29-Jan-18: Freeing unrepentant terrorists and the horrors it has brought

New York Times, October 18, 2011

We haven't been shy about expressing the deeply negative feelings we have for the catastrophic 2011 Shalit Deal and for the decision-making and consultation with members of the community of victims of terror (of which there was none) that led Israel's government to enter into it.

Before the October 2011 mass release, we said this:

“This deal is a disaster,” he [Arnold Roth] said of the exchange for the Israeli soldier, Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit, as he sat with his wife, Frimet, on the balcony of their Jerusalem apartment. “Some of these people will go back to murdering. They pose an existential threat to all of us” ... “This is not a political issue for us,” he said. “I am not some raving right-winger. We too share the joy of the Shalit family. But the victims are being marginalized. We object on principle. We see ourselves as agents of the children who will be killed by the graduates of this release.” ["In Israel, Swap Touches Old Wounds", Ethan Broner in the New York Times, October 14, 2011]

and

"...She's got a life [referring to Ahlam Tamimi, mastermind of the Sbarro massacre] that's being handed back to her as a result of this transaction... Many hundreds of convicted murderers are going to be released for no other reason that the Government of Israel saw no alternative. Obviously, everyone in this country is delighted if this is going to produce a healthy and well Gilad Shalit, but that's not the whole deal - and the parts of the deal that involve allowing terrorists back on the streets are a recipe for a terrible outcome." [Arnold Roth interviewed on Lateline/Australia's ABC, October 13, 2011]

and

"With today’s decision to free the terrorists, prime minister Netanyahu, a savvy politician to the core, conveys to us his disdain for the lives of ordinary citizens like my Malki; his disrespect for Israel's justice system; and his lack of regard for the soldiers who faced death in order to apprehend the terrorists about to be freed. Which rational soldier or police officer is going risk his life in the future to defend us from the monsters like Tamimi, sworn to murder still more Jews? The prime minister is quoted this morning saying that his "heart goes out" to Israel’s many terror victims. His actions and those of his cabinet suggest otherwise. How can they sleep at night, knowing the peril they have brought onto their people?" [Frimet Roth - "A mother's statement", October 14, 2011]

and

[The] murderer of our daughter and of 14 other people, the majority of them women and children, is on the release list as we feared for years she would be... Has our government taken into account what the release means to families like us, and we are in the thousands, who have suffered the worst possible loss and now see the perpetrators dancing and prancing in the arms of their supporters? Everyone wants Gilad Shalit home, safe and well. If we were his parents, we might have done what the Shalits did. But this is not the same as deciding, as prime minister or as the cabinet, what is good for the country, for the people of Israel. The jubilation emanating from the two Palestinian Arab governments tonight, the Hamas and the Abu Mazen regimes, should make clear to Israel's friends everywhere that something dreadful has happened tonight. We may come to bitterly regret this transaction for years to come... [From Frimet and Arnold Roth's statement to an Australian newspaper, October 12, 2011]

and many dozens of similar public statements, interviews and op eds.

Nadav Shragai, a respected veteran of Israel's brand-name media, and for years a correspondent at Haaretz, has a lengthy analytical article in the English edition (which is published online only) of the high-circulation Yisrael Hayom daily. (Amos Schocken, the publisher of Haaretz, is quoted on Wikpedia saying that Shragai was a journalist with clear opinions with which he largely disagreed, but "his opinions never influenced his news reporting, which was always professional".) Datelined January 26, 2018, it's entitled "Warning – abductions planned". Not surprisingly to anyone paying attention to terrorist attacks on Israelis these past six years and in light of what he writes, our statements were painfully accurate.

In our words, some of Shragai's revelations (direct quotes from his article are in italics):

