02-Apr-19: Setting facts, ethics, context aside, Aljazeera salutes a couple of murderers

Mr and Mrs Tamimi at home in Jordan's capital Amman,
in a video segment embedded in the Al Jazeera homage

In Arabic only (so far), Aljazeera published a paean this past week to a pair of convicted and unrepentant terrorists sentenced by Israel to life-term prison sentences for killing many Israelis.

The two are not merely out of prison but, from what we can tell, live a highly public and comfortable life replete with exposure, celebrity, adulation and valuable political connections that seem to help smooth their way.

Aljazeera Media Network whose chairman Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani served as a minister in Qatar's government in the eighties and nineties and who is a member of the ruling family of Qatar, the House of Thani, is a formidable communications conglomerate owned by the government of Qatar. It has some 80 bureaux and more than 100,000 employees distributed around the world.

This particular piece was published on the Aljazeera.net site last Thursday and so far has appeared only in Arabic. While the group publishes in multiple languages including English, Turkish, Indonesian, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, the AlJazeera.net platform is specifically dedicated to Arabic speakers.

Because we think it shines some much-needed light on how Arab-on-Israeli terror is viewed in much of the Arabic-speaking world, we arranged a professional translation. The text appears below. 

A word for those uncomfortable with violence and bloodshed: Rest assured. Though this is all about a couple of unrepentant convicted felons, people who murdered other people and have never expressed regret for their deeds, and while one might expect some unpleasant discussion about killings and deaths - actually there isn't that much. Hardly any.

In fact, what violence there is happens to be about Israelis threatening (they say) and killing other people (they allege). We'll come back to that counter-intuitive aspect at the end.

Political News
Nizar and Ahlam: A couple pursued by “chains” despite their release from occupation imprisonment

March 28, 2019 | Aljazeera.net | From Mahmoud Al-Shar’aan in Amman 

They became engaged in the prisons of Israeli occupation. They were released in the prisoner exchange deal of 2011 known as the “Wafaa’ Al-Ahrar deal” between the Palestinian Resistance Movement (HAMAS) and the occupation. [TOW: In the West, it's better known as the Gilad Shalit Deal]  

Their relationship led to marriage and the establishment of a Palestinian house of “resistance” in the Jordanian capital of Amman.

They are the freed prisoners Nizar Al-Tamimi (45) and his wife Ahlam Al-Tamimi (38) who was born in Jordan. 

The bond of marriage was not the only thing they shared. They were also brought together by the defence of Palestine and the sacrifice they gave towards the struggle through the years they spent in prison.

Nizar, who belongs to the Palestinian Liberation Movement (Fatah) was sentenced to life in prison after he participated in the killing of an Israeli citizen in the nineties of which he served 20 years before he was released. 

Ahlam on the other hand was the first woman to have joined the Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. She was sentenced to 16 life sentences after she participated in a martyrdom operation against the occupation of Jerusalem in 2001, of which she served 10 years before she was released.

A new life

Their many years spent in prison have not killed the normal life of these freed prisoners as they both are pursuing their education, each in his own field. 

The husband is preparing for his Masters thesis [sic] in political science with the title “The law of Jewish nationalism and its effect on the reality and future of the Palestinian cause”, while the wife is preparing to study towards her Masters thesis [sic] in Journalism and Media under the title “A theoretical etymology of the concept of prisoner media”.

Nizar tells Aljazeera.net that freedom was like a new birth for them both after having spent many tough years in jail. “We were able to come out of prison strong, and more importantly we are still bearers of the message of truth when it comes to our just cause, and we have begun a new life”.

But the lives of the couple were thrown into disarray after they received messages threatening to pursue them and to lay cases against them in the United States.

The last case of these threats came in the words of the American peace process delegate to the Middle East, Jason Greenblatt, who wrote on his official Twitter account that “Americans must know that Ahlam Al-Tamimi who is a Hamas terrorist convicted of killing 15 people, seven of whom were children killed in cold blood, is living free today”.

Greenblatt announced a reward of the equivalent of 5 million dollars to anyone who can provide information on Ahlam Al-Tamimi and the Hamas leader, Saleh Al Aruri.

Continuous threats

Greenblatt’s threats were not new. They are a part of a long chain of threats received by Ahlam and her husband. It was revealed to Aljazeera.net that Jewish organizations paid to lay cases against them in American courts of law.

Ahlam identifies herself as a Jordanian citizen of Palestinian origin who is a freedom fighter for a just cause. “I refuse to allow my cause and the cause of my nation to be labelled as terrorism or that the door be opened to some representatives trying to make political gains to pass whatever they want under the cover of their mission”.

The freed prisoner regards her being in Jordan to be a point of strength as there is no agreement between Amman and Washington that states that wanted people need to be handed over. In addition, the Jordanian judicial authorities refused a previous American demand for her to be handed over.

She is asking the Kingdom to protect her from American hegemony and the continuing threats against her, and to solve her crisis with the United States “politically”.

Ahlam does not deny her fears of the financial reward offered by Greenblatt, because the involvement of money in this case might facilitate passing information on her or that the matter might even reach assassination, as she says.

At the same time, her husband is of the view that once a prisoner is released from prison, he remains a target of Israel, and he can therefore never really feel total calm as other prisoners have been killed after they were released from prison, as he says.

A house of resistance

Between four walls, the couple spend time telling stories and reliving the memories of prison life, of Palestine and of comrades in struggle. The best years of their lives were taken from them by Israeli courts and prison bars. This however did not prevent them from trying to live normally and defend their rights in a clear message that is not open for discussion, the summary of which says that there is no conceding the entirety of Palestine.

Nizar, the son of Fatah, and Ahlam, the daughter of Hamas, are the embodiment of the reality of a unified Palestinian people, in the wake of division which they described as an exception to the rule. They have spent their lives together with many ideas, some of which were conflicting, but they both always agree in the end that there is no way to liberate Palestine except through resistance and that it is the only way to achieve it.

Source: Aljazeera (Arabic) online here. In case it somehow disappears, we arranged for it to be  archived here.

A few observations.

