21-Apr-17: In Gaza, human bombs both unwitting and committed

"Female cancer patients in the Gaza Strip go on hunger strike in protest 

of an Israeli decision not to allow them to travel through the Erez crossing 

to seek medical care in Israel" (December 22, 2016). 
Were the sisters described in our post protesting? [Mohammed Asad
Middle East Monitor]

It's too early to know all the facts, but something happened on Israel's border with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on Wednesday) that highlights the hideous things the Islamist terrorists of Hamas do. And not only to their enemies.

Here's how Associated Press reported it:

Two Palestinian sisters from Gaza were caught trying to smuggle explosives hidden in medicine containers into Israel as they were headed for cancer treatment at a Jerusalem hospital, authorities said, accusing Hamas militants of trying to use the women to carry out an attack. Ragheb Atallah, the patient's husband, said his wife, Basema, 55, has gone for treatment of colorectal cancer in Jerusalem more than 10 times since July and has never had a problem before. He said his wife was unaware that she may have been smuggling anything illegal into Israel. "Someone asked them to take a bottle of medicine on their way for a patient there," he said. "The bottle was closed and they did not know what is inside. It seems there was something and this caused disruption," the husband said Thursday.
Ragheb Atallah said his wife was released and has been given permission again to go to the hospital, but her sister, 57-year-old Ibtessam Eid, remained in Israeli custody...
Despite the hostilities [with Hamas], Israel continues to allow thousands of Gazans to enter its territory for medical care or to travel to neighboring Jordan and other destinations. All travelers are subject to strict security checks, including in some cases lengthy interrogations by Shin Bet agents before they receive travel permits. Israel says the strict policies are necessary because Hamas tries to exploit civilians entering Israel by giving them weapons, cash or other equipment for militant activity... ["Israel: Gaza sisters smuggled explosives on way to hospital", Associated Press - Josef Federman, April 20, 2017]

Hussam Abdo, human bomb - before and after his oversize winter jacket 

was very carefully removed by IDF soldiers, March 2004 

[Image Source]

Let's note that the idea of innocent civilians being dispatched on life-threatening missions - whether they know it or not - is part of the Palestinian Arab terrorist ethos and nothing new. To name just two previous instances:

• The 1986 Anne-Marie Murphy affair (concerning whose murder-minded Palestinian Arab fiance a British judge said "about as foul and as horrible a crime as could possibly be imagined"
• Hussam Abdo, the cognitively-challenged 14 year old Nablus boy whose handlers promised him sex with dark-eyed celestial virgins in exchange for strapping explosives to his back on March 24, 2004.

Also relevant but much less innocent: the case of Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Bis, 21 (also called al-Biri, Albes, and al-Bass), a Gazan woman whose massively-burned body - the result of either an accident at home with a gas stove or deliberately burned by her family for the usual reasons - was restored and saved by Israeli doctors via intensive skin graft therapy in the two months from December 2004. She wrote a grateful-sounding thank you note to the hospital staff, and then "repaid" their kindness six months later by attempting to pass through the Erez Crossing on Israel's Gaza border while wearing an explosive belt. Her Fatah handlers instructed her to explode herself inside Beer Sheva's Soroka Medical Center hospital when she went there for a half-year follow-up appointment. Fortunately she didn't get that far. Alert Israeli security at the crossing sensed something very wrong and did not let her pass. She tried to trigger the bomb in front of the Israeli cameras but the Hamas technology was a dud and she lived, and was arrested, tried and convicted. She remained in an Israeli prison until released in the catastrophic Shalit deal of 2011. 

Wafa al-Bis back home in the Gaza Strip and planning to explode
a second time [Image Source]

Safely back in Gaza, she made headlines immediately after returning by telling little children from a Gaza school (very likely an UNRWA school) who visited her at home that "she hoped they would follow her example" and "Gd willing, we will see some of you as martyrs".

According to an Al Ahram report at the time, the little kiddies responded heartwarmingly: "We will give souls and blood to redeem the prisoners. We will give souls and blood for you, Palestine." Wafa al-Bis has repeatedly said she wants to try the human bomb thing again.

Seriously sick Gazans could go to Egyptian doctors or to the lavish medical centers of the astoundingly rich Gulf states. Instead, they keep crossing over into Israel when facing life-threatening illness or injury - 30,000 of them in 2016 alone [source]. The one aspect of this that's seriously confounding - given how much satanic hatred is relentlessly pumped into these people by their Hamas ideological overlords - is that Israel keeps agreeing to it. But anyone who understands the life-affirming sentiment that is deeply embedded in Jewish society and in Israel in particular will get it.

