08-Nov-14: Tonight: rocks, boulders, fire-bombs, rioters

Jerusalem, yesterday [Image Source]

The terror waged on ordinary Israelis in the name of Palestinian Arab "rage" makes for dangerous times. The attacks and injuries around Israel tonight exemplify how law and order are unraveling with the steady escalation of incitement to violence from Arab quarters. All of the following happened tonight and are reported by Israel National News and Times of Israel.

• Palestinian Arabs hurled rocks and explosives at police and Border Police officers in Jerusalem's Ras al-Amud neighborhood. Police arrested two and dispersed the rioters. 
• Rock-hurling Palestinian Arabs targeted Israeli vehicles after the end of Sabbath tonight in the vicinity of Shiloh Junction in the Binyamin region of Samaria, north of Jerusalem. A three-year-old toddler traveling in a car was among several Israelis injured in one of those rock-hurling volleys; he was taken to Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem with head injuries.
• A bus traveling on Route 65 near the police station in Wadi Ara came under rock attack from Palestinian Arab rioters. Two passengers on board the bus are injured.
• A different bus traveling along Route 5, a major highway, near Barkan in northern Samaria (Shomron), struck a barrier on the side of the road after Palestinian Arab attackers pelted it with large rocks and the driver lost control of his vehicle. Three passengers are injured and treated on the spot by Magen David Adom paramedics before being ambulanced to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikvah.
• Dozens of Palestinian Arab rioters hurled rocks and fireworks at police and security forces in the A-Tur neighbourhood of Jerusalem. Israel Police has deployed riot-control teams in the area, and there have been arrests.
• There are three additional rock-throwing attacks on Jerusalem Light Rail trams tonight, all in the Palestinian Arab Beit Hanina community in Jerusalem's north. There are no injuries but carriage damage is reported and there have been arrests.
• In Jerusalem's Ral al-Amud neighbourhood, near Silwan, there are still more riots. This time, security forces were targeted with rocks and firebombs. There are arrests.
• Police officers shot dead a knife-wielding attacker after he repeatedly lunged at a police car with a knife in his hand. The attack is captured in a video on YouTube here (bear the images in mind when reading "‘My son’s killer is inhuman,’ says slain Arab man’s father", a Times of Israel interview). Riots among Arab residents of his community followed, and have been keeping police busy tonight. During Saturday, according to a Times of Israel report, Israel Police "decided to raise the national alert level to the second highest following riots that broke out in the Galilean town of Kafr Kanna in response to police killing Friday of an Arab man. Israel’s Arab sector has called a one-day strike Sunday in protest of the killing."

In other parts of the world, the violence is interpreted in creative ways:

Palestinians are extremely angry at Israeli settler raids (sic) on the al-Aqsa Mosque compound and restrictions imposed by Tel Aviv (sic) on Muslim worshippers’ access to the holy Islamic site. They accuse Tel Aviv of attempts to Judaize al-Quds, which Palestinians see as the capital of their future independent state. [PressTV (Iran), November 8, 2014]

07-Nov-14: Hovels? Shanties? A Palestinian Arab refugee camp

The Shuafat Refugee Camp is in the news today because it's where the terrorist who drove into a crowd of Israelis in Jerusalem on Wednesday lived. We have had some comments from readers about the misery and deprivation of life in those camps, so we thought a few photos might be helpful in managing people's expectations and creating context.

All of the snaps below are of the Shuafat Refugee Camp and not of the more congenial northern Jerusalem neighbourhood called Shuafat.

Shuafat Refugee Camp [Image Source] 

Shuafat Refugee Camp [Image Source] 

Shuafat Refugee Camp [Image Source]

Shuafat Refugee Camp [Image Source]

Paradise? No, not at all. But hardly a shanty town either, and very little like what people imagine when the term 'refugee camp' is deployed to describe the place.

07-Nov-14: In reporting terror, what the perpetrators and their victims are called is part of the war

Shalom Badani, the "17-year-old man" in today's Haaretz
report suffered mortal injuries in a terrorist attack  on waiting passenger
at a Jerusalem Light Rail station on Route 1 near the Shimon Hatzadik
neighborhood [Image Source]

From a report in today's Haaretz about the second victim of Wednesday's murderous terror attack at a Jerusalem tram stop: 

"A 17-year-old man who was wounded in a vehicular terror attack in Jerusalem on Wednesday died of his wounds early on Friday..."