• The only violence mentioned in this brazen homage is violence they claim is directed at - not by - the Tamimis, a pair of unrepentant murderers. As journalism goes, this is exceedingly shabby. Are there ethical standards in the Aljazeera media empire? What are they?
• Seriously, is it true as they claim here that "there is no agreement between Amman and Washington that states that wanted people need to be handed over"? No, not really. We explained that here: "14-Mar-19: Two years after Federal charges are unsealed, Ahlam Tamimi remains free. How is this happening?" Bottom line: Jordan and the US signed an extradition treaty 24 years ago; the US absolutely considers it still valid and in full effect and Jordan has never complained to its American treaty partners that there is a problem with it. In fact, Jordan has cheerfully handed over Jordanian felons to the US at the request of the US. But it refuses to hand over Ahlam Tamimi. It justifies this on the contentious footing that there is now a Jordanian constitutional law issue to consider. They don't say, but we think they should, that Tamimi is different from the others already extradited because she killed Israelis. Note that none of this seems to be known to the Al Jazeera editors and their reporter. Or perhaps they simply have no interest in conveying what they know to their news consumers. So it's either shameful pretense or it's professional incompetence.
• The reporter claims that "the lives of the couple were thrown into disarray after they received messages threatening to pursue them and to lay cases against them in the United States." This is pure invention. Ahlam Tamimi is wanted on US Federal charges that were unsealed in Washington on March 14, 2017 (see the previous para). There are no charges pending against her husband, but it adds an element of extra drama to the story. A great pity, seriously, that it's bunk.
• Did Ahlam Tamimi hurt anyone? Hard to know from this piece of shameless advocacy and terror promotion. All that the Aljazeera journalist and his editors want their Arabic-language readers to know is that this Jordanian woman was locked away for a tremendously long prison term because "she participated in a martyrdom operation against the occupation of Jerusalem". Is it even worth mentioning that 16 people were murdered in that "operation"? That Tamimi picked the spot because it attracted so many children and brought the bomb to it at the busiest time of the day? That this savage boasts openly and happily about it in front of cameras and live audiences? That the panel of judges who sentenced her recommended that Israel never consider letting her out under any circumstances or deals? And that they were ignored when the Shalit Deal was done? We guess not.
• Did she reveal that she's now pursuing a masters degree in journalism and media? We think (and we're checking so that we can be sure) that only a couple of Jordanian institutions offer such programs. One happens to be a school about which we have written in the past, and which has an extremely shabby connection to Tamimi herself: See "By their role models shall ye know them" [Times of Israel, December 2014]. 
• The Tamimis claim to have "received messages threatening to pursue them and to lay cases against them in the United States". Other than as another invented dramatic device, this notion of threats doesn't make much sense. The reporter could have mentioned that the US Department of Justice unveiled those serious criminal charges against Ahlam Tamimi more than two years ago ["14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and extradition is sought"]. He could have pointed out she was arrested in Jordan by Jordanian police on the basis of an Interpol Red Notice in September 2016 (with absolutely no publicity), but he doesn't. She was released the following morning but that says more about Jordan and its legal and power system than about the criminality of Ahlam Tamimi. Maybe he doesn't know. Maybe he already forgot. Maybe this isn't really about facts and news but about fantasies and delusions of Tamimi victimhood. But how is this journalism?
• The reporter and his editors are under the mistaken impression that Trump envoy Jason "Greenblatt announced a reward of the equivalent of 5 million dollars to anyone who can provide information on Ahlam Al-Tamimi". No, he didn't. The reward, which certainly does exist, was issued more than a year before Greenblatt mentioned it in his Tweet. And it doesn't come from Greenblatt but from a unit of the US State Department called Rewards for Justice. The year-and-a-half-old details for the Al Jazeera news-hounds are here (you're welcome): "31-Jan-18: There's now a $5 million reward for bringing the terrorist Ahlam Tamimi to justice". Can we now expect a correction? Or do Al Jazeera's people claim ownership of their own version of reality?
• It's quite moving to read that "The best years of [the Tamimi couple's] lives were taken from them by Israeli courts and prison bars". Taken from them? Why? But it's chilling that the editors of this Al Jazeera group outlet manage to tell the story of two unusually cruel murderers without even a passing reference to the many lives they extinguished by their acts of depraved savagery. They give the impression that they identify with the killers and the killings. Is this fair of us? But if we're right (of course we are), do their pay-masters in the government of Qatar know this? Perhaps they will now. Perhaps they will even want to know about the life and lost "best years" of our desperately missed daughter Malki who was 15 when Ahlam Tamimi delivered her exploding guitar case on the back of her human bomb to Sbarro. (Full disclosure: Malki was not the only person murdered there that day. It was a massacre. In a pizzeria. Children were the target; they ended up being more than half the casualties. Tamimi's sickening, satanic plan worked. She hasn't stopped smiling and boasting about it.)  
• When Aljazeera quotes Nizar Tamimi asserting that "other [Palestinian Arab] prisoners have been killed after they were released from prison", did they check? Can they bring cases? As a news agency, did they think of listing the names of the many mass murderers [some named here along with their crimes] who walked free in that catastrophic transaction? Did they think of referring to the Israelis murdered after the Shalit Deal [some of them named here] by unrepentant terrorists who were let loose?
• The Aljazeera editors, aware of the endless enmity among the Hamas, Fatah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad factions, must have seen the almost humorous irony in their reporter claiming the Tamimis as "the embodiment of the reality of a unified Palestinian people". Unified? They must have already decided this scurrilous piece of reporting-as-incitement needed to serve a higher purpose than the objective reporting of news. So what the heck - go for broke. 
• Will the major news organizations and global content aggregators who partner with Aljazeera (like Google, Bloomberg, TechLive, Snapchat) be interested to know how the party they're consorting with acts as an active and effective promoter of terrorism that publishes sentiments like Ahlam Tamimi's "there is no way to liberate Palestine except through resistance"? Probably not. The rest of us surely should.

This reward poster in Arabic was issued by the US State
Department in January 2018 but has never been physically
posted anywhere in Jordan or the Arab world.

In the interests of seeming balanced, and having regard for the monumental media footprint the Aljazeera empire has managed to create, here's what the public relations professionals working at Aljazeera said about their employer a year ago:

We, at Al Jazeera, renew our commitment to global audiences with news coverage and programs which provide in depth analysis of news and current affairs. We will continue celebrating the achievements brought by our diversity of staff who hail from almost 100 different countries. It is this diversity of values and cultures that enriches our work and provides our audiences with the award-winning content on all our platform. We urge democratic forces all over the world, especially in United States, to stand with free media institutions to promote and protect the values of democracy, liberty, human rights, freedom of media and the right to free speech. Don’t shoot the messenger, journalism is not a crime.

Maybe they don't mean their Arabic output. And when the subject is this thing they call "resistance", perhaps different rules apply.

UPDATE Monday April 2, 2019 at 7:00 pm: The Aljazeera piece includes a substantial video interview which is of course not in English. We have just been told by friends (thank you, friends!) that MEMRI has posted a translation. Please go and read, watch and share - it's here.

26-Sep-17: What do the Palestinian Arabs think now?

[Image Source: PCR]

It's been about nine months since we last addressed the core question of what Palestinian Arab opinion polls tell us about their hopes, fears, ambitions and values. That last review is here: "15-Dec-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think now?"

As it happens, this morning has gotten off to a really rotten start with another Arab-on-Israeli terror attack at the entrance to the bucolic northern Jerusalem suburb of Har Adar. As we write this, reports say three Israelis were shot to death and a fourth is fighting for his life in a Jerusalem hospital. The gunman is dead. We will report on what we know about this later.

With the fresh extreme violence in mind, what do the data tell us? What do Palestinian Arab polls of Palestinian Arab opinion, reveal about support for murder of this kind and about the other issues that are on the minds of the people who play such an influential/complicated role on the lives lived by us Israelis?

As we have said here before, what the Palestinian Arabs think is something we're very interested in knowing. Relying on newspapers or electronic media coverage of their views, a person is likely to get someone's wishful projections or politically-skewed understandings rather than data-based analysis. The difference between the two is vast and unbridgeable.

There are some serious polling organizations that are themselves Palestinian Arab. We tend to focus on the findings of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research or PSR [website] headed by the respected Prof. Khalil Shikaki. We're doing that again now.

