30-Sep-16: As Peres is remembered, some keep looking backwards as others face the future

The scene outside Israel's parliament, the Knesset, yesterday as Israelis
lined up to pay their last respects [Image Source]

It's a gorgeous Friday morning here in Jerusalem. The air is still, the sun is bright, the cloudless sky is a luminescent blue.

But residents of the city, like us, know to expect chaos and it's already noticeable how light the road traffic is in our part of town. Many of the capital's major thoroughfares are already closed by the police and others, including the main highway from Tel Aviv, will be shut down for long intervals during the day.

Foreign delegations from dozens of countries are either already here or making their way to the national cemetery on Mount Herzl at this hour for this morning's state funeral of Shimon Peres, former president, major figure on the Israeli stage for the entire seven decades of Israel's renewed existence, and global statesman.

How are our neighbours dealing with this?

Sadly, in ways that remind thoughtful observers of how tightly they continue to hold to backward-facing conceptions even as booming, sparkling Israel along with most of the world is busy trying to build a better future and resolve a generations-long conflict.

Start with Israeli Arab political figures: they, at least the higher profile among them, seem likely to avoid taking part altogether ["Arabs boycott funeral of Shimon Peres", New York Post, September 29, 2016], though we won't know till we know.

As for the Arabic media, the one part we regularly follow - the English-language version of Ma'an News Agency - has devoted a total of two stories to Peres this week. One reports his death and asserts without embarrassment that Peres

ordered and oversaw the Qanaa massacre in Lebanon, in which the Israeli military killed and injured hundreds of civilians and UN peacekeepers. ["Former Israeli President Shimon Peres dead at 93", Ma'an, September 28, 2016]

There's another yesterday about the funeral which makes no mention about the huge foreign presence and global outpourings of respect and appreciation for what the work of Peres stands for, but focuses intensely on how

Israeli authorities have canceled this week’s visit of Gazan worshipers to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem... ["Israel cancels Gaza worshipers' Friday visit to Al-Aqsa for Peres funeral", Ma'an, September 29, 2016]

The savages of the Hamas regime have vociferously called from Gaza for what they term a(nother) “Day of Rage” to mark, as Times of Israel describes it, both

the one-year anniversary of the beginning of a wave of terror attacks, including stabbings and car-rammings throughout the West Bank and in Jerusalem, that launched in September 2015 [Times of Israel]

and what its spokesperson Sami Abu-Zuhri says is how

"the Palestinian people are very happy at the passing of this criminal who caused their blood to shed... his death is the end of a phase in the history of this occupation and the beginning of a new phase of weakness." [Times of Israel]

No one can predict quite the form that this orchestrated, regime-dictated is going to take. But we can assume they won't confine themselves to banging the walls of their apartments and raising their voices at people. Israel's security forces are on high alert with massive deployment of personnel throughout the country, and particularly here in Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, the so-called moderate head of the Palestinian Authority and of Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas, ["10-Mar-15: The not-so-moderate Palestinian Authority and the terrorism it enables"] is widely reported to be on his way to Jerusalem today after having

sent a condolence letter to Peres’s family expressing “sorrow and sympathy.” He called Peres a partner in reaching a “peace of the brave” with the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. [Times of Israel, September 30, 2016]

The PA faction which Abbas heads, Fatah, put out its own statement in which it called Peres

"the spiritual father of all the wars against Arab states" [Source: PMW]

That hostile message was, naturally, published in Arabic only, intended for consumption by Fatah's rank-and-file constituency as well as, presumably, its rivals in Hamas.

Equally naturally, Fatah put out an entirely different and contradictory message in the English language yesterday, intended for unsuspecting non-Arabic-speakers oblivious to the torrent of hatred and bigotry pumped out daily by the Fatah propaganda machine. In English, their message is that:

Abbas wanted to “send a strong message to Israeli society that the Palestinians are for peace, and appreciate the efforts of peaceful men like Shimon Peres”... Abbas will be joined by a delegation comprising senior negotiator Saeb Erekat, Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh, security chief Majid Faraj and Muhammad Al-Madani, who heads up relations with Israelis. Former Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qurei may also attend... [Abbas also] sent a condolence letter to Peres’s family [in which he] expressed his “sadness and sorrow,” and wrote that “Peres was a partner in making the brave peace with the martyr Yasser Arafat and prime minister (Yitzhak) Rabin.” [Times of Israel, yesterday]

It won't be news to people who keep track of these things that there's plenty of Palestinian Arab double-speak on display here. It's a sadly familiar part of the landscape. And note the loathsome use of the word "martyr" in reference to Arafat. (It doesn't appear, for some odd reason, in today's Times of Israel re-statement of that Abbas statement here.)

The PA's clear and explicit position, contrary to all the available evidence and several lengthy third-party investigations, is that the Israelis martyred Arafat by murdering him. A PA civil servant was even arrested last year and charged with denying the "truth" of Arafat's alleged martyrdom - or as Times of Israel ["PA employee arrested for claiming Arafat was ‘not a martyr’", April 28, 2015] quoted them in its report at the time -  for “attacking and harming the martyr, eternal leader and symbol of the Palestinian people Abu Ammar”, Arafat's nom de guerre.

Arafat's alleged victimhood is evidently too precious an asset to be surrendered for something as ephemeral as baby-steps toward peace. It continues to play a central and highly influential role in the moulding of Palestinian Arab opinion and its obsessive grip on extreme violence [see "15-Jun-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?"]

Worth remembering that funerals continue to play their traditional role in their culture as well. For a reminder of how that works, see "5-May-14: The making of a martyr: it takes more than a village".

Let's hope this glorious Jerusalem day runs its course peacefully  and in the spirit of forward-lookingness.

05-Oct-15: More on the perpetrators of the Henkin killings

Nablus city center (from the municipality's website)

Information is emerging in stages. And both Hamas and Nablus take a starring role.

