08-Jan-19: In the wake of multiple murders, this violent Pal Arab village's economy just grew

Kobar [Image Source]

Providers of foreign aid to the always-insolvent Palestinian Authority - and the ordinary citizens who unwittingly contribute to the funding via their taxes - acquired yet another new beneficiary earlier today.

Assem Barghouti suspected of participating in the murder of 4 day old Amiad Ish-Ran and IDF soldiers Staff Sergeant Yuval Mor Yosef and Sergeant Yosef Cohen, and the injury of numerous others, was arrested this morning. According to Palestinian Authority law and regulations, since he was arrested by Israel for his "participation in the struggle against the occupation", Barghouti is entitled to a monthly salary from the PA of 6,000 shekels [at today's exchange rate, about US$1,637 - TOW]. According to PA law, his salary will increase over time to 12,000 shekels per month 
[at today's exchange rate, about US$3,274 - TOW]. Barghouti's starting salary is higher than most other terrorist prisoners, since he has already spent 11 years in prison for past involvement in terrorism. During his first term in prison, Barghouti received an estimated cumulative sum of 447,000 shekels [at today's exchange rate, roughly US$122,000 - TOW]. Additionally, according the PA law and regulations, upon his release, Barghouti was also entitled to a $6,000 one-time release grant and a guaranteed salary paid by the PA even if he did not work... ["Another baby murderer to receive fat salary from the PA", Palestinian Media Watch, January 8, 2019]

We have written several times concerning the tragic events leading up to today's arrest: "09-Dec-18: A shooter in a passing vehicle seriously injures several Israelis tonight near Ofra, north of Jerusalem"; "13-Dec-18: Another lethal Arab-on-Israeli shooting attack Thursday" and "21-Dec-18: After the terror attacks, the focus moves on as the quiet struggle of the victims continues".

Barghouti's younger brother, 29 year old Saleh Omar Barghouti

shot and injured seven Israeli civilians at a bus stop outside of the Ofra settlement on December 9. Among the wounded was a pregnant woman who gave birth prematurely. Her baby boy died three days later... [The two are the sons] of West Bank Hamas leader Omar Barghouti, from the village of Kobar... [Jerusalem Post, December 20, 2018]

That younger brother who was the subject of an intense manhunt for several days was arrested on December 12, 2018 when IDF soldiers, conducting a manhunt, intercepted a cab he was riding in. Saleh died in the subsequent shootout with IDF forces. A second Palestinian Arab suspect also from Kobar, Wa’ed Barghouti, was arrested separately shortly afterward.

Image Source

The Barghouti's home village of Kobar (also written Cobar, Kaubar and Khobar), controlled by the Palestinian Authority and located about 10 km north of its seat of government, Ramallah, has a population about 3,500 (as of  2007). 

Almost all of them belong to one of eight family-clans of which the most prominent is the Barghoutis. 

For a thinly-populated Palestinian Arab place, it possesses a rich and strikingly repellent charge-sheet:

• Kobar prides itself (when we checked last July) on having no fewer than 25 of its townspeople incarcerated in Israeli prisons. 
• The murderous Barghoutis are close clansmen of, and from the same village (Kobar) as, Marwan Barghouti: convicted murderer, former acolyte of Yasser Arafat and Bishop Desmond Tutu's favored candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. See "04-Apr-17: Something you rarely read about Marwan Barghouti the killer"; and "18-Apr-17: So what, in reality, is Marwan Barghouti?". 
• In relation to Marwan Barghouti, we feel we have a personal account. He personally laid out $500 [archived source quoting a 2004 Jerusalem Post report] for the making of the explosive-filled guitar case that was brought to, and exploded inside, Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria destroying it on August 9, 2001 and killing fifteen innocent people including our daughter Malki. 
• When another clansman from Kobar, Bilal Barghouti, a senior Hamas operative, was on the run from the Israeli security forces because of his involvement in the massacre at the Sbarro pizzeria (he was later convicted for his part), Marwan Barghouti sheltered him for a time in his home. Bilal Barghouti said for the record that, during his stay there, "he saw a number of weapons, and when he left the house Barghouti armed him with a gun for his use." [Source: CAMERA] Marwan Barghouti is an unindicted accessory after the fact to the Sbarro murders. 
• (The Sbarro bombmaker was Abdullah Barghouti, yet another a clansman though we don't think this native of Kuwait ever lived in Kobar. Some background: "20-Jun-13: Abdullah Barghouti, terrorist, bomb-maker, killer of 66 innocents, has some demands".) 
• Another clansman from Kobar: Na'el Barghouti whose background is here: "23-Feb-17: The fate of another Shalit Deal murderer and what this means for peace". Starting his career in terror with Fatah back in 1978, he converted as a prisoner to become a religious extremist and now owes his allegiance to the Islamist terrorists of Hamas. 
• Kobar is located close to the Israeli community of Halamish (also known as Neve Tuf) where three members of one family, the Salomons, were slaughtered as they sat down to their Sabbath evening meal two summers ago. The attacker was from the Barghouti's home town: 

