23-Nov-20: Four Arab-on-Israeli terror attempts; close to zero media attention

Qalandiya Crossing, the pedestrian part - seen in a 2019 photo
[Image Source]

No one was hurt. But that was surely not the intention of the perpetrators behind four terror attacks directed against Israelis in the past few days. 

In four separate attempts this past weekend, terrorists sought to carry out lethal attacks directed at Israelis targeted at random. 

Two happened on the edges of the capital, Jerusalem, a third in the country's south and the fourth in the Samaria District. None of them individually got much attention, and we don't see any media saying that four in the space of a single weekend means something.

It's reported ["Explosives placed by terrorists near Jerusalem over weekend" | Jerusalem Post. November 22, 2020] that at the Qalandiya Crossing on Jerusalem's north-eastern entrance, two explosive packages were concealed Friday night close to where vehicles drive through. One exploded but failed to cause injury or damage. Witnesses spotted two suspects arriving at the crossing, placing the explosives and fleeing from the scene. A chase ensued with Border Police eventually arresting two under-age suspects in a nearby convenience store. This Arab source names them as Khaled Salim and Ismail Abu Zaidiya, both residents of the Qalandiya "refugee camp".

It didn't end there. In taking the prisoners away, the security people were confronted by dozens of Palestinian Arabs hurling rocks at them. Riot dispersal measures were used and the melee - which could easily have become the story - ended with no injuries.

The second attempt, on Friday night at the ancient Rachel's Tomb near Bethlehem, was thwarted when a lookout spotted a suspect placing an explosive close to the walled complex and running away from the scene. He was pursued by Border Police who caught up with him and placed him under arrest. He is an 18-year-old male from a so-called refugee camp in the Bethlehem area. His explosive failed to detonate.

IDF forces apprehending a terror suspect this past weekend.
No one was hurt which - being Israelis - was the intention.
[Image Source]

A media release quoted in the Jerusalem Post report says "Border Police are working in the Jerusalem Envelope area to strengthen deterrence and thwart terrorism while increasing the deployment of forces in sensitive places where there have been recent attempts to harm civilians and security forces."

Then Saturday night around 9:30 pm, a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel set off the Tzeva Adom (Color Red) missile attack sirens in the southern coastal city of Ashkelon, according to a Ynet report. The resulting explosion caused damage to a warehouse in an industrial zone of the city. But fortunately no injuries - and to state the obvious (whenever missiles are fired into cities by malevolents totally indifferent to outcomes) this could have been a far more troubling event.

Then on Sunday morning in a third hidden explosives incident reported by Jerusalem Post - making it the fourth terror event of this weekend - IDF combat soldiers carrying out routine searches uncovered camouflaged explosives placed just outside the village of al-Mughayyir, south of Jenin. The military assessment is the intention of those who planted the explosives was to harm Israeli soldiers.

Seems a good time to mention that, for the Palestinian Authority, "...rewarding terrorists is not about social welfare. It is about incentivizing and rewarding terror and murder. “Pay for slay” is an abomination that should enjoy universal condemnation." Those sentiments, which are easy to agree with, come from "Lies, damn lies and Palestinian Authority’s ‘pay for slay’ policy", an op ed published by Jewish News Syndicate four days ago. It's authored by Maurice Hirsch who served in past years as director of the IDF Military Prosecution for Judea and Samaria. 

He's the kind of hands-on expert who can be expected to have some well-founded sense of what foreign aid funding achieves once it's handed over to the terror-addicted kleptocrats of the PA.

As it happens, Yossi Kuperwasser of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a former Director General of the Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs and past head of the Research Division of IDF Military Intelligence, released a brief the same day as the Hirsch piece. It's called "Will the Palestinian Authority Stop Paying Terrorists? End the “Pay to Slay” Program?" and he leaves readers with the impression that no they won't. 

With predictable consequences.

07-Jan-19: Pre-dawn Gazan rocket attack on Ashkelon is thwarted

The marina at Ashkelon [Image Source]

It's a little after seven in the morning on a chilly January Monday and the sleep-deprived citizens of Ashdod are, not for the first time, counting their blessings.

Around three this morning, incoming-rocket warnings were sounded in the coastal city that has the misfortune of being within easy firing range of the rocket-rich Gaza Strip and its mayhem-minded terrorist hordes:

...[W]arning sirens blared in the southern city of Ashkelon and the nearby Ashkelon beach region after 3 am. The IDF said it identified a single launch from Gaza that was intercepted by Iron Dome. Residents reported hearing loud explosions, apparently from the interceptor. The launch came hours after the Israeli Air Force struck two Hamas positions in the eastern Gaza Strip in response to an explosive device that was flown into southern Israel earlier in the day, the army said. On Sunday morning, a bomb was flown into Israel using a large cluster of balloons and a drone-like glider device, landing in a carrot field in the Sdot Negev region of southern Israel shortly before noon... ["Air force hits Gaza targets after rocket fired into Israel", Times of Israel, January 7, 2019]

Following the now-familiar playbook, the in-bound rocket was aimed at civilian targets (Ashkelon is not a military base but a bustling city of about 140,000 civilian residents). The fact that it was intercepted mid-flight indicates it was on-target for causing the very sort of damage and destruction that it was intended to. The Iron Dome system calculates the trajectory of enemy rocket attacks before telling its operators whether or not to commit to firing off one of its counter-measure rockets.

No less familiar, Israel's response was to fire from the air against "several terror targets at a Hamas training camp in the northern Gaza Strip" according to Times of Israel quoting the IDF. Since this happened in the dark of the early morning, it's likely no one was injured on the ground.