• No fewer than 420 of the 1,027 let loose in the Shalit Deal are again engaged in the satanic work of doing more terror. 210 of the 1,027 have already been re-arrested by the IDF. Some 100 are currently back in the Israeli prison system.
• "Terrorists freed in the Schalit deal have directly or indirectly been involved in the murder of seven Israelis, including the three teens abducted in Gush Etzion in June 2014, as well as Rabbi Michael Mark and Baruch Mizrahi."
• Shragai, referring to reports from the Palestinian Authority, says Shalit Deal releasees are currently "working to carry out attacks in various parts of the West Bank and their main goal is another abduction of an Israeli". 
• The Gaza operations of Hamas are now led by graduates of the Shalit Deal who are keeping Gaza relatively quiet while they "rebuild themselves [and] hatching plans for terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria, all while continuing to shake up the regime of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas." 
• One of those is Yahya Sinwar of whom we wrote recently ["13-Feb-17: Another Shalit Deal milestone: Four terms of life imprisonment but this murdering jihadist now heads Hamas in Gaza"]. He is aided by Tawfiq Abu Naim [we mentioned him in 2012] and Zuhair Jabarin, another Shalit Deal graduate. Sinwar, while serving a term of four life sentences for planning terrorist attacks and before being freed by Israel, was involved in planning the lethal kidnapping of a young IDF service man, Nahshon Waxman.
• In the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, Shalit Deal beneficiaries play a major terrorist role as well. A Jordanian with close ties to Iran, Maher Obeid was put in charge of Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks in the West Bank in late-2017 [see this Ynet backgrounder] after Saleh al-Arouri, who was freed prior to the Shalit Deal, was promoted in October 2017 to become the deputy head of Hamas. 
• al-Arouri has been the focus of several of our posts. One of the founders of Hamas, he is a veteran of Israel's prison system where he spent 15 (some say 18) years. On release in 2007, he was expelled to Syria. Hamas' offices in Syria were shut down in 2012, at which point he and several terrorist colleagues were welcomed to Turkey. He appears in several of ours posts: "22-Dec-15: Has a Hamas terror insider just been thrown out of Turkey?"; "11-Dec-15: The price of the Shalit Deal and the countries that help it keep rising"; "27-Nov-14: Hamas terrorist ring is busted; Israel says the handlers operate from Turkey; Qatar is involved"; "30-Sep-14: Martyrs and monsters"; "11-Sep-14: Freeing terrorists: The price in human lives lost and in justice perverted keeps getting clearer".
• Three Shalit Deal graduates now report directly to Obeid: Abdel Rahman Ranimat (also written as Abed a-Rahman Ghaminat) [a central figure in this post of ours: "11-Sep-14: Freeing terrorists: The price in human lives lost and in justice perverted keeps getting clearer"] is in charge of the Bethlehem, Hebron and Jericho regions. Abdullah Arar [profiled in "01-Jan-18: Another reason we call it the catastrophic Shalit Deal"] controls Jerusalem and Ramallah. Forsan Khalifa runs what we call Samaria, the northern part of the West Bank.
• Dozens of terrorist attacks, including many that were thwarted, over the past year were initiated by this leadership and by other Shalit Deal releasees.
• They have also been instrumental in so-called smaller Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks in which firebombs (otherwise known as Molotov Cocktails) were the weapons of choice rather than guns, rifles, knives and vehicle rammings. These have risen greatly in number over the past few weeks: 84 in November 2017, but then 249 in December 2017. Shragai notes that another Shalit Deal releasee was the driver of the wave of such attacks in the area of Dura until he was sent back to prison.

Other prominent Shalit Deal releasees mentioned in the Yisrael Hayom article because of their revived active terrorism roles:

• Hussam Badaran who "oversaw an attempt by Hamas operatives from Hebron to commit terrorist kidnappings of Israeli civilians or soldiers". We have much more to say about this terrorist: see "13-Jun-13: Little-known sides to the post-Shalit careers of unjustly released killers"
• Hashem Abdel Kader Ibrahim Hijaz "tried to launch terrorist abductions near Ramallah, using a local Hamas operative." 
• Mazen Fuqaha, another leader of Hamas' West Bank command who was killed in Gaza in March 2017, also devoted his energy to preparing a massive abduction. Fuqha was responsible for the suicide bus bombing at the Meron junction in 2002 that killed nine people. Sentenced to nine terms of life imprisonment, he served only nine years before being freed in the Shalit Deal.
• "The Hamas cell that planned a series of terrorist attacks to be launched at the train station in Binyamina, the central synagogue in Zikhron Yaakov and the bus station in Wadi Ara, was also planning a kidnapping. The cell, which consisted of two residents of the village of Bani Naim near Hebron and an Israeli Arab from Wadi Ara, was funded by a group of terrorists freed in the Schalit deal. They kept in touch via Facebook."
• Ruhi Mushtaha "another senior figure in Hamas who is close to Sinwar, had been assigned seven life sentences for his involvement in the Waxman abduction, was also released in the Schalit deal. Mushtaha was involved in assembling the list of prisoners Hamas wanted to be released. Since Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, he has also been in charge of the Hamas prisoners portfolio."
• Mohammad al-Sharatha, "a member of the terrorist cell that kidnapped and murdered IDF soldiers Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon in two separate abductions in 1989."

All of them, back in the same lethal business that long prison sentences ought by rights, and by reason of justice, to have terminated.

