11-Jun-18: A young woman is a multiple-stabbing victim in Afula; the assailant fled and is caught [Developing]

Video still shows the moment the alleged stabber,
still in possession of his knife, is shot and
stopped [Source video]

Local news reports starting just before noon today (Monday) said there had been a serious stabbing incident in the Israeli city of Afula. The victim is a still-unnamed young woman in her late teens (that's an estimate by the medical personnel) and the attacker, who feld the scene and was then caught by security personnel, is a Palestinian Arab from Jenin.

Not surprisingly, the suspicions being raised at this hour in the media point to this being a terror attack. But no official statement to that effect has issued yet.

As told by Israel National News

An Israeli teenager is in serious condition after being stabbed multiple times in the northern city of Afula Monday afternoon. The incident occurred outside of the local Aroma cafe at around noon on Monday. The 18-year-old woman who was stabbed was treated by MDA emergency first responders dispatched to the scene. Medical teams then evacuated the victim to HaEmek Medical Center in Afula in very serious condition. Police have opened an investigation into the stabbing incident, and are currently investigating if the attack was in fact terror-related...

Her condition when this was first reported is defined as moderate-to-serious and she is getting emergency treatment at HaEmek hospital in  Afula.

Times of Israel says

Police arrested her suspected attacker, who had fled the scene, after a brief manhunt. The suspect was identified by police as a Palestinian man in his 30s from the northern West Bank city of Jenin. “Police shot the suspect in the leg after calling upon him to stop,” a police spokesperson said. “The suspect was arrested with a knife in his possession.” Police said they were working to determine the motive for the stabbing. Videos of the suspected terrorist’s arrest were quickly posted to social media by bystanders.

Here for instance.

More details when we know them.

18-Apr-16: For the jihadists of Hamas, planting bombs on Israeli buses is something to sing about

The Hamas music-video is online here

The Islamist terror organization Hamas has praised this afternoon's attack on a Jerusalem city bus. But so far, at least, it has taken no credit for carrying it out.

Hamas praised the attack on the bus in Jerusalem but doesn't claim responsibility in a tweet from the official Hamas twitter account, The tweet in Arabic said "Hamas praises the operation in Jerusalem, and regards it as a natural reaction to Zionist crimes, specifically for the extrajudicial killings and the desecration of Al-Aqsa mosque." ["Hamas praises Jerusalem attack", Ynet. April 18, 2016]

Hamas' bashfulness is a little too disingenuous for its own blood-soaked history and track-record of savagery.

For instance, just six weeks ago, Hamas began promoting a music video [online here] in which a group of its singing-and-dancing all-stars parade in front of a bus made up (poorly) to look like it belongs to Egged, the veteran Israeli co-operative that operates most of Jerusalem's city buses. The Hamas mock-up is smoking and is meant to look it has been freshly exploded.

The Hamas video clip was first shown to an eager Palestinian Arab audience on the Hamas-operated Al-Aqsa satellite television network on February 6, 2016, and then beamed throughout the Arabic-speaking world via a multitude of streaming-video websites and cable networks that carry the terrorism-steeped Al-Aqsa programming.

Not a mock-up: The aftermath of today's bus attack on southern Jerusalem's Moshe Baram Street [Image Source]

Via Palestinian Media Watch [here], here's a taste of what the lyrics mean:

O bearer of good news, strap on an explosive belt
Nothing will be told about the Intifada except for the roof of the bus that flew off
O Martyrdom seeker, respond to Al-Aqsa’s call
Make the bomb even more powerful
Bring Netanyahu down
And the losses should be too many for him to count
Scatter them in all directions, terrorize their families...

Twenty-two years ago, almost to the day, in April 1994, Hamas carried out two bombing attacks on Israeli buses, one in the northern city of Afula (8 murdered, 55 victims injured) and another in the northern coastal city of Hadera, a week later (six killed, 30 injured). Murderous Hamas bombings of people traveling on Israeli buses evolved into an especially effective mode of jihadist warfare in the years that followed [table].

09-Oct-15: The wave of terror attacks goes on

In the aftermath of this morning's murderous attack on an Israeli in the
Kiryat Arba community, the assailant's knife and blood are left behind
after the victim is taken to hospital and the attacker is shot dead [Image Source]

The coordinated eruption of rock-hurlings, stabbings, shootings and assaults by Arabs on Israelis continues in full force today, Friday.