Yesterday's balloon attack: The payload exploded while
being examined by Israeli police [Image Source: IDF]

Yesterday (Sunday), a brightly-colored, large cluster of balloons carrying an explosive payload as well as (bizarrely) a non-functioning drone-looking device floated across Gaza's frontier with Israel and exploded in a carrot field in one of southern Israel's Gaza containment communities:

The balloons were attached to a drone, which was labeled with a logo from the Gaza engineering college. The balloons sat in a field near the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip for most of the day before security personnel could raise the drone using heavy machinery. When that occurred, the device detonated, but the incident did not cause any damage or injuries. Palestinians frequently send balloons, kites and other items laced with incendiary devices over the border fence in attempts to harm Israeli territory, since the "Great March of Return" riots along the fence began in March 2018. The devices have burned more than half the forested land in the area, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) data showed in October... ["Israel hits Hamas posts after incendiary balloons, drone, fall near border", Jerusalem Post, January 6, 2019]

Given the very different kind of media coverage terrorism gets here versus outside Israel, the capacity of Hamas' rocket-equipped forces to deliver serious and deadly harm to Israelis is well-recognized by Israelis; much less so by people far from the scene. Less than a month ago, some 300 Israel-bound rockets were fired from Gaza [Ynet, December 11, 2018] during a single, very violent 5-hour time span on a Monday evening.

No one expects attacks of that sort to end soon.

17-Nov-15: Rocket intercepted in the air south of Ashkelon

It's Tuesday and around 2:30 pm this afternoon, the IDF's "Color Red" incoming rocket warning system sounded alerts in parts of Israel's south. Too early to be sure of the details yet but it appears at least one rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip and was intercepted in the air. The sirens were sounded in the Shaar HaNegev region, the Otef Aza (Gaza belt) region, and in the Hof Ashkelon region. Israel's Channel 2 news says the intercept was south of Ashkelon, and brought down one rocket. No indications of injuries or damage.

UPDATE Tuesday November 17, 2015 at 6:00 pm: There is a surprising, and relatively rare, follow-on. As Times of Israel reports it,  the Iron Dome missile was fired into the air this afternoon by mistake. The detection system

reportedly mistook gunfire in the Gaza Strip for an incoming rocket fired at Israeli territory. The missile streaked across the sky before exploding harmlessly in midair, but it triggered air raid sirens in communities bordering Gaza, sending residents running for their air raid shelters. The IDF confirmed that there had not been any rocket fire from Gaza, but did not provide further details as to what caused the incident.

An expensive error, but fortunately the cost is measured in money, not in lives.

10-Oct-15: Bloody Saturday and Hamas says "we intend to join in"

[Source]

Shabbat ended here in Jerusalem about four hours ago. The sirens of police and emergency vehicles throughout the night and day ensured that the drama unfolding in this city was never far from most people's thoughts, notwithstanding the specialness of the day and its message of peace.

A survey of the day's events:

• Around the middle of this morning, two Jewish men, wearing the traditional black Sabbath garb that marks them as belonging to the Haredi sector, were attacked while walking home from Sabbath prayers at a local synagogue in the Nevi'im Street neighbourhood of Jerusalem adjoining the Old City. Medics who rushed to the scene found both men "on their feet... conscious and in stable condition", according to a Times of Israel report. One was moderately injured while other other sustained light wounds. Both, suffering from stab wounds to the upper part of the body, were rushed to Shaare Zedek Medical Center for emergency treatment. Police arriving at the site of the attack "saw the terrorist with a knife in his hand and called on him to halt. The terrorist ran towards them with his weapon and the two cocked their weapons, fired at him and neutralized him. The attacker was identified as Ishak Badran of Kafr Aqab in East Jerusalem." His life ended at the age of 16. In the Palestinian Arab media, they're saluting him today as "the child martyr". A photograph doing the rounds today on Twitter [here] purports to show him holding the knife before police did what they had to do:

[Image Source]

• A second knifing attack in Jerusalem happened around 3:45 pm at Damascus Gate in the Old City. A police statement says two Border Police officers on patrol in the area noticed a Palestinian Arab male acting suspiciously. They asked him for identification and in the course of handing over his ID card, he pulled out a knife and stabbed one officer in the neck. Other nearby service personnel saw the attack and opened fire, killing the attacker, but also accidentally hitting two Israeli officers, one seriously. The dead terrorist is named as Muhammad Saed Ali, 19, from Shuafat in North Jerusalem. According to a Reuters report tonight, Hamas has issued a statement saying the attacker (Reuters calls him a shooter) "was one of its members. "The hero martyr fought the Israeli occupation with language they understand," Hamas said." That's interesting; perhaps the editors at The Guardian, always careful not to take sides in such matters unless it's to castigate Israel, ought to mention it some place, because right now they are telling their news consumers that Mr Ali "was shot dead after Israeli police alleged that he stabbed two police officers." Do you think the Islamist thugs of Hamas might be offended by the Guardian's squeamishness? We certainly hope so.
• Iron Dome anti-rocket defense system batteries were emplaced in Ofakim and Be'er Sheva (both of them are cities in Israel's south) today after two separate rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip during Friday night. The first of the attacks consisted of two Israel-bound rockets fired late Friday night - both failed to get as far as Israeli territory and crashed into people or property inside the Gaza Strip, with zero news reporting about the outcome, which is what normally happens with Fell Shorts. A second attack, at about 1:00 am Saturday morning, resulted in a crash landing in an open area in the Eshkol region, close to the border fence with Gaza. Fortunately no injuries or damage, but that, as we keep saying here, was never the intention of the terrorists who have death and destruction on their minds and in their prayers.
• Related to that last note: William Booth, writing for the Washington Post on Friday ["Gazans join in widespread violence sweeping Israel", Washington Post, October 9, 2015] said: "Palestinians in Gaza joined in angry protests sweeping across Israel and the West Bank, rushing Israel’s perimeter fence and throwing stones at soldiers, who shot and killed six Gaza residents and wounded 60, many of whom were in serious condition, according to the Health Ministry. The clash at the Gaza fence marks the highest death toll in the coastal enclave since last year’s war between Hamas and Israel. After Friday prayers in Gaza, the leader of the Islamist militant movement Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, declared that a third Palestinian uprising, or intifada, had begun “and we intend to join in.”
• Over at the Wall Street Journal, Haniyeh is quoted differently but no less savagely: "A leader of Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules in the Gaza Strip, spoke in support of the attacks on Israelis. Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas politician, in a sermon on Friday called for “the strengthening and increasing of the intifada,” saying Gaza was “ready for confrontation."
• Incoming rocket warnings are sounding as we write this. The area under attack appears to be Ashkelon, a coastal city in southern Israel within a few seconds' rocket-firing distance from the terror-infested Gaza Strip. Initial indication [at 11:20 pm] - a successful mid-air intercept, which means the trajectory of the terrorists' rocket was calculated to be threatening to lives or property in the target area. There are also reports that Hamas has in the past few minutes been threatening (via its media channels) to launch additional rockets with longer-range targets as their goal.
• Earlier this evening, we learned the government of Israel has issued emergency call-up notices (in Hebrew: Tzav 8) to three Border Police reserves units. They are expected to be deployed in and around Jerusalem.
• There have been violent riots and clashes in Ramleh, Shuafat (North Jerusalem), Taibe.
• We are scanning reports throughout the evening of Arab rock-hurling attacks on Israeli buses and cars, as well as firebombings in a number of dispersed locations throughout Israel. 

