01-Jun-18: On watching our child's killer

Some people wonder why Tamimi has such an enthusiastic
following. We're not so puzzled.

What must it be like to endure a loved child's violent death and then see the killer's face in front of you: unhindered, alive, well, thriving, a celebrity boasting to others about what a blessed thing she did?

Not such a common thing of course. But in our case it doesn't take much imagination. It's part of our lives, a stressful and painful matter of our routine.

The name of Ahlam Tamimi, our daughter Malki's murderer, will be familiar to people who follow our blog. Tamimi was convicted on her open confession for the central role she had in the 2001 massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria. She was sentenced by an Israeli judicial tribunal to 16 consecutive terms of life imprisonment. But she walked free in October 2011 - not because she was pardoned, not because she repented, not because the court changed its mind.

She was a beneficiary of the catastrophic Shalit Deal which brought about the unwarranted (and eventually lethal) release from Israeli top security prisons of no fewer than 1,027 Arab terrorists, the majority of whom were there for having killed or tried to kill Israelis and/or Arabs.

Two days after her release, Tamimi was re-settled in her homeland, Jordan. Shortly after that, we started work on asking the US government to bring serious charges against her under its laws. Our daughter Malki was a US citizen.

Early last year, a US Federal criminal complaint against Tamimi was unsealed in Washington DC ["14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and extradition is sought"].

The same day, the FBI announced she was being immediately added to its Most Wanted Terrorists list, and that the US was asking the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to extradite her under the provisions of the Clinton-era Jordan/US Extradition Treaty of 1995.

Fifteen months later, she is still on the FBI's list; the charges against her remain pending, though she needs to be in the US for the US courts to do their work; and Jordan flatly refuses to extradite her.

In fact, a Jordanian court has ruled that the treaty is of no effect, and never took effect. It blamed some narrow and technical factors that the US lawyers and criminal justice officials we have consulted dismiss as nonsense and that could have been fixed, if they existed at all, by Jordan alone. Our own research has turned up at least three separate cases where Jordan did extradite its own nationals to face serious criminal charges in the US.

An October 2017 commentary published by the respected National Security Law Brief says

Jordan's positions are without merit... the United States should not give up on attempting to extradite Al-Tamimi. If other countries place enough pressure on Jordan due to concerns of Al-Tamimi’s danger and susceptibility to planning another attack, Jordan may change its position... Jordan should reconsider its position and permit extradition in the case of Al-Tamimi for the safety of Jordanians, and citizens of other nations that may be subject to another attack by Al-Tamimi. Thwarting extradition not only violates the principle of comity, but it also perpetuates the international danger presented by Al-Tamimi... ["Pressure on Jordan: Refusal to extradite mastermind of deadly 2001 Sbarro suicide bombing in Jerusalem contravenes international law and agreements", Michelle Munneke, October 28, 2017]

Nonsense or not, Jordan seems to be at ease with this self-confessed mass-murderer among its citizens, living freely and unhampered in its capital, playing an active role in that country's public life. Our efforts to get Jordan's foreign minister, other vocal members of Jordan's government, and Jordan's diplomats in Washington to justify Jordan's scandalous approach have produced what we feared: silence.

We have some pots on the cooker and are quietly hopeful that the day is not far off when Ahlam Tamimi appears before the US justice system and has to answer to the law.

We also claim some credit for a bounty that was announced by the State Department five months ago ["31-Jan-18: There's now a $5 million reward for bringing the terrorist Ahlam Tamimi to justice"] but has not yet been awarded though there's no secret about where Tamimi and her family live.

Meanwhile, Tamimi remains - as we warned she would be in the months and years leading up to her extorted freedom - a highly visible spokesperson, an idolized advocate for the Islamist brand of terrorism and for bigotry directed at Jews, a constant and persuasive pro-terror voice spreading her brand of jihad in receptive circles.

(Among the scores of instances of what we said publicly back then, see "13-Oct-11: Roth explains to Australia's AM why the release of murderers is so bad [audio]"; "19-Oct-11: Haaretz: Shalit prisoner swap marks 'colossal failure' for mother of Israeli bombing victim"; "17-Nov-11: A monster walks the streets and she has many accomplices").

For five years, Tamimi fronted a heavily-promoted, made-in-Jordan terror-advocacy television program called “نسيم الأحرار” (transliteration: “ Nassem al-Ahrar” or “Breezes of the Free”) on one of the global Hamas TV stations. Beamed weekly by satellite and internet to large audiences, this turned her into a personality throughout the Arabic-speaking world.

Tamimi is an extremist who sees herself part of a war pitting her religion against others, in particular against the Jews. Not a philosophical war or an abstract clash-of-cultures battle but an actual blood-and-guts war in which people are physically conquered and killed. You can watch her being explicit about this in a video here: "08-Oct-17: Why kill religious Jewish children? Because, says Hamas celebrity-jihadist, this is a religious struggle".

For reasons worth exploring, though not here and now, she seemed to be less obvious and lower-profile in recent months. But spring has a been a busy time for her. Here she is addressing the Association of Palestinian Women Abroad in Jordan just a month ago:

Tamimi, in the white kerchief , is standing in the middle

As thrilling as enjoying the live presence of the woman who overcame the Zionists must have been to the ladies group, Tamimi played the central role in a significantly more impactful appearance just a few days later on May 8, 2018.