We heard a commentator on BBC's Outside Source, reporting from the Mount of Olives an hour ago, call them lone-wolf attacks (she may also have slipped the word "alleged" into the sentence to flesh out the effect of her political korrectness) but they are nothing of the sort - unless wolves take their orders via shrill voices broadcasting messages of hate-based incitement via the social media and in mosques and prayer rooms.

The direction of the reporting, at a time when Arab-on-Jew attacks are happening at a furious pace throughout the country, is reflected in the precisely-worded lede of a major BBC report at this hour:

Israelis and Palestinians have been injured in a fresh spate of stabbings, including what Israeli police say was an apparent revenge attack on Arabs... The attacks come amid soaring tensions between Israelis and Palestinians...  ["Israelis and Palestinians injured in new stabbing attacks", uploaded to BBC's website around 3:00 pm Friday]

Here's an incomplete summary as of 2:30 pm Friday:

• An Arab woman attacked a security guard with her knife in Afula's bus station around 2:00 pm this afternoon. (Another knifing attack was launched on one of Afula's main streets just last night.) The guard was unarmed according to this report, though he was part of the team responsible for safeguarding passengers moving through this northern city's main transit hub. Friday early afternoon is one of the week's two major public transport rush-hours throughout Israel. Friday is the start of the weekend in Israel, and many travelers want to be at their destination before the sun sets signifying the start of the Sabbath, The attacker, evidently a resident of the predominantly Arab Israeli city of Nazareth, whose name is reported as Asraa Zidan Tawfik Abed, was stopped with a bullet fired by one of two IDF soldiers (says Jerusalem Post), one male, one female, who fired at her legs and brought her down but did not kill her (this is not Syria or Jordan). The knife-woman is now in Afula's Ha'emek Hospital getting the best treatment that Israeli medicine can offer. We wish her a speedy recovery and a very long prison sentence. The guard's selfless actions almost certainly saved lives today.
• In the southern city of Dimona, a Jewish youth of 17 stabbed four Arabs this morning. BBC calls them "two Israeli Bedouins and two Palestinians". The attacks occurred at a shopping center and nearby. A security guard tackled the knife-wielding Israeli and held him till police arrived to arrest him. This Jew-on-Arab attack has caused an uncommon amount of consternation. News reporters often search high and low to spin terrorism and related events in this country as if they were part of some mythical cycle-of-violence, which they are not. The violence in this current wave is like that of previous waves - calculated to deliver a message of hatred-driven terror into the hearts of Israelis. Unfortunately an Israeli engaging in similar-looking tactics, even given the vast gulf that separates Israeli public opinion about terror from Palestinian Arab views on the same subject, makes it that little bit easier for those superficial reports to be made and to sound credible. All four of the Arab victims are out of danger. Two have moderate injuries and the other two are said to have light injuries. Three of them were taken to Beer Sheba's Soroka Medical Center for treatment. According to Associated Press, "Dimona mayor Beni Bitton said the stabber is a "mentally ill man." He told Channel 10 TV that two of the victims worked for City Hall, and that passers-by quickly rushed to help the wounded Arabs and provided first aid."
• On the narrow route that passes the notoriously violent Arab village, Beit Ummar (about which we have written frequently), hails of rocks yesterday and today (and many times in the past) continue to make life dangerous for Israeli traffic traveling on the Gush Etzion, Kiryat Arba and Karmei Tzur roads. Numerous vehicles have been damaged during today's violence.
• In Jerusalem around noon today in the haredi Shmuel Hanavi neighbourhood, a Jewish teenager of 16 (according to Jerusalem Post) was stabbed and moderately injured by a Palestinian Arab from Hebron. Israel National News reports that the assailant was tracked down by security personnel and apprehended soon after, The wounded boy is getting treated at Hadassah hospital.
• Also around noon, in Kiryat Arba - close to the spot where a serious very similar attack took place yesterday - a policeman was stabbed and injured by a Palestinian Arab male. The assailant was shot by other officers and died of his wounds.
• We are hearing reports from the coastal city of Ashdod about Arab construction workers hurling rocks and cinder blocks at passing cars in the early afternoon.
• And perhaps feeling out-activisted by the Fatah-controlled crowds of lone-wolves in Judea and Samara, the Hamas overlords of the Gaza Strip appear to be flexing their muscles this afternoon. A Times of Israel report, uploaded around 3:00 pm Friday, says "Hamas’s chief in Gaza on Friday called for additional violence against Israel. "Gaza will fulfill its role in the Jerusalem intifada and it is more than ready for confrontation,” Ismail Haniyeh said during a sermon for weekly Muslim prayers at a mosque in Gaza City. “We are calling for the strengthening and increasing of the intifada… It is the only path that will lead to liberation,” he said." The results were not long in coming: "Some 200 Palestinians approached the fence closest to the Nahal Oz Kibbutz in the northern Gaza Strip. “They began throwing stones and rolling burning tires at Israeli forces,” an army spokesperson said. IDF troops, who remained on the Israeli side of the border, opened fire at the protesters, who were approximately 150 feet (50 meters) away, in order to break up the protest and push them from the fence, the spokesman said."