And in a previous Haaretz: 

"20-year-old youth held for questioning after attacking police"

There's probably some reasonable media rule-of-thumb at work here that jaundiced observers like us stubbornly refuse to see. For instance, when Aljazeera.com calls 17 year old rock throwers "boys". When three Israeli seminary students aged 16, 19 and 16 are termed "settlers". And when three Palestinian Arab males, aged 21, 20 and 20, are repeatedly described as "youths".

On the other hand, those of us deeply irritated by the way news editors often spin an entire report via the judicious choice of specific words can't help suspecting there might be a little something on display here about agenda-driven reporting and editing.

07-Nov-14: At the BBC, a road 'accident' in the far-off Middle East gets curiously prominent coverage

Attacked by a van? By a man? Or by a jihad-minded terrorist, quickly
honored as a 'hero'? The scene at the site of Wednesday's
murderous attack in Jerusalem [Image Source]

The rising wave of chaos and violence that have brought Jerusalem into the headlines in the past months exacted another life last night with the death of a second victim of a terror-attack-by-car assault on pedestrians on a road that skirts the edge of the Old City.

It is reported this morning (Friday) that Shalom Ba'adani, a boy of seventeen, succumbed at Hadassah Ein Karem hospital to the critical injuries he suffered when a resident of Shuafat, northern Jerusalem, Ibrahim al-Akari, steered his commercial van directly into a crowd of people standing at a Jerusalem Light Rail stop on Wednesday.

Not the first murder-by-driver to terrorize Jerusalem in recent days (we wrote here about another: 
("27-Oct-14: Another quiet, decent life whose tragic end fails to merit news reporting"), this time there appears to be a little less pretense on the part of the family and friends of the killer about the motivations:

In a conversation with Ynet, the terrorist's 16-year-old son, Hamza, said he looked up to his father's acts. "I'm proud of my father. I'm not sad that he died a martyr." The police agreed for the family to bury al-Akari at midnight in the presence of up to 35 people... The terrorist's brother is Musa al-Akari, a prisoner released in the Shalit deal and deported to Turkey. He was a member of the Hamas cell that murdered border police officer Nissim Toledano in 1992. Al-Akari, 38, a father of five from the Shuafat refugee camp, arrived at the Light Rail station in the afternoon and ran over anyone who crossed his path. He was shot to death by a border police team that was on site after he exited the vehicle and attempted to attack passersby. Hamas has taken responsibility for the attack. [Ynet. November 5, 2014]

What Ynet does not mention is that the killer leaped from his van after mowing down his first victims and, armed with a lethal metal bar, launched a frenzied slashing attack on passers-by. He was stopped by a volley of gunfire from security forces patrolling the area and died. The terror attack was captured on security-cam video, and there is wide media coverage of the riots that ensued in Arab suburbs of Jerusalem in the hours that followed and again this morning (Hebrew report).

The first of Al-Akari's victims was a Border Police superintendent, Captain Jadan Assad, whose funeral in the Druze community of Beit Ja'an, also received wide media coverage - at least in Israel - yesterday (Thursday).

Another victim of the terrorist's evil was - again, not for the first time - the common sense of some of the people who report events in the news industry. Here (on the right) is a screenshot of the initial report as published on the BBC's website in the hours after the Jerusalem attack" "Drive hits pedestrians..." Could happen anywhere, right? And if we, the BBC, want to avoid being judgmental, well, that's understandable, no?

Even in the revised and "improved" version of the BBC's account ["Jerusalem: Palestinian van attack kills policeman", November 6, 2014 - including graphic video footage that leaves little doubt about where raging jihad fits into this tragic event], there is a striking aspect worth noting:

A Palestinian driver has rammed a van into several pedestrians in Jerusalem, killing a policeman, hours after clashes at the city's holiest site. Some 13 people were hurt in the attack on Wednesday. The driver was shot dead. Hamas militants said they carried out the attack. Israel's prime minister said it was a result of "incitement" by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. A similar car attack by a Palestinian took place in the same area two weeks ago which left a woman and a baby dead... His Facebook page states that he is a member of Hamas, and the Twitter account for the group's armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, described him as a member and a martyr... Hamas rejects Israel's right to exist and advocates what it calls "armed resistance" against the Jewish state... Hamas praised the attack as a "glorious operation", describing Mr Akari as a "hero" whose actions were a "natural response" to Israel's actions in east Jerusalem. Two weeks ago a Palestinian from the Abu Tor area drove his car into a tram station, killing a baby and an Ecuadorean woman.