Image Source: FBI

Shragai doesn't mention her but Ahlam Tamimi deserves a place in the gallery of monsters. 

We have written frequently about her; she's our child's unrepentant murderer. The Shalit Deal enabled her to walk free, return to Jordan where she was born and where most of her family lives, to marry in a widely-watched celebration - to another Shalit Deal murderer/releasee, to start a family, to host her own TV show and present it to a global audience for nearly five years, to become a celebrity guest at guilds, colleges, schools and universities in several Arab countries and especially in Jordan, and to be a media-smart spokesperson for the deeply bigoted jihadist mission personified by Hamas.

The strikingly undeserved peace and quiet she has found in Jordan despite (full credit to the Hashemite regime and its ruler - "26-Jul-17: We listened carefully to Jordan's foreign minister and we have 10 questions") being on the run from the FBI is one of the many reasons we hold, and will continue to express, strongly critical opinions about the process that handed her freedom back to her and to many hundreds of additional loathsome murderers.

11-Dec-15: The price of the Shalit Deal and the countries that help it keep rising

Mutual admiration society: Hamas' Haniye, Turkey's Erdogan
[Image Source]

It was always clear that the release of 1,027 convicted and imprisoned Arab terrorists from Israeli jails in the ill-conceived Shalit Deal would lead to, and has in fact caused, the deaths of numerous innocent Israeli victims.

What is less clear even now is the enabling role provided by certain countries in empowering a cohort of Shalit Deal graduates to emerge as key figures in a campaign of anti-Israel terrorism by remote control. The note below focuses on just four: Turkey, Qatar, Jordan and Malaysia.

A small flurry of media attention in the past day indicates that the worst of the deadly consequences of the 2011 Shalit Deal are still ahead:

Palestinian prisoners released and deported to Gaza, Turkey, and Qatar as part of the Shalit deal are organizing their own terrorist cells in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, according to a report on Thursday. The deported prisoners, who are members of Hamas’ military wing, are providing guidance and funds to these cells, Hamas sources told Ynet...  The operation is being run by senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri, who is based in Turkey... The exiled Hamas members also have created their own cells in the West Bank to incite, protest and clash with Israeli security forces... The sources said, according to the report, that the Hamas leadership in Gaza is pushing for suicide bomb attacks to be carried out in the West Bank and east Jerusalem...  Israeli officials are convinced that Hamas will make every effort to execute a large-scale attack by using whatever means are available to its men in the field. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior figure in Hamas' political bureau, told an Islamist-affiliated web site in Gaza in October that he was hopeful the current violence would escalate into "an armed intifada." ["Freed Hamas prisoners from Schalit deal forming independent terror cells, says report", Jerusalem Post, December 10, 2015]

Al-Zahar, Hamas foreign minister [Image Source: Reuters]

(We would add that Mahmoud al-Zahar, mentioned above, is more than just a senior Hamas figure. He's usually identified as Hamas' foreign minister in the media. Not being part of Hamas' armed "wing" doesn't prevent him from saying he is hopeful the violence now happening here daily will evolve into "an armed intifada".)

Quoted in the little-noticed Jerusalem Post article, the Ynet report written by Elior Levy, describes a shadow organization, largely independent of both Fatah and Hamas and with an intense focus on doing terror. Members of its leadership, taking advantage of the unjustified freedom handed to them via the government of Israel and the extortion made possible by the Shalit transaction

are using the connections they made in the villages and cities of the West Bank and East Jerusalem before they were arrested. They each operate separately, working with a contact in the territories, each in a different area. The expelled prisoners provide their contacts in the territories with funding and guidance, while the contacts form the cells. The fact the communication between the expelled prisoners and their contact in the West Bank is done directly makes these military cells decentralized and compartmentalized. These operations are led and financed by the head of the Hamas military wing's West Bank Division, Saleh al-Arouri, who is located in Turkey... According to the Hamas source, an escalation of the situation in the West Bank will provide the terror organization with a way out of the crisis it faces in the Gaza Strip. [Ynet, December 10, 2015] 

This emerging branch of Palestinian Arab terror has been evident for some time. The existence of an amorphous terror structure operating from Judea and Samaria and led by released Palestinian Arab prisoners was documented this past summer in a monograph [here] published by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, directed by Dr. Reuven Erlich (it's often called ITIC). The report focuses on three men, all sentenced by Israeli courts to long prison terms for terror, all freed and all currently engaged in plotting fresh murders from the safety of other countries. Two were released in the Shalit Deal; the third was released from prison in 2010 and took an active, perhaps key, role in the Shalit negotiations.