That's when one of the numerous arms of Hamas - equipped for reasons that baffle us with a working Twitter presence that has attracted more than 300,000 followers - ran this video clip (Tamimi comes on after about 15 seconds). It calls our daughter's murderer "the liberated prisoner Ahlam al-Tamimi" and it captures her delivering a message to the students of Birzeit University.

(It's archived here in case, you know, it gets lost at some point.)

رسالة الأسير المحررة أحلام التميمي إلى طلبة جامعة بيرزيت . pic.twitter.com/nZvXaDRV8l

— شبكة فلسطين للحوار (@paldf) May 8, 2018

Click the image above to view the video

Screen grab from the video

Translated to English by a friendly native-Arabic speaker, she is saying to the students:

“This phase is the phase of your persistence. The future is yours and the dawn smiles on you. God is with you and God’s eye protects you.”

She's in comfortable territory when addressing the Birzeit students. In 2001, Tamimi was herself a student of journalism at Birzeit University. Its website offers this self-description:

What began as a small girls’ school in Birzeit town has become the most prestigious Palestinian university, transforming Palestinian higher education through its impact on community awareness, culture and resistance. Birzeit University has been a thorn in the side of the occupation, insisting on playing its role of enlightenment and creating a multicultural Palestinian society on the campus grounds.

Ramallah where it is located has been ruled by the Palestinian Authority since the early nineties and serves today as the de facto administrative capital of the Palestinian National Authority. Nonetheless it's only too clear what the Birzeit authorities mean by their references to "resistance" and being "a thorn in the side of the occupation".

It's also clear what Tamimi, Hamas' first female jihadist, speaking via a Hamas-mouthpiece Twitter account, means when she refers to the future belong to the students and the almighty being with them and protecting them. She is an advocate for murdering Jews and Israelis. As she has said many times in public, she thinks others should do it too.

When it comes to Ahlam Tamimi, this is no mere polemic. Her audience understands that she is free despite masterminding a massacre. In her customary religion-centric language, she is urging them to do the same, assuring them of the same divine protection that her life exemplifies.

What sort of impact does explicit incitement of the Tamimi kind have on university students?

It's a question that ought to be asked by the various foreign universities that have "international partnership" arrangements with Birzeit. As the list here on the Birzeit website show, they include campuses in Spain, Belgium, Latvia, Malta, Greece, United Kingdom (including Middlesex University,  and the University of Salford), Italy, Norway, Bulgaria, Estonia, Iceland, Ireland, Austria and Germany.

The Arabic version of Birzeit's Wikipedia entry lists under the heading "Students and Graduates" the names of prominent terrorists including Tamimi herself along with Yahya Ayyash, Hamas'  most famous bomb-maker (now deceased) and Marwan Barghouti, serving multiple life sentences for terrorism and murder. (None of them is mentioned in the English-language Wikipedia entry for Birzeit, though it does mention that "Hanan Ashrawi taught literature there".

Jordan is an ally of the United States. A March 2018 "Fact Sheet" issued by the State Department and entitled "U.S. Security Cooperation With Jordan" calls the Hashemite Kingdom

a critical and close partner for the United States in the Middle East with which we share a number of important strategic goals. Jordan has been a staunch U.S. ally in the global effort to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other terrorist groups. Jordan is also a close partner with the United States on a range of diplomatic and security challenges throughout the region, among them the crisis in Syria, combating violent extremism, and advancing Middle East peace. Jordan’s stability and security is a priority for the United States, which has provided assistance to Jordan... 

Then there's also this:

Jordan has treaty obligations to the US and seeks - successfully so far - to avoid them in the specific case of the murderer of Jewish children and Israeli citizens even as it agrees to extradite other Jordanian felons whose victims weren't Jews or Israelis.

And this:

Jordan provides a safe haven for one of the highest-profile individual propagandists for Hamas' brand of Islamist terror currently active.

If Jordan respects its US ally, it ought to be acting very differently and the US ought to be letting the Jordanian regime know what is expected of it. If Tamimi is a test, up until now there can be little doubt the jihadists are ahead.

17-Sep-16: In a Saturday morning Hebron stabbing attack, another assailant is thwarted

Scrutinizing papers at an IDF security checkpoint in
Hebron [Image Source: UPI]

We're seeing a marked increase in Arab-on-Israeli violence in the past two days.

During the just-ended Shabbat, a Palestinian Arab resident of Hebron aged about 25 approached IDF personnel manning the Tamar security checkpoint in the Tel Rumeida quarter, a Jewish neighbourhood of Hebron. Israel National News reports that on being asked to show identification,

he pulled out a knife and began stabbing the soldier... Reportedly, one of the soldiers initially succeeded in subduing the terrorist without killing him, but when the terrorist tried to continue stabbing, he was shot dead.

The injured soldier, who serves in the IDF Nahal Brigade's 50th Battalion, was treated locally by Magen David Adom teams and then taken by ambulance to Jerusalem's Shaarei Zedek Medical Center hospital for emergency treatment.

The Palestinian Arab news service Ma'an in customary fashion reports this as "an alleged stabbing attack". It quotes the knife-man's brother saying the assailant

was headed to work in the morning like every morning, but when he passed near a checkpoint "Israeli soldiers executed him in cold blood." He said that his brother worked at a factory in Hebron and was shot walking the only way that residents of the neighborhood are allowed to enter Hebron's city center. [Ma'an, September 17, 2016]

(We noticed that the same Ma'an report refers to another stabbing attack, this one from last night - Friday - in which it says "15-year-old Muhammad Thalji Kayid Thalji al-Rajabi was also shot and killed in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron’s Old City after reportedly stabbing and lightly injuring an Israeli soldier." The Friday night stabbing attack by yet another weaponized Palestinian Arab child seems not to have gotten much attention in the Israeli media and would have slipped past us but for the Ma'an mention and this brief Times of Israel report.)