We are passionately opposed to the use of the expression "suicide bomber". We explained why in a previous post: see "30-Jun-15: We need to be calling them what they are: human bombs". This week's Basema Atallah affair underscores the point. A suicide bomber she certainly was not, as far as can be ascertained at this stage. But could she have ended up being a human bomb? Absolutely yes, and with all the consequences.

And in passing, we noticed that a photo in a Daily Mail UK October 20, 2011 article about Wafa al-Biss has this completely absurd caption:

"Waving a Palestinian flag at her house upon her release, Al-Biss has been in prison since 2004 after a failed suicide attempt"

[Image Source: Daily Mail]

Ms Al-Biss was imprisoned because she failed in an attempt to carry out an explosive act of mass killing. She was evidently indifferent about whether she would survive. That makes it murder, not suicide. And attempting suicide was not what got her sent to an Israeli prison.

In addition to being a human bomb, and probably against her will and without actual knowing, it's clear Mrs Atallah was also used by the bomb makers as a human shield. The news industry generally has a hard time owning up to how Hamas does this routinely (see for instance, "Myth of Hamas’s human shield. Gazans deny being put in line of fire" [Belfast Telegraph, July 21, 2014]).

The cancer patient was almost certainly asked by Israeli security whether she had agreed to carry something through the security barrier on behalf of someone else on the Gaza side. If that happened, the husband's version means she gave an untruthful answer. (Whether or not she knew she was carrying bomb-making materials is irrelevant.) Should she be allowed back into Israel for more life-saving treatment? Given the existential dangers, is it more humane to say yes? Is it less humane to say no?

And to end, some food for thought from six months ago: 

Dozens of female cancer patients in Gaza began a hunger strike today to protest Israeli authorities’ banning them from obtaining travel permits to travel to receive treatment. During a protest attended by dozens of cancer patients in front of the Ministry of Civil Affairs in Gaza this morning, the Aid and Hope Programme for Cancer Patient Care in Gaza condemned senior health official Bassam Al-Badri for humiliating and offending cancer patients. Al-Badri had previously directed offensive and false accusations against the female cancer patients barred from travelling, claiming they purely sought media attention... In a statement she read on behalf of the Aid and Hope Programme, Al-Tatri condemned Al-Badri for also accusing the cancer patients of spying and working for the occupation, as well as exploiting the issue of cancer patients...  A large number of these cancer patients announced they were going on hunger strike as of this morning in an attempt to gain the attention of officials and the world and raise the issue of their suffering... ["Gaza women cancer patients start hunger strike to protest Israel treatment ban", Middle East Monitor, December 22, 2016]

Were the two Gaza sisters in this protest? No idea. The Israelis seem to have given them great attention and help. About Hamas, it's not so clear.

31-Mar-16: More on UK funding of Abbas' Reward for Terror scheme

Jibril Rajoub, inexplicably termed a Palestinian statesman by some, personifies
much of what has gone hideously wrong with UK funding of Palestinian Arab
neediness [Image Source]

The searing report by Ian Birrell published this past weekend in the Mail on Sunday (the Sunday edition of the Daily Mail) has had a huge impact in the five days since it appeared.

We described it in a pair of blog posts here this past Sunday (see "27-Mar-16: In UK, facing up to UK Aid's scandalous ongoing financing of Palestinian Arab jihad" and "27-Mar-16: The PA's "Rewards for Terror" scheme and the lies that keep the pounds flowing in"). We called it an expose of

the ongoing fraud perpetrated by the conniving Palestinian Authority to hide its Reward for Terror scheme, and the active involvement of hundreds (maybe more) of European politicians and bureaucrats - many of them British - in funneling the indispensable cash without which it could not happen.

The report's impact is reflected in the massive and rapid response it has generated among readers. The Mail's editors framed a petition to the UK government that tied into the substance of the report. Here's the text:

Despite spending cuts at home the Government is committed to hand over 0.7% of national income in overseas aid, regardless of need. The Mail on Sunday believes voters do not want this and instead, we should provide money only for truly deserving causes, on a case-by-case basis.

The Mail's editors are arguing for a wider investigation into abuse of British aid, and a debate of what they term "the absurd new legislative requirement to give away 0.7 per cent of national income... These payments to Palestine seem a classic example of the core aid problem of "fungibility" - when foreign cash supporting public services frees up a regime to spend money in other questionable areas, which all too often fuels conflict or corruption."

Ending extreme poverty: From the DfID/UK Aid website

They explain that

Parliament considers all petitions that get more than 100,000 signatures for a debate [and] Government responds to all petitions that get more than 10,000 signatures

Though the petition is going to remain open until September 24, 2016, it has already gotten past the critical barrier. As of tonight [Thursday], more than 148,000 Brits had signed.

