24-Dec-15: Another terror outrage narrowly averted - and Shalit Deal releasees are again at the heart of the darkness

Al-Quds University students [Image Source]

This could have turned out very, very badly - and might still.

Right here in Jerusalem, side by side with ordinary, constructive lives being lived by most of the people who call this special city home, a cluster of death-cultists - yet another in a lengthening string of them, working in dark places and preparing unspeakably dark plans involving injuries, mayhem and deaths - has been stopped.

No one imagines they are the only such cluster of plotters or that there will not be others on the way. But these, at least, have been stopped for now.

No innocent civilians were hurt - at least, not for now. So news coverage of this important development has been sparse outside our beleaguered country, particularly as seasonal celebrations have the attention of most of Europe, Australia and the Americas. From Times of Israel:

The Shin Bet, alongside the IDF and Israel Police, have thus far arrested 25 Hamas operatives, the majority of them Al-Quds University in Abu Dis students, who they suspect were preparing to attack Israeli targets, the agency said in a statement. The arrests were carried out over the past few weeks. The service also uncovered a makeshift laboratory in Abu Dis, in east Jerusalem, which was being used to create the explosives necessary for bombing attacks. It said the cell was controlled by Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip... In addition to the Abu Dis terror cell, the Shin Bet also busted a [related] Bethlehem-based group... ["Hamas cell planned suicide and car bombings, Shin Bet reveals", Times of Israel, December 23, 2015]

Some of the plotters

The article makes clear that some of the intelligence that led to the unraveling of this group's plans came from interrogations carried out by PA security officers of Hamas people arrested by them. As we keep noting in this blog, Hamas operates throughout the areas occupied by the PA, in some places more publicly, in others less. Their hand, not to mention their flags and the signs of their terror-focused activities, are everywhere.

Among those arrested in this latest intercept:

• Ahmad Jamal Mousa Azzam, 24, from Qalqilya, at some point a student at Al-Quds University in Abu Dis: Considered the terrorist ringleader, and controlled from Gaza. He was given training by his handlers in "how to create explosive belts and vests, as well as improvised explosive devices". Once in, Azzam recruited the others, mostly from among the Al-Quds student body. Some of those were intended to become human bombs.
• Hazem Ziad Amran Sandouqa, 22, a resident of the Old City of Jerusalem and an Israeli citizen - therefore able to move around with relative ease, an obvious strategic advantage to the planning and execution of terror. 
• Fahdi Daoud Muhammad Abu Qaian, 19, also an Israeli citizen, a Bedouin from the Negev, and a designated attacker in the terror plot. Under interrogation, he confessed that he was being prepared for a bombing mission by means of an explosive vest or by driving an explosives-packed vehicle into an Israeli target (we're guessing the target would have consisted of human beings).
• Issa Nasser Issa Shoka, 19, an Al-Quds University student, a designated money courier and intending human bomb, as well as one of the leaders of the Bethlehem cell.
• Muhammad Waleed Ahmad Sarhkhan, 20, of the Bethlehem cell.
• Muhammad Na’im Issa Ali, 19, also from the Bethlehem cell, another intending human bomb.

Avi Issacharoff, in a follow-on article published last night ["What if the Hamas terror cell in Abu Dis had succeeded?", Times of Israel, December 23, 2015], looks at the dire consequences had this Hamas terrorist cell not been stopped:

The Palestinian Authority is surviving. And overall, Israeli citizens have become used to a sick reality in which almost every day Palestinians try to attack them. [But although] this weapons factory and infrastructure were discovered, the fact is that every passing day moves us closer to Second Intifada-style terrorism... [Issacharoff]

Viewing yesterday's IDF real-time video (above) of soldiers breaking into the Jerusalem lab and doing an inventory of the chemicals they found there turns this into something more real and immediate. For purposes of bomb making, the jihadist/murderers had stocked up (something we have not seen reported so far in the news) on nitro-glycerine and cyanide - they're shown clearly. That's in addition to an evil scientist's trove of lethal substances and explosives intended for killing and seriously harming people. Experience tells us those people would have been innocent Israelis, almost certainly civilians. That's how terror works.