Over at Times of Israel, they identify the dead assailant as Hatem Abdel-Hafiz al-Shaloudi. A video captured by a security camera shows him approaching the soldiers at the checkpoint during this morning, presenting a piece of paper which is presumed to be ID:

The moment the soldier accepts the paper and glances down at it, Shaloudi is seen pulling out a knife and lunging at him. The soldier manages to duck away in time, and Shaloudi then turns his attention to another soldier. He chases him with the knife and the two are seen scuffling. The soldier wrestles Shaloudi to the ground as three more troops rush to his aid, weapons drawn. It is not clear exactly when the assailant is shot. At the end of the clip the soldiers are seen moving away from the now motionless Shaloudi as he lies on the ground... Some time after Saturday’s attack security forces surrounded Shaloudi’s Hebron home. There was no word on whether they made any arrests or confiscated materials... [Times of Israel, September 17, 2016]

That surveillance camera video is below:

We're no experts at interpreting scene-of-crime evidence but it's apparent the Arab had mayhem on his mind, and a lethal weapon in his pocket, as he drew near to the Israelis. See for yourselves.

That's not how Dr Hanan Ashrawi sees it. There has been a small flurry of interest following a statement she issued today in the wake of the violent Arab-on-Israeli attacks of Friday and today [see "16-Sep-16: Vehicle ramming attack on Israelis near Kiryat Arba" and "16-Sep-16: Arab-on-Israeli stabber thwarted at one of Jerusalem's Old City gates"]. 

Speaking via Palestine News Network [here], this noted scholar of Medieval and Comparative Literature was, as she always is, sharply critical of Israeli actions. She termed the prompt defensive actions of the Israeli service personnel "extra-judicial killings":

Israel is flagrantly employing a systematic and willful policy of summary executions against the Palestinian people. Such provocative acts are in direct violation of international law and conventions... Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing extremist government are creating a culture of violence, intimidation and lawlessness that is destroying the chances for peace; their volatile actions threaten to plunge the entire region into further instability, extremism and chaos. [Ashrawi via PNN, today]

She wrapped it up with a call to "the international community" to "hold Israel accountable with punitive measures before it is too late".

Oddly she entirely overlooked making any mention of the role played by Arab men and women with concealed knives or driving their vehicles at Israelis standing at bus stops. It's not clear at this stage what the "international community" thinks about the ongoing acts of Arab-on-Israeli terror or the recent uptick in their frequency. What is clear, and has been for a long time, is that Ashrawi - for all her peace-maker pretensions - is a skilled apologist and propagandist for Arab thuggery and the sort of violent, death-cult values that have produced lemming-like waves of badly-educated young Palestinian Arabs, heads filled with bogus visions of glory and heroism.

"Peace-maker" Ashrawi [Image Source]

By way of context: Ashrawi is a veteran PLO insider, a member of the PLO's Executive Committee (which Wikipedia calls "the highest executive body... of the government of the State of Palestine") and which, like the rest of the Fatah/PA inner circle of insiders, continues to conduct itself as if it were an elected leadership while pretending to ignore the reality that Palestinian elections have only happened once in the dozen or so years since the Palestinian Authority was brought into existence under the leadership of her close associate, Yasser Arafat - and that was eleven years ago.

Ashrawi herself is on that PLO Executive Committee because she was not elected but appointed to it in 2009 by the Palestinian National Council which is headquartered in the Kingdom of Jordan.

To the chagrin of ordinary Palestinian Arabs, democracy in their world is, for the most part, whatever the clique of Fatah/PA/PLO insiders declare it to be.

Meanwhile it's been announced tonight [Times of Israel] that the Israel Defence Forces has deployed an additional infantry battalion to Hebron to provide additional protection and to preserve the tense peace in this most historic of Jewish communities.

10-Mar-15: The not-so-moderate Palestinian Authority and the terrorism it enables

The freshly moderate Abbas regime being
sworn in, June 2013. Abbas on the left, Ashrawi in white
[Image Source]

How moderate is Mahmoud Abbas, now well into into the eleventh year of his four year elected term as the PA's president? How moderate is his Palestinian Authority?

People - like us - who have personally experienced the agony of terrorism ripping at the fabric of their lives and familes tend to have a more black-and-white response to those questions than others do. We don't think Abbas or the PA are moderate at all. They are heart-and-soul for terrorism. And for pretending the opposite.

A good indication comes in news like this report from yesterday's Haaretz ["PA holding 50 Islamic militants, fearing terror attack will give election to Likud", March 10, 2015]

Palestinian Authority security services have arrested some 50 members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the West Bank over the last two days, acting out of apparent fear that a terror attack in the coming days would give the Israeli election to Likud... Israeli security sources said the wave of arrests, which took place in towns and villages throughout the West Bank, was ordered by PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Most of those arrested belong to Hamas, but some belong to Islamic Jihad... 

So to be clear about this: if there's a PA clamp-down on terrorists, it's temporary only, and being done for a super-pragmatic reason (i.e. "fear that a terror attack [now] would give the Israeli election to Likud...") and certainly not because they oppose terror attacks on Israelis. The photo below is a reminder of the high regard Abbas and his government have for murdering, unrepentant terrorists.

