14-Aug-13: Aged, decrepit freedom fighter and former political prisoner walks out of jail (hint: ignore your lying eyes)

Old, now freed, unrepentant Palestinian Arab terrorist: Boarded a crowded bus,
stabbing whoever he could. Now free to do it again bigger and better.

We could tell dozens of similar stories, and perhaps we will eventually. Meanwhile in the aftermath of last night's unjust release of 26 killers, we will focus on one, chosen literally at random.

Reuters published this photo along with the following caption this morning.

Freed Palestinian prisoner Hosni Sawalha (C) is greeted by his sister upon arrival in the West Bank village of Azmout near Nablus early August 14, 2013. Israel freed 26 Palestinian prisoners on Wednesday to keep U.S.-sponsored peacemaking on course for a second round of talks, but diplomacy remained dogged by Israeli plans for more Jewish homes on land the Palestinians claim for a future state. REUTERS/Abed Omar Qusini (WEST BANK - Tags: POLITICS)

Keep in mind, as we fill in some of the real background, the nonsense that has been propagated in recent weeks about how the Palestinian convicts (shamefully termed "political prisoners" and "freedom fighters" by too many mainstream voices) are old, spent, tired and heading for a retirement devoted to knitting and gin rummy.

In various reports, they call this individual Hosni Faregh Sawalha, Fazeh Ahmed Hosni Sawalha and Sualha Fazah Ahmed Husseini. No matter - his actions speak more eloquently than his label. In 1990, he and a cousin from the Sawalha clan (also released to freedom yesterday) and a third man boarded a crowded Line 66 bus in the Tel Aviv suburbs, making its way from Bnei Brak to the adjoining Ramat Gan.

(By the way, ideologically-driven news channels tend to make up stories about an apartheid-like state in which Arabs are prevented from getting onto public transport, but in reality there are almost always Arab passengers on the Israeli buses and trams we ride. In December 1990, the murder-minded Sawalha boys had absolutely no difficulty boarding the bus.)

A JTA report from that day says three young Arab villagers from the Balus area, the two Sawalhas and a third man called Omar Dawikat, boarded the crowded commuter bus and began stabbing wildly at passengers. They murdered a 24-year-old Yeshiva student, Yaacov Baruch Heisler, named for a grandfather who was killed in a Jordanian bombardment of the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem during the 1948 War of Independence (which ended, to remind the information-challenged, with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan's forces illegally occupying half of Jerusalem to no one's great consternation). Thousands attended the young man's funeral that evening (a Sunday) in Jerusalem's Har Hamenuhot cemetery near to where our daughter, also a victim of political prisoners, lies in eternal rest.

Three youngsters were stabbed by the attackers and hospitalized in stable condition: Avishag Cohen, 19, and Shmuel Cohen, 16, both from Bnei Brak; and Becky Malka, 18, of Rishon le-Zion. JTA's report says none of the attackers were known to have police records or to be affiliated with any terrorist group. But times change, and they are now reported (see Times of Israel) to be, or to have been (not clear) members of the Fatah terrorist organization, which by the way was formed and active years before there were any so-called occupied territories. Dawikat was shot dead by an alert off-duty security officer. The two others were arrested and tried, convicted, sentenced and - as we see - freed.

Notice please that neither this Reuters report nor the vast (by far) majority of the reports and photo-essays lavishly documenting the joy among our Palestinian neighbours wastes a sentence, a word, even a single space, on the Jewish victims of these psychopaths and thugs. Nor do they ask what it means when an entire society (the Palestinian Arabs) glorifies and celebrates the killers of children, students, pensioners and Holocaust survivors... and calls it the start of a peace process.