The text of an official statement made by the Government Press Office tonight includes some key pieces of information for those, like us, concerned to spotlight the role of Hamas in ongoing terrorism warfare against Israelis. These are all verbatim quotes from that report:

• The ISA [better known as the Shin Bet], IDF and Israel Police have arrested members of the cell that perpetrated the attack. The detainees have been transferred for investigation by the ISA and have admitted their involvement in the murder of the Henkins.
• The cell – affiliated with Hamas in Nablus – numbered five terrorists, each of which had a defined role. One terrorist checked the route. Three terrorists were in the attacking vehicle – a driver and two attackers. The cell commander was not in the vehicle. Several additional suspects have been arrested on suspicion of aiding the cell.
• The cell commander was Raeb Ahmed Muhammad Alivi [we think Alawi might be a better transliteration], born in 1978, and active in Hamas's military wing. He recruited the members of the cell, instructed them and provided them with weapons.
• Members of the cell included: Yehye Muhammad Naif Abdallah Haj Hamed, born in 1991, a resident of Nablus. A Hamas member, he carried out the shooting in this attack and has been active in others. Samir Zahir Ibrahim Kusa, born in 1982, a resident of Nablus. A Hamas member, he drove the attacking vehicle. Kerem Lutfy Fathi Razek, born in 1992, a resident of Nablus. A Hamas member, he set out on the attack armed with a pistol but was mistakenly wounded by his colleague during the carrying out of the attack. Zid Ziad Jamil Amar, born in 1989, a resident of Nablus. A Hamas member, he checked the route.
• During the shooting, one of the cell members was accidentally shot by one of his colleagues and dropped his pistol, which was left at the scene and found by Israeli forces. After carrying out the shooing, the terrorists fled toward Nablus.
• The cell members also said that they had been involved in two shooting attacks in recent weeks, neither of which resulted in casualties, including the 30 August attack near the entrance to Kedumim.
• The investigation of the cell members is continuing.

Fatah, Hamas' sworn enemy, earlier claimed credit. Such is life among the savages.

Ynet is reporting that Alawi, the ring-leader, spent time inside Israel's prison system but does not elaborate. Was he released in a deal? We are checking.

There's some graphic security-camera video [via YouTube] from inside a Nablus hospital of armed Israeli forces entering and apprehending an injured attacker. Ynet is reporting that the person being arrested is Karam al-Masri, 23. (He is not named among the five arrested suspects.) Al-Masri happens to be the name of the human bomb planted by the infamous terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, whose explosion in the center of Jerusalem on August 9, 2001 destroyed the Sbarro pizzeria and the lives of dozens of Jewish families. We don't know whether there is a close relationship, but we're checking.

From social media posts tonight, we see that the hospital where the suspect was picked up is Arab Specialist Hospital, Nablus which

was established in 1997 and included the most important sections multiple medical treatment center and cardiac surgery center and blood diseases and bone and runs these sections Kadrozifa trained and qualified and has a high efficiency. Runs the hospital Arab specialists with expertise and high efficiency and management of distinctive always strives to be the best. [The hospital's website]

Haaretz is reporting tonight that four additional Israel Defense Forces battalions have now been sent in to Nablus which is now locked down to facilitate the ongoing search for the terrorists responsible for the attack.

10-Aug-15: Reminders that terrorist savages have a sentimental side

Remembering the Sbarro massacre - from the savage's
standpoint [Image Source]

(A modified version of what follows appears at Times of Israel as "The sentimental side of the savages".)

Yesterday, we commemorated the anniversary of a massive explosion that ripped through a pizzeria crowded with children in the center of Israel's capital city. It was a catastrophe that upended lives, futures and attitudes and - in relatively small measure - influenced public policies, at least for a time.

We are the parents of one of the children murdered there that day. In fact, a majority of the 15 lives lost in the attack by an Islamist terrorist gang on Sbarro in Jerusalem were children. (A 16th victim, a mother whose child was then two years old, remains in a vegetative state to this day.)

August 9, as it has been for the past fourteen years, was a time for writing and tweeting and receiving back messages of strength and support from the people in our lives who care for our well-being. But if we take a brief look at the Arab world - parts of it, at any rate - yesterday was a day of memories for them too.

But of a very different kind, as we found by Googling today:

• This Facebook account [the post to which the following words relate has now been removed from this location, with neither comment nor explanation] celebrates the anniversary because of the 19 "Zionists" killed at Sbarro Jerusalem. That most of them were children goes unmentioned, perhaps because of the sheer transcendental joy of the celebration. And if they overstate the death toll by 4, so what? The human bomb is offered hearty congratulations on his fine achievement. The page has gotten 190 Likes and 13 Shares between the time it was launched on Sunday morning and 5:00 pm today, Monday, Jerusalem time.
• The Sahafah Arabiah website, based in Egypt, has a tribute page honoring the killing of 20 "Zionists" at Sbarro. (Actual death tolls are evidently a minor detail once the Islamists have crossed the "massacre" threshold.) Referring to the guitar case carried on the human bomb's back and in reality filled with thousands of nails along with ten kilograms of tightly-packed explosives, the writers of the page wax lyrical about "playing melodies of revenge". It seems music does that to you, if you're inclined a certain way.