• Turkey-based Saleh Mohammed Suleiman Al-Arouri is a founder of Hamas' so-called military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. He spent 18 years behind Israeli bars until being freed in the year before the Shalit Deal. He was then deported to Jordan, moving on from there to Syria from where he had a hand in the Shalit negotiations. When Hamas abandoned Damascus, he moved on to Turkey. He's based there now as the person in charge of Hamas terrorist operations in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. He's also a member of the Hamas political bureau. He claimed credit in a public speech last year [here] for the June 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens. (Hamas' strategy of having ostensibly separate political and military "wings" aims to shield its terror-spouting leaders from from responsibility for Hamas terrorism - a shabby form of plausible deniability that confers fig-leaf protection for reporters and politicians seeking a cost-free engagement with the blood-lusting Islamist terrorists.) 
• Hussam Atef Badran, released in the Shalit Deal, living and operating freely in Qatar from where he often appears in global news media as Hamas spokesman. An Islamist terror insider, he has responsibilities in the fields of terrorist network management and recruitment in Judea and Samaria. ITIC says he also spends terror-related time in Turkey.
• Ahmed al-Najjar, convicted for the terror-related shooting murders of six Israelis, was also released in the 2011 Shalit Deal. He holds US citizenship, according to ITIC quoting an Arabic-language report from March 19, 2011 on the amin.org site, shortly before being let loose. Deported to the Gaza Strip, he moved on to Jordan from where he oversees terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria. The murder of Malachi Rosenfeld in July 2015 ["19-Aug-15: The road to Malachi's death and the decisions that made it possible"] is one of them. 

Hussam Badran, Hamas's Qatar-based spokesman, appearing on
Turkey's TRT television, June 2014 [Image Source]

Many of our readers live in countries that have ongoing diplomatic and friendly ties with the states that host these terrorists and their operations. ITIC describes how those states play an invaluable role in anti-Israel terror:

Communication between the handlers and the operatives in Judea and Samaria is mainly by phone or via the Internet. Money transfers are performed by utilizing people who hold an entry permit into Israel (for example, for medical treatment) and the Palestinian Authority. In some cases, meetings are held outside Judea and Samaria by means of a courier who goes abroad. In the ITIC’s assessment, Turkey and Jordan are the two countries of choice for these meetings. This is due to their geographical proximity to Judea and Samaria and the relative ease with which one can create a suitable cover story in order to travel to them. [ITIC Report, August 4, 2015 - page 7]

Turkey also provides a congenial setting for field training of freshly-recruited terrorists

Saleh al-Arouri and additional operatives at the military headquarters in Turkey are also engaged in training operatives recruited by Hamas. Some of the terrorist operatives exposed in Judea and Samaria in August and September 2014 had received training in Turkey on planning military operations and methods for carrying out attacks against targets in Israeli territory, in Judea and Samaria, and abroad. After completing their military training, the recruits were given various tasks and assigned to squads by senior Hamas officials in Turkey... [ITIC Report, August 4, 2015 - page 11]

We noted in a blog post a year ago ["27-Nov-14: Hamas terrorist ring is busted; Israel says the handlers operate from Turkey; Qatar is involved"] that several bloody attacks - along with even more that were thwarted thanks to good Israeli intelligence - would probably have been labeled "lone wolf" terrorism if not for the now-exposed role, mostly ignored outside Israel, of these terror manipulators working unhindered from Jordan, Qatar and Turkey.

And before anyone makes holiday plans for Turkey in particular, here's a reminder of some thoughts we shared here some months ago? ["25-Feb-15: Talking Turkey on terror"]

ITIC has collected evidence that Malaysia provides the Hamas terrorists with covert support (though Malaysian sources deny this), partly based on things the Shin Bet has said. Wasim Qawasmeh, a resident of Hebron and one of numerous Qawasmehs to be mentioned in this blog over the years for their passion for murdering Jews, was recruited by Hamas in Malaysia [details here], as were numerous other Palestinian Arabs studying there. Other reports have mentioned Palestinian Arabs having undergone hang glider training in Malaysia, intended to be applied to terrorist attacks against Israelis.

When we wrote about Malaysia here some months back ["28-Apr-15: In Malaysia, years of anti-semitic exhortations along the path to anti-Israel terror"] we referred to the nauseating incitement that has emanated at intervals from the country's prominent, though it has to be said somewhat bizarre, former leader Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. He was his country's prime minister for 22 years between 1981 and 2002:

"I am glad to be labelled anti-Semitic... How can I be otherwise, when the Jews who so often talk of the horrors they suffered during the Holocaust show the same Nazi cruelty and hard-heartedness towards not just their enemies but even towards their allies should any try to stop the senseless killing of their Palestinian enemies..."