More coming.

21-Sep-15: Monday morning rocket attack on southern Israel

Yet another overnight Gazan rocket was fired at southern Israel in the dark of early Monday morning (today), around 4:00 am. Times of Israel reports that Israel's anti-rocket Iron Dome system calculated that it was going to crash into open unoccupied land in the Hof Ashkelon region, and therefore no sirens were heard or countermeasures taken.

This, as we feel needs to be stated each time, is never the intention of the terrorists who do the firing. They place themselves and their communities at mortal risk when they shoot at Israel. In the terrorists' calculus, the risks are justified by the prospect of achieving some meaningful damage or injuries or worse to the Israeli side. These are acts of war. But other than in the Israeli media, there is zero coverage by the news reporting industry which is likely to spring into action if and when an Israeli counter-measure is taken.

The most recent in-coming rocket attacks from Gaza took place all the way back on Friday night. On Thursday, we wrote:

What are the chances that rocket fire directed at anything Israeli in southern Israel is going to happen in the next 24 hours? Your answer will likely depend on how high a price you believe the Palestinian Arabs making the decision to let those rockets blast will be paying. In this neighbourhood, the price is close to zero, which is why an Iron Dome battery is being deployed there at this moment. ["17-Sep-15: Rocks, rockets, riots, religion, risks"]

19-Sep-15: Gaza rockets: Another Friday night attack

Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted a rocket heading for the southern coastal city of Ashkelon around midnight on Friday night, the Jewish Sabbath. Another rocket attack - thought to comprise two separate rockets - at about 8:45 pm Friday night produced explosions in a residential area of Sderot where some property damage - including to a bus - resulted. Jerusalem Post says a house was also hit.

One report says Sderot's public bomb shelters, which are programmed to open automatically when Tzeva Adom (Color Red) incoming-rocket sirens sound, failed to unlock during the Friday night attack. Several people had to be medically treated for shock.

Times of Israel says the intercept in the skies above Ashkelon

was the first since last summer’s war between Israel and armed Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip last summer.

"Credit" was rapidly claimed by one of the proliferating Gaza Strip terror industry groups, the so-called Sheikh Omar Hadid Brigade, also known as Ahfad Ashaba, which first emerged (and was probably created) in the last few months.

01-Sep-15: Inbound rocket from Gaza announces new school year

Israeli schools go back this morning, which may be part of the reason for an inbound rocket alarm that sounded around 5:15 this morning (Tuesday) across southern Israel. For now, the thinking is that this one, like so many before it, was a Fell Short, doing damage to people or property on the Hamas side of the Gaza/Israel fence, but it's still early to know for sure. And if it does turn out to have crashed onto Gazan heads or farms or homes, it's highly unlikely we will be hearing details via anyone, least of all the terrorist regime that rules the area, of damage or pain.

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that the launch was done from Gaza's Beit Lahiya and the rocket was pointed in the general direction of the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon, but did not get there. Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, said to be connected to ISIS, claimed "credit".

23-Aug-15: Do they understand the price of freeing the hunger-striking terrorists?

This photo of the notorious PA insider, Issa Karake, appears in a Jordan Times
article [here] under the headline "Palestinians call for release of 
hunger-striking prisoners". The face at the top of his poster
belongs to Abdullah Barghouti. Calling him "hunger striker"
somewhat misses the point. A confessed mass murderer, he wants to add to 
his current tally of 66 innocent victims. Naturally, they want him free.

Flush with the thrill of achievement, the imprisoned Islamic Jihad terrorist who has been waging a campaign against the Israeli authorities is back to making some improbable fresh threats from his Israeli hospital bed.

Muhammed Alaan (about whom we wrote on Friday: see "21-Aug-15: Hungering, thirsting, just dying for fresh victims")

told a Hamas journal: “I am free at the moment. If the Israeli occupation arrests me again, I will return to the hunger strike until they put an end to the travesty I am suffering, as are hundreds of administrative prisoners.” He added that the practice of detaining suspects without trial while refusing them the right to a lawyer and denying them visits from their family must be stopped “immediately.” Allaan was speaking from his hospital bed at Ashkelon’s Barzilai hospital. The High Court of Justice on Wednesday suspended Allaan’s administrative detention — a special anti-terror measure that allows imprisonment without trial on terrorism charges — after tests showed that he had sustained brain damage as a result of his two-month fast. There were conflicting reports as to whether the damage was reversible... Security officials believe Allaan, 31, is tied to the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization. Right-wing lawmakers and ministers reacted furiously to the High Court decision, with some accusing the court of setting a dangerous precedent that would lead to the release of other security prisoners being held in Israel. On Friday Allaan said in a video that his strike had been successful, and thanked his Israeli Arab “brothers” for their support. ["Terror suspect says he’ll renew hunger strike if rearrested" | Times of Israel, August 21, 2015]

It's unlikely to get much media coverage outside Israel (which is a pity), but some observations by an Israeli expert on how to treat prisoners, Orit Adato, emerged in an interview shown on Israel's Channel 1 on Saturday night. They were triggered by the ongoing Alaan case and the absurd and dangerous results it seems to be producing.