Had, Heaven forbid, the Abu Dis/Bethlehem terror collective pulled off a "showcase" outrage

The Israeli government would have come under immense pressure to take steps against the PA, and the call for a closure of the major West Bank cities would have come from every direction. The pressure would likely have led to a ban on all Palestinian workers entering Israel, and possibly even to a widespread IDF operation in one or more West Bank cities... Tens of thousands more unemployed Palestinians would be on the streets, with hundreds of thousands affected by their loss of income. More violent confrontations with young Palestinians would likely ensue. The fraying of cooperation between the PA security forces and the IDF would be inevitable, maybe even a complete severance of such cooperation. And at the end of that slippery slope, the collapse of the PA itself... [T]hat’s precisely why Hamas has been trying so hard to set up an infrastructure capable of carrying out suicide attacks against Israeli civilians, including inside sovereign Israel... Hamas is avoiding a direct confrontation with Israel in Gaza but is doing a lot to heat things up in the West Bank. Senior Hamas operatives in Gaza know they have a certain amount of immunity from Israel, because Israel does not want another major conflict there. The people who are today orchestrating the effort to carry out attacks are mostly Hamas members who were freed in the 2011 Shalit exchange — West Bankers who were exiled to Gaza under the deal. Somebody in Israel evidently believed, or wanted to believe, that confining them to Gaza would reduce the danger they presented. Except that even from Gaza, these people have now become a central headache for Israel in the West Bank... [Issacharoff]

We blogged last month ["27-Nov-14: Hamas terrorist ring is busted; Israel says the handlers operate from Turkey; Qatar is involved"] about the meaningfully-malevolent role of Shalit Deal releasees. And we offered more background here: "11-Dec-15: The price of the Shalit Deal and the countries that help it keep rising".

The price paid by Israeli society - and in a meaningful sense also by the Palestinian Arabs - for this catastrophic transaction keeps growing. Yet there remains, it has to be said and with some pain, a striking unwillingness among the insiders of our government to properly analyze what was done, reach operative conclusions and express sincere regret. It's surely called for.

30-Nov-15: Incitement to savagery costs lives on all sides so why doesn't everyone want to shut it down?

Ahlam Tamimi: It's not every day you see the parents of a murdered child
posting an image as explicit as this one depicting the now-free-as-a-bird 
socipathic killer exulting merrily over what she did

If you saw another of our posts today ["30-Nov-15: Radio that kills: silencing it"], you will be aware that incitement to killing and violence has gotten some of the Israeli government's attention in recent days and for deadly serious reasons.

Now there's a related move, this time, perhaps surprisingly, attributed to the Mahmoud Abbas regime in Ramallah:

The Palestinian Authority on Monday instructed its broadcasting authority to indefinitely suspend Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV programming in the West Bank. “The PA’s security apparatuses have announced officially to all broadcasters in the West Bank that they are forbidden from airing the Al-Aqsa network,” Hamas confirmed in a statement on Facebook. Israeli watchdog groups have long-claimed Al-Aqsa TV promotes terrorist activity, teaches anti-Semitism and incites hatred of Israelis, especially in its programming for children. Monday’s move was seen as an attempt by Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to tackle Hamas “incitement” and in so doing to curb the almost-daily clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian rioters. ["PA orders Hamas TV off the air in West Bank", Times of Israel, November 30, 2015]

Incitement is expensive in terms of lives lost and ruined on all sides of the conflict. We know about the cost from up close. It might not surprise to know that we have a very personal interest in this.

Our daughter's murderer, a woman called Ahlam Tamimi who was in her early twenties at the time, was charged with 15 counts of murder for engineering the August 9, 2001 massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria. For this, she was tried, convicted on her own comprehensive and unblinking admission, and eventually sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment. Along with the judgment, the panel of three judges saw fit to add an explicit recommendation: that no consideration ever be given by the Israeli authorities to releasing her early.

This was ignored.

In October 2011, she walked free, her life-sentences conditionally commuted (there were very real conditions), and went back to Jordan where she had been born and where her family live.

We warned whoever would listen [via the BBC for instance, as well as NPR, Canada's CBC, Haaretz, The Guardian, CNN, Le Figaro and dozens of other mainstream media channels] that she was not done with terrorism. This proved, of course, to be right and then some.