In PSR's Poll Number 65 (there have been three on which we did not manage to report since our last related post), which was published on September 19, 2017, we think these are the key findings (italicized texts are taken verbatim from the source)

A syndicated AFP photo shows the supporters of Fatah and of Abbas in the
Gaza Strip last week. There may be more out of camera range. [Image Source]

• Violence: 35% of those polled "think that the most effective means of creating a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel is armed action". Negotiation gets 33% and "popular non-violent resistance" 26%. In the December  2016 poll, armed action got slightly more: 37%. A year ago, it got 34%. Those slight rises and falls are less significant than the reality that a third of the Arabs living closest to us see the best solution to the differences between as being achieved by murder and terror. A third. But it gets worse...
• Non-violence? Now bear in mind that "popular non-violent resistance" is an expression that means something quite different for the Palestinian Arabs and their advocates - including their president - than for most other people. Abbas and people around him use it to refer to lethal measures like hurling rocks at Israelis and their vehicles: non-violent resistance in  their lexicon includes rock hurling, knifings and vehicle-rammings. That's plainly terrorist violence, whatever advocates for the Palestinian Arabs claim, and it means that nearly two-thirds of the Palestinian Arabs are for it. 
• An "overwhelming majority" are "worried about the future of liberties in Palestine". Contributing factors, over and above the decades of heavy-handed, thuggish rule by a self-preserving clique of aging Abbas/Arafat regime kleptocrats (our observation, not PSR's) include a marked rise in PA arrests of reporters and "activists"; a new presidential decree enacting an oppressive piece of regulation that they call a "cybercrime law"; and upcoming changes to the PA's Law of the Judiciary. 
• Related to the first point: A large majority of Palestinian Arabs (85% of West Bank Arabs) now say they are afraid to criticize their PA masters. Fully half of them believe Abbas' PA has become "a burden on the Palestinian people". 
• This is evidently affecting their political outlooks. If presidential elections were held today, the Hamas candidate "Haniyeh would win against Abbas. Findings also indicate a decline in support for Fatah, particularly in the Gaza Strip where Hamas is more popular. In the West Bank however, Fatah remains more popular than Hamas." Just 3 months ago, PSR found that each candidate had the same level of support if this were a two-horse race. No longer. 
• But even before they get to elections, there's no doubting the appetite for immediate political change: "67% of the public want president Abbas to resign... Three months ago, 62% said [this]... Demand for Abbas’ resignation stands at 60% in the West Bank and 80% in the Gaza Strip."
• Gaza is one big set of problems for Fatah and its leader: "It is certain that [Mahmoud Abbas, president-for-life of the PA] would lose any presidential elections in the Gaza Strip to Hamas’ Ismael Haniyeh". 
• Worth recalling that the last time Palestinian Arabs were given the chance to vote for a president was in January 2005 when Abbas won; he has held tenaciously on to power ever since. The only previous presidential election, dominated by Yasser Arafat, was in 1996.
• For the rather touchy Abbas and his hangers-on, there's more bad news and it involves Abbas' fiercest rival: "Fatah is fast losing its popularity in the Gaza Strip, standing at 28% today compared to 40% only nine months ago. Those who still support Fatah in the Gaza Strip are shifting loyalty to Mohammad Dahlan whose popularity among Gazans has more than doubled during the past nine months, from 9% to 23% today, while his popularity among West Bankers did not change, remaining hardly at 1%."
• In a three-way race, the convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti who lives in an Israeli prison cell, would easily beat both Abbas and Haniyah.
• Support for violence against Israelis has risen over the previous poll, "despite the fact that a majority remains opposed to it", partly because of "the lack of trust in diplomacy. Findings show that about three quarters believe that the Trump Administration is not serious about Palestinian-Israeli peace making and an even higher percentage believes that the Administration is not an honest broker and that it is biased in favor of Israel".
• When they watch television, here's where they tune in: Al Jazeera (Qatar-owned, Qatar-based) 20%; Ma'an TV 14%; Hamas' Al Aqsa TV 13%; Palestine TV (controlled by the PA) 12%; Filasteen al Youm/Palestine Today 11%; Al Arabiya (Saudi-owned, Dubai-based) 6; Hamas' Al Quds TV 4%; al Mayadeen (satellite-news station based in Beirut) 3%.
• The popular perception of corruption in the PA and its institutions is now at 77%. This is actually something of an improvement; in a 2014 PCR poll, it stood at 81%.
• On the list of "Most vital Palestinian goals and problems", the top item with 40% support is the need "to end Israeli occupation". A mere 12% think the "first and most vital goal should be to establish a democratic political system that respects freedoms and rights". The most serious problem confronting their society today is poverty and unemployment (26%) with "the spread of corruption in public institutions" second at 25%.
• The violent confrontations that took place on Jerusalem's Temple Mount in July 2017 in the wake of the brazen and cold-blooded killing of two Israeli Druze security men [see our post] occupied much of the thinking of the Palestinian Arab public. In PSR's words and despite those other concerns we just listed, the "the installment of metal detectors at the entrance to al Haram al Sharif gates were the most important event during the period in question". 
• As for Israel's decision to quickly remove them, a minuscule 7% of Palestinian Arabs attribute this to King Abdullah II of Jordan despite Jordan's not-so-subtle PR efforts to grab the limelight, as in this Arab media quote: “Without the Hashemite custodi­anship and the steadfastness of the Jerusalemites, the holy sites would have been lost many years ago.” (Those of us old enough to remember life in Jerusalem pre-1967 recall how the Old City of Jerusalem was under illegal Jordanian military occupation from 1949 until freed in the Six Day War.)

There's not much here to feel good about. As their own societies - both Fatah and Hamas - explore new kinds of tyranny, between one-third and two-thirds of them hold tight to a vision of more violence as a solution to their problems. The future of their children, meanwhile, along with their health, their schools, their environment and their economy remain mired in self-inflicted gloom, failure and inertia.

PSR 65 was based on a sample size of 1,270 adults interviewed face-to-face (not by phone) in 127 locations selected randomly. The statistical margin of error is 3%. 

10-Sep-17: Chasing the killer of my child

Mishpacha originally published this interview
in Hebrew

An interview of Frimet Roth by the Israeli journalist Michal Ish Shalom originally appeared in the Hebrew weekly Mishpacha, August 24, 2017. An English translation, the work of Rochel Sylvetsky whose contribution we gratefully acknowledge, was published today on the Israel National News website under the title "The non-extradition of our daughter's murderer". Our thanks go to Mishpacha for their permission to use their Hebrew article in this way. (The cross-post that follows has some minor editing changes and we have inserted hyperlinks.)

Malki Roth was murdered in what is called the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing 16 years ago. 

Her parents hope that her terrorist murderer, against whom the US has issued an extradition request, will be brought to justice. The family hopes the US presses for extradition, is disappointed that Jordan does not honor its legal obligations to the US, and blames Netanyahu for not caring about families of terror victims.

Arnold and Frimet Roth, the parents of Malki Hy"D, murdered in the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing attack 16 years ago, were carefully optimistic on the day after the Purim holiday this year.