What's striking here, apart from the circumlocutions? The word terror appears in this lengthy article exactly zero times, reflecting the morally-compromised and self-damaging guidelines at work within one of the world's most influential sources of news and opinion [here's one of our earlier notes about the phenomenon]. The BBC at its best.

06-Nov-14: The killers among us

Poster of the "blessed martyr" Mu'taz Hijazi, praising the
attempted murderer for his life of "jihad and sacrifice", appears
on the Arabic-language website of the "Rachel Corrie
Palestinian Center for Human Rights" here

From today's Jerusalem Post, a startling report that highlights glaring gaps in the approach taken by Israeli law enforcement officials to the growing threat from jihad-minded terrorists living and working inside Israeli society:

Almagor Terror Victims Association is preparing a database of released terrorists so businesses can look up potential employees, accusing the Justice Ministry and Israel Police of negligence for not doing so themselves.
The initiative comes a week after Mu’taz Hijazi, a terrorist released from Israeli prison, attempted to assassinate Temple Mount activist Rabbi Yehuda Glick, outside the Menachem Begin Heritage Center. Hijazi worked in Terasa, the restaurant in the museum, where Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, President Reuven Rivlin and other senior officials have dined. Terasa's management said after the attack that they did not know Hijazi had been in Israeli prison for multiple stabbings and murder attempts. "We checked, and the police and Justice Ministry do not have any system of warning workplaces," Almagor director Lt.-Col. Meir Indor explained, demanding that [they] establish one to limit terrorists' easy access to Israelis.
Families of terror victims have already begun voluntarily providing the organization with details about the terrorists and who they killed or injured, and requested that the Justice Ministry provide them with information about the terrorists' locations. Indor pointed out that the Justice Minister does give information about pedophiles freed from jail...

More here.

03-Nov-14: If any Gazans are as infuriated as we are by Hamas fat-cat self-serving hypocrisy, make yourselves known

Current headline over at Times of Israel:

"Hamas chief’s sister treated in Israeli hospital | Several relatives of the Islamist group’s leaders known to enter reviled Jewish state to obtain medical care unavailable in Gaza"

Moussa Abu Marzook is deputy head of Hamas' political bureau, and about as inside as an insider in the terror world ever gets. 

If there are Gazans among our readers, be assured that when you are ready to rip into the bald-faced hypocrisy that brings someone like Abu Marzook to endanger (and kill) you and your children; to commandeer the basements of Gaza's few and inadequate hospitals in order to safeguard the Hamas leadership during a shooting war like the one we had in July and August; and to use human shields (Gazan human shields) to protect the rocket-men of the jihadist forces with zero regard for the price you and your children pay, then we will be ready to help you formulate some angry arguments and get them out to where they might do some good.

Until then, you are invited to see what we wrote just two weeks ago on essentially the same issue: "20-Oct-14: Sincere wishes for a complete and thorough recovery as soon as possible" and to help us get that out where people - especially people in Gaza - can see it.

02-Nov-14: In Gaza, puzzlement all over again

Essential goods cross over from Israel to the Gaza Strip

in August 2014 [Image Source]

In Gaza, they're evidently at a complete loss to explain some recent developments:

ISRAEL CLOSES TWO GAZA CROSSINGS WITHOUT MENTIONING ANY REASON | Israel will on Sunday close down Gaza's only functioning two crossings, namely Kerem Shalom and Erez. Israeli authorities had told the Palestinian side that they would close down Kerem Shalom, Gaza's only functioning commercial crossing, on Sunday, even without mentioning any reasons, Mounir al-Ghalban, the head of the Palestinian side of the crossing, told Anadolu Agency. He added that Israeli authorities did not mention a date for reopening the crossing, warning against the effect of the crossing closure on Gaza's foodstuff supplies. Israeli authorities will also close down Erez Crossing in northern Gaza, al-Ghalban said. He added that only Palestinians on emergency would be allowed to cross between the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank through the crossing. [Daily Sabah (a Turkish publication), yesterday]

No reasons? We can help. Here's a little fresh background via Ynet:

