11-Nov-15: An Arab grandmother, an "accident", what we were told, what we know now

Immediately after the elderly woman driver was shot, Israeli soldiers
inspect her car: Halhul Junction, November 6, 2015 [Image Source]

Emphasizing the immersion of the entire spectrum of Palestinian Arab society in hateful, bigoted terror, there's some more to know about the woman in her seventies whose vehicle somehow collided with several Israelis last week, resulting in her death by gunfire. [Here's where we reported on it.]

Her name is Tharwat Ibrahim al-Sha'rawi, known also as Tharwat Sharawi and by the title Um Ayoub, presumably in honor of a child called Ayoub,

On November 6, 2015, a vehicle she was driving suddenly accelerated as it approached a cluster of Israeli soldiers near Halhul Junction, close to Hebron. (An additional ramming attack had taken place more or less in the same location a day before - our report on that is here.) The soldiers reacted quickly, and she was shot. They found a large commando knife in her handbag after the woman was rushed away to hospital in Jerusalem. She died there of her injuries.

Here's a clip of the attack as captured by an IDF helmet-mounted video camera:

In the immediate aftermath, the propaganda machine serving the Palestinian Arab side got busy with its customary denials and accusations:

• From the Jerusalem Post: A witness who works at a gas station close to the scene of the attack described the incident as a “regular car accident.” The witness, who was not identified, told Palestinian reporters that Sha’rawi was driving her car in an area where clashes were taking place between IDF soldiers and stone-throwers. He said she tried to flee from the scene because of the tear gas fired by the soldiers. “She drove toward the gas station, where the soldiers were stationed... As soon as she got out of her car, the soldiers opened fire at her, killing her instantly. I saw three soldiers open fire at her.” [The video above shows what nonsense this is.]
• Associated Press: "Her son denied she tried to harm anyone, and that she was on her way to lunch with her sister when she was killed."
• A Tweet: "#Israeli occupation forces executed the #Palestinian woman Tharwat Sharawi 70Y/O from Hebron with 15 bullets"
• Electronic Intifada, a notorious megaphone for anti-Israel propaganda asserted that "it is possible that the elderly driver could have been impaired by tear gas media reported had been fired heavily in the area. The video reveals that there are Israeli soldiers both to al-Sharawi’s right and to her left, on a median in the middle of the road. Several Israeli soldiers standing in the street have no trouble moving out of the way. No one is hit by the vehicle. But Israeli soldiers, including those on the median, immediately begin firing on the car." [The Electrifada activists might have noted, as we did, that another attack-by-vehicle ramming had been done at the same place a day earlier. That makes it easier to understand the rapid response of the IDF soldiers at the junction.]
• On the Arabic-language Alwatan Voice site, an alleged "eyewitness" employee of the nearby gas station said that Al-Sharawi’s car "approached towards the gas station from the direction of the Ras al-Jora area in what he called a normal manner. The Israeli soldiers opened fire on it with volleys of bullets. [She] was likely trying to escape towards the gas station from the large amount of tear gas in the Ras al-Jora neighborhood when the soldiers riddled her car with bullets..." Why? No special reason. [Source]

Today, via the Tel Aviv-based Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, some fresh details have emerged that shed some light on her intentions and motivations:

• Two weeks before the lethal assault, al-Sha'rawi wrote a will. And she reportedly told a daughter, Ihlam, about the same time: "I think I am going to die soon... Oh, Allah, let me die as a shaheeda [martyr] and not in my bed" (Source: The Shasha.ps website, November 8, 2015). We now see she turned her prayer into a plan; she succeeded in not expiring in a bed.
• Violent confrontation with Israelis is nothing new in this clan's life. She was the widow of Fouad al-Sha'rawi, a terrorist killed by IDF fire near Hebron during the early days of the so-called First Intifada in 1988.
• Ihlam, the daughter, is the wife of Mohammad Jamal al-Natshe, a Hamas-faction member of the (non-functioning) Palestinian Legislative Committee. His current address is in care of the Israel Prison Service. Though none of the Arabic-language websites we consulted said so, this book indicates that Grandmother Al-Sha'rawi's son-in-law was among the founders of Hamas. At some point, al-Natshe served as head of Hamas' so-called "military wing in the West Bank". The connection to the Islamist terrorist movement runs strongly in this tribe.
• A Hamas poster [source], replete with Hamas symbols and imagery (see right) was issued to mark the death of the elderly woman, adopting and celebrating her "achievement".

There's a tragic consistency to the counter-factual way the Palestinian Arab media collaborate in issuing broad-ranging denials that attacks against Israelis - by car, by gun, by knife - are connected to terrorism. Allegations that the Israelis have carried out "extra-judicial executions" are now a fixed part of the ritual, adopted by Palestinian Authority figures, by anonymous editors and reporters, and by members of the terrorists' family and/or clan. For foreign consumption only, the attackers are presented as being as innocent and pure as the driven snow.

The message beamed at the Palestinian Arabic public, by contrast, is the exact opposite: the perpetrators - whether pension-age grandmothers or adolescent youths - are portrayed as martyrs, shaheeds, whose heroic actions elevate them into figures of community-wide emulation, and role models for others who will be persuaded to follow in their footsteps.

A society, in other words, in the full grip of a death cult state of mind.

27-Jan-10: Saving lives, getting criticized: same old same old

The Jerusalem Post's Shmuel Rosner hits the nail on the head with blog comments addressing the nonsensical and offensive criticism of Israel's successful efforts to save lives in Haiti.

Some excerpts (the whole article is here):

Here's the Electronic Intifada criticizing the media for its positive spin of this humanitarian effort: "A few media outlets have pointed out the discrepancies in Zionist self-congratulation".

And the estimable NYT showing very little understanding of Israel's true feelings by claiming that "Israelis have been watching with a range of emotions, as if the Haitian relief effort were a Rorschach test through which the nation examines itself. The left has complained that there is no reason to travel thousands of miles to help those in need - Gaza is an hour away". "Range of emotions" meaning what? That 99% support the effort and 1% complain about Gaza? That 99% feel proud about this humanitarian effort and 1% feel the need to politicize even the simplest act of compassion and demonstrate, yet again, that they've lost their collective minds?

Anyway. Since this the why-Haiti-but-not-Gaza nonsense is gaining traction, maybe some reminders are necessary. Here we go:

1. Because Haitians never bombed Israeli towns.
2. Because the government of Haiti never declared that it wanted Israel to be eliminated.
3. Because no Haitian suicide bomber was caught trying to reach an Israel bus stop of cafe.
4. Because while Gazans' suffering should not be belittled, I don't remember any report claiming that 100,000 Gazans are dead because of Israeli blockade. Not even the Goldstone report.
5. Because it's easier sending rescue workers and doctors in uniform into a place in which Israelis in uniform are well received.
6. Because no Israeli soldier is being kept hostage in Haiti, and there's no standing Haitian demand for the release of hundreds of terrorists from Israeli jails.
7. Because Haiti had no way of stopping the earth-quake and the government of Gaza can easily make life better for its people by changing course.

CNN, reporting from the devastated eartrhquake zone on Day 6, pointed out that no one other than the Israelis, had managed to get a properly functioning hospital clinic together in Haiti as of the day of the report. The Israelis, and only the Israelis, were out there successfully leveraging medicine and humanitarian values to save lives.

Skeptics are welcome to step into any Israeli hospital (any one - without exception) and walk into the pediatric ward. From our experience (unfortunately we have a lot of that), many and often most of the children and families getting the benefit of world-class Israeli medicine are Arabs. No Israeli, whether Arab or Jew, thinks this is odd.