Tamimi's influence has grown greatly since her release. As we noted in this blog some months ago

[I]n December [2014] she was proclaimed the "Success Model" of the students at the Arab world's most important graduate school for journalists, an institution [called the Jordan Media Institute] modeled on the Columbia School of Journalism and founded by the woman previously known as Rym Brahimi who graduated Columbia and who then spent years working as an on-camera reporter for CNN. As Princess Rym Ali, she is now the king of Jordan's sister-in-law.

Tamimi travels freely and often throughout the Arab world. And she hosts a weekly television program on the Al-Aqsa TV. As we noted in an earlier post ["6-May-12: What lies behind freedom of the Palestinian Arab press?"], starting in February 2012, just four months after her release from an Israeli prison cell, her career

has been on a sharply-upward trajectory. She got her own glossy television program that is beamed by satellite every Friday night into all parts of the Arabic speaking world via the Al-Quds TV channel. That's one of two global-facing television channels operated by the Hamas terrorist regime; the other is called Al-Aqsa TV. Her weekly program, "Naseem Al Ahrar" (translation: “Breezes of the Free”) focuses on the injustices allegedly visited on Palestinian Arab prisoners languishing in Israeli custody... [A]t the age of 31, this woman possesses one of the most prominent and influential platforms that an Arabic-only journalist could ever dream of having. 

Tamimi hosting the March 23, 2015 edition of her weekly televised paean to
terrorism, Islamist-style, produced in Jordan for Hamas and beamed
throughout the world

Tamimi was the first female terrorist in the ranks of the blood-soaked Hamas jihad organization. Her undiminished enthusiasm for its barbarism is widely advertised on the web.

In 1999, under Jordan's then and current ruler, King Abdullah II and shortly after the death of his father King Hussein, the Hashemite Kingdom banned Hamas. Fearing the presence of "radical Islamic elements", it accused Hamas of engaging in "illegitimate activities within Jordan" and "clandestine paramilitary training and... of penetrating local fundamentalist opposition parties". Khaled Mashaal, who today heads Hamas, was arrested that year on returning to Jordan from a visit to Iran but - reflecting the tightrope-walking for which the kingdom is famous - the Jordanian king very soon afterwards flew him by private jet into "exile". That's how he came to live in Syria for some years, before trading that for considerably more-glossy Qatar where he currently resides.

A New York Times report at the time said the Jordanians

adamantly denied that the [Jordanian kingdom's] crackdown had been conducted at the behest of Washington or Israel. But they acknowledged that the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, had asked Amman to take action against what he saw as a dangerous source of rebellion against his peace negotiations with Israel. 

Quoting an Indian newspaper from November 22, 1999, one source said that Hamas leaders were warned by Jordan that "firm action would be taken if the Palestinian organization resumed its activities on Jordanian soil".

Our impression is that this "firm action" has never been taken very seriously. The reality is clear in the way the Hashemite regime has consistently turned a blind eye to the production in Amman each week of "Naseem Al Ahrar", the Hamas TV show that Tamimi fronts. That has been the case for nearly four years.

How difficult is it to see the evidence? It's not. The Tamimi show is easy to find and to watch, even for people living far from the Middle East. YouTube hosts an Al-Quds channel where more than 170 episodes [click to see an interactive list] of Ahlam Tamimi's weekly tribute to terrorism and terrorists are stored and viewable online, though without Arabic-to-English subtitles. We have watched many of them. With the help of Arabic-speaking friends, we have come to understand that this loathsome young woman with a cold passion for murder [view this 2012 video with English subtitles] may be one of the most powerful marketing tools in the entire murderous Hamas arsenal.

On the day she returned to Amman after being conditionally freed in an
extortion deal, Tamimi arrived at Jordan's Family Court for a reception in
her honour, one of many that followed throughout the
Arab world, but especially in Jordan [Image Source]

We pointed out above that all the Al-Quds programming is beamed throughout the world by satellite to wherever there are potential audiences i.e. Arabic speakers. This means there's almost nowhere on earth where ordinary Arabic-speaking folk with access to satellite programming can't watch their favorite jihadist.

But in the internet age, even that's more technology than a person needs. Click here to see a long list of streaming sites that will bring the same message of terrorist "heroism" and dead Jews onto the laptop, smartphone or home computer of anyone with a connection to the web.