Islamic Bloc

• Over at Nablus Live, their commemorative article focuses, at great length, on the personality of the human bomb (we don't feel the need to type his name - may his memory be forever erased), and his short career as a covert member of the ranks of Hamas. He is described as "not an ordinary man... a person of calm and tranquility". Dead children do not appear in this account. Nor, as far as we can see, is there a word of condemnation, embarrassment or regret. It's simply a paean to heroism, to an acclaimed hero, and his attainment.
• The Islamic Bloc at Hebron University has its own Facebook page too. It's where they paid tribute on the 14th anniversary of the killings to the main killer, Ahlam Tamimi, the plotter who survived. They display a photo of her meeting Khaled Meshaal, the de facto fuehrer of the Hamas Islamists, on the day she was freed from her Israeli prison cell in 2011. It's here, and has scored 106 likes since Sunday as of the time we wrote this post. The accompanying message, translated from Arabic, reads: "Freed prisoner in a deal... Ahlam Tamimi, by the Qassam martyr Izzedine Al Masri allowed him and identified the site, the Sbarro restaurant, in which he carried out the martyrdom operation..." Readers may be interested to note that Hebron University is part of Global University Network for Innovation via which, in its own words, it "applies for the European Union Academic partnership programs and it is currently partner of several projects", including several focused on "peace". (We're not sure what they mean by that out-of-context word.) The Islamic Bloc, the "students wing" affiliate of Hamas, has had a dominant position for years in the student government of Hebron University, despite the heavy hand of the Fatah/PLO regime that rules over the city.
• Not so surprisingly, the Twitter account of the woman who personally engineered the massacre and proudly accepted credit for it, who brought the human bomb into Jerusalem; who walked him to the target before slipping away in time to save herself; who celebrated with sincere joy the blowing to pieces of fifteen innocent victims most of whom, by her design, were Jewish children; who pleaded guilty to all the murder charges with zero remorse; who was convicted and sentenced to 16 life terms but is now free; focuses on the glory of the killing. That is what it does, here. Tamimi, a television performer with her own weekly show, is another who adopts a musical metaphor (in her native Arabic tongue which we have translated to English) to pay poetic homage to the cultured young religious fanatic with the dual-purpose guitar case on his back and to the uplifting devastation wrought by its explosive contents:
  
      "When the (musical) melodies are turned into explosions, 
      Then hearing the music is pleasant to us. 
      Your time has come, oh ye who play the harp (referring to Masri, the human bomb).
      All that remains is the memory of you."

The chief plotter and arch murderer's Tweet - we translated the Arabic text

There are more. But we feel we should devote the remainder of the space available in this post to a complete and comprehensive listing of the various anniversary-driven condemnations of the Sbarro massacre that we were able to find online in the Arabic language. The list begins here.

And ends here.

Is there anything a reasonable person can learn about terrorism and what it does to people - especially to those who worship it and its practitioners - by considering this small handful of reactions to just one Islamist massacre?

31-May-15: Lights, camera, action, terror

Abdullah Barghouti: Poster child for those
lusting for the murder of still more
Jewish children [Image Source]

[This post, like a number of others before it, has been translated to Polish ("Światła, kamera, akcja, terror") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the listyznaszegosadu website. Our sincere thanks to her, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.]

It might not come as the greatest of surprises that we follow from a distance the public appearances of two of the central actors in the killing of our fifteen year old child.

Malki, the oldest of our daughters, was one of the innocents murdered in a savage Hamas terror attack on central Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria on August 9, 2001. Fifteen people were killed there that day. A sixteenth has been unconscious through all the years since the bombing. 130 more, most of them pedestrians passing through the busy central Jerusalem intersection outside the store, were maimed and terribly injured.

The explosion was achieved by the sending of a human bomb into the center of Jerusalem with what looked to be a guitar case slung across his back. The explosive device (for that is what it was) had been assembled by a bomb-maker, Abdullah Barghouti, a Kuwaiti, who during a brief career produced a series of civilian-seeking explosives that blew 66 people to pieces.

In 2004, he was convicted in an Israeli court and sentenced - having pleaded guilty - to one term of life imprisonment for each of the deaths he was instrumental in causing. Plus one additional life term for all those he injured and who survived: a total of 67 life terms in all.

Barghouti's satanic handicraft took innocent lives in some of the most horrific terror attacks of the period:

• The August 2001 massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria
• The December 2001 triple-bomb outrage on Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall
• The March 2002 mass-victim bombing of Jerusalem's Cafe Moment
• The July 2002 bombing inside the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria on the Hebrew University of Jerusalem campus on Mt Scopus.

And naturally, he is now the idol of untold millions. 

Some of the evidence for that statement is in a tour we did two years ago of his widespread fan base: see "1-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?"

If anyone feels upset by that gross and unfair generalization, then we want you to know about our standing offer. For years, we have undertaken to re-publish and/or link to any published condemnation of this man's actions and values. There's just one condition: it must have been published in Arabic. We have been waiting years for someone to challenge us on this. Apparently it's tougher than it looks.

Barghouti had a deep impact on some other people: the panel of judges who sentenced him expressed regret that the death penalty was not an option. (The only time a death penalty has been carried out in Israel was that of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichman in 1962.)

The bomb-making sociopath has been confined to an Israeli prison since his 2004 trial. From inside, he has reminded every possible audience of the bestiality that underpins his murderous nature. 66 innocent people killed? Not enough, he declares - explicitly. In 2006, in the intimate setting of a quiet interview beamed throughout the world by CBS television's '60 Minutes' program, Barghouti notoriously 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]

It's a point he emphasized when he appeared in a different Israeli court in 2010. At that time, he took the opportunity to reiterate his dedication to killing more if (when?) he is freed again.

We are going over all these matters here now not because we expect to arouse sympathy for the victims of this depraved individual (we certainly know better than that). The issue is that it enrages us to see how easily and cheaply he and his message succeed - from deep inside a high security jail within the vaunted Israeli justice system - to project a message out to the masses hungering, salivating, for the inspiration and message he embodies. It's almost as if the good people on our side don't comprehend how the triumphalism of the Islamist jihadists feeds, grows and thrives on exposure of this sort.