And this from Mahathir's speech to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit in 2003, published in The Malaysian Insider:

"[T]he Nazis killed six million Jews out of 12 million (during the Holocaust). But today, the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them"... adding this time that any sympathy accorded to the victims of the Holocaust was "wasted and misplaced".

Worth noting that Malaysia currently occupies one of the non-permanent-member seats on the
United Nations Security Council.

We plan to come back to the roles of Jordan and Qatar shortly.

11-Aug-15: Still more stabbings of Israelis - wait, no, thankfully this one was intercepted

The suspect in custody yesterday: just a 17 year old girl and
already terminally crippled by violent hatred [Image Source]

Living in a terrorism-rich environment makes people like us a touch impatient with the occasional calls for our side to treat the neighbours with greater respect - relax those oppressive security arrangements, take down the checkpoints, give women, and especially teenage girls the leeway they are entitled to, and so on.

Keeping those sentiments, here's a news report from the Jerusalem Post that will probably not have made it to news channels outside our borders:

An unidentified Palestinian youth was detained Monday after admitting that she intended to use a knife, found in her hand bag during a search at a checkpoint, to commit a terror attack at an Israeli prison. The suspect, 17, who attempted to pass through a checkpoint south of Hebron, initially claimed that she forgot that the knife was in her possession and that its use was for cutting vegetables. Under interrogation in Hebron, she admitted that she intended to use the knife to stab a female prison officer at Eshel prison, where her brother lectures inmates who are serving sentences for security related offenses... On Saturday Hamas publicly called for widespread attacks against Israelis. "The murderous settlers will not be deterred unless we initiate attacks - do not wait for them to arrive in our villages and towns,"  said Hamas spokesperson Husma (sic) Badran. Since then several attacks have been carried out. ["Palestinian arrested after admitting 'vegetable knife' was meant for terror attack", Jerusalem Post, August 11, 2015]

Just to recap: she's 17, a girl. Her weapon, a knife, is of the kind that has caused the deaths of many innocent Israelis. And there's a fresh general call in the air from the savages of Hamas to do precisely the murderous thing she confesses to planning to do.

Rational human beings will be all in favour of more and stronger security measures - like checkpoints, fences, and alert, well-trained and armed security personnel - to intercept jihad-minded Arabs from doing what the echo chamber in which they live is instructing them to do. This probably offends some people, but life is too short and too sacred to pay attention to their foolishness.

Husam Badran, mentioned in the report above, is the Hamas spokesperson most closely aligned with the ongoing calls for more acts of murder against Israelis:

"[T]he shootings... and the stabbing operations that have been carried out by lone men and women represent an important development..." Hamas, he said, “welcomes these actions... an important and positive step towards returning to the natural state in which we must fight the occupation directly until it is defeated... it will not be long before the [West] Bank returns to the days of the Aqsa Intifada.” [From a June speech by Badran reported in Algemeiner]

Incitement doesn't come much clearer or lethal than that. Thankfully, there are people on our side who understand the implications.

02-Aug-15: Violence, incitement, double-talk, more violence

Site of the child's death: Intensive IDF and Israel Police investigation
[Image Source]

In the wake of Friday morning's apparent attack on a sleeping Palestinian Arab family in their home, the death of their infant and widespread Arab rioting, there's a poisonous atmosphere of unrestrained incitement to revenge and further acts of violence and murder.

Not so much from the Israeli side: the president condemned the awful events, addressed an anti-violence-and-incitement rally in downtown Jerusalem on Saturday night and conveyed the same message to the Arabic media on Friday. The prime minister visited the injured family in hospital (as did the president) and told them and the media that

we’re shocked, we’re outraged,.. We condemn this. There is zero tolerance for terrorism wherever it comes from, whatever side of the fence it comes from. We have to fight it and fight it together. [Jerusalem Post, July 31, 2015]

During Saturday night, there were reports of incoming explosive missiles emanating from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and directed at Israelis. Readers of this blog know better than most that rocket attacks by Palestinian Arab terrorists are very far from new in southern Israel, or rare, and those doing the firing have never needed a trigger like the death of a Palestinian Arab child.