That includes the Al-Quds website itself; it's streaming live Al-Quds programming into our home as we write this. Obviously most of our readers probably don't speak Arabic. But all of us live among many people who do. In the privacy of their homes or phone screens, access to this hateful, violent programming is just a click away. The success of the Tamimi show, running for four years and going strong, testifies to those global clicks.

The Tamimi story raises troubling questions. Among them:

• Why does Jordan, which even now bans Hamas from its territory, allow hateful extremist Hamas TV programming to be created and up-beamed weekly (at least) from downtown Amman? 
• If the Palestinian Authority has silenced Al-Quds and Tamimi, why does Jordan not immediately follow suit?
• Why do Jordan's friends, the countries with whom it has diplomatic relations (for instance the United Kingdom, Denmark, Switzerland, the Vatican, the United States, Sweden, the EU, Australia and many others) not whisper into the Jordanian authorities' ears and suggest this does not advance Jordan's interests? Ordinary folk who live in those places can easily notify their politicians and especially their foreign ministries of how repugnant it is to them that their country turns a blind eye to the Jordanian indulgence of lethal incitement.
• Why, knowing who Tamimi is and what she stands for, the pride she takes in the massacre she engineered, in the deaths she caused, don't those ambassadors accredited to Jordan explain to their diplomatic hosts what they already know: that the Jordanians, by turning a blind eye or (which is just as likely) encouraging Tamimi's missionizing for Hamas, are active participants in incitement to murder by their actions and by their failures to act? People are being killed.

From experience, we don't have much faith in the power of petitions. We managed to sign up more than 8,000 people from all over the world in the space of three days back in 2011 when we badly wanted to stop Tamimi, our child's killer, walking free. Other than an exercise in raising consciousness, the effort was mostly a painful and frustrating waste of time and effort.

We prefer on this issue to publicize our request by bringing it to the attention of the decision-makers in Jordan and in countries friendly with Jordan. We need help in doing that - help from people who understand how serious the issue of incitement to terrorism is and who care. 

Please comment below if you can offer some concrete suggestions, or email us at thisongoingwar (at) gmail.com

05-May-13: Self-confessed jihadist murderer: "With my media card, I was able to enter back and forth, undetected..."

Convicted and unrepentant murderer Ahlam Tamimi (in July 2012),
explains her outlook on high-profile Kuwaiti talk-show

Anyone who reads our blog, even occasionally, knows that the double-standards, circumlocations and hypocrisy so manifest in the way certain people, certain institutions, certain major broadcasters, certain other parts of the mainstream media, deal with terrorists, terrorism, terror and the murder of children simply enrage us. 

We don't see the issues as political. Terrorism is beyond politics. In fact, it's a sort of litmus test. How you deal with terrorism - after you peel away all the double-talk and jargon - determines the sort of human being you are and how others ought to view you. 

Thoughts like these were on our minds when we wrote eight months ago about an American, a senior and influential journalist in the world of Christian thought, and a man of letters. He is James M. Wall and in a blog post ("23-Aug-12: Theology and sociopaths"), we wrote this about him:

Wall is not marginal to the public discourse of the United States. Nor is he regarded (as far as we can tell) as a shrieking crank or a red-neck. He served as editor of a prominent journal called The Christian Century for 27 years, from 1972 to 1999. Wikipedia calls it "the flagship magazine of U.S. mainline Protestantism" [source]. He continued there as a regular columnist until a few years ago, even after his retirement. Though it appears he has stopped writing for it, his name remains on the masthead as Senior Contributing Editor. These days, Wall writes a blog under the title “Wall Writing”. From where we sit, his output has some quite unpleasant tones. In a December 2011 piece on US politics, for instance, he characterizes pro-Israel Republican candidates as “wear[ing] the Jewish kippah”. But as we learned, Wall is capable of advocacy journalism of a far more pungent sort. In October 2011, he posted a lengthy article to coincide with the extorted release from prison of Ahlam Tamimi, our child's murderer... At about the time he wrote it, in October 2011, an Arab newspaper dotingly quoted Tamimi making this statement: “I have never regretted what I have done, and if given another chance I’ll do it again” [source]. Yet extraordinarily, the Wall piece 'lionizes' her. (That’s the term used by the clear-eyed Christian analyst who pointed us to it). With loving attention to the human aspects of her story, Wall urges his readers to resist the Israeli view of the Jordanian woman's "crimes"; those quote marks around the word crimes appear in Wall's essay. Wall leaves readers in little doubt that the atrocities to which Tamimi confessed in court - atrocities to which she confesses afresh frequently, proudly and in public - were not crimes at all but something very different.