More when we can manage to write and edit. The Sabbath is approaching fast.

13-Nov-13: Israeli is stabbed by Arab assailant in Afula this morning

Afula Central Bus Station [Wikimedia]

The central bus-station in the northern Israeli city of Afula has seen more than its share of violent acts of terror over the years. There's more today.

An Israeli male is in critical condition this morning (Wednesday) after being stabbed by a Palestinian Arab around 08:30 am. Following the attack, the victim was rushed to Afula's Ha'emek Hospital with multiple stab wounds to the neck.

Times of Israel quotes a radio news source saying the victim is an IDF serviceman. Haaretz says he is eighteen years old.

Ynet's Hebrew report says the stabbing took place on a bus traveling from Nazareth to Afula and on to Tel Aviv, and that the attacker is a sixteen year old from Jenin who, the report suggests, was in Israel without a permit. The attacker was seized by other passengers and on the bus' arrival at Afula's central bus station he was taken away by police for interrogation.

UPDATE Wednesday night November 13, 2013:  The victim of this morning's savage attack on a bus is a young soldier, Eden Atias, 18. He died of his injuries shortly after arriving at hospital and is being buried tonight in Nazareth Ilit’s military cemetery as we write these lines. Times of Israel says thousands are attending the funeral.

UPDATE Thursday morning November 14, 2013: For those nourished by the pursuit for root causes, here is the root cause for the murder, while he slept, of a young Israeli man riding on an intercity bus yesterday morning:

"Security guards stopped the assailant, Hussein Jawadra, a 16-year-old Palestinian from Jenin who is residing in Israel illegally, and turned him over to security forces. Jawadra’s two cousins are both held in Israel. One of them was sentenced to three life sentences for the murder of two Israelis and for several counts of attempted murder. The other was jailed for 12 years for attempted murder." [Ynet]

Those two cousins who constitute the claimed motivation for a sixteen year-old to murder a sleeping teenager, were "associated" with the Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades (the terrorist faction headed by Palestine president Mahmoud Abbas). They were convicted and sentenced for their crimes a decade ago, according to Haaretz. The notion that a simple village boy who likely never met those two clansmen of his, but who felt compelled to avenge them, is ideologically-spun reportorial nonsense. The real story here is the relentless incitement to hatred and murder emanating from the highest levels of the Palestinian Arab power pyramid.

01-Jul-13: 66 acts of murder make him a hero in parts of the Arab world. What does this tell us about parts of the Arab world?

Mahmoud Abbas' official television station expresses what they want

us to know about the convicted and unrepentant killers

in our prisons [Image Source: PMW]

The Jordanian parliament is so keen to have Palestinian terrorists freed from Israeli prisons where some of them are serving multiple life-terms for hideous atrocities that they are seeking to expel Israel's ambassador and cancel the Israel/Jordan peace treaty if they can't get their way.

A report posted on a Jordanian government website last night (Sunday) says they are demanding that Israel

respect the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty and to respond to the Jordanian demands and release all Jordanian prisoners. They stressed that "soft diplomacy" with Israel can not solve the issue of prisoners, therefore, the government is required to use all political and legal papers its has to ensure the release of the prisoners. 