Odato, a specialist consultant whose privately-held business focuses on effective ways to manage the imprisoned terrorist population, is Israel's only female three-star army general, and a past commissioner of the Israeli Prison Service.

She said last night that the Israeli authorities have made two serious mistakes that have brought on the current fiasco.

1. Israel freed hunger strikers several years ago. This conveyed a clear message to the prisoners and their advocates that in Israeli eyes they hold a very effective tool in their hands. If Israel had wanted to release some administrative detention prisoners - and Israel was holding many at the time - it ought to have released several who were not on hunger strike, along with perhaps one or two who were. The point would be to make clear that the hunger strike was not the reason for the releases. Instead, Israel released only the hunger strikers.
2. The doctors who have refused to force-feed the hunger striking prisoners are utterly wrong. They have an obligation to save lives. They already save the lives of other terrorists who have no interest in living - for instance, human bombs (erroneously called "suicide bombers" - see "30-Jun-15: We need to be calling them what they are: human bombs") who survive. They save prisoners who are found hanged and are freed from the rope before death. The case of a hunger striker is no different from those other cases. 

We have quoted Odato several times in the past (in 2008, for instance). She has expressed some consistently smart views that, in retrospect, pointed in the right direction.

Here, below, is an essay published in 2006 in which she features. It's one of those now-forgotten (and always ignored) pleas we made to the Israeli authorities to re-think their plans to free terrorists from Israeli prisons in order to secure the freedom of Gilad Shalit, a hostage illegally held by Hamas for years.

This particular article was published in Front Page Magazine just before we started blogging here, and fully five years before the catastrophic Shalit Deal was executed. We're still sure it made sense then and feel it's helpful to repost it here, now.

"Reasonable" Suicide | Frimet Roth | FrontPageMagazine.com | September 12, 2006 

Prepare for another Israeli retreat. The prison gates are about to be flung open again and Hamas handed a victory greater than any territorial concession. Sources say that the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit is imminent. The ransom demanded by Hamas reportedly now stands at 800 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. The absurdly skewed numbers make plain that this will be no exchange. While the first Palestinian to walk through those prison gates will be swapped, the seven hundred and ninety nine who follow him will be handed over gratis.

A mass release of this kind, if it takes place, will be catastrophic for Israelis. In its wake, terrorists would be insane not to carry out more such abductions in order to reap such bonanzas. And past experience shows that released prisoners rejoin the ranks of their terror gangs with redoubled fervor.

Orit Adato, former Commissioner of the Israeli Prison Service, observed, in her 2005 article, "The Issue of Prisoner Release", that some security prisoners "left jail more extreme and better equipped ideologically and professionally." But these sacrifices have long been accepted as the unavoidable price of "bringing our boys home." Israeli soldiers and their families, facing the harsh realities of life here, know that no stone is ever left unturned in our government's pursuit of that goal.

Amnon Zichroni, a veteran negotiator for the release of Israeli soldiers, reflecting on this, said in a recent interview: "Perhaps the other side doesn't have the same attitude as we do to our people." Based on his past involvement in trying to free European hostages held in Iran and Lebanon, he is convinced that even "the Europeans placed less value on their citizens' lives than we [Israelis] do."

This noble attitude should not be tampered with. However, it is essential that candidate prisoners be carefully selected and their release wisely negotiated. Zichroni, a lawyer, has come by this wisdom over several decades. His experience in the field began in 1978 when PM Menachem Begin appointed him to handle the release of Israeli prisoners and hostages in Arab hands. He was also involved intensively with the cases of Ron Arad and the 1982 Sultan Yaakub MIA's.

Successful negotiation, he maintains, demands that government lay the groundwork immediately after the kidnapping. Interviewed by the Bitter Lemons forum shortly after Cpl. Shalit was taken hostage, Zichroni advised the Israeli government to "desist from targeted assassinations and deal instead with targeted kidnappings… of people who are close to the organizations holding Shalit, who could be bargaining cards... Without leverage, we fail."

His advice was not heeded. Prime Minister Olmert's initial public stance was to refuse to negotiate at all. Zichroni says this increased the danger to Shalit's life.

Having since flip-flopped and with no ground-work, Olmert is negotiating from a position of weakness. Consequently, the deal being weighed threatens to be more loathsome than all those preceding it. If closed, it will cross a critical red line that has been observed in all of Israel's earlier prisoner exchanges.

To obtain Shalit's freedom, Israel has reportedly agreed for the first time to hand over prisoners "with blood on their hands." But the deal's brokers and Israel's political leaders are attempting to conceal this with the lulling words "women and children."

The fact is that several of the women and sub-eighteen-year-olds who are candidates for release are no less lethal and murderous than the stereotypical twenty-something male terrorist.

Those who grieve – like me – for loved ones murdered at Jerusalem's Sbarro Restaurant are well aware of the dangers posed by female terrorists. One hot August afternoon five years ago, Ahlam Tamimi, then a twenty-year-old university co-ed, played a central role in the terror attack that took the life of my daughter and 14 other innocents, most of them children.

Tamimi selected the target and escorted the suicide bomber to the restaurant's door. 130 people were injured and maimed in that massacre.