A delegation from the US Department of Justice came to Jerusalem to inform them that the United States was about to make an announcement later that day: a request for extradition had been presented to the Jordanian government. Jordan, which signed an extradition treaty with the United States in 1995, was being requested to extradite Ahlam al-Tamimi, the terrorist who planned and executed the suicide bombing in which their daughter was murdered. Tamimi was being added that day to the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list.

The Roths had initiated this process by meeting with US officials in Washington five years earlier – in February 2012. The Jordanians had been served with the extradition request months earlier, right before the High Holidays, and Interpol was involved. But now in mid-March 2017, the US were going to publicize the extradition request, leading the Roths to believe that justice was going to be done at last.

Frimet with our daughter Malki, April 2001

Malki, born in Melbourne Australia, came to Israel as a young child. Her mother is an American citizen, and as such, could obtain American citizenship for her daughter. That was not a significant part of Malki's too-short life, all of it lived in Israel. She grew up in Jerusalem, a happy, kindhearted teen, especially attuned to special needs chidren – her youngest sister Haya Elisheva suffered serious neurological impairment when she was a year old, a fact which caused Malki to volunteer with such children unstintingly.

On that unforgettable, bitter day, the 20th of Av (August 9, 2001), Malki went over to a friend's house.

"See you later, have a good time," said her mother Frimet, whose eyes were shut due to a severe migraine; she couldn’t even open them before her daughter left the house. "How I regret not looking at her that morning because the last time I saw her was the day before it happened," she says painfully. The loss of her daughter is palpable throughout our conversation; it gets harder to bear as the years pass.

Malki called from her friend's house to say that she was going to a get-together in the Talpiyot neighborhood and received her mother's permission to go. "I love you," the conversation ended - three words fated to become the last ones Frimet and her beloved daughter would exchange with one another.

And then – suddenly the terrible news - a major terrorist suicide bombing in the middle of downtown Jerusalem. Frimet’s thoughts were instantly with locating her children.

"I worried about them, because they left without taking a mobile phone. Malki had one with her, so I was less worried, " recalls Frimet. "Besides, she said she was going to Talpiyot and I knew that she would only be in town for as long as it took to switch buses."

Malki's siblings were located quickly – they were safe. Malki did not answer her mobile phone.

Anyone who remembers the chilling "routine" of the period in which suicide bomber attacks took place with horrendous frequency, knows that the cellular phone connections were always down, for security reasons, in an area in which an attack occurred. Since everyone had become used to that happening, they urged Frimet not to worry.

But a good deal of time passed, and then it turned out that Malki had never reached the get–together she planned to attend, nor did her friend Michal – who also could not be found.

"I still didn't get it. She was not even supposed to be in Sbarro," says Frimet. She and Michal's mother, along with Frimet's soldier son, a newly-enlisted hesdernik (in the 5 year yeshiva-army program) who had returned home to help, decided to go to Shaarei Zedek Hospital to look for their daughters.

On the way there, corroboration came in: Malki had been at Sbarro, she had sent a text message to someone to meet her there - a meeting that never took place.

"I began to scream," recalls Frimet. "I realized it was all over. At the hospital, we separated and each one of us searched for her own daughter. Michal's mother found her daughter still alive, but we did not find our Malki. In the office into which I was taken, they had me speak to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute so I could describe her, and for some reason they said there was no one who fitted my description."

This unbearable day continued, with family and friends searching other hospitals. Much later that night, on the advice of social workers in another of Jerusalem’s hospitals, two of Malki’s older brothers went there with a national insurance social worker.

"At 2 a.m. they called to tell us they had identified her."

Malki and her friend Michal were
always inseparable. Now they are
buried side by side.

Her friend Michal had been found barely alive, but she didn't make it and those were her last moments in this world. 

Malki and Michal, "beloved and pleasant during their lifetimes”, (as King David said of King Saul and his son) were buried side by side in Jerusalem's Har Hamenuchot cemetery.

That day marked the start of the Roth family's struggle. To memorialize Malki, they soon created the Malki Foundation which helps fund treatments for seriously disabled children who live at home and are cared for by their parents. Parents can choose among occupational therapy, therapeutic horseback riding, speech therapy, physiotherapy and hydrotherapy with 85% of the costs covered by the fund. It also lends special equipment to those children via a partnership with the Yad Sarah organization.

But along with the generous deeds associated with Malki's memory, the Roth family is engaged in fighting to have the terrorists brought to justice. This struggle is focused on Tamimi, the daughter of an infamous riot-inciting Arab family ["11-Sep-15: How devoted to non-violence are the villagers of Nabi Saleh really?"]. Tamimi was a communications student at Bir Zeit University who was born and raised in Jordan and had come to Israel to do her post-high school studies. She became Hamas’ first female terrorist.

Some days before the Sbarro attack, Tamimi tried to carry out an attack on a smaller scale, which failed because there were not enough explosives in the bomb she used. That made her prepare the Sbarro attack more carefully. Her press card (she did part-time work for a TV station in Ramallah) gave her free and easy access to Jerusalem ["5-May-13: Self-confessed jihadist murderer: "With my media card, I was able to enter back and forth, undetected..."].

In recent years she has described with chilling lack of emotion how she looked for a place where she could murder as many… women and children as possible. She found it in one of the fast food places at one of the most congested intersections in Jerusalem.

Malki, the talented classical flautist

Tamimi hid the bomb inside a guitar case, passing right through the IDF checkpoint on Jerusalem’s northern edge and along Jaffa Road with her lethal weapon – the suicide bomber. The two were dressed like ordinary English-speaking tourists and succeeded in looking completely harmless. She brought the suicide bomber to the Sbarro entrance and told him to wait until she got far enough away. She wanted to live.

"My daughter played guitar and flute. She played the classical flute beautifully and was in Jerusalem’s youth orchestra," Frimet said sadly. Malki was right next to the terrorist when he blew himself up. She probably stood near him, thinking: “Here is another music lover like me with a guitar on his back.”

Tamimi worked as a TV news-reader and in that evening’s bulletin impassively reported the terrorist attack - the attack she herself had just perpetrated.

There seems to be no limit to the evil with which the Roth family has to deal. Ahlam Tamimi, who continues to this day to boast of her crimes, was arrested about a month after the bombing and sentenced to 16 life sentences. Officially, 15 human beings were murdered in the attack, but in reality, there are 16 dead, Frimet emphasizes. One critically wounded victim, a young mother, has never came out of a coma.

Those 16 life sentences came to an end very quickly: Tamimi was freed six years ago as part of the Shalit deal ["19-Oct-11: Haaretz: Shalit prisoner swap marks 'colossal failure' for mother of Israeli bombing victim"].

"Even after Tamimi was freed, we did not get a response from anyone in the government, certainly not from the prime minister or his office," Frimet says, visibly upset. "Binyamin Netanyahu said publicly when announcing the Shalit deal: 'I sent letters to the families who were hit by terror'. That never happened. It is an utter lie. After his declaration, we took the initiative and called his office multiple times to ask which letters he meant, since we had never received one and neither had any of the many victim families we asked. The officials lied to us, making up stories about how the PM’s letters were in the mail. When I asked them how many letters were sent, and how come none of the terror stricken families I knew had received one, I heard someone in the background saying 'Tell her there were hundreds.' They simply fabricated an answer. No bereft family ever received a letter."

