07-Sep-15: Peace, human rights, the sheer joy of killing people

Bassem Tamimi with arm around his nephew/cousin Nizar Tamimi, an unrepentant convicted murderer/terrorist in the service of Fatah, soon after Nizar was released from life imprisonment via the Shalit Deal. Nizar was convicted for being one of three Tamimis who killed a Jewish "friend", Chaim Mizrachi [Image Credit: Anne Paq/Activestills.org]. Nizar Tamimi is now married to another convicted, unrepentant Tamimi, a hero of Nabi Saleh, who is also an  unrepentant terrorist/murderer

Speaking tours are generally supposed to be listening tours too.

That's Bassem Tamimi above, the one on the left. Along with his wife and other members of their clan-controlled hamlet a few kilometers from where we live ["17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns"] he has been sending children, including his own children, out into the dusty streets for five years since before they reached their teens. The goal has been to theatrically challenge Israel Defense Forces personnel in a weekly series of staged clashes while his cameras roll. The results can be seen all over the social media.

Mr Tamimi will be speaking over the coming month in various United States venues. Given what we know from paying close attention to his statements over these years, we hope his audiences listen really hard.

And not only his audiences. The roadshow, in which our daughter's murderer's clansman is described as "Palestinian human rights activist", is sponsored by three aspirational groups: Jewish Voice for Peace, Friends of Sabeel North America and Interfaith Peace-Builders. They, along with Amnesty International, have provided indispensable megaphones for his message for a long time.

We know the work of the first two only too well. Whatever they mean by "human rights" and "peace", the human rights of our family and the peace of our neighbors have no role in it.

The promo for Bassem Tamimi's Ithaca NY whistle-stop says he will be speaking under the faux-noble title "Our Destiny is to Resist". It's a familiar-sounding phrase. The word 'resist' happens to be used over and over again by Ahlam Tamimi, the proud murderer of our daughter Malki, as Ms Tamimi describes the sheer joy of selecting a Jerusalem target that is filled with children - with religious Jewish children - and planting the bomb - a human bomb - so that it would explode at 2 in the afternoon on a summer vacation afternoon to ensure maximum devastation.

'Resist' is also part of the formal name of the death-cult terrorist organization Hamas and appears throughout its self-published apologetics.

We're sincerely hoping Ithacans turn out in large numbers. And when Bassem Tamimi is done with his speech, we hope (as we wrote here on Friday - "04-Sep-15: Mr. Human Rights Defender, a question if we may") someone will have the integrity and courage to ask him this:

Bassem Tamimi, tell us in simple words: are you as delighted by your cousin Ahlam Tamimi's massacre of Jewish children as she is? Have you criticized it ever, anywhere? Will you condemn it here and now?

(The massacre we mention is described here. It's where the life of our precious fifteen year-old daughter Malki ended.)

Why do you think no one has asked the ever-interviewable man (or his wife, or his daughter better known these days as Shirley Temper) this question till now? Arriving at an answer would bring an enquiring person a long way towards comprehending just how poorly terrorism, terrorists and their defenders are understood in most societies.

The 'gentle' folk of Bassem Tamimi's town are on record numerous times celebrating the killing of Jews by various Tamimis, and especially the murders done by Ahlam Tamimi, the town heroine. As we wrote on Friday, this sort of stuff, first-person-statements, photos from the village of Nabi Saleh as it celebrates the killers, is easy to find for anyone who actually looks for it. 

Your chance, Ithaca.