The arrests naturally cause their terror-addicted Hamas unity government 'partners' to foam and rage. The Jerusalem Post on Sunday quotes one Hamas figure saying the arrests "prove that the Palestinian Authority has no credibility", which makes some sense to us. Another, quoted in Times of Israel the same day, calls the PA's actions "an act of national betrayal" and "a knife in the back of the Palestinian people".

So what should the PA do? Clearly, if their goal is to keep their murdering, marauding, hate-filled terrorists on a national pedestal, then what they ought to be doing happens to be exactly what they are doing.

An Arabic-language news source, Firas, reporting from Ramallah [here] says:

The Ministry of Finance announced on Saturday evening its intention to pay families of martyrs and wounded 100% [of the monthly payments guaranteed under PA pro-terrorism laws] despite the financial hardship being experienced by the PA... Finance Minister Shukri Bishara agreed to the payments... which will be implemented during the next two days. [FPNP, March 7, 2015]

(The PA's foreign-funded program for financially rewarding terrorists is a subject to which we have given a lot of attention here. See for instance "28-Jul-11: Taxpayer-funded salaries to convicted Palestinian Arab terrorists. What a good idea." And "20-May-11: Rewarding the Palestinian Arab terrorists: is this being done in your name?")

A generous and sensitive soul, this Shukri Bishara. Though his government is, in the words of The Economist, "nearly broke", he's proudly and happily continuing to sign cheques for those jihad-reward payments to killers and assorted other terrorists, even advertising them via a press announcement.

But for the schleppers in the bloated ranks of the PA's under-employed civil service, a different class of treatment is on offer:

The Ministry of Financial Affairs (MFA) Wednesday announced that public servants will only receive 60% of their salaries for February... for the third month in a row" [Palestinian News and Info Agency/WAFA, March 4, 2015]

This leaves not much doubt about the PA's priorities. Terrorists, murders of Jewish children, attackers of unarmed Israeli pensioners - these go to the top of the Palestinian pecking order. And despite the economic pain to run-of-the-mill Palestinian Arabs, they stay there.

Bishara is, in some ways, the prototypical face of extremist PA "moderation". This emerges in a recent report featuring him and some previous acts of money-related trickiness and disingenuousness. Prior to becoming the PA's finance minister, he was chief executive of Arab Bank, a Jordan-based commercial giant currently struggling through ground-breaking litigation in a New York federal court. In September 2014, the jury in that case found Arab Bank liable for knowingly supporting terrorism efforts connected to two dozen attacks in the Middle East, the first time a bank has ever been held liable in a civil suit under a broad anti-terrorism statute. 

Bishara, the PA's finance minister today, played a key role in the events examined by the court, as well as in the trial:

[He] admitted that he had cut a check for thousands of dollars to a senior Hamas leader while working for the bank... In one of many instances in the case where Arab Bank's witnesses have sparred with plaintiffs' lawyers, Bishara had originally said the bank wouldn’t have anything to gain by funding terrorists, before admitting that he had cut the check for a man on the US terror blacklist... While being questioned by his own lawyers as a supporting witness, Mr. Bishara presented in much the same manner that Arab Bank Chairman Sabih Al-Masri had: a charming, western-educated finance executive with strong ties to the West whose family was touched by terrorism... Mr. Bishara asserted that banks have a vested interest in peace, not violence... [But] Under cross examination by a counsel for plaintiffs, Mark Werbner, Mr. Bishara’s tone changed from gregarious to acrimonious... The most heated exchange came when Mr. Werbner asserted that Mr. Bishara released funds from a bank account belonging to senior Hamas leader Osama Hamdan... [Jerusalem Post, September 14, 2014]

Life and litigation are, of course, two different things. But it does the heart of a victim much good to see how the expensively-suited Bishara and the smooth-tongued Hanan Ashrawi, both well-regarded in certain Western circles and - in the case of Ashrawi - acclaimed as some sort of activist for peace, were both rejected by two attentive civil juries (Bishara in the Arab Bank litigation last September; Ashrawi in the PLO/PA damages case last month).

Those two juries were called upon to decide who was lying and who ought to be believed. In both cases, press releases and media spin had not much of a role to play, but the facts did. And they spoke loudly and clearly.

25-Feb-15: A step closer to making the PA unable to keep funding its terror addiction

Aftermath of a January 27, 2002 human bomb attack on central Jerusalem's
Jaffa Road, directly across the street from the Sbarro pizzeria,
[Image Source]

Many readers will already know about the major legal victory ["Palestinian Groups Are Found Liable at Manhattan Terror Trial"] achieved on Monday when the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization were found liable by a jury in Federal District Court, Manhattan, for the roles they played in knowingly supporting six terror attacks in the Jerusalem, Israel, area between 2002 and 2004.

A relevant terrorism law provides for the automatic tripling of the $218.5 million damages awarded by the jury. (The plaintiffs’ attorney sought an order of $350 million.) So the defendants are ordered to pay $655.5 million. According to the New York Times report,

In at least two previous cases, in which judges entered default judgments against them for more than $100 million, the groups reached confidential settlements, court records show.

So there's some history of extracting money from them. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that if the Palestinian Arab entities fail to pay, the groups’ assets can be seized in the United States and elsewhere.