It's hard to doubt the impact of Big Media. The Daily Mail is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper, according to published February 2016 data [here]. Its digital edition, Mail Online, is ranked by ComScore as the most visited newspaper website in the world, getting more than 50 million unique visitors per month which puts it just ahead of the New York Times. MediaWeek UK said Mail Online had more than 11.3 million daily unique browsers in August 2014, the most recent data we could find.

Today, a longer version of the Ian Birrell article is published on the Jewish Chronicle UK's website under the title "Cash for terror: how PA duped British backers | Millions of pounds of taxpayers' money is used to fund Palestinian killers". And yes, we certainly feel "duped" is an appropriate word to sum up what Britain's foreign aid mandarins underwent themselves and continue (right up until this morning) to inflict on the citizens they ostensibly serve via money paid by those citizens as British tax. Duped.

The JC version of the Birrell revelations includes elements that we understand were edited out of the Daily Mail version for space-limitation reasons. The following extract happens to quote one of the bloggers of the site you are now visiting:

But critics say the surge of knife attacks and stabbings against Israelis are encouraged by the PA diverting funds from public services and fighting poverty into generous salaries for arrested terrorists. Highest sums go to those convicted of the worst crimes and serving the longest sentences. Recipients include Hamas killers such as Abdullah Barghouti, given 67 life sentences in 2004 for attacks including a Jerusalem restaurant bombing that killed 15 people. He is said to have earned £106,000 since his conviction, paid to him or whoever he designates. "Aid is most certainly being abused," said Tzipi Hotovely, Israel's deputy foreign minister. This serves as a huge financial incentive to carry out acts of terror against Jews. "Is it imaginable for a Western government to contemplate subsidising acts of mass murder and terror in this fashion? Yet that is effectively what is happening." She was backed by Arnold Roth, whose 15-year-old daughter Malki died in the restaurant attack. He said: "Western governments enable the PA to keep afloat its hideous rewards for terror scheme - and the consequence is a rising tide of deaths on their side and ours." Several ex-prisoners confirmed to me they were paid monthly stipends that started in jail. One said they also received a "bonus" on leaving prison and lucrative civil service job offers, the most senior posts going to those serving more than 15 years behind bars. "Many are not capable of doing the jobs they are being paid to do. I went to university, but these are people without the ability to be managers, especially after 20 years in jail," said the source, who works for the interior ministry... ["Cash for Terror", Ian Birrell, Jewish Chronicle, March 31, 2016]

(The restaurant attack ascribed to Barghouti's satanic bomb-making prowess is the one that brought about the murder of our daughter Malki in 2001.)

Here's another segment that did not appear in the Mail on Sunday:

The UK pours so much aid into Palestine that the Foreign Office even spent £10,300 on the team's kit for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, according to its own reports. Jibril Rajoub, chairman of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, congratulates "martyrs" such as Halabi for "heroism" while his organisation hosts events named after terrorists behind savage atrocities.
The same killers are also routinely praised on state-funded television, say Israeli critics, even by presenters of children's shows... Yet amid an intense struggle against militant Islam, it seems astonishing Britain and the EU are linked to the funding of bloodstained terrorists and jihadist bombers... DfID defended its aid support, insisting none of its cash went to prisoners or their families. A spokesman said: "This funding helps build Palestinian institutions and promotes economic growth so that any future state will be a prosperous and effective partner for peace." DfID sources also said payments to civil servants only went to people on an approved EU list and that the government takes extensive precautions to ensure British aid does not support Hamas "either directly or indirectly"... ["Cash for Terror", Ian Birrell, Jewish Chronicle, March 31, 2016]

Jibril Rajoub is frequently mentioned - as he is above - when ongoing incitement by Arab leaders and the violent, dangerous and duplicitous games played by top-of-the-pile PA insiders are discussed. We have felt the need to write about this extremely unlovely man numerous times. Two examples among many from our previous posts:

1. He's a very public figure about whom we have written in the past. See for instance "3-Dec-12: Deadly dangerous games and those who play them" and "8-May-13: "I am your partner. I am going to kill you now" as two among many or click here. Rajoub heads the PA's Sports Authority as well as holding the political position of Deputy Secretary of Fatah's Central Committee. The busy fellow is also head of the Palestinian Football Association... ["02-Sep-14: Wonder how living with terror-minded neighbors works? We offer some tips"]
2. Let's also mention in this context how Jibril Rajoub, the head of the Palestinian Football Association (also the head of the Palestinian Olympic Committee; also a convicted and imprisoned Fatah terrorist in past years; also Head of the Palestinian Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs), has just gone on the record, speaking about [how] "Fatah supports and encourages the heroes who are carrying out the attacks. We are proud of them." Though Rajoub is a brazen liar, we feel he should certainly be believed on this. [Source]

Those British claims of "extensive precautions" quoted in that last extract from Ian Birrell's article, are, it has to be said, self-evident and somewhat arrogant nonsense in view of the facts we pulled together concerning the results of the one and only European foreign aid (to the Palestinian Arabs) audit that was publicized 18 months ago. We summarized them in "28-Mar-16: Is it time yet for UK's foreign aid office to come clean on their part in funding Palestinian Arab terror?"

