02-Apr-19: Setting facts, ethics, context aside, Aljazeera salutes a couple of murderers

Mr and Mrs Tamimi at home in Jordan's capital Amman,
in a video segment embedded in the Al Jazeera homage

In Arabic only (so far), Aljazeera published a paean this past week to a pair of convicted and unrepentant terrorists sentenced by Israel to life-term prison sentences for killing many Israelis.

The two are not merely out of prison but, from what we can tell, live a highly public and comfortable life replete with exposure, celebrity, adulation and valuable political connections that seem to help smooth their way.

Aljazeera Media Network whose chairman Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani served as a minister in Qatar's government in the eighties and nineties and who is a member of the ruling family of Qatar, the House of Thani, is a formidable communications conglomerate owned by the government of Qatar. It has some 80 bureaux and more than 100,000 employees distributed around the world.

This particular piece was published on the Aljazeera.net site last Thursday and so far has appeared only in Arabic. While the group publishes in multiple languages including English, Turkish, Indonesian, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, the AlJazeera.net platform is specifically dedicated to Arabic speakers.

Because we think it shines some much-needed light on how Arab-on-Israeli terror is viewed in much of the Arabic-speaking world, we arranged a professional translation. The text appears below. 

A word for those uncomfortable with violence and bloodshed: Rest assured. Though this is all about a couple of unrepentant convicted felons, people who murdered other people and have never expressed regret for their deeds, and while one might expect some unpleasant discussion about killings and deaths - actually there isn't that much. Hardly any.

In fact, what violence there is happens to be about Israelis threatening (they say) and killing other people (they allege). We'll come back to that counter-intuitive aspect at the end.

Political News
Nizar and Ahlam: A couple pursued by “chains” despite their release from occupation imprisonment

March 28, 2019 | Aljazeera.net | From Mahmoud Al-Shar’aan in Amman 

They became engaged in the prisons of Israeli occupation. They were released in the prisoner exchange deal of 2011 known as the “Wafaa’ Al-Ahrar deal” between the Palestinian Resistance Movement (HAMAS) and the occupation. [TOW: In the West, it's better known as the Gilad Shalit Deal]  

Their relationship led to marriage and the establishment of a Palestinian house of “resistance” in the Jordanian capital of Amman.

They are the freed prisoners Nizar Al-Tamimi (45) and his wife Ahlam Al-Tamimi (38) who was born in Jordan. 

The bond of marriage was not the only thing they shared. They were also brought together by the defence of Palestine and the sacrifice they gave towards the struggle through the years they spent in prison.

Nizar, who belongs to the Palestinian Liberation Movement (Fatah) was sentenced to life in prison after he participated in the killing of an Israeli citizen in the nineties of which he served 20 years before he was released. 

Ahlam on the other hand was the first woman to have joined the Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. She was sentenced to 16 life sentences after she participated in a martyrdom operation against the occupation of Jerusalem in 2001, of which she served 10 years before she was released.

A new life

Their many years spent in prison have not killed the normal life of these freed prisoners as they both are pursuing their education, each in his own field. 

The husband is preparing for his Masters thesis [sic] in political science with the title “The law of Jewish nationalism and its effect on the reality and future of the Palestinian cause”, while the wife is preparing to study towards her Masters thesis [sic] in Journalism and Media under the title “A theoretical etymology of the concept of prisoner media”.

Nizar tells Aljazeera.net that freedom was like a new birth for them both after having spent many tough years in jail. “We were able to come out of prison strong, and more importantly we are still bearers of the message of truth when it comes to our just cause, and we have begun a new life”.

But the lives of the couple were thrown into disarray after they received messages threatening to pursue them and to lay cases against them in the United States.

The last case of these threats came in the words of the American peace process delegate to the Middle East, Jason Greenblatt, who wrote on his official Twitter account that “Americans must know that Ahlam Al-Tamimi who is a Hamas terrorist convicted of killing 15 people, seven of whom were children killed in cold blood, is living free today”.

Greenblatt announced a reward of the equivalent of 5 million dollars to anyone who can provide information on Ahlam Al-Tamimi and the Hamas leader, Saleh Al Aruri.

Continuous threats

Greenblatt’s threats were not new. They are a part of a long chain of threats received by Ahlam and her husband. It was revealed to Aljazeera.net that Jewish organizations paid to lay cases against them in American courts of law.

Ahlam identifies herself as a Jordanian citizen of Palestinian origin who is a freedom fighter for a just cause. “I refuse to allow my cause and the cause of my nation to be labelled as terrorism or that the door be opened to some representatives trying to make political gains to pass whatever they want under the cover of their mission”.