This case was filed by the plaintiffs in 2004. A decade is a long time for a case to run its course, but the likelihood is there will be still more delays before the court-ordered damages are collected. To no one's great surprise, the PA have said they will appeal. Mahmoud Khalifa, their deputy minister of information, says the PA are

"confident that we will prevail, as we have faith in the U.S. legal system and are certain about our common sense belief and our strong legal standing. This case is just the latest attempt by hard-line antipeace factions in Israel to use and abuse the U.S. legal system to advance their narrow political and ideological agenda..." [New York Times]

But meanwhile, it's clear that several things of enduring importance have been achieved. In the words of the NYT report: 

While the decision on Monday was a huge victory for the dozens of plaintiffs, it could also serve to strengthen Israel’s claim that the supposedly more moderate Palestinian forces were directly linked to terrorism.

Does the word claim really belong in that last sentence? A jury and a judge sat listening to testimony and evaluating piles of evidence for nearly seven weeks. In the end, they found they had a solid basis for deciding and so they handed down a resounding verdict. The evidence made it impossible to ignore, and the political spinmeisters with their pretentious circumlocutions ("violent extremism" is an egregious example) are not allowed into the court.

The plaintiffs are 10 families, about three dozen people. Eight individual plaintiffs had been physically injured in the attacks; many of the others were "left with deep psychological scars, testimony showed" (NYT). In all, the terror attacks that underpin the case took the lives of 33 people and left more than 450 injured.

The law under which the action was brought - the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows cases dealing with international terrorism to be heard in United States courts - requires that the injured and dead must be Americans. The number of plaintiffs would have been far larger otherwise.

The usually taciturn Mahmoud Abbas comes perilously
close to smiling as he and freshly released life-term
murdering terrorists strut and high-five in a Ramallah
victory parade, August 13, 2013 [Image Source]

We are struck by the high-sounding words of that information ministry politician. When he blames the bad outcome (all bad outcomes have to be blamed on someone else, according to the Palestinian Arab playbook) on "hard-line antipeace factions in Israel", was he deaf to the blood-curdling shrieks of joy, jubilation and triumph from his side (presumably he would call them the pro-peace side) cheering the undeserved freedom of convicted and unrepentant murderers during three rounds of US State Department-inspired prisoner releases of Palestinian Arabs from Israeli prisons in 2013-2014?

Those scenes - like the one depicted in the photo on the right - are indelibly engraved in our memory. We expressed the despair of seeing and hearing it happen in several posts like, for instance, "25-Aug-13: Wake up call for those who thought the terrorists are walking free for peace", written after we witnessed the murderers of unarmed Jews

placed on pedestals and given lavish foreign-funded pensions for life... Abbas, who ought to be believed on such things, says this has nothing to do with making peace.

PLO's Ashrawi in Ramallah yesterday: “We cannot pay.
We do not have this money... the Authority is fighting
for its survival. If it collapses, there will be consequences for
the entire world.” [Image Source]

We take some small comfort in the knowledge that Hanan Ashrawi, a smooth-talking, long-term member of the PLO executive committee who testified for the defense in the late stages of the trial, told the jury "We tried to prevent violence from all sides" and was clearly disbelieved.

In fact, as the NY Times account reports,

the plaintiffs showed that many of those involved in the planning and carrying out of the attacks had been employees of the Palestinian Authority, and that the authority had paid salaries to terrorists imprisoned in Israel and had made martyr payments to the families of suicide bombers [New York Times]

and certainly still do today, they might have added.

How much does that cost? Back in 2011, Palestinian Media Watch presented data to US Congressional lawmakers showing the monthly PA outlay on salaries to convicted and imprisoned terrorists came to more than $5 million per month. Assume it has not shrunk since then, and we are talking of about $65 million per year at least. Now terminate that illegal and immoral policy immediately and the PA will have been able to set aside enough in the next decade to satisfy its liability under the verdict. (But holding breaths would probably be a mistake.)

The day their financial condition renders them unable to keep making those payments (may it come soon!) will be one of celebration for those Palestinian Arabs who understand the corrosive effect on their lives of the Arafat/Abbas/Hamas circles' addiction to terror.

12-Feb-15: It's Red Hand Day. Do you know where the children are?

We first mentioned Red Hand Day here two years ago ["24-Jan-13: Sacrificing the lives of an entire generation of adolescents..."] which is marked on February 12 of each year. That's of course today's date. It's a day that serves as an occasion to encourage political leaders to be aware of the fate of children forced to serve as soldiers in wars and armed conflicts. Wikipedia says 

The aim of Red Hand Day is to call for action against this practice, and support for children who are affected by it. Children have been used repeatedly as soldiers in recent years including armed conflicts... A number of international organizations are active against the use of children as soldiers. These organizations include, for example, the United Nations Child Fund (UNICEF), Amnesty International, Terre des Hommes or the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

As memorable events go, Red Hand Day isn't, frankly. It's hugely overshadowed by commemorations that have a stronger following at this time of year: Valentines Day, for instance, which has the enthusiastic backing of shop-keepers and gift manufacturers. There isn't much enthusiastic backing from the people whose mandate ought to include generating awareness of Red Hand Day, and in particular the egregious ways its message is trampled in Gaza and in the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, 

An iconic message of the 60's and 70's
[Image Source]

Just two days ago, we wrote ["10-Feb-15: The Islamists of Gaza: Yet again preparing children to kill and be killed"] about how cynical (and lethal) abuse of Arab children has become an open secret that is carefully ignored by some of the world's most important, best-funded child-welfare organizations. We're still waiting to hear them address the awful things done in broad daylight to Gazan Palestinian Arab children by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and their fellow Islamists. We have learned not to expect much.