Mohammed Al-Awadi hosts a talk show on Kuwaiti television that
provided a platform for Ahlam Tamimi

Wall's rambling article, entitled “Ahlam and Nezar, A Palestinian Couple Released in The Prisoner Exchange”, makes the argument that Tamimi did what anyone would do if they saw themselves at war. And at the end of the day, what she did was merely logistic. For Mr Wall, it was therefore quite understandable:

[Tamimi’s] crime, for which she was sentenced by a military court for multiple life terms, was for “choosing the location and securing transportation to reach that location”.

We can argue, and we have certainly tried to say over and again, that this is an irresponsibly wrong view of what the convicted murderer Ahlam Tamimi did. 

Today, however, there is no need for us to say it again because she has now said it about as clearly as a person can. 

We have just seen an Arabic-to-English translation, published in the last few days, of what this psychopathic woman says about herself and about what she did. 

It’s in a video that has had wide dissemination via YouTube and other channels right across the Arabic-speaking world since its appearance in July 2012. [In case they disappear, the page is archived here. We archived the YouTube clip itself, the full length version, here.] 

For now, we rely on the translation that appeared Thursday on Walid Shoebat's site. Fluent in Arabic, he gives this intro to his transcript:

Tamimi first teaches Muslims how to best prepare their souls by instructing Muslims how to abandon secular life and worldly things, then how to smuggle terrorists, plant explosives in condensed areas, watch, document statistics, and monitor civilian movements in heavy traffic areas... Tamimi tours the Arab media now and provides expertise on how Muslims – both male and female – can become killing machines. [Shoebat]

Here is Ahlam Tamimi, the murderer of our child and of fifteen other innocents, in her own words: 

Tamimi: I studied all the ideologies of each [terrorist] group in order to decide which one I will join... With my media card I was able to enter back and forth, undetected, to do journalistic interviews in Jerusalem in order to avoid detection by the Zionists. 

Al-Awadi (her interviewer): So you get in and out as a journalist? 

Tamimi: Yes 

Al-Awadi: Beautiful! 

Tamimi: I entered a [terrorist] cell. A cell is constructed by having a leader, then there are different groups; each one is divided into itself... You do not know who the leader is... First, I scouted places to decide where to carry out Jihadi operations... I would wander into Jerusalem to find the best spots to carry out these missions... First, I would scout stores and major shopping malls… schools, restaurants… I would then present my findings to the leader of the cell... I would do a meticulous count on the numbers of people moving in these areas and study it mathematically. I would use my wrist watch and count how many were walking in an area within one hour. So I would make reports that if an operation is conducted in such and such area. Then I would estimate the numbers of casualties; in some cases my number would be 30 Israelis will die and other estimates it would be 50 Israelis that will die... So from this time to that time there would be 70 Israelis who entered this spot. So during lunch for example, from this time to that time, so many Zionists enter this area. The school for example, I would study the morning time when school children would enter. Of course the second phase would be the Jihadi operation itself. I would take the components to be filled up with explosives to Abdullah Barghouti. He of course prepares the explosive charges. I would choose the device myself, based on products that are most sold amongst the Zionists. So I would provide a report, for example, that said the best device is a favorite drink or product. So the explosive device is manufactured to look like this product. So the product on the outside would appear like something that easily looks like the products in the stores and on the inside, it would be a time bomb. Of course, I learned how to operate one of these devices... My other mission is to accompany suicide martyrs. [Archived source]

There are some life-saving lessons here for what is and is not legitimate to do with reporters in dangerous jihad-infected places and times. And when she cryptically says that the "best device is a favorite drink", she is referring to the bomb, disguised as a beer can, that she placed on the shelf of the basement supermarket in the Mashbir Latzarchan building on King George Street, central Jerusalem, ten days before the Sbarro massacre and only 200 meters up the street from the pizza restaurant. In a little-reported prequel to her career as a terrorist, it exploded but fortunately killed and injured no one.