The freed prisoner regards her being in Jordan to be a point of strength as there is no agreement between Amman and Washington that states that wanted people need to be handed over. In addition, the Jordanian judicial authorities refused a previous American demand for her to be handed over.

She is asking the Kingdom to protect her from American hegemony and the continuing threats against her, and to solve her crisis with the United States “politically”.

Ahlam does not deny her fears of the financial reward offered by Greenblatt, because the involvement of money in this case might facilitate passing information on her or that the matter might even reach assassination, as she says.

At the same time, her husband is of the view that once a prisoner is released from prison, he remains a target of Israel, and he can therefore never really feel total calm as other prisoners have been killed after they were released from prison, as he says.

A house of resistance

Between four walls, the couple spend time telling stories and reliving the memories of prison life, of Palestine and of comrades in struggle. The best years of their lives were taken from them by Israeli courts and prison bars. This however did not prevent them from trying to live normally and defend their rights in a clear message that is not open for discussion, the summary of which says that there is no conceding the entirety of Palestine.

Nizar, the son of Fatah, and Ahlam, the daughter of Hamas, are the embodiment of the reality of a unified Palestinian people, in the wake of division which they described as an exception to the rule. They have spent their lives together with many ideas, some of which were conflicting, but they both always agree in the end that there is no way to liberate Palestine except through resistance and that it is the only way to achieve it.

Source: Aljazeera (Arabic) online here. In case it somehow disappears, we arranged for it to be  archived here.

A few observations.

• The only violence mentioned in this brazen homage is violence they claim is directed at - not by - the Tamimis, a pair of unrepentant murderers. As journalism goes, this is exceedingly shabby. Are there ethical standards in the Aljazeera media empire? What are they?
• Seriously, is it true as they claim here that "there is no agreement between Amman and Washington that states that wanted people need to be handed over"? No, not really. We explained that here: "14-Mar-19: Two years after Federal charges are unsealed, Ahlam Tamimi remains free. How is this happening?" Bottom line: Jordan and the US signed an extradition treaty 24 years ago; the US absolutely considers it still valid and in full effect and Jordan has never complained to its American treaty partners that there is a problem with it. In fact, Jordan has cheerfully handed over Jordanian felons to the US at the request of the US. But it refuses to hand over Ahlam Tamimi. It justifies this on the contentious footing that there is now a Jordanian constitutional law issue to consider. They don't say, but we think they should, that Tamimi is different from the others already extradited because she killed Israelis. Note that none of this seems to be known to the Al Jazeera editors and their reporter. Or perhaps they simply have no interest in conveying what they know to their news consumers. So it's either shameful pretense or it's professional incompetence.
• The reporter claims that "the lives of the couple were thrown into disarray after they received messages threatening to pursue them and to lay cases against them in the United States." This is pure invention. Ahlam Tamimi is wanted on US Federal charges that were unsealed in Washington on March 14, 2017 (see the previous para). There are no charges pending against her husband, but it adds an element of extra drama to the story. A great pity, seriously, that it's bunk.
• Did Ahlam Tamimi hurt anyone? Hard to know from this piece of shameless advocacy and terror promotion. All that the Aljazeera journalist and his editors want their Arabic-language readers to know is that this Jordanian woman was locked away for a tremendously long prison term because "she participated in a martyrdom operation against the occupation of Jerusalem". Is it even worth mentioning that 16 people were murdered in that "operation"? That Tamimi picked the spot because it attracted so many children and brought the bomb to it at the busiest time of the day? That this savage boasts openly and happily about it in front of cameras and live audiences? That the panel of judges who sentenced her recommended that Israel never consider letting her out under any circumstances or deals? And that they were ignored when the Shalit Deal was done? We guess not.
• Did she reveal that she's now pursuing a masters degree in journalism and media? We think (and we're checking so that we can be sure) that only a couple of Jordanian institutions offer such programs. One happens to be a school about which we have written in the past, and which has an extremely shabby connection to Tamimi herself: See "By their role models shall ye know them" [Times of Israel, December 2014]. 
• The Tamimis claim to have "received messages threatening to pursue them and to lay cases against them in the United States". Other than as another invented dramatic device, this notion of threats doesn't make much sense. The reporter could have mentioned that the US Department of Justice unveiled those serious criminal charges against Ahlam Tamimi more than two years ago ["14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and extradition is sought"]. He could have pointed out she was arrested in Jordan by Jordanian police on the basis of an Interpol Red Notice in September 2016 (with absolutely no publicity), but he doesn't. She was released the following morning but that says more about Jordan and its legal and power system than about the criminality of Ahlam Tamimi. Maybe he doesn't know. Maybe he already forgot. Maybe this isn't really about facts and news but about fantasies and delusions of Tamimi victimhood. But how is this journalism?
• The reporter and his editors are under the mistaken impression that Trump envoy Jason "Greenblatt announced a reward of the equivalent of 5 million dollars to anyone who can provide information on Ahlam Al-Tamimi". No, he didn't. The reward, which certainly does exist, was issued more than a year before Greenblatt mentioned it in his Tweet. And it doesn't come from Greenblatt but from a unit of the US State Department called Rewards for Justice. The year-and-a-half-old details for the Al Jazeera news-hounds are here (you're welcome): "31-Jan-18: There's now a $5 million reward for bringing the terrorist Ahlam Tamimi to justice". Can we now expect a correction? Or do Al Jazeera's people claim ownership of their own version of reality?
• It's quite moving to read that "The best years of [the Tamimi couple's] lives were taken from them by Israeli courts and prison bars". Taken from them? Why? But it's chilling that the editors of this Al Jazeera group outlet manage to tell the story of two unusually cruel murderers without even a passing reference to the many lives they extinguished by their acts of depraved savagery. They give the impression that they identify with the killers and the killings. Is this fair of us? But if we're right (of course we are), do their pay-masters in the government of Qatar know this? Perhaps they will now. Perhaps they will even want to know about the life and lost "best years" of our desperately missed daughter Malki who was 15 when Ahlam Tamimi delivered her exploding guitar case on the back of her human bomb to Sbarro. (Full disclosure: Malki was not the only person murdered there that day. It was a massacre. In a pizzeria. Children were the target; they ended up being more than half the casualties. Tamimi's sickening, satanic plan worked. She hasn't stopped smiling and boasting about it.)  
• When Aljazeera quotes Nizar Tamimi asserting that "other [Palestinian Arab] prisoners have been killed after they were released from prison", did they check? Can they bring cases? As a news agency, did they think of listing the names of the many mass murderers [some named here along with their crimes] who walked free in that catastrophic transaction? Did they think of referring to the Israelis murdered after the Shalit Deal [some of them named here] by unrepentant terrorists who were let loose?
• The Aljazeera editors, aware of the endless enmity among the Hamas, Fatah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad factions, must have seen the almost humorous irony in their reporter claiming the Tamimis as "the embodiment of the reality of a unified Palestinian people". Unified? They must have already decided this scurrilous piece of reporting-as-incitement needed to serve a higher purpose than the objective reporting of news. So what the heck - go for broke. 
• Will the major news organizations and global content aggregators who partner with Aljazeera (like Google, Bloomberg, TechLive, Snapchat) be interested to know how the party they're consorting with acts as an active and effective promoter of terrorism that publishes sentiments like Ahlam Tamimi's "there is no way to liberate Palestine except through resistance"? Probably not. The rest of us surely should.