"We also never heard a word from the Shalit family telling us that they understand our sorrow and pain," she adds.

This, however, does not end the inexcusable behavior of the Netanyahu government towards terror-stricken families. After Tamimi was expelled to Jordan as part of the conditions for her release, she announced that she had become engaged to her cousin, another Shalit deal freed murderer-terrorist, another Tamimi. The conditions under which he was freed stipulated his remaining on the "West Bank" and not leaving the region. The conditions of her release were that she could never go there. The terrorist couple had the nerve to declare that the "cruel Israeli government" is the only factor preventing their marriage.

"We began to hear rumors that the government was about to allow him to cross into Jordan and we hired a lawyer to stop the government via an injunction. Wait a bit, the prime minister's office told us, don't take it in front of a High Court judge yet. We had the fleeting thought that the government was actually going to do something. While we were politely waiting, someone ensured the groom quickly crossed over the Allenby Bridge into Jordan. That's Netanyahu," she says. "They could not have allowed him to cross into Jordan without Netanyahu's authorization.”

Tamimi's wedding took place the following week ["22-Jun-12: A wedding and what came before it"]. They flaunted it. It was a highly-publicized victory for them, covered live via several Jordanian TV stations and the social media.

And what about us? How do we look? Victory after victory. Netanyahu will never do anything about our ludicrous justice system.

Perhaps the next prime minister will be able to do something, she says with faint hopes. "I hope he is coming close to the end of his stint as prime minister, because the things he did are unbelievable."

Chilling. Ahlam Tamimi, the murderer, recounts with heated enthusiasm
the circumstances of her ride from the scene of the bombing to her
work place, a TV studio in Ramallah

“Now that the terrorist who murdered our daughter is a married woman and evidently the mother of a young child - although that has never been publicized - she continues to make fun of us. She is a popular speaker, tells the story of her atrocity with obvious pride, is a broadcaster and used her own globally-broadcast TV show ["27-Apr-17: Satellite TV and other basic rights of terrorist life behind Israeli bars"] to allow incarcerated terrorists to make contact with their families. Officially, terrorists in Israeli prisons are not permitted to view the Hamas channel that broadcasts her program, but we learned via our own sources that mobile phones have been smuggled into their cells enabling them to watch the programs.”

Giving up hope on Israeli justice, the family turned to the US government.

Malki Hy"d was not the first American terror victim. Another young American woman, her parents' only child and pregnant with her first baby, was also murdered in Sbarro. The woman in a coma since the Sbarro massacre is also an American citizen. The Roth family turned to the American Department of Justice in the name of the three US terror victims, requesting that Tamimi be charged under US Federal law and brought to the US to stand trial for her crimes. American law expressly permits this.

Roth says that since they initiated this in 2012, various Justice Department lawyers, investigators and FBI agents have met with them several times.

There are people who really care there, she says, in contrast to the way we were treated by Israeli officialdom.

Meanwhile the Roths have won several battles against Tamimi, small but significant ones. Twitter shut down her account twice so she was prevented from tweeting her evil thoughts to the world ["12-Apr-17: A modest step toward justice: Twitter today suspended the account of our daughter's murderer" and "25-Jun-17: A voice of lethal, bigoted hatred is silenced... for a while"].

Last Purim's joy at having the request for extradition in Jordan's hands lasted just two days, after which it became clear that Jordan does not intend to extradite Tamimi for various evidently-bogus reasons despite an extradition treaty dating from 1995 which was used several times in order to extradite terrorists to the US ["20-Mar-17: The Hashemite Kingdom's courts have spoken: The murdering FBI fugitive will not be handed over"]. The Roths feel that Tamimi is being used as a propaganda tool vis a vis the Palestinian Arab majority in Jordan, who consider her a heroine.

Political interests that have no connection with justice at all, such as the gas deal, are what the Israeli government worries about. They need King Abdullah as a regional power and will not pressure him to make the decision to extradite, one which only he can make. No pressure and she is still free.

March 21, 2017: Lead story in Al Jazeera [here]

The ball is now in the hands of the US State Department, says Roth. "The State Department has a great deal of power, more than the president does in certain areas. There are things they could do, things they should not have done and we are still awaiting answers about certain actions that we can still not talk about. However, it is clear they are not trying to extradite at this point.”

"Until Tamimi is extradited," Frimet declares, "we will not stop what we are doing. It is of utmost importance to us. The present situation only exacerbates our endless pain."

The pain, it must be said, along with the feeling of helplessness in the face of the Israeli government's behavior, the long wait for justice from the US – all have taken their toll. Frimet suffered a heart attack a few months ago at a relatively young age.

Question: If the extradition does take place, will Tamimi spend the rest of her life in an American prison? What will that accomplish?

Frimet: That will not erase the pain of losing our daughter, of missing her constantly. But it will take away the outer layer of that pain caused by the injustice done to us. Malki is so lacking in our home, our pure and sweet natured talented daughter would be 32 today. I see her with a husband and children, spending her free time doing good deeds. She used to help people and come home with her face shining with joy, and she was really close to Haya Elisheva, her sister, and with the girls in the mainstreaming class at school. In fact, the very summer in which she was murdered, she worked as a counselor in a summer camp called Etgarim, Challenges, for disabled youngsters.

She has left such an empty hole in our hearts.

18-Apr-17: So what, in reality, is Marwan Barghouti?

Barghouti, convicted on multiple counts of murder by shooting,

is a candidate for the next Nobel Peace Prize [Image Source: Arab media]

There are serious efforts underway this week to re-engineer the public image of the convicted Palestinian Arab felon, Marwan Barghouti.

Based on disinformation, partial information and lots of spin, they are directed at concealing the facts of his crimes and imprisonment and putting some wind into the sails of this ambitious man's on/off political career.

Outrageously, the key thing to know about Barghouti, according to one of the world's most influential newspapers which yesterday provided him yesterday with an invaluable op ed platform ["Why We Are on Hunger Strike in Israel’s Prisons", New York Times, April 17, 2017] to megaphone his extreme views, is that

Source: New York Times

In the following 24 hours, the Times found itself in the midst of a storm of protest. We have little sympathy for how the NYT's public editor summed things up today.

A side issue: Barghouti's English is poor. Yet "his" op ed, datelined Hadarim Prison, is a slickly-written piece of eloquent self-promotion. We think there's a teensie-tiny possibility it was written by professional pubic relations people in his name. But then who pays attention to such trivia when the cause is just so compelling?

Barghouti has an interesting group of admirers who help his self-promotion process move forward. Here are just a few.

Desmond Mpilo Tutu, the South African church leader who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, regularly sings Barghouti's praises. On one view, this is exceedingly odd, given how the Nobel committee specifically noted Tutu's own "nonviolent path to liberation" in its citation. So then is Tutu unware of Barghouti's lethal criminality, as widely outlined in the media for anyone who cares to look (for instance Dr Emmanuel Navon's cogently argued "Desmond Tutu is Wrong about Marwan Barghouti")? No, it does not seem that he is unaware. Instead, like many at that extreme end of the political spectrum, he seems to feel criminality of Barghouti's kind just doesn't count. And to show he means it, he has lately been touting the deeply offensive notion that Barghouti ought to get the same rich prize that Tutu himself did ["Bishop Tutu Nominates Jailed Palestinian Leader Barghouti for Nobel Peace Prize", Michael Friedson, June 8, 2016].