Gaza cut off from the world as Israel, Egypt close border crossings | Ynet - Saturday | The Gaza Strip will be completed isolated from the world starting Sunday after Israel decided to close both the Kerem Shalom and Erez border crossings and Egypt has accelerated its plans to create a buffer zone on the Sinai-Gaza border. According to the Arabic Sky News channel, the evacuation of the border area to create a buffer zone was sped up after satellite images showed hundreds of tunnels remaining in the area, even after an intense Egyptian campaign to eliminate them.
While the Egyptian army has managed to destroy 1,500 smuggling tunnels, satellite images exposed hundreds of additional tunnels - some in Rafah mosques, bedrooms and shops. The establishment of a buffer zone in Rafah - a strip of land 14km long and half a kilometer wide - started following a terrorist attack in Sinai that led to the death of 33 Egyptian soldiers. The army began its work on the buffer zone by quickly evacuating and destroying 800 homes, compensating the residents... The Qatari TV network affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood quoted residents and activists who claimed this was the "Egyptian equivalent of the Nakba in '48." Egyptian state media, on the other hand, focused on the citizen's understanding of the operation. Al-Aharam newspaper wrote that evacuated residents were "standing by the state after the terrorists made their lives hell." The rocket fire from Gaza to Israel on Friday is viewed by Israel as the first blatant violation of the ceasefire by Hamas. It led to the decision to close both of the border crossings from Israel to Gaza - Kerem Shalom at the south of the Strip, used to transfer goods, and Erez in the north of the Strip, through which people pass - as a way of pressing Hamas and making it clear to Gazans what is the price of rocket fire.

Kerem Shalom a year ago: trucks laden with goods for
Gaza, lined up and waiting to be received [Image Source]

A pity Daily Sabah doesn't keep its readers more updated on the strategic value of Kerem Shalom to the long-suffering ordinary people of the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip. They might for instance have shared this story with them: "First trucks with reconstruction supplies enter Gaza" [Times of Israel, October 14, 2014]. Or this, if they prefer a Palestinian media source: "Reconstruction material enters Gaza via Kerem Shalom" [Ma'an News Agency, October 30, 2014]. Then again, if they did give proper coverage of what outsiders like the Israelis wish they could do more of for the Gazans, they might have to include a line like this one:

"On the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing, PA and UN officials are overseeing the shipments to ensure they do not fall into the hands of Hamas, the IDF’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories said." [Times of Israel]

Or this explanation from Associated Press:

"The United Nations, in turn, devised a system under which Israel would gradually ease a ban on selling building materials to Gaza, with U.N. monitors keeping track of shipments in Gaza to make sure they are not diverted by Hamas for military use." [AP, October 22, 2014]

So Hamas is meant to get none of the incoming materials. They are intended for the Gazan people. Comprehending this might take the Daily Sabah people and their readers some way towards understanding why (a) the thugs of Hamas have no problem firing more rockets into Israel, and (b) Israel wants Gazans to understand that Israel-bound rockets fired by Hamas rocket-men from the alleys where they live come at a price.

02-Nov-14: How well does "Democracy is for infidels" resonate among Europeans?

"They kill Muslims", ISIS preacher's son responds. "The infidels
of Europe, all the infidels."[Image Source]

The German news magazine site Spiegel Online currently has an interview with an Islamic State operative who goes by the name Abu Sattar

around 30 years old and wears a thick, black beard that reaches down to his chest. His top lip is shaved as is his head and he wears a black robe that stretches all the way to the floor. He keeps a copy of the Koran, carefully wrapped in black cloth, in his black leather bag.

The article says he "recruits". This brief extract gives a sense of what the marketing-savvy ISIS people want the world to hear:

SPIEGEL: There are an estimated 1.6 billion Muslims in the world today. Many are very democratic, some are liberal while others are conservative and, just imagine, there are heterosexual Muslims and homosexual Muslims among them. Most of them do not share your ideology. But you act as though there were only one kind of Muslim, namely those who think like you do. That is absurd!
Abu Sattar: Democracy is for infidels. A real Muslim is not a democrat because he doesn't care about the opinions of majorities and minorities don't interest him. He is only interested in what Islam says. Furthermore, democracy is a hegemonic tool of the West and contrary to Islam. Why do you act as though the entire world needs democracy? And when it comes to homosexuality, the issue is clearly dealt with by the Koran. It says it is forbidden and should be punished...

SPIEGEL: In the golden age of Islam, there was music, dancing, painting, calligraphy and architecture. Yet you are propagating an Islam free of culture and art. It is time to discuss religious content and find a modern interpretation, don't you think.
Abu Sattar: It is not up to us to interpret God's word. There have been repeated errors and lapses in Muslim societies. That which you refer to as the "golden age" was one of them...

SPIEGEL: You constantly speak of fighting. Do Muslims not constantly speak of Islam being a religion of peace?
Abu Sattar: It is when people submit to Allah. Allah is merciful and forgives those who follow him.