In a post ["27-Mar-08: Palestinian infanticide"] here by Frimet Roth nearly seven years ago, we quoted a speech broadcast on the Hamas Al Aqsa television channel that MEMRI had translated into English, under the title "We Used Women and Children as Human Shields". In it, a Hamas spokesman boasts that 

"death has become an industry at which women excel and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this and so do the mujahideen and the children... This is why they [the Palestinian people] have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly and the mujahideen..."

Anyone familiar with the tragic realities of Gaza knows how right he is.

Frimet then recalled how Dr Hanan Ashrawi had appeared on the CBS "Sixty Minutes" program back in October 2000 [transcript here], injecting heat, but not so much light, into an interview with the show's Bob Simon (who incidentally died in tragic circumstances this morning in New York City):

"To me this is the essence, the epitome, of racism... They're telling us we are – we have no feelings for our children? We're not parents? We're not mothers or fathers? This is just incredible." 

The photo is from a decade ago (here's one source).
Where is this Palestinian Arab child now? 
What sort of life has he been living?

As Frimet wrote in that 2008 post: Indeed it is. But we in the Middle East learned long ago that reality can be incredible.

Many Americans will know that certain television channels down through the sixties, seventies and even today, broadcast a public service announcement late at night (it's described here), intended as a reminder to parents to worry about the younger generation. Times change, children are now agents of death in large parts of the world, and it's right (as Red Hand Day today reminds us) to think about what the despots and fanatics in charge of various jihad-addicted parts of the world, including the cities where many of us live, have done: 

Do we know where their children are? And what they are being taught to do? And if we do, why is so little being done about it? 

For the letter-writers among our readers, please consider sending this along to UNICEF, Defence for Children International, UNESCO, Child Rights International Network, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Washington-based Jerusalem Fund, Save the Children, Arab Council for Childhood Development and others in the thriving children's rights industry. 

24-Nov-14: What it takes to be a real man in a society of sociopaths

Courtesy IDF Blog [here]

Fathi Hamad, once the Hamas minister of the interior and a man who has a way with words - ugly words, conveying violent hatred, often directed at putting the lives of children at risk - got a mention in a post we published here earlier today, and not for the first time: click here for other Hamad appearances in our blog.

Just this afternoon, by coincidence, someone over at the IDF Spokesperson's Office gave Hamad the ultimate accolade: a poster of his own, and a quote that reminds people of what a man's man this man is. 

Ah, but this Hamad is so much more than just a pretty face. 

Six years ago, Frimet Roth quoted him in a post ["27-Mar-08: Palestinian infanticide"] on our blog that got a fair amount of attention because of the way Hamad's rant completely upended some outrageously dishonest statements famously made some years earlier by Hanan Ashrawi, the long-time apologist for the now-deceased, corrupt despot, Yasser Arafat. 

Frimet quoted a Hamad speech delivered on February 29, 2008 that had been broadcast on the Hamas Al Aqsa television channel, reaching an exclusively Arabic-speaking audience, unfortunately. MEMRI fixed that; they translated it to English, under the title "We Used Women and Children as Human Shields" and put it where the world could see and pay attention:

"For the Palestinian people", Hamad boasts in Arabic, "death has become an industry at which women excel and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this and so do the mujahideen and the children... This is why they [the Palestinian people] have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine."

Frimet recalled how Ashrawi had appeared on the CBS "Sixty Minutes" program back in October 2000 [transcript here], injecting heat but not so much light into an interview with the show's Bob Simon:

"To me this is the essence, the epitome, of racism... They're telling us we are – we have no feelings for our children? We're not parents? We're not mothers or fathers? This is just incredible." 

As Frimet wrote in that 2008 post: Indeed it is. But we in the Middle East learned long ago that reality can be incredible.

02-Nov-14: Understanding what they really mean when the terrorists say children are their main concern

Palestinian Arab child photographed at Hamas "victory" event
in Nablus, August 29, 2014 [Image Source: AP]

Universal Children's Day takes place on November 20, less than three weeks from today. 

The annual event was initiated by the UN General Assembly in 1954 as a way of encouraging states to "to promote mutual exchange and understanding among children" and similar blah blah. But also "to initiate action to benefit and promote the welfare of the world's children" which is a worthy and concrete goal.

Even the most cursory look at things that are done to children in many parts of the world serves to persuade of the need to take their welfare very seriously. Think of the millions of children cheated of education and forced into child labour, slavery, prostitution and pornography. And then there's the recruitment and training of child soldiers, a matter that has occupied us here on this blog often. 

The UN adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child on November 20, 1958 and then the Convention on the Rights of the Child exactly 31 years later, on November 20, 1989. That convention is going to be 25 years old later this month. Pretty soon now the formalities, the issue of new postage stamps and theme posters and similar actions by civil servants are going to render the occasion even more meaningless than it probably is already. So allow us please to share a handful of observations about children in the Palestinian Arab world.

First some notes from a brief analysis triggered by the wave of violence that is currently on view here in Jerusalem from where we produce this blog. The Israeli Arab journalist and analyst, Khaled Abu Toameh ["Palestinians:Stop the Children's Intifada!", October 29, 2014] writes:

Nearly half of the Palestinians arrested by Jerusalem Police over the past few months are minors. Some of them are as young as nine. These children are being sent to throw stones and firebombs, and launch fireworks at policemen and IDF soldiers, as well as at Israeli civilians and vehicles, including buses and the light rail in Jerusalem. Hamas, Fatah and other Palestinian groups are using children from east Jerusalem and the West Bank in what appears to be a new intifada against Israel... The exploitation of children in the fight against Israel has attracted little attention from the international community and media. Human rights groups and United Nations institutions have chosen to turn a blind eye to these human rights abuses. Instead of condemning those who exploit the children and dispatch them to confront policemen and soldiers, these groups and institutions are busy denouncing Israel for targeting minors.