We are speaking of this news item published this afternoon:

Hamas inmate smuggles phone into cell, holds radio interview | Prison Service officials say Abdullah Barghouti will face disciplinary action | Times of Israel | May 31, 2015 | Hamas prisoner Abdullah Barghouti will face disciplinary action after he conducted an illegal telephone interview from his prison cell on Sunday. Barghouti, who is incarcerated in the Ramon Prison in southern Israel, used a cellphone smuggled into his prison cell to conduct an interview with the Al-Rai radio station in Gaza. The call was in violation of prison regulations, which prohibits him from speaking on the telephone or holding interviews. During the conversation, which lasted roughly four minutes, Barghouti urged Hamas and Izz al-Din al-Qassam, its military wing, to reach a deal with Israel on prisoner releases, the Ynet news website reported. “We are steadfast and waiting patiently, according to your promise to us,” he said. “We will continue adhering to it whether we are released today or in another thousand years.” He also called on Hamas’s military wing to have no mercy on “the Israeli enemy.”
Israel Prison Service officials said in response that "disciplinary measures will be taken against him for that interview, and the issue of the smuggling will be investigated"... 

A short while after this report went up, Israel National News, quoting a spokesperson from the Israel Prisons Service, said Barghouti was punished this afternoon by being sent to solitary confinement. For how long? A reasonable question - but they're not saying. (And it's not for the first time. Back in 2010, when he gave the interview published here, we were told by officials in the prison service that he paid a price in terms of solitary confinement then.)

Barghouti, evidently photographed last week
inside an Israeli prison, sending a message
to Moslem Brotherhood buddies in Egypt: How
allows this kind of thing in prisons?

We didn't hear the Al-Rai interview given by Barghouti. But during last week, via some of the Arab websites and social media we occasionally review, we encountered this photograph. That's Barghouti over on the right.

From the context, it's clearly a fresh photo. We're guessing it was taken with the same phone as the one used to conduct the interview. We have not seen any news report which mentions that photos of the murderer were also taken and disseminated. Perhaps we're the only non-Arabs who know or care. We think people ought to know this, because something is is wrong if this can happen.

How wrong? If you click here, you can see via Google that it has been copied and republished on close to two hundred sites across the Arab world in the past few days. The number might be larger by the time you read this. There's a huge appetite for what emanates from this person.

We will leave for a different occasion an explanation of the four finger salute on his shirt and right hand. In brief, it's called the Rabia, or sometimes the R4BIA. And the woman in the photo below is doing it too, along with her buddies in the snapshot:

Happy, happy Islamists, 2013. Second from right in the
Islamist party dress is the confessed engineer of
the 2001 Sbarro massacre

We first reproduced this 2013 photo on the right - a woman in black, three goofy men, fingers splayed - four months ago, here.

Like the still-imprisoned murderer Barghouti, the fingers tell us that all four are Islamists. The woman with the relaxed smile and the black robes is the self-confessed planner of the terrorist outrage at the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria - the woman who murdered our daughter.

Back in August 2001, dressed in skimpy clothes and aged 21, she brought a bomb (a human bomb) through the IDF security checkpoints and right into the center of Jerusalem. She then slipped away, according to plan, before it exploded, and went right back to Ramallah to her evening job. She presented the news on a Palestinian Arab TV station. There in front of the cameras, she exulted in reading the first item - about a "resistance activity" in "occupied Al Quds". Many dead "Zionists". She did not mention that she was the killer in chief.

Our child's killer reads the news on a Palestinian Arab
TV station a few hours after engineering the massacre
herself, August 9, 2001

That confession came later when she stood trial in an Israeli court, and was convicted of the murder of 15 people including our Malki.

The photo above (the one captioned "Happy Islamists, 2013") is evidence of what became of the multiple life terms in prison to which she was sentenced. It's a photograph taken in 2013, in an Arab capital. She has been completely free since October 2011. The background is recounted here. Nine months after walking out of prison, triumphant, she was married in front of television cameras from all over the Arab world. The radiant groom was (is) another convicted, unrepentant, unjustly freed terrorist/murderer. As the picture suggests, she appears to be a contented woman on a mission, using her undoubted celebrity in the Arab world (and her Facebook and Twitter accounts) to encourage more people to kill more Jewish children.

From experience, a certain part of our readership is going to be sitting there, sadly shaking their heads, wondering how any of these horrible things could have happened.

The killer, now free as a bird, on her globally-beamed
weekly television show, marketing Islamist terror to
an enthusiastic international market

Another part is aching, just aching, for the day when the man in the yellow shirt can walk free from his cell, take his rightful place in open Arab society, and be hailed for his courage, heroism, leadership, achievement, vision and greatness.

The woman, meanwhile, can be seen on live television, every Friday night and via YouTube, on the pro-terror program she hosts from Amman, Jordan, beamed throughout the world on a Hamas satellite TV network. (Details are here.)

As parents of one of the many children killed by these insatiable monsters, we are left to get on with our constructive lives, to focus on our families, our careers, our communities, and to try not to be knocked off balance by the befuddling phenomenon of a prison system that permits itself to serve as a propaganda platform for hatred-driven jihadists.

We thought we had enough of that in 2007 when a film crew was ushered in to the Israeli prison where we had been encouraged to believe our daughter's killer would spend the rest of her days. We have never ascertained who approved the entry of the film people or why. The production that resulted, called Hot House, got her prominent coverage in the New York Times (to our fury) and eventually contributed, we think, to her unjustifiable and totally unjust release from that prison a few short years later.

A final thought to ponder, if we're dealing with perplexing matters.

Barghouti is paid each and every month a Palestinian Authority salary that is multiples of what senior civil servants in the Abbas-dominated PA government are paid. When he goes free, as we fear he may, he stands to be handed a huge lump sum. It's PA policy.

Tamimi, who served less time in Israeli prison for her crimes, earned less each month, but has already cashed in her massive walk-free bonus. Both happen to be aligned with the PA's rivals, Hamas. But that doesn't matter. The PA's funding/terror-reward scheme applies to all. It's not whom you support but whom you murdered that counts.

And to those of our readers who pay taxes to a European state: Who do you imagine funds those payments?