Al Jazeera, referring to the noble hero of the South African struggle to defeat apartheaid, calls Barghouti "the Palestinian Mandela". So do the Ma'an News Agency and a commentator at The Guardian. On the other hand, Le Monde, in the course of an interview with Barghouti, calls the comparison "debatable".

Adolfo Perez Esquivel, an Argentine human rights activist who received the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize and is a leader of the non-violent Latin American Christian group Servicio Paz y Justicia, is another supporter of a Barghouti Nobel [May 2016 source]. So is the parliament of Tunisia [source]. And so are sixteen mayors of towns in France [source] including Valenton and Bergerac (unfortunately we don't know the names of the other metropolises).

A cluster of Belgians, all of them involved in their country's national politics, followed suit and wrote to the Nobel committee in May 2016, improbably calling Barghouti "a peace activist":

“Peace requires the freedom of Marwan Barghouti and of the political prisoners, and more generally the freedom of the Palestinian people living for decades under occupation.”

Thinking logically, we might have surmised that the Belgians meant to exclude homicidal thugs from the list of those to be freed because what possible basis can there be to label such felons "political prisoners"? But then they do seem serious about wanting Barghouti to go to Oslo. So evidently they - like Tutu - don't see a conflict between being (a) a convicted murderer and (b) a peace activist. Sort of like being both a cheese-burger addict and an activist for veganism.

But for those to whom facts and realities still mean something, here's a brief excursion through the contemporary reports that accompanied his journey into the Israeli penal system. To emphasize the point, we refer to news reports carried by Haaretz which is much closer to Tutu's views than to ours.

The capture:

Wiretapping revealed that Barghouti was hiding in a safe house. The commander of the army’s Ramallah Brigade... told Haaretz: “When the intelligence arrived that he was in a building in the heart of a Ramallah neighborhood... an armored brigade surrounded the site and the baton was passed to me. The Duvdevan unit was under my command. We understood that he was in the building. One of the soldiers saw him through the window, taking cover close to what looked to us, at least, like an old woman who was lying on a bed. We removed everyone from the building... ["Will Marwan Barghouti be the Palestinian Nelson Mandela?", Haaretz, July 5, 2016]

The conviction

The Tel Aviv District Court convicted former West Bank Tanzim commander Marwan Barghouti in the deaths of five people on Thursday. Barghouti was convicted of three terror attacks in which the five were murdered, as well as in another charge of attempted murder, membership in a terror organization and conspiring to commit a crime. However, the court acquitted him of 33 other murders with which he was charged, noting that there was no evidence that he was a full partner to those incidents...  The court ruled that Barghouti was directly responsible for a January 2002 terror attack on a gas station in Givat Zeev in which Israeli Yoela Chen was murdered. The attack, the judges said, was carried out at his direct order in revenge for the assassination of Raed Carmi. Barghouti had admitted his responsibility for this attack. The attack in which a Greek monk was murdered in Ma'aleh Adumim on June of 2001 was also carried out at the instruction of Barghouti, the judges said. The former Tanzim leader, the court ruled, also approved the March 2002 attack at Tel Aviv's Seafood Market restaurant in which three people were murdered, as well as a car bomb attack in Jerusalem... [He] was charged with leading dozens of terror operations against Israeli targets since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising, including suicide and shooting attacks that led to the death and injury of hundreds of Israeli citizens and Israel Defense Force soldiers. According to the charge sheet, Barghouti headed the Fatah, Tanzim and Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade terror groups in the West Bank and was subordinate to Arafat... The state prosecutor said Barghouti funded and planned terror attacks and is not the political activist he claimed to be... Barghouti's supporters in the European parliament were expected to show up for the ruling... ["Barghouti Convicted in Deaths of Five People", Haaretz, May 20, 2004]

Barghouti was sentenced by judges Sarah Sirota, Amiram Benyamini and Avraham Tal to five consecutive life terms plus an additional 40 years. The judges observed that

Barghouti used to receive reports of the attacks carried out by his associates only after they were completed. This was an effort to preserve his image as a political leader not involved in armed attacks against Israelis... [Haaretz, June 6, 2004] 

And some occasionally overlooked points, via JTA:

When Israeli authorities chose to put Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti on trial in a criminal court rather than a military court, prosecutors may have set the stage for an even bigger prize: Yasser Arafat. That possibility was given a boost last week with Barghouti’s conviction on five counts of murder, for Israelis killed in three separate shooting ambushes... The judges said Barghouti could be convicted only in cases where it was proven that he had prior knowledge of imminent terrorist attacks and that he approved the attacks... [He] was acquitted on 21 other counts of murder for lack of evidence. Both outcomes bolstered the argument for putting Palestinian terrorists on trial in regular Israeli courts rather than in military courts, where the standards of evidence are not as strict. Barghouti’s conviction shows that there is sufficient evidence to put terrorists behind bars using standard criminal procedures, and his acquittal on the other counts lends legitimacy to the argument that even Palestinian terrorists will get fair trials in Israel... ["Barghouti conviction could foretell Arafat trial", JTA, May 24, 2004]

Some additional overlooked dimensions:

• Marwan Barghouti publicly boasted of his role in igniting what many call the Second Intifada in 2000. We published his direct quotes (translated to English at the archived Wayback Machine]. This may come as a surprise to those who think of Ariel Sharon visiting the Temple Mount in September 2000 as being the real story. 
• He personally laid out $500 [source: the archived Wayback Machine quoting a November 30, 2004 Margot Dudkevitch report in the Jerusalem Post] for the making of the explosive-filled guitar case that was brought to, and exploded inside, Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria destroying it on August 9, 2001 and killing fifteen innocent people including our daughter Malki. The bombmaker was Abdullah Barghouti, Marwan's clansman.
• We sat through Marwan Barghouti's trial in a Tel Aviv court.
• When another clansman Bilal Barghouti, a senior Hamas operative, was on the run from the Israeli security forces because of his involvement in the massacre at the Sbarro pizzeria (he was later convicted for his part), Marwan Barghouti sheltered him for a time in his home. Bilal Barghouti said for the record that, during his stay there, "he saw a number of weapons, and when he left the house Barghouti armed him with a gun for his use." [Source: CAMERA] Marwan Barghouti is an unindicted accessory after the fact to the Sbarro murders.
• And since we're mentioning the Barghouti clan, let the record show that Ahlam Tamimi, the Jordanian Hamas agent who boasts of taking the central role in the 2001 Sbarro massacre and who faces terrorism charges in Washington that were made public on March 14, 2017, is the daughter of a woman named Hasna al-Barghouti [Arabic source]

Leader and parliamentarian, battler for non-violence and peace, candidate for the world's most important reward for bringing peace to the world. And also a cold-blooded thug closely directing other thugs. A man happy to appear in public gripping a sub-machine gun as he claims credit for the blood-drenched Intifadeh years from 2000 onwards.