The notion that Israel must "release all Jordanian prisoners" because of "the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty" is nonsense. No such obligation has ever existed: not legally, not morally, not diplomatically. We are aware that the notorious "chief negotiator" for one of the two Palestinian Arab statelets, Saeb Erekat, claims it does. But as IMRA explains here, he achieves this only by twisting the plain words of the 1999 Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum which in reality says something quite different.

So whom are the Jordanians so keen to free? Well, it's a long list, but it includes the man sentenced to the longest term of anyone in the Israeli prison system. 

We're speaking of a person about whom we have written in the past [see here]: Abdullah Barghouti, a Kuwaiti who is the self-confessed murderer of 66 people including 9 in the July 2002 bombing at the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; 11 in the March 2002 bombing of Jerusalem's Cafe Moment; 10 in the December 2001 triple-bomb outrage on Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall; and 15 (most of them children, including our 15 year old daughter Malki) in the August 2001 massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria in August 2001.

The judges who sentenced him expressed regret that the death penalty was not an option. This is a not common occurrence in Israeli jurisprudence. The one time a death penalty was carried out in Israel was that of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 1962.

From prison, Barghouti has done an exemplary job of reminding anyone listening of the bestiality that underpins his psychopathic nature. 66 innocent people killed? Not enough. In 2006, in the intimate setting of a quiet interview beamed throughout the world by CBS television's '60 Minutes' program, Barghouti famously said

"I feel bad because the number is only 66. This is the answer you want to hear? Yes, I feel bad because I want more." [Quoted on a CBS site]

To emphasize the point, in an Israeli court in 2010, he reiterated his dedication to killing more if (when?) he is freed again.

Hard to imagine anyone seriously trying to turn this sick killer of children into something heroic and worthy of emulation. But of course that is precisely what has been happening during the past decade.

Case in point - the official public television station of the Palestinian Authority headed by the 'moderate' Mahmoud Abbas. Just four days ago, it broadcast a program which Palestinian Media Watch has now translated to English and is streaming from its own site [here]. The host, a woman called Manal Seif, launches with visible enthusiasm into a paean of worhip and praise for three figures - all of them sitting in Israeli prisons, all of them convicted of acts of mass-murder. Let's listen:

I want to tell the Israelis that our prisoners are heroes and not terrorists. What I saw reminded me of an Israeli website called PMW or Palestinian Media Watch, a site that monitors the Palestinian media. Of course every visit that we film for a prisoner gets them angry. I was surprised a week ago that [regarding] brother Ibrahim Hamed (54 life sentences), brother Abbas Al-Sayid (35 life sentences), and brother Abdallah Barghouti (67 life sentences), they [PMW] objected, they were upset, they slandered these heroes and claimed that they are terrorists. If they see Abdallah Barghouti as a terrorist, Abbas Al-Sayid as a terrorist, Ibrahim Hamed and Nasser Awais (14 life sentences), if they see all these prisoners as terrorists, we see them as heroes... I salute you, all you heroic fighter prisoners, and of course I always wish you freedom. [PMW]

The good people at PMW told us that Manal Seif hosts a weekly PA TV program called "For You", where 'you' means 'prisoners'. Each week, she visits homes and families honoring/glorifying prisoners as heroes. She is a civil servant, paid a PA salary that is principally funded, as we keep reminding readers here, by the EU, Norway and the US. Without that funding, the hateful and distorted bile she delivers into the airwaves could simply not get there.

In those night-is-day, evil-is-good parts of the Arab world, Seif is not alone.