You might want to start your enquiry here: "Dutch, British and German MPs condemn PA deception, antisemitism, and terror glorification" [PMW, May 25, 2015]. And there's some detailed and disturbing background here for readers from the United Kingdom.

04-Oct-14: Hamas announces "a new victory"; once again, it's about terrorists being freed from Israeli prisons

Scene from August 2013 release of convicted Palestinian Arab murderers
from their Israeli prison cells under the influence of a failed
US State Dept-engineered transaction [Image Source]

Here's a syndicated report from the Chinese news agency Xinhua that was published Friday. At the moment, we don't see any other sources for the story, but we have just begun to look. We will comment separately but at this point here's the dry report:

New prisoners' swap deal with Israel will be soon: Hamas 

GAZA, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- Islamic Hamas movement on Friday promised the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip that a new prisoners' swap deal with Israel is expected to see the light soon. Large banners were stuck early on Friday morning at crossroads in the coastal enclave. The banners signed by al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas armed wing and wrote "Palestinian Prisoners to be released soon." 

The banners included a picture of the Israeli soldier Shaul Oran, who was captures after 12 days of the large-scale Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip, which lasted for 50 days and ended in Aug 26. The group's banners didn't say clearly if the soldier is dead or alive, but said a new prisoners' swap deal is expected to see the light soon. The banner included several question marks, in reference to the fact that there is another soldier. 

Meanwhile, Mushir al-Masri, a senior Hamas leader in Gaza told Xinhua that his movement promised the Palestinian people that "we have an appointment with a new victory, a new prisoners' swap deal with Israel." "The Palestinian resistance (Hamas) has the right to keep the details in secret, but it promised its people of an honorable swap deal, and resistance has the ability to do so," said al-Masri, who declined to give anymore details. 

However, everything is related to finalizing the Egyptian- sponsored indirect negotiations for enforcing a permanent ceasefire agreement and end the Israeli siege that has been imposed on the Gaza Strip for eight years. 

"Talks for a prisoners' swap deal will be completely isolated from reinforcing a ceasefire and ending the siege on Gaza," said al-Masri... 

Oddly the Xinhua reporters and/or editors seem to lack the word "hostage" in their professional vocabulary. 

About Mushir al-Masri, the Hamas spokesperson: we last mentioned him here when we wrote about three Hamas politicians who were ignominiously kicked out of Bulgaria in February 2013 [see "15-Feb-13: Gnashing of teeth in Gaza as its reps are roused from bed and thrown out of Bulgaria". One of them was this al-Masri. We wrote at the time that he

is a clansman of another al-Masri who entered Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant on August 9, 2001, walked up to the counter and exploded the guitar case on his back. That bomb caused the deaths of 15 Jews, most of them children - which was the plan - and injured more than 130 others. We have written a great deal about that bombing since it cost us the life of our fifteen year-old daughter Malki. 

He happens to be an individual with a deep and personal commitment to violence and terrorism that he has no problem publicizing at any opportunity. In a 2006 backgrounder entitled "Hamas Essentials" produced by CAMERA. they quote him saying in a speech:

We have come here to say that the weapons of the resistance that you see here will remain, Allah willing, so that we can liberate Palestine - all of Palestine - from the Sea to the River, whether they like it or not. 

Quite the diplomat, with his well-matched suit and civilized-looking tie. But his public speeches exemplify unvarnished racist hatred and incitement, in the customary Islamist-style. The "distinguished politician" tends towards finger-wagging and shrieking with hate-filled passion and foaming at the mouth (please do check to see if we're over-stating this) in his public appearances. A YouTube video captures him fully engaged in putting on a show of spite, spit, blood-curdling threats and Islamist hatred at a women's rally in Gaza, March 2012. Check it out.

None of this, astonishingly, dissuaded the Swiss authorities from allowing him to come to Geneva in 2012 as the head of a Hamas "parliamentary" delegation and to be received there as an honoured guest at the University of Geneva (here's a January 2012 Swiss news report about this. with al-Masri's face as its focus). We were personally involved in creating some media awareness about this at the time (with little effect - Switzerland is a European country with all the political consequences). We blogged about this ["17-Jan-12: Switzerland again: International parliamentary group says it erred in inviting Hamas"] at the time.

We will be back later with some more comments about the claims of a prisoner release deal. Meanwhile, just for the record, a Haaretz report this past Wednesday quotes Israeli negotiators saying 

Israel is refusing to discuss the release of Hamas terrorists who were freed in the 2011 deal for kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit but then rearrested after Hamas kidnapped three Israeli teens in June, a senior defense official said on Tuesday. Hamas had raised their release as one of its demands in the Egyptian-mediated talks on a long-term cease-fire in the Gaza Strip that began in Cairo last week. But the official said Israel’s position, as presented in the talks, is that it refuses even to discuss any demands relating to the West Bank, including the release of the rearrested terrorists. “We told them clearly and consistently: We’re willing to discuss Gaza,” the official said. “But nothing about the West Bank – not the [other Palestinian] prisoners and not those freed for Shalit.” [Haaretz]

Checking now.

11-May-14: Still searching for outraged moderate Palestinian Arab voices

From the Arabic press: Funeral of the remains of the Sbarro pizza shop
human bomb

We wrote a few days ago on an issue about which we are especially passionate, even while we realize it's one that moves relatively few people in political life or in the media. We called [see "6-May-14: In search of appalled, sickened Palestinian Arabs" ] for published Arabic-language articles that condemn 

the ongoing satanic strategy that continues to drag Palestinian Arab society - along with those who give such pathological forms of education their passive or active support - down into the gutter of human society and history. Strong words? What else to call a process in which the leadership of an entire society - Abbas and his PA; Hamas; the Palestinian Islamic Jihad - seeks to turn its pre-teen children into human bombs?

We're offering to republish those Arabic articles here, translated into English. It's a serious offer, and a serious search. If those voices exist in Arabic, it's in everyone's interests that people come to know about them. 