Interviewed in her prison cell four months ago, she told reporters: "I'm not sorry for what I did. I will get out of prison and I refuse to recognize Israel's existence."

Tamimi has served less than five years of her 16 consecutive life sentences. Yet already in March 2006, she proclaimed, "I know that we will become free from Israeli occupation and then I will also be free from the prison."

I appeal to Prime Minister Olmert to resist the pressure of Palestinian and Western diplomats to succumb to the above terms. They are undoubtedly invoking populist comparisons between the IRA and the Palestinian prisoners and pointing to the success of the Good Friday Agreement, signed by the IRA and Britain in 1998. But our situation is fundamentally different.

The Good Friday document took into account several factors absent from the Palestinian case. First, there was no mass exodus of hundreds of Irish convicted terrorists. They were released gradually, in order of the severity of their crimes and the time remaining in their sentences.

In addition, only prisoners belonging to organizations that had signed the ceasefire accord were freed. The others were to be reassessed at a later stage in the peace process. And both sides, the Irish and British governments, were entrusted with re-integrating the prisoners both before and after release.

Clearly, none of those conditions apply in our region. No Palestinian terror organization has signed anything remotely like a cease-fire with Israel. On the contrary, they have reiterated, both in word and deed, their commitment to the destruction of Israel. There is no peace process to speak of.

Consequently, once the freed Palestinians have rejoined the ranks of their terror organizations, the only "re-integration program" they will attend is target practice and advanced Islamist indoctrination.

There is another significant distinction between the Irish and Palestinian experiences. InIreland, the victim families were involved in the process from the start. They were notified of pending IRA prisoner releases and invited to respond. The pain of the Israeli victims has never been a factor in the prisoner release equation.

With Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev still held for ransom by terrorists, prisoner release is a hotly debated issue. Now is the time for the government to reassess this tactic. Once fine-tuned, it can become the key to "bringing our boys home" without being suicidal: without strengthening our enemies, endangering Israel, making a mockery of justice or infuriating the victims.

The question is: Are our leaders up to the challenge?

Nine years later and in the wake of the deplorable events of October 2011, we have the tragic answer. And along with millions of other Israelis, we are left to live with its consequences.

21-Aug-15: Hungering, thirsting, just dying for fresh victims

Image Source

Muhammad Allan, a Palestinian Arab, is widely depicted in parts of the social media right now as a hunger-striker unjustly detained, a veritable "freedom fighter", "courageously resisting tyranny". And of course "gentle, conscientious and well-respected". 

Multi-media campaigns like the one in which he now features usually come with gentle backgrounders ("loved kittens, spoke nicely to his sisters") plus lawyers, mothers and protesters. This one is from that same template, along with media distortions, half-truths and inaccuracies.

A 31-year-old Arab lawyer, the man is indeed a hunger striker and has been since June. He became comatose earlier this week and then regained consciousness in Barzilai Medical Center, Ashkelon, on Tuesday where he has been getting Israeli medical care. The following day, Wednesday, Israel's High Court ordered that he be freed from administrative detention "due to his deteriorating medical condition, including the revelation Wednesday afternoon that his brain had been damaged." More than this, 

Deputy High Court President Elyakim Rubinstein and justices Hanan Melcer and Neal Hendel held that due to his health situation, Allan’s family members could visit him on an unrestricted basis, as if he were not a detainee. [Jerusalem Post]

Once the court had ruled, one of his lawyers told Reuters that the 65-day hunger strike was done: 

"The story is over, administrative detention is canceled, and therefore there is no strike," said lawyer Jameel Khatib. But a hospital spokeswoman said it would not have been possible for Allan to make such a decision, since he was not conscious or aware of his surroundings... [Jerusalem Post]

Hunger striker's mother in the Ashkelon hospital where his life
is being saved by Israeli medicine, despite his best efforts [Image Source]

Internal contradictions happen. No one seems too concerned for factual accuracy when Palestinian Arab figures are being elevated to mythic/heroic status against all the evidence. For us news consumers, we're left to distinguish among the available menu items of fantasy, exaggeration, political spin and ordinary empirical facts.

Naturally, Allan (or Alaan or Alan or محمد علان) is not just a lawyer. And his problems are not the kind that traditionally come from legal practice. 

Quite the opposite: from reliable sources, we understand he's deeply invested in terrorism as both active player and facilitator. Allaan was first arrested by Israeli authorities in 2006 due to his involvement in recruiting a human bomb in advance of a murderous attack. These charges earned him a trial, a conviction, and a sentence of which he served three years in jail. He was arrested again in 2014 on the basis of reliable intelligence regarding his contacts with Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the context of preparing of fresh terror attacks. The evidence was brought before the same High Court that eventually released him on Wednesday, Based on their judicial review at that time, his incarceration under Israel's administrative detention laws got the court's approval - not a foregone conclusion in Israel's strict legal frameworks. At a guess, we think this may have been a "ticking time bomb" case, though no one has said so in the media.

Same mother, same hospital [Image Source]

Alaan's hunger strike is naturally self-imposed, and the physical damage he may have caused to himself is too. 

But setting that aside for a moment, concerned people reading the heart-rending descriptions in the media of what he and his organs went through up until Wednesday might find it hard to avoid feelings of sympathy. It was good to note that one of the judges in Wednesday's hearing, presented with a passionate argument on Alaan's behalf by another of his lawyers that detention was at the root of the problem, pointed out what ought to be obvious:

"This is not a result of his detention, sir. There is damage as a result of his hunger strike that he undertook." - Supreme Court Judge Hanan Melcer, quoted in Jerusalem Post, August 19, 2015

They might even come away with the impression that Israel applies administrative detention widely and indiscriminately. Or that Israel is somehow unique or unusual among civilized states in resorting to it. 