We don't think it's all that difficult to distinguish between Barghouti the plastic-coated fantasy and invention of parts of the media, and Barghouti the loathsome killer of innocents. 

In the end, it seems to come down - tragically - to whom and what you want to believe.

12-Apr-17: Qatar is "behind state sponsorship of terrorism". So what?

Current Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani [Image Source]

Here's an excerpt from a sharp and uncommonly plain-spoken take-down of Qatar and its brazen self-promotion that was published yesterday in the Toronto Star.

It's penned by Mohamed Fahmy whose Wikipedia page describes him as an Egyptian-born, award-winning Canadian journalist, war correspondent and author who has worked extensively in the Middle East and North Africa for CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera English.

Fahmy became head of Al Jazeera English's International Bureau in Egypt in September 2013 and was arrested and imprisoned soon afterwards by the Egyptian authorities on terrorism charges. Arising from this, he is now said to be suing Al Jazeera which, it ought to be pointed out, is "owned by the Qatari state".

So a couple of paragraphs from "Qatar behind state-sponsorship of terrorism", [Toronto Star, April 11, 2017]

It may be time to include the little oil-rich Arab state of Qatar on the top of the [state sponsors of terror] list since it continues to house and protect wanted financiers of Al Qaeda, Daesh, Al Nusra Front, Taliban, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups designated as terrorists by many countries and the United Nations... At one point in 2013 Qatar opened an office for Taliban... Right then and there the Al Thani ruling family of Qatar gave legitimacy to murderers who committed horrific massacres in Afghanistan for decades, staged targeted killings and kidnappings of diplomats and civilians... [T]he Qatari leadership maintains policies of duplicity, using an unprecedented flaunting of cash to keep the international community from taking a tougher stance against it. You will not see the United Kingdom, for example, taking a punitive position against Qatar. Why? The Telegraph newspaper summed it up recently: “Qatari investors own more property in the capital than the Mayor of London’s office and three times more than the Queen.”
“You have to ask, who is arming, who is financing ISIS troops?,” German Development minister Gerd Muller ‎asked during an interview with the German public broadcaster. “The keyword there is Qatar — and how ‎do we deal with these people and states politically?” [More]

Fahmy goes on to point out that

• The Al Thani clan, who own the family business called Qatar (that's our description, not his) are known for generously donating $100 million to the victims of Hurricane Katrina one day, and then giving $31 million to pay Hamas terrorist salaries the next. They also provide safe haven - have done for years - for the senior leadership team of the Hamas terror group. Note how a tremendous proportion of the senior public officials in Qatar share the same surname: Al Thani. 
• Hillary Clinton, quoted on a leaked Podesta email last year, said Qatar finances the Islamist savages of ISIS. He then notes laconically how Qatar donated $1 million to the Clinton Foundation. 
• Hamza, the youngest son of Osama bin Laden and a designated terrorist in his own right whom the United States is pursuing, currently lives safe, sound and unmolested in Qatar.

Several million dollars worth of illegally-parked super-luxury cars are
clamped by British traffic wardens outside Harrods (also owned by
the Qataris) in London [Image Source] [Video]

Five years from now, Qatar is set to host the FIFA Soccer World Cup. That decision has been under a cloud for years, having come with a laundry list of allegations focusing principally (but not only) on bribery and corruption. 

Nonetheless, with Qatar reliably reported [here, here, here and in many other places] to be spending upwards of two hundred billion dollars to ensure it achieves its goals, the show evidently will go on.

Still, almost everything we read about Qatar - by far the highest per capita income in the world according to a February 2017 ranking - and the things its owners do convinces us that Qatar's goals ought to be getting more attention than they currently do.

Here's some additional background on Qatar from some of our previous posts:

• 11-Dec-15: The price of the Shalit Deal and the countries that help it keep rising
• 10-Nov-15: Qalqilya where the strings are pulled by Hamas and Qatar
• 21-May-15: Why is this man still free? Human rights, the Qataris, dignity and football
• 18-May-15: Peeking behind Qatar's genteel, manicured and increasingly disastrous public relations
• 18-May-15: As the Qatari thug says, Disneyland it's not
• 07-Dec-14: World's richest country again reminds us what that means in practice
• 15-Sep-14: Like a horse and carriage: Qatari money and terror
• 30-Jul-14: Is Qatar's stupendous wealth connected with Hamas' ongoing terrorism?
• 22-Jul-14: Polite suggestion to Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson: Some background on those very generous Qataris
• 11-Jul-13: Football and barefaced hypocrisy

15-Dec-15: Unwanted questions that today's European terror arrests raise

Coulibaly: How lone was he? [Image Source]

What do we know about the terrorists behind the bloody attacks in Paris on a kosher food-market in January, and on multiple Paris restaurant and concert venue targets on Friday, November 13? Less than we need to know. Less than most people think we know.

There's a wave of terror-related arrests going on in Western Europe today.

Concerning those multiple Paris massacres that cost the lives of 130, here's what the news services say today:

But three of the nine attackers have yet to be identified, including two of the three suicide bombers who blew themselves up outside the Stade de France stadium, who appear to have used fake passports to sneak into Europe posing as refugees... Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old French citizen thought to have played a key logistical role, is still on the run and subject to an international arrest warrant... [Aljazeera, December 15, 2015]

There has been anxious debate inside Europe over the need to review its internal open border policies. Some politicians and policy-makers and plenty of observers, have been asserting that the terrorist attackers were born in the EU or had EU citizenship, which is another way of suggesting that terror-minded people sneaking into Europe posing as refugees is not the essence of the problem.

But if the hordes penetrating Europe from the Arab world - not all of them, but that's hardly the point - are more involved in terror than many want to believe, then the challenges facing governments and police are orders of magnitude more complicated. It's not a viewpoint that brings much joy. But it might be inescapable.

It was also widely publicized back in January that those Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher terrorists were "self-radicalized" (a very difficult expression to parse) and essentially lone-wolf operators. Now we learn that two of three suspected terrorists in today's news headlines are being interrogated in relation to those Hypercacher killings where the mainstream view had been of a lone wolf attack done by Amedy Coulibaly, an Islamist.

Seen via the prism of today's developments, it's possible that both core assumptions are wrong. If so, the issue of terrorists posing as refugees might have to become a bi-partisan concern, not merely a political slogan.

3-Aug-14: Does intimidation of news reporters work? The thugs of Hamas can answer that

Some of Al Jazeera's eyes and ears on the ground in Gaza [Image Source]

It's long been said that history is written by the victors. Perhaps Winston Churchill said it, and perhaps not, but in the on-line age of blogs, Twitter and YouTube it's plainly no longer true. Even the terrorists - among other losers - can write history, leaving the rest of us to figure out whose narrative we want to accept.

A news report this morning about Qatar - owner and operator of Al Jazeera, aspiring Middle East peace broker, provider of jet travel services to Ban Ki-Moon, and major source of finance for the terrorism of Hamas - got us thinking (and Tweeting) about the larger issues of news reporting in time of war and the influence that fear and intimidation play in what does and does not reach news consumers around the world.