Omar al-Abed, 19, from a Palestinian Arab settlement called Kobar - the home village of the notorious convicted Palestinian Arab terrorist Marwan Barghouti - jumped the fence in the dark and made his way to one of the nearby, brightly-lit houses. He burst into the home around 9:30 pm brandishing a kitchen knife he had purchased earlier in the day for what he admitted to be an intended knife attack on Jews... Times of Israel says the Salomons were celebrating the birth of a baby boy in the family. Also that El'ad's wife, Michal, managed to flee from the carnage and protect their five children behind a locked door in the house from where she called police. That same report quotes the 19 year-old murderer saying he was driven to carry out the killings by the incitement of "the imams on the Temple Mount". This statement ought to be getting much media amplification but almost certainly will not... ["22-Jul-17: Friday night carnage in Neve Tzuf"]

• Also from Kobar: Muhammed Tarek Ibrahim Dar Youssef whom we profiled in "27-Jul-18: A murderous Thursday night knifing attack in suburban Jerusalem; the killer, again, is a child". It's believed Kobar is where the arsonists who set the fires that destroyed a depressingly large number of Neve Tzuf's homes came from ["27-Nov-16: What lies behind the conflagration"].

For reasons best known to certain kinds of Brits, the English West Midlands industrial town of Walsall in Staffordshire chose to establish a twinning relationship with Kobar which is still in operation. What each side gets from this borders on the frankly disturbing.

Kobar's economic basis was bleak as of 2011 which is when some detailed analysis was published. Some 62.5% of its population were categorized at the time as "not economically active". The village was reported to have (and this is the whole list) an olive oil-press and two stone quarries, 14 grocery stores, one fruit and veg store, five "professional workshops", three service stores, and one shop for agricultural tools [source].

We have not yet found published data to show what share of daily life in this violent place is sustained by lifetime Pay-to-Slay stipends from the Palestinian Authority. Whatever it is, it grew larger today.

Thanks, Europe.

21-Dec-18: After the terror attacks, the focus moves on as the quiet struggle of the victims continues

Shira and Amichai Ish-Ran speak to reporters from hospital
five days ago [Image Source]. Their baby did not survive the cowardly attack.

Based on reports in the past few hours from several news sources, including Times of Israel and Jerusalem Post, here are some updates on the Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks of the past ten days.

Amichai Ish-Ran, who took three bullets in the leg as a civilian victim - alongside his wife - of a  drive-by shooter at a bus stop near the entrance to the Israeli community of Ofra ["09-Dec-18: A shooter in a passing vehicle seriously injures several Israelis tonight near Ofra, north of Jerusalem"] is thankfully doing well enough that he was released from Shaarei Zedek Medical Center yesterday (Thursday).

His wife Shira, who suffered critical injuries in the attack, is said to be "steadily recovering". She had further surgery on Wednesday and this is reported by the hospital to have been successful. The baby boy she was carrying in her womb when they were shot died four days after the attack after being born under emergency conditions by Caesarian section.