From a 2006 article on the Keren Malki website

• A December 2012 profile of Barghouti on a Palestinian website provides an astounding example of the self-delusion fueling the hatred industry in their world. Barghouti "was charged with organizing a series of attacks against Israel, which resulted in the death of up to 70 Israeli soldiers" they absurdly write. And so Israel "sentenced him to serve seven life sentences", which is also nonsense; he was sentenced to 67 life terms. In reality, there were few if any soldiers among those killed by Barghouti's bombs, all of which were deployed in deliberately mundane places: popular restaurants, mostly. The engineer of the Sbarro massacre, the woman called Ahlam Tamimi, makes plain that her explicit goal in delivering a Barghouti bomb to the center of Jerusalem was to kill and maim Jewish religiously-observant children [video]. Soldiers never came into the calculation. These people are terrorists, and that's how terror works.
• In May 2013 [source: PMW], mass-murderer Barghouti's family was honored with a media-drenched visit by a delegation of government officials from the Abbas regime headed by PA Minister of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake and District Governor of Ramallah, Laila Ghannam. It was termed a 'solidarity' visit, from which we deduce (but of course we knew this already) that significant parts of the PA government feel solidly connected to the killer of our daughter.
• Ten days ago, in a post here ["21-Jun-13: In dark corners, remorseless killer of 66 innocents is called 'administrative detainee' and 'captive'"] we quoted reports that Barghouti has been on a hunger strike since May. He is being treated in Ha'emek Medical Center (aka Afula Hospital) in northern Israel. 

A report published today by another Palestinian Arab website, Alray, calls him a "Palestinian-Jordanian detainee", but not a Kuwaiti for some reason even though Kuwait is where he was born. It reveals that Barghouti is sadly now

"in a critical condition... Barghouti‘s heart rate is very weak; only 40 beats per minute and he suffers from a liver failure which might lead to liver cirrhosis. Doctors of Internal Committee of Red Cross expressed their concern over Barghouti’s health deterioration, warning that his heart might stop at any time." 

Some years ago, on the Keren Malki website we created to honour the memory of our daughter, a victim of Barghouti and of others like him, we wrote this at the time the CBS interview went to air:

As ugly and repugnant as the words of Barghouti will likely be to the viewers of "60 Minutes", we urge them and CBS not to focus on the man. He is irrelevant, except that he creates a context. Barghouti's evil deeds are the concrete expression of the desires of a government which wants to be accepted as an equal by the community of nations. The anger and revulsion which his interview creates should be redirected at them - at the terrorists in business suits who plot and scheme every day to increase Barghouti's 66 to the largest number they can think of. 

1-Aug-06: Using Dead Lebanese Children for Ammunition

Those of us living in Israel or concerned for Israel's welfare have a pretty good idea what's happening in Haifa, Nahariya, Safed, Afula. This is in large measure because of the real-time, mainly-unfiltered reportage and live television coverage from there and from every other part of this robustly democratic and open country.

But do you know what really happened in Qana? In Tyre? In Beirut? No, neither do I. What we think we know is what the news media – papers, TV, blogs, radio – feed us, generally after the fact, sometimes days afterwards. How safe is a diet like that? Well, as with most diets it's a matter of how carefully you want to check. Here's a look at who's doing the feeding and at the additives, preservatives and other foreign materials that are mixed into what reaches us.

Qana question

As painful as what happened in Qana is to most of us, there are some very disturbing aspects about the tragedy which go to the root of what happened. Some of them:

• Did Hezbullah stage-manage the Qana incident? A Lebanese source (translated from French to English here) says yes. It suggests disabled children were brought to a building which served as a base for a Katyusha battery because the inevitable destruction of such a building by the IDF and the deaths of children would have such a powerful effect on world opinion.
• As revolting as this sounds, the cynical parading of dead children's bodies tells you we're dealing with people whose culture and humanity are unrecognizable to most of us.
• We're also dealing with newsagencies (Reuters, AFP, Associated Press) whose photographers are active collaborators in this disgraceful pornography. The evidence is in the bullet below.
• A small handful of Hezbollah low-lifes appear in one staged photo after another, posing with a dead child's body, hamming up a range of facial responses. If you can stomach it, see The Parade of Dead Children - Euphoric Reality; What Really Happened in Qana? - Wizbang; Qana: The photographic evidence (Update: Bodies from Tyre?) from Hot Air; and especially EU Referendum.
• It may be that the dead bodies from fighting some days earlier in Tyre were trucked in to Qana. Ridiculous? Maybe. But you may want to read this before dismissing the idea entirely.
• In its briefing for journalists at the end of the long day on which the Qana incident happened, the IDF raised several more serious questions. Customarily careful to avoid saying what might not be fully confirmed, the spokespeople presented whatever they were confident to show. This included video footage of missiles being fired from immediately next to the destroyed house several hours before the IDF attacked Qana. CNN's Brent Sadler has just been on our screens this afternoon (Tuesday), reporting live from Qana, pooh-poohing Israeli claims that the town was a launching pad for Hezbollah war ("Nope, no Hezbollah people here"), and asserting that Israel has failed to bring any evidence to the contrary. If you have Sadler's email address, we'd be glad to know he gets this link to the film footage.
• Sadler or his CNN producers might also be interested to hear - since they evidently have no clue - that Qana was the source for no fewer than 150 rockets fired into Israeli civilian settlements in the past three weeks, as documented here. Hezbollah salvos from Qana have crashed (among others) into Haifa, Nahariya, Ma'alot and Kiryat Shmona. They caused the documented, proven and undisputed deaths of 18 Israeli civilians and hundreds more wounded. Brent, our email address is on this page for when you get a free moment to send the people of Israel your apology.
• Reuven Koret over at Israel Insider has some additional, cogent and bothersome questions. Please visit his excellent site to read them.
• We know how hard it can be for some people to accept that Hezbullah would ever treat their Lebanese brethren poorly. But there is some evidence that this is not entirely beyond them. Try looking here and here and here.
• As for the general credibility of Hezbullah, its record as one of the bloodiest of the bloodthirsty speaks for itself... though evidently not loudly enough.