"Qatar’s emir has phoned UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to express his anger that the United Nations blamed Hamas for breaking Friday’s ceasefire, Al-Jazeera reports. Speaking with Ban, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani said he was astonished that the UN would blame Hamas without first verifying the facts. Al-Thani, considered a Hamas backer despite attempts to broker a ceasefire, called on the UN to come out clearly against Israel. A 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire announced by the UN and US State Department fell apart shortly after it began Friday morning, when Hamas fighters attacked a group of Israeli soldier working to dismantle a tunnel it says was built for terror attacks, killing three. At the time, Ban’s office released a statement saying he “condemns in the strongest terms the reported violation by Hamas of the mutually agreed humanitarian ceasefire which commenced this morning. He is shocked and profoundly disappointed by these developments." Source: ”Hamas threatening journalists in Gaza who expose abuse of civilians [Times of Israel, July 28, 2014]: 

We tweeted:

Then we went searching online for indications that thoughtful people see this and are troubled by it. We found Daniel Schwammenthal, head of the AJC Transatlantic Institute in Brussels and formerly a writer at the Wall Street Journal Europe, who tackled this in an article published by The Commentator ["Fear and trembling: Western media and Hamas"] on August 1, 2014. In it, he observed:

We are all aware of the wilful blindness of Western media when reporting on Hamas in Gaza. Though it's no excuse, what may not be so clear is that many of the journalists are also terrified of telling the truth... Whatever the reason is for today’s miscoverage - fear, ignorance or bias - we are not getting the true picture from Gaza... Occasionally, though, the truth slips out, often almost accidentally. 

He then offers some disturbing examples:

• A report on an earlier broken Hamas/Israel ceasefire includes the disclosure in paragraph seven that Gaza City's Shifa Hospital had “become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.” Schwammenthal says this is reported "almost in passing, without further analysis. It seem neither the journalist nor his editors realized the enormity of this information. The leadership of one of the warring parties is hiding in a hospital, a clear war crime validating Israeli accusations. But instead of this becoming headline news, triggering further reporting by other journalists, we get nothing but silence". Source: “While Israel held its fire, the militant group Hamas did not”, Washington Post July 15, 2014.
• He brings "one of the rare instances the media bothered to detail to what extraordinary length Israel goes to protect Palestinian civilians". It's a NYTimes piece in which an ordinary Gazan by the name of Salah Kaware "tells the reporter that he received a personal call from Israel urging him to leave the building. The second paragraph contains this bombshell: “’Our neighbors came in to form a human shield,’” he said, with some even going to the roof to prevent a bombing.” Amazingly, the reporter did not take further note of this incredible admission from a Palestinian, which again validates Israeli accusations usually treated with much skepticism." Source: “Israel Warns Gaza Targets by Phone and Leaflet”, New York Times, July 8, 2014.
• On July 28, NBC News (among many others) reported on a "strike" at the Al-Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza. Quoting a Palestinian "health official" as well as a Palestinian resident of the area at length, the story describes the deaths of "at least 10 people, including children". And while it pays some minor attention to the IDF's version, the weight of the story is about children playing in a crowded street until they are tragically killed by the Israelis. "Hamas later text messaged a statement to journalists, blaming the IDF — and alleged they had proof of Israeli responsibility... Early reports from the ground had said an Israeli drone appeared responsible for the attack... "May God punish... Netanyahu," he said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu." A statement by a notorious Hamas "spokesperson" is prominently featured. Then the following day, July 29, an Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati, sends out this tweet: “Out of #Gaza far from #Hamas retaliation: misfired rocket killed children yday in Shati. Witness: militants rushed and cleared debris.” Barbati's close-to-the-scene report corroborates the results of the Israeli investigation which found that the deaths came from yet another Palestinian Arab rocket that fell short; instead of killing their intended civilian targets in Israel, it killed still more Palestinian Arab civilians, children among them. He also tweeted, “@IDFSpokesperson said truth in communique released yesterday about Shati camp massacre. It was not #Israel behind it.”
• He brings the case of a Palestinian Arab journalist, Radjaa Abou Dagga. His article in the French newspaper Libération, published July 23, 2014, substantiates those other accounts of reporters bring cowed by Hamas intimidation. In his case, this lead the reporter to flee Gaza. He too says Hamas terrorists work from inside Gaza's Shifa Hospital, right next to the emergency room, as the Washington Post had reported. Dagga then asked that his revelatory article be removed from the Libération website, evidently because of fears for the well-being of his family still in Gaza. Source: Liberation (French), July 24, 2014
• Schwammenthal refers to other instances of Western journalists removing Hamas-critical tweets without explanation, and still others who "have been prevented by Hamas from leaving Gaza." Other observers [here, here, here, here and many other places on the web] have raised similar concerns.

We also recall the notorious matter of Ricardo Cristiano. An Italian TV crew, working for the RAI station, captured an especially gruesome attack on video in Ramallah in 2000 that resulted in two Israelis being literally torn to pieces and murdered. They sent this, the only existing visual record of the horrifying Palestinian Arab lynch mob, to Rome from where it shocked audiences throughout the world. Then the fear and intimidation kicked in. Cristiano, RAI's representative in Jerusalem, sent a groveling letter of apology to Arafat, pledging to "respect" the "rules" laid down by the Palestinian Authority, assuring the arch-terrorist that his station never again do such an act or otherwise harm the Palestinian cause, and reaffirming his personal solidarity with the Palestinians. This caused uproar in Italy, and led to his subsequent recall to Rome. But plainly (and the evidence since then confirms) there cannot have been a single journalist working the Middle East beat who failed to draw the obvious conclusions.

Schwammenthal steps back from the specific facts and asks whether journalists working "under the constant threat from Hamas" are “self-censoring” themselves, and therefore censoring the news reports and images that we get. He asks: Is this why we don’t see coverage of Hamas terrorists firing rockets from civilian areas, the use of human shields and other war crimes?

Times of Israel reported on Friday ["The images missing from the war with Hamas"] that photographers who had taken pictures of Hamas operatives in compromising circumstances - like those of Hamas terror operatives preparing to shoot rockets from within civilian structures, fighting in civilian clothing - were bullied and threatened by Hamas men who confiscated their equipment. An L.A. Times slideshow of more than 75 photographs from the conflict includes not a single image of a Hamas fighter [source]. An Israeli official quoted there says what might not be already obvious:

“Walking around Gaza with a camera and asking people what they think is not like walking around New York or London. People are not free to say their true opinions. It’s a bit like asking Syrians in government-controlled areas of Damascus if they like President [Bashar] Assad.”

Even so, it's disturbing that too few of the many working journalists now covering Gaza from inside seem to be asking the sorts of incisive questions we expect from their profession. 

We mean questions like those set out in an invaluable posting on the Harry's Place website two days ago: "40 questions for the international media in Gaza". And we mean the intelligent, unfiltered observations (and photos and videos) like those that show gunmen and rocketeers and some of the thousands of Hamas and PIJ fighters whose exploits they regale. 

Having those would go some way towards enabling the rest of us to reach reasonably-founded conclusions about what's really happening in that dark and dangerous place. 

For the record, at the New York Times, they now claim they don't have any pictures of Hamas fighters. It's a stance that deserves much closer scrutiny.