We mentioned yesterday (here) the stunningly high degree of support views like this person's have among the British, but it's certainly not only them. A poll released during August 2014 [reported in Newsweek] examined attitudes towards ISIS among Europeans.

One in six French citizens sympathises with the Islamist militant group ISIS, also known as Islamic State, a poll released this week found. The poll of European attitudes towards the group, carried out by ICM for Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya, revealed that 16% of French citizens have a positive opinion of ISIS. This percentage increases among younger respondents, spiking at 27% for those aged 18-24... Newsweek’s France Correspondent, Anne-Elizabeth Moutet, was unsurprised by the news. “This is the ideology of young French Muslims from immigrant backgrounds,” she said, “unemployed to the tune of 40%, who’ve been deluged by satellite TV and internet propaganda.” She pointed to a correlation between support for ISIS and rising anti-Semitism in France, adding that “these are the same people who torch synagogues”.[Newsweek, "16% of French Citizens Support ISIS, Poll Finds", August 26, 2014]

Positive attitudes to ISIS in Germany "showed less divergence, remaining between 3% and 4% for all age groups" [Newsweek]

Compare this with Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia - the Arab states who are now partnered with the US in combat with ISIS forces in the military sense. A recent New Republic analysis [graphics here] based on polls conducted in September suggested

that ISIS has almost no popular support in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Lebanon—even among Sunnis. Among Egyptians, a mere 3 percent express a favorable opinion of ISIS. In Saudi Arabia, the figure is slightly higher: 5 percent rate ISIS positively. In Lebanon, not a single Christian, Shiite, or Druze respondent viewed ISIS favorably; and even among Lebanon's Sunnis, that figure is almost equally low at 1 percent. Nevertheless, there is a real difference between almost no support and no support at all. Since 3 percent of adult Egyptians say they approve of ISIS, that is nearly 1.5 million people. For Saudis, the 5 percent of adult nationals who support ISIS means over half a million people. And even in tiny Lebanon, 1 percent of adult Sunnis equals a few thousand ISIS sympathizers. In any of these places, this is enough to harbor at least a few cells of serious troublemakers.

Back in July 2014, there were reports showing a completely different trend among Saudi Arabians, described in "Saudi poll to reveal public’s level of sympathy for IS":

The Sakina Campaign plans to carry out a scientific survey to determine the position of the Saudi public on the "caliphate" announced by the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. This comes after the results of an opinion poll of Saudis were released on social networking sites, claiming that 92% of the target group believes that "IS conforms to the values of Islam and Islamic law." [Al-Monitor, July 2014] 

Despite some searching, we have not yet found any indication on-line that the Sakina ("which operates under the supervision of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Da'wah and Guidance in Saudi Arabia" - Al-Monitor) poll was done or its results published. We will keep looking.

02-Nov-14: Understanding what they really mean when the terrorists say children are their main concern

Palestinian Arab child photographed at Hamas "victory" event
in Nablus, August 29, 2014 [Image Source: AP]

Universal Children's Day takes place on November 20, less than three weeks from today. 

The annual event was initiated by the UN General Assembly in 1954 as a way of encouraging states to "to promote mutual exchange and understanding among children" and similar blah blah. But also "to initiate action to benefit and promote the welfare of the world's children" which is a worthy and concrete goal.

Even the most cursory look at things that are done to children in many parts of the world serves to persuade of the need to take their welfare very seriously. Think of the millions of children cheated of education and forced into child labour, slavery, prostitution and pornography. And then there's the recruitment and training of child soldiers, a matter that has occupied us here on this blog often. 

The UN adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child on November 20, 1958 and then the Convention on the Rights of the Child exactly 31 years later, on November 20, 1989. That convention is going to be 25 years old later this month. Pretty soon now the formalities, the issue of new postage stamps and theme posters and similar actions by civil servants are going to render the occasion even more meaningless than it probably is already. So allow us please to share a handful of observations about children in the Palestinian Arab world.

First some notes from a brief analysis triggered by the wave of violence that is currently on view here in Jerusalem from where we produce this blog. The Israeli Arab journalist and analyst, Khaled Abu Toameh ["Palestinians:Stop the Children's Intifada!", October 29, 2014] writes:

Nearly half of the Palestinians arrested by Jerusalem Police over the past few months are minors. Some of them are as young as nine. These children are being sent to throw stones and firebombs, and launch fireworks at policemen and IDF soldiers, as well as at Israeli civilians and vehicles, including buses and the light rail in Jerusalem. Hamas, Fatah and other Palestinian groups are using children from east Jerusalem and the West Bank in what appears to be a new intifada against Israel... The exploitation of children in the fight against Israel has attracted little attention from the international community and media. Human rights groups and United Nations institutions have chosen to turn a blind eye to these human rights abuses. Instead of condemning those who exploit the children and dispatch them to confront policemen and soldiers, these groups and institutions are busy denouncing Israel for targeting minors.