But the western media would surely blow the whistle on stage-managed news fakery, right?

Reporting from southern Lebanon (and quoted in the Columbia Journalism Review), freelance journalist and Time magazine contributor Christopher Allbritton drops this little gem:

To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I'm loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist's passport, and they've already hassled a number of us and threatened one.

To be clear, he doesn't say that Hezbollah fakes the news events. Or that they manipulate the journalists. But he doesn't need to. And we're left wondering: on what other aspects of this complex story are he and his colleagues loathe to report? And what have they reported as fact that perhaps ought not to have been reported as fact? Fair questions, no?

CNN's Nic Robertson can supply a helpful answer to that. Last week, Howard Kurtz – on his Reliable Sources show on CNN - interviewed Robertson about reporting from Lebanon. Here's Columbia Journalism Review's analysis of their exchange:

Just a few days before, Hezbollah minders had taken Robertson on a tour of a neighborhood in southern Beirut that had been hit by Israeli missiles. Robertson told Kurtz, "Hezbollah has a very, very sophisticated and slick media operation," and in southern Beirut, "they deny journalists access into those areas. They can turn on and off access to hospitals in those areas." He also said that Hezbollah "designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn't have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath ... Hezbollah is now running a number of [press tours] every day, taking journalists into this area. They realize that this is a good way for them to get their message out, taking journalists on a regular basis. Robertson [said]: "We went in to those southern suburbs of Beirut with that media representative from Hezbollah. They haven't let western reporters into some parts of that very, very, very carefully controlled southern suburbs ... they took us in because they wanted to show us what was being damaged." He then ended by again reminding viewers that it was a "very, very brief and swift tour escorted by Hezbollah." The disclosure that Hezbollah acted as tour guide does put the report into perspective, but still, Robertson could have dwelled a bit more on the calculated photo op CNN's cameras were provided by an obviously interested party.

(Source: Paul McLeary, Lifting the Cover of the Hezbollah PR Effort). McLeary also quotes CNN's Anderson Cooper from a week ago (transcript here):

We found ourselves with other foreign reporters taken on a guided tour by Hezbollah ... They only allowed us to videotape certain streets, certain buildings... This is a heavily orchestrated Hezbollah media event. When we got here, all the ambulances were lined up. We were allowed a few minutes to talk to the ambulance drivers. Then one by one, they've been told to turn on their sirens and zoom off so that all the photographers here can get shots of ambulances rushing off to treat civilians ... These ambulances aren't responding to any new bombings. The sirens are strictly for effect.

So whom can you believe?

In our opinion, no one deserves our uncritical support. Questions need to be asked, and no one is beyond criticism. Politicians will do what politicians always do, and terrorists will do whatever they can get away with. Our question is why are so few journalists doing what journalists do -- dig, question, investigate. Thus, the one action point we would urge on everyone visiting this blog is: never assume that reporters, editors, photographers are more credible or more objective than anyone else. It's perfectly plain that they're not and never have been. More than this, they are as capable of being jackasses and dupes as anyone else.