Again, the mother, the hospital, the arms [Image Source]

Reuters, in reporting on Alaan on Monday, framed its version of the narrative in a way that might easily lead a reader to those wrong conclusions:

Israel sees his hunger strike, which began more than 60 days ago, as a powerful challenge against "administrative detention", a practice that has drawn criticism from Palestinians and human rights groups but which Israel calls a security necessity... [Reuters, August 17, 2015]

Human rights people say this, but Israel says that. He says, she says, the human rights people say. It's a common news industry approach with which friends of Israel are familiar, but it's also cheap, unfair and misleading. 

The reality (very rarely mentioned in Alaan-related news reports) is that many states, some of them respectable - including Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Jordan, United Kingdom and the United States - all have laws providing for administrative detention. Those laws are in active use when there's a need and the circumstances are appropriate. Considering the intense but little reported acts of terrorism to which Israeli civilians are routinely subjected by their Palestinian Arab neighbours, you could make a strong case that Israel has the need. And the circumstances, according to the widely respected High Court of Justice, are appropriate.

Hunger striking terrorist's mother again. She's in an Israeli hospital
- probably Barzilai - but we can't be sure [Image Source]

To illustrate: we wrote about a rocket barrage that struck northern Israel yesterday ["20-Aug-15: Rockets from Syria slam into Israel's north"]. The IDF says those rockets came from Syrian terrorists acting in the name of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (the PIJs deny it, but the IDF makes a pretty strong case). They're Alaan's colleagues, the people in whose company he hangs when he's not on hunger strike in an Israeli hospital room.

As for how widely administrative detention is used by Israel, the numbers given in this Palestinian Arab news report suggest it's currently applied to about 7% of the Arabs in Israeli prisons.

A word about Barzilai before we end. 

The medical center where the hunger-striking Islamic Jihadist is having his life saved is in Ashkelon, the closest Israeli city to the Islamist-ruled terror-addicted Gaza Strip. Despite the unstinting care it provides to all-comers on a non-discriminatory basis, Barzilai gets routinely attacked by Qassam and Grad rockets ("as many as 140 over one weekend" and here's a fine photo collection to drive the message home) fired at them by Hamas and PIJ. Scarce funds have had to be diverted from the hospital's budget into the construction of underground wards and emergency facilities - an effort that saves lives. 

We understand the profound cultural and ethical chasm separating us, and don't expect the Alaan clan to give thanks. But it's striking that no mainstream media channel has seen fit to at least mention that the facility which has saved this Islamic Jihad terrorist's life has frequently come under rocket-attack by his fellow savages-in-arms, and almost certainly will again when they can do it.

16-Jul-15: Lessons from yet another early-morning rocket attack on southern Israel

The huge role played in Palestinian Arab culture by exploding rockets
seems to be poorly understood by foreign news editors. In everyone's interests,
they ought to be paying more respect and giving much more attention to
the message of rallies like this one, in Nuseirat, Central Gaza Strip,
on December 12, 2014 [Image Source]

We were sound asleep at 2 this morning, Thursday. But in the communities of Israel's southern coast, it's likely that hundreds of thousands were rudely woken by the sounds of the Color Red incoming-rocket warning system, commencing at 2:02 am and blaring out a message of "seek shelter right now".

Ynet (basing itself in part on Reuters) reports today on

a rocket that was fired from the Palestinian enclave just after 2am local time... [N]one of the organizations known to hold rocket stockpiles in Gaza initially claimed responsibility for the early morning rocket attack on Israel. The rocket set off code red sirens in Zikim, parts of Ashkelon city and the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council... No damage or injuries were reported as a result of the Gazan missile that landed in an open area in the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council. Security forces are still searching the area to find the projectile. "The IDF considers this incident a severe one," said the IDF spokesperson in announcing the retaliatory attack on Gaza. "We won't put up with any attempt to harm Israeli civilians. Hamas is the address of responsibility."

From the way the United Nations committee looking into last summer's vicious rocket attacks on all parts of Israel ("Commission of Inquiry on the Gaza Conflict", better known here as the Schabas Report after the chairman who resigned late into its work after revelations about his past involvement with the PLO) dealt with 2014's barrages of rockets on Israeli civilian targets, we're not expecting much interest by news reporting agencies outside Israel. Nor should you.

(Israel absorbed more than four thousand - no mistake, 4,000+, Palestinian-Arab-Gazan rockets during calendar 2014. Here's the record-keeping to demonstrate it.)

Reuters reported Thursday's early-morning attack, but in a way that guarantees close-to-zero reporting among its subscriber news channels.

Here are the key sections from the Reuters bulletin, issued around 8:30 this morning Israel time, with a headline that makes clear it's a story about what Israel did: "Israeli air strike hits Gaza Strip after militant rocket launch":

Israeli aircraft struck militant targets in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip early on Thursday after a rocket from the coastal territory landed in southern Israel, the Israeli military said. A passerby was lightly hurt in the Gaza Strip, according to residents. No damage or injuries were reported in Israel after warning sirens sounded and the rocket struck open ground near the city of Ashkelon before dawn, the army said. Rocket launchings have become an almost weekly occurrence from the coastal strip recently but no militant group took immediate responsibility for the attack... A group that sympathises with al Qaeda, who have defied Hamas, has been blamed for other recent strikes, none of which caused injuries or damage. The Israel-Gaza border area had largely been quiet since last year's July-August war, when Palestinian militants launched thousands of rockets and mortar bombs into Israel and Israeli shelling and air strikes battered the enclave. More than 2,100 Palestinians were killed, most of them civilians, while 67 soldiers and six civilians were killed on the Israeli side.

As always, we are struck by how the low casualties on the Israeli side feature as a key component of the newsagency messaging. Perhaps one day they will offer some insight into how and why it is that our side takes the measures that any sane society would to protect the lives and homes of its civilians, while on the Gazan Arab side, they don't even provide their miserable subjects with shelters.