Pre-teen Pal Arab girl poses at Nablus "victory" rally
organized by Hamas, August 30, 2014 [Image Source]

He says most of the children detained by police for involvement in the violence are released to house arrest. Those aged between nine and 13 are referred to social welfare authorities and not detained. More quotes from Abu Toameh:

• Hamas and Fatah had long discovered that children are one of the most effective tools in the fight against Israel - especially because of the damage Israel sustains in the court of international public opinion.
• This strategy works out well for Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Fatah. At the end of the day, they can always blame Israel for "deliberately" targeting Palestinian children and women -- an allegation that the mainstream media in the West often endorses without asking questions.
• Moreover, the Palestinian groups know that the children who are being sent to confront Israeli soldiers and policemen will not be held accountable...
• These children are victims of a campaign of indoctrination and incitement that is being waged by various Palestinian groups... through the media, mosques, educational institutions and the fiery rhetoric of leaders and activists...
• There are also reports that Fatah and Hamas activists in Jerusalem have been paying children small sums of money to throw stones and firebombs at Israelis and block roads in several Arab neighborhoods... Palestinian groups often reward the families of the children by hiring lawyers and paying fines imposed on them by Israeli courts. As a result, the families are less motivated to stop their children from risking their lives... 
• The time has come for the international community and media to pay attention to their disturbing conduct and demand that Palestinian groups stop hiding behind children... The adult activists who send and encourage children to take part in violence should be held accountable, not only by Israeli authorities, but also by their own people and international human rights organizations. If these adults want an intifada, they should be the first to go out and confront Israeli policemen and soldiers.

Life Magazine, June 12, 1970

We mentioned above that the recruitment and training of child soldiers into the Palestinian terrorism machine is a matter that has occupied us often here on this blog over the years. Here are some links to past posts to bookmark and read when you can:

• 03-Jul-06: Marketing Suicide to Children
• 13-Aug-06: People Who Love Death... and What This Means for the Rest of Us
• 27-Mar-08: Palestinian infanticide
• 09-Jan-13: Yet another reminder why war against terrorists is different from conventional warfare (includes some revealing insights into the damaging role played by Dr Hanan Ashrawi in deflecting much-needed criticism of Palestinian Arab society's treatment of its children)
• 24-Jan-13: Sacrificing the lives of an entire generation of adolescents on their altar of hatred, the thugs of Hamas boast of plans to create a children's army
• 27-Jan-13: Hamas' new army of children: Will the UN's and foreign funders' role in this scandal be critiqued by the news-reporting media?
• 29-Apr-13: Hamas demonstrates importance of solid education
• 04-May-13: So you thought the people who raise children to become "the fertilizer of their land" could sink no further?
• 18-Jun-13: They want their children to become killers and they say why. The rest of us are left with questions
• 15-Jan-14: When a society praises itself for turning its children into human bombs, whose problem is that?
• 27-Jan-14: In Gaza, a death cult celebrates its graduating class
• 21-Jul-14: War, civilians, children: what the terrorists of Hamas can teach us
• 30-Jul-14: The ordinariness of utter evil (includes one of the most chilling video interviews we have ever seen - a Palestinian Arab mother speaks from the hospital room where her child's life is being saved by Israeli doctors, and tells of her deepest hopes)
• 08-Oct-14: Children, innocence, rhetoric and savagery

Not for the first time, we are left to wonder aloud why UNICEF, Save the Children, Amnesty, Terre des Hommes, International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and so many other well-funded, high-profile public interest organizations are taking so little interest in this unfolding tragedy. It's happening right under their noses. And, as the famous cover (above right) from LIFE magazine, published more than 40 years ago reminds, they can hardly claim this is some sort of new phenomenon.

02-Nov-14: Friday rocket attack on southern Israel is confirmed by IDF

From Ynet:

A rocket fired late Friday night from the Gaza Strip exploded east of the border fence, in an open area in the Eshkol Regional Council. Israel's alert systems identified a rocket launch, but did not sound an alarm. No injuries or damages were reported. The incident marks the second time that a rocket landed in Israeli territory since the end of Operation Protective Edge two months ago.