Pre-teen Pal Arab girl poses at Nablus "victory" rally
organized by Hamas, August 30, 2014 [Image Source]

He says most of the children detained by police for involvement in the violence are released to house arrest. Those aged between nine and 13 are referred to social welfare authorities and not detained. More quotes from Abu Toameh:

• Hamas and Fatah had long discovered that children are one of the most effective tools in the fight against Israel - especially because of the damage Israel sustains in the court of international public opinion.
• This strategy works out well for Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Fatah. At the end of the day, they can always blame Israel for "deliberately" targeting Palestinian children and women -- an allegation that the mainstream media in the West often endorses without asking questions.
• Moreover, the Palestinian groups know that the children who are being sent to confront Israeli soldiers and policemen will not be held accountable...
• These children are victims of a campaign of indoctrination and incitement that is being waged by various Palestinian groups... through the media, mosques, educational institutions and the fiery rhetoric of leaders and activists...
• There are also reports that Fatah and Hamas activists in Jerusalem have been paying children small sums of money to throw stones and firebombs at Israelis and block roads in several Arab neighborhoods... Palestinian groups often reward the families of the children by hiring lawyers and paying fines imposed on them by Israeli courts. As a result, the families are less motivated to stop their children from risking their lives... 
• The time has come for the international community and media to pay attention to their disturbing conduct and demand that Palestinian groups stop hiding behind children... The adult activists who send and encourage children to take part in violence should be held accountable, not only by Israeli authorities, but also by their own people and international human rights organizations. If these adults want an intifada, they should be the first to go out and confront Israeli policemen and soldiers.

Life Magazine, June 12, 1970

We mentioned above that the recruitment and training of child soldiers into the Palestinian terrorism machine is a matter that has occupied us often here on this blog over the years. Here are some links to past posts to bookmark and read when you can:

• 03-Jul-06: Marketing Suicide to Children
• 13-Aug-06: People Who Love Death... and What This Means for the Rest of Us
• 27-Mar-08: Palestinian infanticide
• 09-Jan-13: Yet another reminder why war against terrorists is different from conventional warfare (includes some revealing insights into the damaging role played by Dr Hanan Ashrawi in deflecting much-needed criticism of Palestinian Arab society's treatment of its children)
• 24-Jan-13: Sacrificing the lives of an entire generation of adolescents on their altar of hatred, the thugs of Hamas boast of plans to create a children's army
• 27-Jan-13: Hamas' new army of children: Will the UN's and foreign funders' role in this scandal be critiqued by the news-reporting media?
• 29-Apr-13: Hamas demonstrates importance of solid education
• 04-May-13: So you thought the people who raise children to become "the fertilizer of their land" could sink no further?
• 18-Jun-13: They want their children to become killers and they say why. The rest of us are left with questions
• 15-Jan-14: When a society praises itself for turning its children into human bombs, whose problem is that?
• 27-Jan-14: In Gaza, a death cult celebrates its graduating class
• 21-Jul-14: War, civilians, children: what the terrorists of Hamas can teach us
• 30-Jul-14: The ordinariness of utter evil (includes one of the most chilling video interviews we have ever seen - a Palestinian Arab mother speaks from the hospital room where her child's life is being saved by Israeli doctors, and tells of her deepest hopes)
• 08-Oct-14: Children, innocence, rhetoric and savagery

Not for the first time, we are left to wonder aloud why UNICEF, Save the Children, Amnesty, Terre des Hommes, International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and so many other well-funded, high-profile public interest organizations are taking so little interest in this unfolding tragedy. It's happening right under their noses. And, as the famous cover (above right) from LIFE magazine, published more than 40 years ago reminds, they can hardly claim this is some sort of new phenomenon.

08-Oct-14: Children, innocence, rhetoric and savagery

Children undergoing Hamas indoctrination and training
for jihad [Image Source]

Finding yourself in a war waged against a regular society by terrorists is, more and more, something that people who never saw it coming find they have to learn to comprehend and live with. 

If only the news-reporting media helped us all make sense of it - but the reality is the people who package and deliver the news are often not well-equipped themselves to analyze and interpret it for the rest of us.

More than six years ago, in the pages of FrontPageMagazine, Frimet Roth wrote a critical expose of where the Palestinian Arab people's political leaders stand on the subject of the murder of children - their own and ours. Along the way, she quotes a leading Palestinian Arab political insider, Hanan Daoud Khalil Ashrawi, whose ability to make well-articulated statements totally at odds with reality has served her career well. It's arguable, we think, that Ashrawi gets credit for bringing certain Western audiences to a degree of ambivalence and even understanding of terrorist savagery via the rhetoric of peace-making. That's no small achievement.

The cynical manipulation of children's lives by Hamas, Fatah and the other terror practitioners in the Palestinian Arab constellation has, tragically, continued and expanded in the years since then. By now, that reality has become well-documented and its methodology and consequences (to those who want to see) clear. 