This search got started a week ago after a widely-reported ceremony honoring the burial of the remains of a certain human bomb. (If it's not obvious, we think the use of the expression "suicide bomber" is wrong on multiple levels, and we hope it disappears.) And when we say widely-reported, we of course mean widely-reported in the Arabic-speaking world. In the English, French and Spanish language editions of the online Arab media, and in the English-language mainstream news media, there has been barely a mention of the obscene al-Masri funeral. We described it here ["6-May-14: In search of appalled, sickened Palestinian Arabs"] including photos and links to videos.

We are essentially searching for signs of a true moderate voices in Palestinian Arab society - the one we keep being told exists but is not getting noticed enough. 

We're also wondering about the liberals, the humanists, the defenders of human rights, living far from the Middle East, who have given their support to the Palestinian Arabs. We still hope to unearth their condemnations of the process by which a man who murders innocent children is transformed by government officials into a hero and a figure whose actions deserve to be emulated. 

Can it be that liberals, humanists and defenders of human rights hold no view about this? Or think it's unworthy of their attention? Their silence, the absence of condemnation from them, screams.

6-May-14: In search of appalled, sickened Palestinian Arabs

The official government-controlled WAFA News Agency gave major
prominence (above) to the funeral of the "martyr" and to the messages
of PA officials inciting to fresh acts of murder and destruction.
Naturally in Arabic only.  [Image Source]

Yesterday's post ["5-May-14: The making of a martyr: it takes more than a village"] reported on the state funeral given to the remaining body parts of a Palestinian Arab human bomb. 

He exploded in August 2001 inside a restaurant filled with Jews, most of them children, and died a happy young man, perhaps even an ecstatic one. His life, in accordance with the insane religious dogmas that had been pumped into his head, had reached its point of fulfillment.

We made the point that representatives of the major segments of Palestinian Arab society took part in the funeral. If you were looking for moderates - for instance the so-called moderates of the Mahmoud Abbas regime - they were indeed there. But they were not moderating anything. Nor were they expressing viewpoints that came close to moderate. When it comes to murder and incitement to murder of Israelis and of Jews, they are not moderate; they are enthusiastic. 

In last Wednesday's funeral procession in Tubas, they participated, heart and soul, to ensure the strongest possible message of support, encouragement, adulation for acts of calculated murder like the one in which the dead human bomb had engaged - and that stole the life of our daughter Malki. 

They amplified this message of hatred and jihad via the official Palestinian Arab state media, as did the Hamas regime in Gaza through theirs. They wanted everyone to know - at least, everyone who speaks Arabic - how united they all are in their passion for jihad, death, mayhem, destruction. 

As for publishing reports of the funeral and its speeches in languages other than Arabic, they were considerably less interested. Try (just as one random example) finding any mention of it on the English-language, Bethlehem-based, high profile European-funded Ma'an News Agency website. 

Then go to Maan's Arabic side [here] where you can find all the death-cult worship an Arabic reader with an interest in such things could want. 

Interesting, no? Perhaps a person could even learn something from it.

We received some reader feedback suggesting this characterization was unfair. They said there are voices in the Palestinian Arab world that are as sickened as people like us are by the unconcealed blood-lust of Hamas, of Islamic Jihad, of Fatah, of the Palestinian Authority and of Mahmoud Abbas.

We're doubtful. 

But we're willing to investigate. So here's an invitation for anyone who has such evidence to send us public, published statements in Arabic - statements in which Palestinian Arab voices condemn what sickens the rest of the world: the process of turning psychopaths like the human bomb who murdered our daughter into martyrs, heroes, figures to be emulated.

Over to you. Send what you have to thisongoingwar@gmail.com or add them to the comments below. We'll publish what we receive here. 

Remember - in Arabic. We'll take care of the translating into English.

30-Apr-14: A moment of moral clarity as Mahmoud Abbas and his PA prepare to inter another of their inspirational heroes

As the remains are received from Israel,
the celebrations begin. That's al-Masri
in the poster [Image Source]

From Israel National News this morning

Israel Returns Body of Sbarro Terrorist to PA | Dalit Halevi | First Published: 4/30/2014, 1:13 AM | Israel has returned to the Palestinian Authority (PA) the bodies of four terrorists who carried out deadly terrorist attacks against Israelis, including the body of the terrorist who blew himself up in the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem in 2001. The PA-based Safa news agency reported on Tuesday that the terrorists... In addition to Izz al-Din al-Masri, the Sbarro suicide bomber, Israel also reportedly handed the body of suicide bomber... The attack at the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem in August of 2001 was one of the deadliest terror attacks in Israel’s history, and it took place during the Second Intifada, also known as the Oslo War. 16 people were killed in the Sbarro attack [our comment: actually fifteen but a victim remains unconscious today as she has for the past twelve and a half years] including five members of the Schijveschuurder family from the community of Neria in Binyamin. Ahlam Tamimi, the female terrorist who drove [our comment: not true; she accompanied him by by bus and taxi cab; her major contribution to this crime was not the accompanying but the planning of the massacre before it was executed] the suicide bomber to the attack, was released in 2011 in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange.

For the record, the Israeli decision to hand over the body of Al-Masri, the human bomb whose explosion caused so much devastation, grief and ongoing pain to so many Israelis, was made on the basis of zero consultation with the families of his victims. There was also no pre-hand-over official notification to the news media or to the judicial system as far as we know. The Arab media are the sole source of the news.

What next? Will the human bomb be quietly buried in an unmarked grave, with a nondescript marker identifying the place of his remains? Will this happen in the dead of night so that civilized people will not be offended, and so that their civilized lives can go on undisturbed?

Perhaps in some parallel universe.

But not in the world where we live - a world where the Palestinian Arab people are lead by individuals fully engaged on a daily basis in cynical incitement towards hatred and acts of savagery; whose deep and personal involvement in praising the barbaric killers of children and of elderly Holocaust survivors has produced mass rallies where men, women and children are whipped into frenzies of baying for more blood, and videos of school children yearning to become fresh human bombs themselves.