Then there's the pathetically laconic

No damage or injuries were reported in Israel after warning sirens sounded... [Reuters]

but that was not, and never has been, the outcome that the terrorist forces, equipped with their rich arsenals of rockets, intend.

They fire at us hoping to kill and destroy. An outcome that involves merely terrifying families in their bedrooms (as happened in the small hours of this morning) is an achievement in their terms. But it is not the goal. And they will certainly keep trying again and again and again and again to achieve the goal - one which involves deaths and destruction.

No sane government would ever allow a terrorist enemy free rein to do that.

23-Jun-15: Rocket sirens are heard across southern Israel tonight... and almost nowhere else

Haaretz ran this photo at the height of last summer's Gazan rocket

barrages on Israel. Seeking cover in the stairwell of an

Israeli apartment building is often the only thing you can do when

those Gazan rockets come flying in, seeking Israeli victims [Image Source]

Yet another Gazan rocket was despatched in the customary Palestinian Arab manner in the past hour. Meaning it was fired off entirely indiscriminately in the general direction of anything Israeli, Did it crash into a school bus? A cow shed? A busy shopping mall? Did it drop short and explode on top of a Gazan Arab home and the children living inside?

The men who did the firing certainly don't care. Nor do the vast majority of the reporters who cover the Middle East conflict beat. A story that focuses on the malevolence of the fighting forces under the Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad banner? Not worth an editor's time. And anyway, news consumers long ago learned to assume the Arab side are capable of any outrage so why bother getting worked up about it?

So who does care? Israelis. It's our side that holds its collective breath as the Tzeva Adom (Color Red) incoming rocket alert system's warning siren is heard. It's our side that has created well-functioning communities, farms, towns, cities, roads, schools, malls, hospitals, homes - and the shelters that are inseparable part of all of them. Because on our side, every injury, every death (Heaven forbid), every disruption to normal, constructive lives counts, matters, has a measurable impact.

From Ynet, posted at 10:40 tonight (Tuesday):

Rocket launched from Gaza explodes near moshav greenhouse
Alarm heard in south shortly after 10 PM; IDF says rocket was launched, but that it was unclear whether it had fallen in Israeli territory.
A rocket launched from the northern Gaza Strip towards Hof Ashkelon shortly after 10 PM on Tuesday, exploding near a greenhouse in a moshav. A Red Alert siren sounded in the area during the incident.

From Israel National News:

The IDF confirmed that a rocket launch from Gaza was identified. Reports indicate that a succession of explosions was heard. Just before 10:30 p.m. a rocket was found in the Hof Ashkelon region, having fallen in an open area and caused no damage.

Haaretz reminds readers that the same area, Hof Ashkelon, last came under rocket fire from Gaza a whole ten days ago:

The IDF's Gaza Division said it believes the rocket was launched by Salafi groups, like in the previous incidents over recent months, but that it was still not clear what launched the militants to fire. No group has claimed responsibility for Tuesday's fire yet. The chairman of the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council, Yair Farjun, said: "It doesn't matter to us who fired the rocket. Hamas is responsible and we won't let them set our daily schedule."

Times of Israel adds

The rocket landed in an open area near the Yad Mordechai Kibbutz just north of the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement. “Forces are currently searching the area,” the army said. There were no reports of injuries or damage directly after the alarms, which sounded in the communities of Zikim, Karmia, Netiv Ha’asara and Yad Mordechai just after 10 p.m., the IDF said. Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, a former foreign minister, called on the government to take action to end the sporadic rocket fire. “”Whoever is prepared to accept a drizzle — will at the end of the day get a torrential downpour,” he wrote on Facebook. “This situation is insufferable, unfathomable and must be brought to an end.” Israeli planes have attacked targets in Gaza in the past following rocket attacks. Israel considers Hamas responsible for all rocket fire emanating from the Strip. The alarms come a day after the United Nations Human Rights Council issued a report accusing both Israel and Palestinian armed groups of possible war crimes over heavy fighting last summer.

Foreign news coverage will happen, if at all, only when Israel does something military to silence the rockets. Till then, tonight's attack will almost certainly fail to reach the threshold of reportable news.

It's a blessed relief to know that no damage or physical harm was caused tonight, as far as we can know at this hour. But that, of course, was never the intention of the men with the rockets. For them, it's a numbers game. Just keep firing. Some will Fall Short as hundreds have in the past few years, and may kill or injure Gazan Arabs. From an Arab perspective that's a minor issue, with plenty of theological cover and political justification: no terrorist ever lost his job in the Palestinian Arab world for inflicting harm on his own side. Most of those rockets will fall in uninhabited parts of Israel's territory where the explosion will be so minor as to require a search party. But occasionally, (and given the numbers, this happens regularly) there will be a hit, and some injured or dead on the Israeli side, along with significant property damage. And then the rocket men are hailed as heroes. some headlines are published along with some Hamas insiders being interviewed, their bogus "resistance" is back in the news and it's all worth it.

Meanwhile, a metaphysical question: if a rocket was fired into Israel and no one was hurt, and no news channel outside Israel reported it, what are the ways in which Israel brought this upon itself? And how ought the Israeli side to be condemned for whatever response the IDF now carries out?

14-Jun-15: Israel's anti-rocket defence system gets wider deployment

Taking cover on a road in Israel's Negev as incoming Gazan rocket
warning is heard, July 2014 [Image: Reuters]

Rockets being flung into the sky in the general direction of Israel might sound (if people hear about them at all) like a vague and trivial threat. The media repetition of how few Israelis, relative to the dead and injured on the Arab side, have been hurt reinforces that impression.

In reality, vast parts of southern Israel are under actual threat of attack by them right now. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis live in communities in those parts, and anxiety levels are running high. Relying on the good sense of the terrorists to avoid self-damaging escalation is generally perceived, based on overwhelming evidence, as not getting our side very far.