Growing numbers of voices inside the Palestinian Arab death cult have ceased denying it. On the contrary, it's a source of pride for them:

• Children as human shields ["21-Jul-14: War, civilians, children: what the terrorists of Hamas can teach us"]
• Children raised to rejoice in the abductions and killings of the other side's children [here]. 
• Children as fodder for a death-cult machine that shapes them into jihadists and spits them out to do savagery and barbarism ["27-Jan-14: In Gaza, a death cult celebrates its graduating class"; "15-Jan-14: When a society praises itself for turning its children into human bombs, whose problem is that?"; "18-Jun-13: They want their children to become killers and they say why. The rest of us are left with questions"; "4-May-13: So you thought the people who raise children to become "the fertilizer of their land" could sink no further?"; "29-Apr-13: Hamas demonstrates importance of solid education"; "27-Jan-13: Hamas' new army of children: Will the UN's and foreign funders' role in this scandal be critiqued by the news-reporting media?"] 

It's a depressingly long list of child-centric "accomplishments, and all from the past year and a half. Here's the warning Frimet Roth sounded six years ago.

Palestinian Infanticide    
Frimet Roth | FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, March 27, 2008 | The welfare of Palestinian children has always stood at the center of the Middle East conflict. Whether in debates, in photographs or in casualty figures, they are the substance of the local news. 

In the early days of the Second Intifada, Israeli Brigadier General Benjamin Gantz (now Israel's military attache in the US) appeared on the popular American television program, Sixty Minutes, hosted by Bob Simon, in a segment entitled "To Be Continued..."

Predictably, the discussion turned to Palestinian children. With candor and prescience rarely encountered nowadays, Gantz tackled the issue head on. He asserted that Palestinians often deliberately place their children at the front lines of the clashes where they are killed, adding: "When they are sending their kids forward and they are firing at us and then the kids are in the killing zone so unfortunately, really unfortunately, those things happen."

Simon seemed aghast and asked: "Do you really think that the Palestinians are actually pushing their kids to the front line?"

Gantz affirmed this. Simon, incredulous, pressed on: "With the objective of creating casualties?"

Gantz did not budge: "That's right, sir. I'm sure that they are trying to get the world to see that Israel is a terrible, cruel people and cruel army and that's really what they want to do."

By now, Simon seemed apoplectic: "Is this something that you can really imagine? That there are people who would do that, who would get their, their kids killed or wounded to make good television?"

When Gantz said yes, Simon concluded: "In other words, the Palestinians are really different from Israelis in that respect?"

Gantz: "Unfortunately."

For those mired in this awful ongoing war, his words could not ring truer.

To us, it is obvious that people who not only allow their children to chill out beside missile launchers, but who actually send them to die fighting, are not loving. In fact they do not fit any definition of "parent" that we can find.

People in the West may find this difficult to digest. Such conduct is considered child abuse in their societies. It is aberrant, criminal and punishable.

Moreover, they hear the incessant harangue of Palestinian spokesmen insisting they love and protect their children just the way Western parents do theirs. No Israeli army officer, not even Gantz, is going to convince them otherwise.

But perhaps Hamas MP, Fathi Hammad, could do the job. A speech he gave on February 29, 2008 and broadcast on the Al Aqsa television channel, is currently circulating on the Internet with English subtitles (see "We Used Women and Children as Human Shields"). It is compelling footage.

"For the Palestinian people", Hammad boasts in Arabic, "death has become an industry at which women excel and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this and so do the mujahideen and the children."

Hammad then confirms everything that Bob Simon found inconceivable:

"This is why they [the Palestinian people] have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine."

Ashrawi and former colleague [Image Source: BBC 1998]

The Palestinians are careful to only utter these truths in Arabic and amongst themselves. Such revelations are never intended for wider consumption. Non-Muslims are only exposed to hand-picked, English speaking, articulate representatives, such as Dr. Hanan Ashrawi.

She was entrusted with the rebuttal of Gantz' allegations that day on Sixty Minutes, and did so with aplomb.

"To me this is the essence, the epitome, of racism", she railed indignantly. "They're telling us we are – we have no feelings for our children? We're not parents? We're not mothers or fathers? This is just incredible."

Indeed it is. But we in the Middle East learned long ago that reality can be incredible. The staging of 12 year old Mohammed Al-Durah's shooting in October 2000, which at first seemed ridiculously far-fetched has been almost definitively proven true.

That segment of 60 Minutes was entitled "To Be Continued..." because that was the caption on posters distributed across the Arab world depicting the final moments in the life of the allegedly slain 12-year old Al-Durah.

Hammad's speech demonstrates that Al-Durah was but one of many children sacrificed on the alter of the Second and extant Intifada by their own people.

It is high time that the West accepts that its attitudes toward parenting are not universal. Child sacrifices are still exalted in certain cultures today just as they were in ancient times. 

Haddad summed it up thus: "It's as if [we] were saying to the Zionist enemy: We desire death like you desire life."

I wonder how Dr. Ashrawi would respond to her comrade Haddad. After all, on 60 Minutes, she balked at being forced to "sink to the level of... proving I'm human." and noted that "Even animals have feelings for their children."

Both she and Haddad were spot on. We Israelis do desire life, but more than anything, we desire our children's lives. We live for our children and we grieve interminably when they are murdered. 

And, yes, Dr. Ashrawi, animals do have more feelings for their children than the people who use their children as weapons do.

[This article has been kindly translated into Polish by Malgorzata Koraszewska, and appears at www.listyznaszegosadu.pl/brunatna-fala/dzieci-niewinnosc-retoryka-i-barbarzynstwo]