Al Awadi, on whose program she appeared, is described in this US confidential cable as "a Kuwaiti Islamist commentator and regular al-Jazeera talking head". It's sobering to think how many major figures in the Arabic world take such a public, central role in the encouragement of terrorist outrages. (If only more non-Arabs understood Arabic.)

A word about Abdullah Barghouti whom Tamimi mentions in passing. [We have written about him here, here and here.] Barghouti was contracted to custom-assemble the bomb that destroyed the Sbarro restaurant. A clever man with golden hands, he embedded it inside a guitar case to minimize the risk that the man carrying the nail-filled explosive packaged would be intercepted before he brought it to ground zero in the absolute center of Israel's capital city. Tamimi and the young Islamist fanatic who had the bomb on his back passed through the busy Qalandiya security checkpoint en route to Jerusalem. The Israeli soldiers and Border Guard personnel manning the crossing did not stop them, even in a cursory way. Perhaps the sight of a woman dressed in a typically Israeli tank top completed the illusion of a harmless couple of youngsters with music on their minds. 

Barghouti was not there that day. He was in the midst of his busy season. Bombs delivered up by him to his Hamas clients during 2001 brought about the extremely violent deaths by murder of 66 people. The government of Norway, among the most generous providers of development aid to the Palestinian Authority, is currently wrestling with its conscience over the role it has played in funding the PA’s Rewards-for-Terror scheme. That’s not what they call it, but that assuredly is what it is. (There’s some background here. And keep in mind this is a program of the 'moderate' PA, lead by the 'moderate' Mahmoud Abbas'.) Under the scheme, Barghouti will receive a salary this month, and every month for as long as he remains a prisoner of Israel, equivalent to four times the average salary of a PA government worker. The scheme is highly publicized among Palestinian Arabs because the 'moderate' PA wants its citizens to understand the high priority it gives to acts of child-murdering heroism like those undertaken by Barghouti and Tamimi. 

Tamimi has always described herself as an agent of Hamas, though on the day she blew up the Sbarro restaurant, she was the on-camera news-reader for the other Palestinian Arabs, the faction that calls itself the PA, the 'moderate' side of the Palestinian Arab world. Few of the Palestinian Arab viewers watching her read the news that night (August 9, 2001) realized what a central role she took in the massacre on which she was reporting.

Click here to visit the site

And a word about James M. Wall as well. 

As we noted last summer, he engages in advocacy for self-admitted murderers and their deeds. In open societies like the US and Israel, it’s something he has the right to do freely, obnoxiously and even offensively. But what does it mean that The Christian Century still has him on its masthead? Does the editorial board agree with his ‘understanding’ of the actions of people who murder children in the name of jihad? Do they disagree? Will they disavow him and them? Are his views Christian? How Christian is it to embrace the unrepentant murderer of children who says she prays for the chance to do it again?

Ahlam Tamimi was sentenced to sixteen terms of life imprisonment after her conviction for planning and executing the massacre at central Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant. She walked free in October 2011 as one of the 1,027 murderers, jihadists and assorted other terrorists whom Israel bargained away for the freedom of a hostage, Gilad Shalit, held captive for five years by Hamas. Tamimi subsequently married another unjustly freed murderer (her cousin), and is living in total and unfettered freedom in Jordan from where she is a regular broadcaster on the Al-Quds satellite channel (operated by Hamas). She flies freely around the Arab world and YouTube features dozens of her speeches. Her relentless encouragement of acts of murder in the name of jihad has made her a figure of admiration and stature throughout the Arab world. 

We fought a campaign to have her name removed from the go-free list in October 2011. But we failed. At the time of the Shalit transaction, we wrote [here] that the "media celebrity" Ahlam Tamimi is a "religiously-inspired monster":

Dozens of photographs of her smiling and exultant face are syndicated by the major global newswire services. Her every statement is broadcast and analyzed not only by the terrorists of Hamas and Gaza to whose murderous strand of Islamism she long ago swore allegiance, but also by the mislabeled 'moderates' of Fatah and the PA who are not in the least moderate on the subject of the murder of Jews and the dismemberment of the society we have created here in Israel. The injustice of this person's freedom, and the hypocrisy of those who fail to scream out against it, overwhelm us. They choke us. 