Two rockets fell near the Israel-Gaza border fence late on Saturday night. No warning sirens were heard and the military was initially unsure whether the projectiles struck the Israeli or Gazan side of the border... The [IDF] army’s official policy is to retaliate to attacks based on their damage, not the attackers’ intent. Misfired rockets landing on the Gaza side of the fence do not generally elicit an Israeli response. [Times of Israel, today]

If, as is the case with many of the previous Gazan Fell Shorts (Palestinian Arab rockets that misfire and hit something Gazan instead of something Israeli) someone was hurt or something was damaged on the Arab side, this will almost certainly go unreported. (Check out some of our past Fell Short reports.)

Though no news channel, to our knowledge, quotes Gazan sources on the subject of last night's rocket attack, this morning we checked the European Union-funded GANSO website which we have mentioned numerous times in the past. Visit their Incident Alerts page right now, as we did (see image below) and you see their report of four, not two, Gazan rockets last night, all of which crash landed on the Gazan side of the border.

Was anyone killed? Were any houses destroyed? No one, but literally no one, seems ever to report on such Arab-on-Arab casualties. Why? Ask the foreign media reporting from there. They're sure to find a justification.

From the GANSO website, Sunday morning August 2, 2015. Published in Gaza, GANSO say 4 rockets were fired at Israeli targets last night, not just 2 as reported in Israel. And not one managed to get as far as the Gazan border. Our sympathies to the hapless Gazans who have to live with this kind of catastrophe daily/nightly.

In the background - the very distant background to judge by the almost entirely absent media news coverage - there have been dozens of attacks on Israelis during Friday and the Sabbath day. This Hebrew-language report provides a summary and a time line, replete with photographs depicting the aftermath at some of the attack sites. One of them [here] shows a fire bomb (a so-called Molotov Cocktail) being hurled at an Israeli bus inside Jerusalem on Saturday evening. Israel National News [here] provides its customary close-the-action reports on the weekend's wave of anti-Israel violence.

In the Palestinian Arab media, the call to arms is unmistakable:

Clashes broke out across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank on Friday night in response to the death of an 18-month-old Palestinian who was burned alive in an arson attack carried out by suspected Israeli settlers earlier that day... [Maan News, Saturday]

It's almost comical to witness the straight-faced reporting of old/new threats emanating from the terror-addicted ranks of the Islamist Hamas regime in Gaza whose rockets and thuggish "security" agents have been - and continue to be - the cause of so many Palestinian Arab deaths:

Hamas said Friday that every Israeli is now a legitimate target following the deadly terror attack in the village of Duma in which a Palestinian toddler was killed, Israel Radio reported. In an official message to the public, Hamas also called for a "day of rage" to protest the deadly terror attack and "in order to protect al-Aksa mosque..." Israeli and Palestinian Authority security forces are on high alert in Jerusalem and the West Bank as Hamas calls for "day of rage." [Jerusalem Post, Friday]

Alert readers understand that declaring Israelis now to be legitimate targets for the rage and murderous hatred of the ranks of Hamas is a cynical joke. The Hamas Charter, its constitution, lays down the foundation for "legitimizing" the murder of Israelis, and virtually every public statement by its spokespersons reinforces the message. Friday's declaration is entirely directed at foreigners, and in particular foreign news reporters.

But not all. This Hamas statement was plainly directed at Palestinian Arab society:

Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri has accused Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas with bearing responsibility for the death of an Arab infant in the village of Duma in Samaria on Friday, which came during an arson attack the IDF suspects may have been committed by Jewish extremists. "I call on Abbas to stop pursuing Hamas in the (West) Bank, and place on him personal responsibility for the burning of the infant Ali Dawabsha, due to his harassment of resistance fighters," said the terrorist spokesperson. "If Hamas had a free hand to act in the (West) Bank, the settlers wouldn't be able to commit crimes like this and burn our children," claimed Abu Zuhri. [Israel National News, August 1, 2015]

(Abu Zuhri's non-stop venom has been the subject of some of our previous comments.)

Some other selected voices from this weekend (all direct quotes):

• Palestinian officials say Israel is "fully responsible" for the death of an infant in an arson attack blamed on Jewish settlers... [T]he Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which dominates the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, said it held the Israeli government "fully responsible for the brutal assassination" of the child, Ali Saad Dawabsha. "This is a direct consequence of decades of impunity given by the Israeli government to settler terrorism," it said. [BBC, Friday] The head of the PLO is Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.
• Husam Badran, a key Hamas leader in Judea and Samaria... [said] that "this crime has turned IDF soldiers and settlers into legitimate targets, in any location and situation... Badran called for every "free person who can harm the occupier to start conducting revenge activities" because "the enemy doesn't understand anything but the language of force." [Israel National News, July 31, 2015]
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the firebombing "an act of terrorism in every respect" and made a rare telephone call to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas... Abbas said he had ordered his foreign minister to file a complaint at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. "We want true justice, but I doubt that Israel will provide that," he said of the attack in Duma, near the northern city of Nablus. [AFP, July 31, 2015]
• The US State Department condemned the "vicious terrorist attack" in "the strongest possible terms," urging Israel to "apprehend the murderers" and calling on both sides to "avoid escalating tensions". [AFP, July 31, 2015] 

That last point causes us personal heartburn, and here's why.