Hence:

[Israeli S]ecurity officials decided last week to deploy four Iron Dome air defense system batteries in Ashdod, Netivot, Ashkelon and Beersheba... ["More Iron Dome batteries deployed in light of renewed rocket fire", Jerusalem Post, tonight]

According to an article that appeared last summer (see "15 things you didn't knw about the Iron Dome")

The cost of launching a missile from the Iron Dome at a threatening rocket has been reported to cost anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 [while] the rockets fired by terror groups at Israel are estimated to cost between a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. 

A 2013 report in TIME Magazine looked at the cost on a per-battery basis:

At about $50 million per battery — the launchers with 20 missiles each, ground radar and command-and-control center, led by an officer equipped with an abort button — Iron Dome still costs plenty, especially since Israel estimates it would need at least 13 of them to protect the entire country.

11-Jun-15: Thursday night incoming rocket warnings heard in southern Israel

At 10:00 pm tonight, Thursday, Tzeva Adom warnings began to be sounded in a swathe of communities across southern Israel. Ashkelon appears to among them, as does the nearby Hof Ashkelon region. No indication yet of whether and where rockets fell, but when we know we will update this post. The last round of Gaza terrorist rocket fire on Israel (the kind that involves flinging rockets indiscriminately in the general direction of Israel with zero regard for where they land or whom they injure, destroy or kill) was just a few days ago: see "06-Jun-15: Saturday night rocket attack on southern Israel communities"

UPDATE Friday June 12: This source within the IDF Spokesperson Unit (Dover Zahal) said last night that "The rocket that was launched from #Gaza earlier this evening, fell short & landed in the Gaza Strip." Call that another in a long, long, mostly unreported line of "Fell Shorts". And additional evidence that Gaza's Palestinian Arabs are trampled by the Islamist regime that cruelly rules them to an extent that outsiders rarely appreciate because they are not told.

06-Jun-15: Saturday night rocket attack on southern Israel communities

Starting around 9:37 pm tonight (Saturday night - about half an hour ago as we write this) - Tzeva Adom (Color Red) incoming rocket warnings started being sounded in a swathe of communities across Israel's south, evidently focused on the Hof Ashkelon region and the city of Ashkelon on Israel's southern coast.

Ynet says

at least one rocket was fired from Gaza, landing in an open area near the city of Ashkelon. Residents in the south reported hearing at least one loud boom and it the exact location of the rocket strike was initially unclear. No reports of injuries or damage were immediately forth coming and authorities began searching for the fallen rocket.

Signs of rising trouble in Gaza are behind the decision by the IDF Friday, publicized earlier today (Haaretz, i24news, Ynet) to re-deploy one or more Iron Dome missile defense batteries in several locations in the south, including one near Ashdod, just a few kilometers up the coast from Ashkelon.

This comes in the wake of several rounds of Gazan rocket fire, indiscriminate as always but as always fired off in the general direction of Israelis, their homes, their communities, in the past week [see "03-Jun-15: Alarms sounded: Inbound Gazan rockets around 11:00 pm tonight"].

03-Jun-15: Alarms sounded: Inbound Gazan rockets around 11:00 pm tonight

Tzeva Adom ("Color Red") incoming rocket alarms were heard throughout southern Israel at 10:55 pm tonight (Wednesday). Times of Israel says residents were seen rushing to bomb shelters, the second time this happened in the past week and undoubtedly disrupting the lives of Israeli families with young children who would have had to be dragged out of their beds.

Israel National News says

Two rockets from Gaza exploded in the Sdot Negev region. There were no physical injuries or damages.

Times of Israel reminds us of that previous attack:

On May 26, Palestinian militants shot a Grad rocket into Israel, striking an area outside the town of Gan Yavneh, in an attack that broke several weeks of calm. Palestinian and Israeli officials said the rocket attack, which caused no casualties or damage, was the result of internal fighting within the Islamic Jihad terror group... Last week’s attack marked the first time a Grad rocket, which can go farther than the smaller Kassams more commonly shot out of Gaza, had been fired at Israel since the summer war.

UPDATE 4-Jun-15 at 7:30 am: According to Aljazeera,

At least two rockets have been launched from Gaza into southern Israel, the Israeli police has said. The police said on Wednesday that they were fired at the towns of Netivot and Ashkelon, near the Gaza border. Warning sirens were heard in the area, but no injuries have been reported. A group calling itself the Omar Brigades has claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attack, prompting Israeli fighter jets to bomb three empty fields used by Hamas fighters in the southern Gaza strip.

And from inside the Gaza Strip itself, evidence (see screen shot below from the GANSO website) that four rockets were fired at Israel but (which we have not yet seen reported in any news stories) two of them ended up (yet again) crashing on top of Gazan homes and territory: Fell Shorts, in our terms.

14-Jul-14: Searching for a way to make a positive, concrete, meaningful contribution?

If you are among the ranks of Israel's many friends who want to do something concrete that positively helps the people living under terrorist rocket-fire, here's a suggestion. 

Keren Malki, the foundation we created in memory of the life of our daughter Malki (you can see her photo on the right of this page), has a unique and effective program called Therapists on Wheels that sends highly-qualified therapists - physical, occupational and speech - into the homes of Israelis living in communities far from Israel's center. 

There, in those homes, they deliver vital para-medical therapy sessions to children challenged by often-severe special needs. 

Currently we send therapists to Be'er Sheva, Sderot, Ashkelon and other places in Israel's southern periphery that right now are in the cross-hairs of the Hamas terror-rocketeers. 

In these difficult days, the professional team who run Keren Malki's operations are doing everything possible so that the special-needs children in those places don't miss out on therapies that are so vital to their well-being. 

You can learn more and possibly also give your support to Keren Malki's Zlata Hersch Memorial Therapists on Wheels Program, by clicking here.