And still do.

2-Apr-12: When you march for the rights of prisoners, what does it mean for the rights of their past and future victims?

Source: PMW

A friend has alerted us to the fact that political rallies are being organized in Europe (including Paris) and elsewhere this week in support of yet another UN-sponsored conference about the“plight” of the Palestinian Arabs being held in Israeli prisons.

We want those who march for them and against administrative detention and imprisonment to ask themselves and the organizers some tough and perhaps unpleasant questions - about these prisoners, about what brought them there - before they turn to good, liberal-minded people for support.

When they march, are they marching for the young cousins Amjad and Hakim Awad?

These boys are mere teenagers. And in the world in which most Europeans and Americans live, we know that boys in their teenage years are prone to getting into mischief. As an enlightened society, we treat them a little more gently so that we can encourage them to grow to mature manhood and become constructive members of our societies.

But this is not Europe or America. Yes, the Awad cousins are young. Amjad Mahmad Awad is 19, and was a student at Al-Quds Open University. Hakim Mazen Awad is 18. The Awad clan makes up about half of the population of Awarta, the village to which they fled after they carried out the crime for which they were convicted in an Israeli court. Last year, when they were arrested, Hakim Mazen Awad was a high school student whose father, Mazen, is active in the PFLP terrorist organization and had served a five-year prison sentence, imposed by the Palestinian National Authority, for murdering his female cousin and cremating her body.

It’s a family with some history. The boys had an uncle Jibril, also a PFLP terrorist. This Awad uncle participated in an earlier attack on the neighbouring community of Itamar back in 2002. A mother called Rachel Shabo and three of her children, Neria (16), Zvi (13), and Avishai (5) were shot to death inside their home, and the head of the neighborhood preparedness team, Yosef Twito (31), was also shot to death. Uncle Jibril’s career in terrorism came to a premature and fatal end in a 2003 clash with Israeli forces.

It is perhaps not surprising that the Awad clan had elaborate and quite complete arguments why their beautiful young sons had nothing to do with the horrible crime of which they were convicted last year. (Note also that several early media reports said the perpetrator might have been a Thai agricultural worker, though their services are generally not used in that part of Israel.) The crime was cold-blooded and horrifying even to observers who are hardened by the difficult acts of terror that happen in Israel with sickening frequency. Wikipedia’s report [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamar_attack] says:

After crossing the fence, Amjad and Hakim walked 400 meters into the settlement. The perpetrators first broke into a house of the Chai family who were on vacation, searching all the rooms. They stole an M-16 assault rifle, ammunition, a helmet, and a kevlar vest. They waited an hour and entered the Fogels' house at around 10:30 pm. According to the indictment, the two entered the children's room, told eleven year old Yoav, who had been awakened by their entry, not to be afraid, then took him to a nearby room, slashed his throat, and stabbed him in the chest. Hakim Awad then strangled four-year-old Elad with Amjad Awad stabbing him twice in the chest. The two next entered the parents' room, and turned on the light, waking them up. The parents then struggled with the attackers. Ehud Fogel was repeatedly stabbed in the neck, and Ruth Fogel was stabbed in the neck and back and then shot when the suspects saw that she was not dead. The suspects then left the house… The two then argued over whether to withdraw or carry out attacks in other homes, with Hakim insisting that they return immediately to Awarta, and Amjad arguing that they should return to the home and steal another weapon. Amjad then re-entered the Fogel home. When 3-month old Hadas began crying, Amjad stabbed her… According to several accounts, the infant was decapitated, though one source says that although her throat was deeply slit, she was only "nearly decapitated". The attackers did not notice two other children asleep in the house at the time. In their confessions they said that they would not have hesitated to kill them if they had noticed them.

Hakim Awad's mother, Nawef, claimed that her son was at home the night of the murder and never left the house, claiming that "five months ago Hakim underwent a surgery in his stomach and I'm sure he was tortured and forced into confessing."  Amjad's family also claimed that he was in the village at the time of the event. One relative said that Hakim and Amjad did not know each other, as "one went to university, the other is in high school". He also claimed that if they had been guilty, they would have been captured within days, as "the whole world knows about Israel's advanced investigation abilities and its use of sophisticated means". 