The State Department and especially its now-departed spokesperson Marie Harf, have a history (with us personally) of being mystifyingly unable to label certain kinds of acts of murder as terror, let alone characterize them as vicious. That's astonishing (we feel) when you take into account the plain nature of the crimes of those people, determined in a court of law and with the terrorists mostly confessing to their savagery, and even taking credit for it. (For a reminder of the background: "14-Sep-13: Memo to Secretary of State Kerry: Your staff need some urgent guidance").

We're offering no prizes for readers who can figure out which vicious acts by which people are ranked as terror by State's clever professionals, and which are not. It's about as obvious and clear as such matters ever get. You have to be a certain sort of diplomat to be blind to the nature of what's happening.

Meanwhile. the intensive police and army manhunt for the perpetrators of the Duma village fire-bombing is still underway.

3-Feb-13: Little noticed, unjustly-released terrorists are in charge of the ongoing jihad attacks against Israelis

The remnants of the Tel Aviv Dolphinarium, eleven years after
the June 2001 massacre [Image Source]

We tried, and failed, in October 2011 to arouse public outrage here and abroad at the incomprehensible decision by the government of Israel to surrender to Hamas demands and to free 1,027 terrorists. More than 800 of them (by our calculations, some 79.3% of the total) were behind bars for shooting or hurling explosives at human beings, or injuring or murdering or attempting to murder them.

We said then, and before and after, that we ordinary Israelis will find ourselves eventually having to pay an unbearably heavy price for the foolishness of the decision to open the doors of Israel's prisons and to release a vast horde of unrepentant killers and would-be killers of Jewish children.

But, as we said, our words fell on far too many deaf ears, particularly in the circle of decision makers here in the nation's capital.

Now please think back to June 1, 2001.

A warm Friday night in Tel Aviv. A disco on the premises of  a beachfront structure known as the Dolphinarium. A young Palestinian Arab terrorist, carrying a bomb and on a mission inspired by a religious leadership, merges with the crowd of mainly Russian-speaking youngsters, most of them recent immigrants to Israel. On orders from his Hamas masters, he explodes: 21 of the young people are killed, 132 injured. Families and futures shattered. Lives irreparably demolished.

One of those Hamas masters is a man called Husam Atif Ali Badran (sometimes written Hussan Badran), one of the senior Hamas operators overseeing the Sbarro massacre. Nine years ago, in 2004, Badran was interviewed by two prominent journalists from the Israeli daily Haaretz, Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel who were preparing a book about the second "intifada". In their words, he "spoke relatively candidly about Hamas policy and his involvement in operational decision" though he did hold back from discussing his personal role in specific acts of murder and terrorism.

In an article published in Haaretz in October 2011, Issacharoff and Harel recalled what Badran had told them seven years earlier. Some excerpts (all of them quoted verbatim) from that 2011 article:

• Hussan Badran is the most senior Hamas prisoner from the West Bank who is scheduled to be released tomorrow in the prisoner swap for Gilad Shalit. Badran may be getting out of prison, but he will not be going home, as Israel insisted that he be deported.
• Now 45, Badran, is from the Askar refugee camp in Nablus. He was identified by the Shin Bet security service at the beginning of the second intifada, which began in September 2000, as the head of the military wing of Hamas in West Bank.
• Although intelligence information pointed to his involvement in suicide bombings, including the terrorist attack at the Tel Aviv Dolphinarium in 2001, in which 21 people were killed, he was never convicted of murdering Israelis, as most of his counterparts were. During four months of harsh Shin Bet interrogation, he provided only limited information and was ultimately only convicted of less serious offenses such as membership in an illegal organization. He was sentenced to 17 years in prison.
• Badran called the second intifada a "gift from God," from Hamas' standpoint, saying that the organization had reached a low point between 1997 and 2000. The entire leadership of the organization was either in Palestinian Authority prisons or Israeli ones, he said, and the military wing of Hamas had essentially disappeared. "But within two weeks of the outbreak of the intifada, after our prisoners were released from Palestinian Authority prisons, we had brought our power back on the street," he said.
• Hamas, he said, returned to committing terrorist attacks two weeks after the start of the second intifada in reaction to pressure from the Palestinian street. "Fatah was only carrying out shooting attacks. People wanted to see revenge for our dead, operations inside the territory of Israel," he said, explaining that Hamas leadership decided that terrorist attacks should be carried out wherever possible.
• He said some of the Hamas terror attacks, including the attack at the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem in 2001, were carried out in revenge for the assassination of senior Hamas officials in the West Bank.
• "I believe I will get out of jail," he told us in 2004, "if not as a result of a peace agreement, I will get out in a prisoner swap.