Stand by for more of the same as the Palestinian Authority, probably with its new business partner Hamas (who long ago claimed al-Masri as one of its heroes), prepares to celebrate the life and death of the human bomb who murdered 15 innocents. In fact, it's begun (YouTube, in Arabic, last night).

(And this side question: Will the world's most important organization of Protestant churches take part in the celebration? Will they condemn it? Or sit on the fence? Does their theology teach that "freedom with justice and dignity" applies to people like our daughter's cold-blooded killers and those who stand proudly with them? But not to the victims?)

And prepare - as we will - to scour the news reports for expressions of disgust and rejection from within the Arabic-speaking world for this upcoming latest chapter in the orgy of hate and bloodshed. But be ready to wait a long, long time.

24-Oct-13: Dead terrorists and their achievements

Israel's High Court handed down the decision to free
terrorists' bodies to the terrorism-friendly PA

The English language version of the Yediot report that we quoted a few minutes ago has gone up on the Ynet site. It says that Israel is set to deliver the bodies of 36 terrorists to the Palestinian Authority. 

This comes in the wake of a petition filed by terrorist families with Israel's High Court of Justice. Palestinian sources say the terrorists' families were asked to provide DNA samples to complete the process of identification and have been told to show up at military checkpoints on November 5 and November 7 to effect the collection.

The terrorists whose bodies are going to be handed over are said (by Ynet) to include:

• Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri, exploded in central Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant on August 9, 2001, exacting 15 lives, leaving a young woman in a comatose state that continues until today, and injuring 130 others. He is one of several people who murdered our daughter, Malki, 15. All but one are now free.
• Brothers, Imad and Adel Awadallah, considered at the time they were killed in a shoot-out with IDF soldiers near Hebron on September 12, 1998, to be "the two most wanted terrorists of Hamas" 
• Ayat al-Akhras, female bomber aged 18 and a resident of the Bethlehem area; exploded at the entrance to the Kiryat Hayovel supermarket in suburban Jerusalem on March 29, 2002. Her victims included the security guard posted at the door, Haim Smadar, 55, who "spoke Arabic [and] became suspicious after two Arabic women who usually sold vegetables outside the shop entrance had been told by Akhras to leave", as well as Rachel Levy, a 17 year-old girl from the nieghbourhood. Thirty others were injured.
• Sami Fathi Mustafa Basharat, a terrorist killed (according to Ynet) in a firefight with IDF soldiers in 2003. A human rights organization catalogues him as "22 year-old resident of Tammun, Tubas district, killed on 13.03.2003 in Tammun, Tubas district. Killed when participating in hostilities. Additional information: Killed during an exchange of gunfire." This United Nations General Assembly document lists him as one of the "martyrs killed by the Israeli occupying forces in the Occupied Palestinian Territory".
• Ahmed Faqih, 20, and Mohammed Shaheen, 20, Islamic Jihad terrorist gunmen from the village of Dura. They carried out a shooting attack on the yeshiva at Otniel on December 27, 2002, in which four students were murdered, and many others injured.
• Mahmoud Umdan Salim Qawasmeh, 20, a student at the Palestine Polytechnic University who bombed the Egged Line 37 bus filled with school-children in Haifa on March 5, 2003, killing 17 people. The other Hamas terrorists who planned the bus massacre were freed from prison (despite the multiple life terms to which they were sentenced) in the 2011 Gilad Shalit Transaction
• Abd Al-Karim Tahaineh, another Islamic Jihad terrorist fanatic from Jenin, executed a lethal bus bombing while a passenger on board Egged bus line 823 on March 5, 2002. One person was killed, many passengers on board were injured, as the bus exploded on entering the Afula central bus station.
• Ragheb Ahmed Izzat Jaradat, a terrorist from Jenin in the service of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, exploded on April 10, 2002 in an attack on a bus, Egged Line 960, traveling from Haifa to Jerusalem. The explosion, at Yagur Junction close to Kibbutz Yagur on the outskirts of Haifa, resulted in the deaths of eight people, with 22 more injured.
• 'Ala Sabbah, who executed a car bombing at Hadera's central bus station on May 25, 2001, injuring 65 people
• Daoud Ali Ahmed Abu Sway, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist from the Bethlehem area who carried out a bombing attack near the entrance to the Citadel David Hotel, previously called the Jerusalem Hilton, on December 5, 2001. There were few casualties only because his bomb exploded earlier than intended.

(Much of the detailed info in the Ynet report is unfortunately inaccurate or incomplete. We reviewed their data and checked and corrected where needed; what appears above includes our corrections.)

No word yet on the celebratory aspects that are certain to be in preparation on the far side of the border fence. And concerning our own personal and very bitter experience at the High Court, you are invited to read Frimet Roth's June 2012 article.

UPDATE: Times of Israel ["Bodies of Sbarro bomber and other terrorists set to be released to PA"] has picked up on the story, but raises questions about how many bodies are in the arrangement.

22-Jul-08: The once and future child murderer

Today's Jerusalem Post (for Tuesday 22nd July 2008) carries this op-ed by one of this blog's two authors. It's also published online by the Jerusalem Post. Additional background about the murderer mentioned in Frimet Roth's article can be found on the website that honors the memory of her daughter.

The once and future child murderer | Jul. 21, 2008 | Frimet Roth | The Jerusalem Post

With the specter of another Ron Arad-type tragedy looming, the return of kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit has taken center stage. Yet the impending prisoner release could spell a hero's welcome for my daughter's murderer, one even more chilling than that for Samir Kuntar.

Hamas has repeatedly said that one of its iron-clad conditions for Schalit's return is the release of all female and teenage Palestinian prisoners. And after Hizbullah's emboldening success in freeing Kuntar, Hamas is certain to be more extortionist than ever. But the government must plumb the ramifications of this purportedly "humanitarian" demand.