Understanding what the Europeans learned when they finally got around, after 13 long years -- years of malfeasance and disclosures about Palestinian Arab corruption and about Arafat's secret massive cash horde -- to sending auditors to Ramallah, you have to assume the mandarins of Britain's Department for International Development (DfID, owner of the UK Aid brand) keep hoping this would slip below the radar of the British public.

Could be they were wrong.

25-Nov-15: A stabber outside Jerusalem's main transit hub and how the mainstream media helped put him there

Jerusalem's main transit hub [Image Source]

On busy Jaffa Road in Jerusalem at the point where the city's main transit hub, the Central Bus Station, is located, a young Arab man was stopped yesterday (Tuesday) by the security guards who are stationed there to oversee the well-being of tens of thousands of locals and visitors who daily pass by or enter or exit the modern structure.

The young Arab was asked some urgent questions after a passer-by who noticed him walking along the light-rail tracks just opposite the station alerted them and said the fellow, aged (as we now know) 19, had been checking what appeared to be a knife concealed inside his coat. Knives inside coats are no longer a strange or rare thing here. They demand an instant response.

The Arab, a resident of the Jerusalem Old City, was promptly taken into custody. Times of Israel reports today that he was arrested and confessed to being there so as to carry out a terrorist attack on unsuspecting Israelis. A knife was indeed found hidden in his clothes during a body search.

Police said the suspect initially denied he was planning on using the knife to carry out a stabbing attack. He was later transferred to the Special Operations Squad in the Jerusalem District Police’s Central Unit for interrogation, where he admitted he intended to carry out a terrorist attack. He said he had taken the knife from his home before riding the light rail to the Central Bus Station, where he searched for an appropriate victim... [Times of Israel]

Hadil and Nurhan Awad, cousins, intending murderers, aspiring terrorists.
Ages 14 and 16. The backstory is the real story and it's unreported

This, along with the fast-rising toll - 75 stabbing attacks, 21 killed, about 190 injured - among Israeli victims of the wave of Arab savagery in the past few weeks - makes it incomprehensible to us that a report on a central Jerusalem stabbing attack can have been so poorly done by a leading British news channel.

Daily Mail Online prides itself on being one of the world's busiest web-based news sites. Checking now, we see their current daily "article views" for today is just under 28,000,000. Not too shabby. We can't say the same for the way they reported the matter of the two Palestinian Arab girls, cousins Hadil and Nurhan Awad, aged 14 and 16, from Qalandiya on Jerusalem's northern periphery. We described ["23-Nov-15: Central Jerusalem's shuk - two slashers attack and are stopped"] how they rode the light rail into central Jerusalem in order to launch a frenzied stabbing attack on innocent shoppers, using only two pairs of (absolutely deadly) scissors. They were stopped very forcefully, but only after doing serious damage and being caught in the act by security cameras. The Daily Mail's report is a classic of its kind: "Shocking moment two Israelis shoot Palestinian teenager dead and wound another after they threaten them with scissors in Jerusalem"

Shocking it is. Shocking that with 21 funerals of Israeli victims in the past few weeks of vicious thuggery, the Daily Mail's editors can allow an article to appear under a headline that focuses on the victimhood of a teenager killed by "Israelis" after she threatened them with scissors - with no indication in the headline of the frenzy of murderous stabbing attacks of similar kind happening all over this country.

And utterly shocking that the Daily Mail and most of the mainstream media have failed to focus attention on (a) the violent deaths of three Palestinian Arab children, each one of them aged 16, each one of them clutching sharp instruments in their fists, each one of them trying to kill innocent Israelis, each one of them shot dead by alert Israeli security, all killed in a single day - this past Monday; and (b) the shameful, hideous process, overseen by the Fatah/PLO/PA leadership under the unspeakable Mahmoud Abbas, of programming children to hate, to demonize and then - the logical consequence - to murder Jews.

These children didn't wake up with blood lust one morning out of the blue. It's the end-stage of a process that takes a huge, multi-dimensional effort, with education (school curriculum) and religion (the mosques) being the central components.

It's a tragedy that so few serious reporters and their editors see the recounting of this process as core to the reporting of the current Arab-on-Israeli barbarism and to the ongoing child-abuse conducted by Palestinian Arab society at all its levels (including the most senior). It's hard not to see reporters and their editors as complicit in this process.