And working for a brand-name media channel is no defence.

30-Jul-06: A War on Three Fronts

Too many people have died, too many people are desolate, this war is atrocious, and too few people care to really examine why it's happening. The news from Lebanon is awful. But it still needs to be said (since so few conventional media channels are saying it) that Israel, in the course of prosecuting its disproportionate war, is under real, live, explosives-and-death attack on three fronts. Here's a Sunday snapshot.

In the north: About 100 Katyusha missiles have fallen so far this morning, making plain that the aggression of Hezbollah which kicked this part of the war off is well and truly in place. It's clear they are delighted with the way all of this bedlam, all this human-shield war, is going. In Acre on the coast, a residential building took a direct hit today, wounding two people and leaving others in need of hospitalization for shock. 6 additional Katyusha missiles landed in Acre, and 30 in and around Kiryat Shmona; here too there were injuries and property damage. Eight missiles crashed into Nahariya, five into Ma'alot, four in or near Rosh Pina and two in Tiberias. Sirens also sounded in the Haifa suburbs, western and upper Galilee, Afula, Nazareth, Migdal Ha'emek and Beit Hashita. On Friday night, 3 Hezbollah missiles with especially large warheads of 100 kilograms each, landed in fields near Afula. On Saturday, at least 90 missiles crashed into northern Israel. Villages and towns as far as 15 kilometers from the point of impact reported hearing the explosions.

In the south: Not much coverage here. To paraphrase the old philosophical conundrum, if a Qassam rocket is fired into a civilian area by barbarians intent on causing as much damage, death and destruction as possible, and everyone is too busy with other matters, did it really fall?
Well, yes it did. Qassams have been falling with deadly constancy since Israel's northern front exploded with Hizbullah missiles 19 days ago. And they continue to be fired into Israel's southern towns. Sderot was a victim this morning. One missile struck a factory in Shaar Hanegev, an industrial area of the town. Several people were injured but thankfully there were no deaths. (This was not the intention of the people firing the missiles.) Had it struck a nearby workshop some thirty meters away, the likely toll would have been far greater and more newsworthy.

Yesterday a Qassam landed next to the kindergarten of Kibbutz Zikim, just south of Ashkelon, where children were engaged in a Frisbee class. Two children were seriously injured; eight others had to be treated in hospital for shrapnel injuries, shock and damage to the hearing. The kindergarten building was damaged. The Al-Quds Brigades, a unit of Islamic Jihad, proudly claimed responsibility, declaring that "the shooting will continue in response to IDF crimes against the Palestinians." On Friday, 5 more Qassams struck Sderot and Shaar Hanegev, and on Saturday others hit Sderot, Netiv Haasara, and southern Ashkelon.

Unfortunately for the farmers, kibbutznikim and townspeople of Israel's south - those living in the arc that abuts the Gaza Strip - the unending rain of Qassam rockets has been all but forgotten outside of their immediate vicinity. Hard to imagine, but only a year ago, the government of Israel carried out an immensely painful and controversial abandonment of Jewish communities in the area, in the stated hope that an unoccupied Gaza Strip would become as beautiful as it was when Israeli towns and greenhouses dotted it. Whatever the hopes of last summer, the outcome has been an unmitigated disaster.

In the center: Yet another intending bomber of women and children was seized this morning. The media call him a suicide bomber, but it's far more accurate and helpful to term him a religious fanatic intent on achieving mass murder at any price, including forfeiting his own life provided he can take Jewish lives with him. This time , Israeli security officers and soldiers from an elite IDF unit seized an explosive belt in a Palestinian taxi in a West Bank town, following pinpoint intelligence tips about plans by terrorists to carry out a suicide bombing attack in Israel. The intending bomber and his accomplice were arrested.

Scanning the television coverage of the bombing of a residential building in Qana, you can't help but notice how the analysts, reporters and commentators in place are adjusting the level of their emotional response to the noise and passion of the Lebanese around them. There are those who say our side needs to make more noise, be more emotional, more demonstrative, wave our arms in the air. But Israeli society wants life - and when a bomber is caught and prevented from carrying out his death-cult plan, it's highly appropriate that we remain subdued, say a silent prayer of thanks, and keep going about our lives.