WHO ARE those anonymous female terrorists? And for what crimes are they imprisoned?

Women have acquired enviable status in the world of terrorism. They enjoy the best of both genders. On the one hand, their organizations deem them strong enough and clever enough to mastermind, coordinate and execute terror attacks. Then, once convicted, they morph into delicate, fragile creatures deserving early release by dint of their femininity.

In October 2003, Ahlam Tamimi was sentenced to 16 consecutive life sentences for her role in the terror bombing of Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant. Fifteen men, women and children perished in that explosion on a hot August afternoon in 2001.

Tamimi, a communications student and a television news reader for the Palestinian Authority, was the linchpin of that atrocity. She had the prior practical experience of planting a bomb in a trash bin at a Jerusalem supermarket, one that was detected before it detonated. Tamimi was not apprehended at the time.

Several months later, she tried again. This time, she carried 10 kg. of explosives concealed in a guitar case. Izzaddin al-Masri, the suicide bomber, sat beside her in a taxi until they neared the Israeli checkpoint. Exiting alone, he approached the Israeli soldiers empty-handed. He sailed through the security check.

Meanwhile Tamimi, 23, attractive, dressed in Western-style clothing and chatting in English, aroused no suspicion. She passed unhampered through the Kalandiya checkpoint on Jerusalem's edge.

Once inside Israel, Masri got back into the taxi. He rode with Tamimi to the walls of Jerusalem's Old City, and from there they walked together into west Jerusalem. At the intersection of Jaffa Road and King George Avenue in the city's center stood Sbarro, a pizza restaurant. Why Tamimi selected it as the target is not hard to figure: On that vacation afternoon, it was filled with women and children.

In separating from her "weapon," Tamimi asked Masri to wait 15 minutes before detonating the bomb. She wanted to be far enough from the explosion to escape unscathed. He complied.

DURING THESE past five years, Tamimi has received all the perks that the Prisons Service offers: the right to dress in clothes of her choice, the right to visitors, the right to socialize with fellow prisoners, the right to decorate her cell as she sees fit, the right to study, the right to practice her religion and the right to wed (she recently married a male terrorist murderer, her cousin Nizar Tamimi). Tamimi has also been permitted two interviews. The first, in March 2006, was reported in the press. The second was videotaped and included in an award-winning documentary film, Hothouse. Some of the film's reviews, including one in The New York Times, featured a glamorous, smiling photograph of Tamimi.

I have tried to detect signs of suffering during Tamimi's five years of imprisonment - but in vain.

Nor has a hint of remorse surfaced. During her Hothouse interview, Tamimi learned that her act cost the lives of eight children, rather than the five she had believed died. She smiled upon hearing the updated tally.

In the first interview she had declared: "I'm not sorry for what I did. We'll become free from the occupation, and then I will be free from prison." Israel's past willingness to release convicted terrorists has made them confident of an early release.

TAMIMI IS no anomaly in the world of terrorism. At the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in 2006, Juliette Shedd of George Mason University delivered a study entitled "Understanding Female Terrorists: An Analysis of Motivation and Media Representation". She culled myriad reasons that terrorist organizations avidly recruit women:

Terrorist organizations play upon the stereotypes of women to achieve their goals; popular opinion considers women as victims of violence... rather than perpetrators... The lore that arises around female terrorists can also provide an advantage... Because women are often not part of the terrorist 'profile,' they are able to get through security check points... and can provide cover for male terrorists by assuming mother or girlfriend roles...

Women... often display ruthlessness, dominance, and calm under pressure... In fact, 'shoot the women first' is reportedly an instruction given to counterterrorist recruits in West Germany and other Interpol squads...

A mystique also arises around female terrorists... There is a general sense that women are more likely to receive the media attention needed... In addition, women seem to inspire the question 'Why?'... journalists search for explanations for the violent activities of women [providing] a venue for the terrorist group to spread their message.

Writing in a 2006 academic study by the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz's special correspondent for Arab affairs, pointed out that "the lives of female suicide terrorists are no less tragic than those of male suicide bombers, yet the media accords women more sympathy and treats them with kid gloves."

WE ISRAELIS need to stop using lines like: "No price is too high to free our captive soldiers" or, as Minister-without-Portfolio Ami Ayalon put it last week: "Returning the abducted soldiers is above all else." Such assertions are hackneyed and patently false. Plainly there are demands with which no civilized government would comply.

If, for instance, Hamas instructed us to execute one Israeli child to gain Gilad Schalit's freedom, would we? Is releasing a mass child murderer, able and eager to kill more Jewish children, very different from that?

On the morning that the returned hostages Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were buried, Defense Minister Ehud Barak intimated that there is a red line when he said: "We will do everything that is possible and appropriate to bring Schalit home." But did he mean it?

Before the early release of an "ordinary" murderer, the judicial system ensures that the victims' voices are heard. Yet in the context of terrorist murders, the only concession to families of the victims is the publication - a mere 48 hours prior to the release - of the names of the prisoners being set free. Furthermore, the High Court has never once granted a terror victim's petition to block such a release.

Nevertheless, Smadar Haran, the wife and mother of Samir Kuntar's victims, revealed last week that her wishes had been factored into past government calculations. Even as she expressed her approval of Kuntar's release, she told the nation she had lobbied tirelessly to keep him behind bars for 27 years. She was motivated, she said, by a sense of duty to her murdered loved ones.

I also feel an obligation to my daughter Malki to do everything I can to keep her murderer behind bars. And the rest of Israel owes the same obligation to Tamimi's future targets - their own children.

---

The writer and her husband founded the Malki Foundation (www.kerenmalki.org) in memory of their daughter, murdered in the Sbarro restaurant massacre in Jerusalem in 2001. The foundation provides concrete support for Israeli families of all faiths who care at home for a special-needs child.