And he did. 

Recall how the British newspaper, The Guardian, no great friend of Israeli policies, reported on Badran's part in the 'Gilad Shalit for Terrorists' transaction of October 2011:

Fresh lilies are regularly laid at a monument by the Tel Aviv Dolphinarium bearing witness to an evening in 2001 when 21 Israeli teenagers were killed while queuing outside a nightclub. Another 132 were injured in the attack by Saeed Hotari, a young Palestinian suicide bomber affiliated with Hamas. But last week flowers arrived more in protest than in sorrow. Husam Badran, the former head of Hamas's military wing in the West Bank and instigator of the Dolphinarium attack, is expected to be among 477 Palestinian prisoners released on Tuesday in a deal to free Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. A further 550 will be freed within two months. "It's surreal. It's beyond belief," said one young mother angrily as she looked at the monument. "I may be the only one against it, but no good deal sees the release of 1,000 killers. People say Netanyahu showed courage in agreeing to set them free, but I say he has given in to terrorism."

Poster at entrance to Filisteen elementary (!) school, Qalqilya, 
in January 2003 depicts ‘Abd al-Rahman Hammad (center), 
who planned 2001 massacre at Dolphinarium Tel Aviv 
and Sa’id Hassan Hutri (left) who carried it out [Image Source]

Badran is Prisoner Number 269 on this list issued by the Israel Prison Service on the eve of the massive release of the 1,027. He walked free to so-called exile in Qatar where it now appears he has been busying himself these past 16 months with what he knows best - plotting against the lives of Israelis.

On Thursday, the IDF announced that, together with agents from the Shabak, it had penetrated a terror cell in Hebron and

uncovered and disrupted a terror infrastructure belonging to the military wing of Hamas, which had acted to establish a regional headquarters so as to carry out attacks in the area of Hebron... 20 terrorists – known Hamas members who had previously served prison sentences in Israel for terror activity – were arrested. The investigation carried out by the security forces revealed that the arrested operatives had intended to carry out terror attacks, particularly kidnappings. The terrorists had already begun preparations to carry out a kidnapping, trying to find an apartment to use as a hide-out and an Israeli citizen to serve as a driver for the intended attack. Over the course of the investigation, much combat equipment belonging to the members of the terror infrastructure was discovered... Members of the terror infrastructure maintained contact with Hamas officials abroad so as to receive assistance, directions and funding. The primary contact person abroad was Husam Badran, one of the prisoners released in the prisoner exchange that secured the release of a kidnapped IDF soldier, Gilad Shalit... Upon his release in October 2011, he was exiled to Qatar. The terrorists were indicted... [source]

There has been only minor coverage of the arrests here and virtually none abroad. As to the central role of the Qatar-based Badran to the machinations of the terrorist gang, even less.

It's a source of enormous gratitude that Israel's security apparatus continues daily to pursue and frustrate jihadists in the service of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and the others. It's a dangerous, thankless task, carried out with very little fanfare. But as everyone following these things knows, it's a statistical certainty that one of these days (Heaven forbid) they will arrive on the scene too late to stop one particular jihadist who will carry out his mission and be acclaimed as a martyr throughout the length and breadth of Palestinian Arab society and other parts of the pro-terrorism world. That's all it takes - just one of these ruthless, murderous thugs. The numbers are against us - the targets and victims.

Our side knowingly put 1,027 of these people back out on the streets. And somehow the reports of them being re-arrested or stopped in the course of doing more of their terrorism are being soft-pedaled in the news media or go unreported. The result is that there are highly-motivated murderers and terrorists with years of experience and deep resources who are now in place, scheming and planning the unthinkable, far from the gaze and awareness of most of us.

If, as the saying goes, ignorance is bliss, many are probably pleased with how the various outcomes of the Shalit transaction are evolving.