What the whole world knows is actually something else. The Awads, who confessed and recreated the killings for the police, are now being claimed as heroes in the perverted world of the Palestinian Arab media and its friends and supporters. They are praised on government-owned television which played a song containing this revealing line: “That is what the homeland asked of me”.

Click to view the English-sub-titled PMW video clip

Here is where the story becomes decidedly un-American and non-European. We Israelis are confronted with an enemy that believes its very highest values are served by encouraging its young men to become heroes in the very specific sense of slicing the throats of sleeping Jewish children because “that is what the homeland asked” of them.

One of the most notorious of the killers created by the terrorism-adoring Islamist Arab society is Ahlam Tamimi. She planned the 2001 massacre in which fifteen Israelis, most of them children, were blown apart in a pizza restaurant. She planted the bomb – who happens to have been a human being – and then fled for her own safety. Later that day, she personally, herself, read the evening news report on PA Television about the successful killings in central Jerusalem without so much as a cynical smile to acknowledge that this horrifying crime was in fact hers. (Is there a historical precedent for this? Could Hollywood invent a credible scenario that includes such a scene?)

Tamimi, explicitly unrepentant, was released in October 2011 as part of the Shalit Transaction and has become a genuine media star with her own weekly program on the Al-Quds satellite television channel that is broadcast throughout the Arabic speaking world. Her presence as a fiery religious speaker, finger pointing  heavenwards, encouraging copycat acts of terror against Jews, has become ubiquitous in Islamist rallies in Jordan, Tunisia and parts in between.

Tamimi, speaking to an Islamist rally in Amman a month ago [Arabic source here], revealed that hunger strikes by Palestinian Arabs in Israeli prisons are what she called a “tactical move” that will continue for at least the next two months. And on April 17th, which is termed "Palestinian Prisoners' Day," something is going to happen. As the most well-known spokesperson for the claims of the imprisoned Islamists, she – perhaps more than anyone else on earth – exemplifies the cynical manipulation by the Islamists of liberal sympathy for the victims of alleged human rights offences. And more than anyone else’s actions, hers exemplify where that manipulation leads.

To those planning to take to the streets tomorrow in Paris and elsewhere, we ask: Are you for Tamimi or against the lethal hatred and the pathological racism which she embodies. Are you for the teenage perpetrators of last year’s Itamar massacre, or do you insist that something even worse is done when we hold them behind bars.

It may seem to you that getting this right or wrong does not matter so much because the killers are far away and not threatening your children. But what if you are wrong about that?

It might be interesting to ask the people of Toulouse for their opinion.

7-Nov-08: On having really bad neighbors

It's a beautiful November Friday here - sunny, warm, blue skies, balmy breezes. And the fourth consecutive day of terrorist rocket fire at Israeli civilian targets from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Five rockets crashed into Israel since dawn this morning. Two landed in Sderot; three in the Negev desert. Al-Quds Brigades, part of the Islamic Jihad terrorist entity, issued the usual muscle-flexing, hormone-oozing press release claiming responsibility. Meanwhile parents of Israeli school children have been asked by the authorities to remain alert - whatever that means.

Yesterday, Thursday, four additional Qassam rockets were fired into Israel. And since this past Tuesday, the Palestinian Arab terrorists have fired no fewer than 50 rockets into Israel. One of those landed close to the Neot Ashkelon elementary school where 700 children were preparing for an air raid drill that quickly took on a more real character, and not for the first time. Children who were frightened by the siren were collected shortly afterward by their parents.

Did we say frightened?

Ours is not a society that quakes without reason. Have a look at the following graphs that summarize what it is like to live in a neighbourhood where the barbarians operate with absolute no restraint, and largely without any media or government attention from anyone but the Israelis. (Data courtesy of this source.)

Rockets that have been fired into Israel by the Gazan terrorists during the past year.

Mortars fired into Israel since October 2007 (above)

Israeli casualties - victims of the Hamas rockets and mortars (above) in the past twelve months only, and only in the cities and towns lying close to the Hamas-controlled Gaza region.

The charts above were prepared before the wild firing of this week.

So now a question for our visitors: Which self-respecting country - other than Israel - would ever absorb this sort of relentless attack on its civilian population without carpet-bombing the terrorist perpetrators in their vipers' nest strongholds?