An IDF soldier, 21-year-old Naveh Rotem, who was critically injured this past Friday when stabbed and head-bashed with a rock by a Palestinian Arab at a military post outside the Israeli community of Beit El is thankfully doing much better. The attacker who fled the scene, prompting a manhunt, later turned himself in.

The soldier, had been taken to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in life-threatening condition, unconscious and hooked up to a ventilator. The hospital said in a statement that Rotem had been treated by multiple medical experts over the past week, and quoted neurosurgeon Dr. Iddo Paldor as saying he was returning home “in good condition, strong and smiling.” Rotem will undergo followup treatment. His parents said in a statement that they were “happy to thank all the hospital staff,” saying they had “felt we were in good hands..." [Times of Israel]

Shira Sabag, a civilian seriously injured in last week’s Arab-on-Israeli shooting attack ["13-Dec-18: Another lethal Arab-on-Israeli shooting attack Thursday"] at a bus stop near the small Israeli community of Givat Assaf, is said to be improving though still hospitalized at Shaare Zedek.

An IDF soldier, Netanel Felber, whose family made aliyah to Israel from the US a decade ago, is still reported to be critically injured and fighting for his life and suffering gunshot wounds to his head in the attack, He has undergone multiple surgeries at Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital. Two of his army colleagues, Yovel Mor-Yosef and Yosef Cohen, were killed in the attack.

It was reported yesterday (Thursday) that the main perpetrators of both the Ofra and Givat Assaf attacks are brothers, As'am Barghouti, 32, and Saleh Omar Barghouti, 29, clansmen and residents of the same village (up until he was incarcerated) of prominent Palestinian Arab convicted terrorist Marwan Barghouti. (There's some background here: "18-Apr-17: So what, in reality, is Marwan Barghouti?") Salih Barghouti was shot last Wednesday in a village near Ramallah as he resisted apprehension by Israeli security forces. The attack allegedly carried out by As'am Barghouti happened the following day. There is an ongoing manhunt for him.

It was also reported yesterday for the first time that this As'am Barghouti was released from an Israeli prison in April 2018 after serving an 11-year sentence.

We personally sat through the 2003/4 terrorism trial of Marwan Barghouti in Tel Aviv (he was convicted and has been in prison since then). Beyond the homicides for which he was convicted, we learned that Barghouti personally laid out $500 [source] for the making of the explosive-filled guitar case that was brought to, and exploded inside, Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria destroying it on August 9, 2001 and killing fifteen innocent people including our daughter Malki. 

The Sbarro bombmaker, the inventor of that grotesque explosive-and-nails-filled guitar case, was another Barghouti clansman, Kuwait-born Abdullah Barghouti. About him, we have written numerous times. Here's one piece: "20-Jun-13: Abdullah Barghouti, terrorist, bomb-maker, killer of 66 innocents, has some demands".

When churchman Desmond Tutu, himself a Nobel Peace Prize winner,
nominated convicted murderer and terrorist Marwan Barghouti for the same
award, he tweeted the news with this photo of himself with Mrs Marwan
Barghouti [Twitter Source]

And yet one more clansman, Bilal Yaqub Barghouti, a senior Hamas operative, was personally sheltered by Marwan Barghouti in his home when Bill Barghouti was on the run from the Israeli security forces because of his involvement in the massacre at the Sbarro pizzeria (he was later convicted for his part). Bilal Barghouti said for the record that, during his stay there, "he saw a number of weapons, and when he left the house Barghouti armed him with a gun for his use."

Unlike most of the Sbarro Massacre plotters, Bilal Barghouti still resides in an Israeli prison cell. On being sentenced in 2003, he said: "Thank god. I regret that I did not kill even more people than I did kill". (More background here: "24-Aug-18: What aid funds handed to the Abbas regime ($1 million and growing) have done for savages who kill Jews".)

And this: Marwan Barghouti, whom the Nobel Prize-winning social activist church-man Desmond Tutu odiously nominated for a Nobel Prize in 2017, is arguably an unindicted accessory-after-the-fact to the Sbarro murders. (It would be nice if someone were to forward this post to Archbishop Tutu in South Africa.)

May all the victims needing a full and rapid recovery get it.