This reward poster in Arabic was issued by the US State
Department in January 2018 but has never been physically
posted anywhere in Jordan or the Arab world.

In the interests of seeming balanced, and having regard for the monumental media footprint the Aljazeera empire has managed to create, here's what the public relations professionals working at Aljazeera said about their employer a year ago:

We, at Al Jazeera, renew our commitment to global audiences with news coverage and programs which provide in depth analysis of news and current affairs. We will continue celebrating the achievements brought by our diversity of staff who hail from almost 100 different countries. It is this diversity of values and cultures that enriches our work and provides our audiences with the award-winning content on all our platform. We urge democratic forces all over the world, especially in United States, to stand with free media institutions to promote and protect the values of democracy, liberty, human rights, freedom of media and the right to free speech. Don’t shoot the messenger, journalism is not a crime.

Maybe they don't mean their Arabic output. And when the subject is this thing they call "resistance", perhaps different rules apply.

UPDATE Monday April 2, 2019 at 7:00 pm: The Aljazeera piece includes a substantial video interview which is of course not in English. We have just been told by friends (thank you, friends!) that MEMRI has posted a translation. Please go and read, watch and share - it's here.

18-Apr-17: So what, in reality, is Marwan Barghouti?

Barghouti, convicted on multiple counts of murder by shooting,

is a candidate for the next Nobel Peace Prize [Image Source: Arab media]

There are serious efforts underway this week to re-engineer the public image of the convicted Palestinian Arab felon, Marwan Barghouti.

Based on disinformation, partial information and lots of spin, they are directed at concealing the facts of his crimes and imprisonment and putting some wind into the sails of this ambitious man's on/off political career.

Outrageously, the key thing to know about Barghouti, according to one of the world's most influential newspapers which yesterday provided him yesterday with an invaluable op ed platform ["Why We Are on Hunger Strike in Israel’s Prisons", New York Times, April 17, 2017] to megaphone his extreme views, is that

Source: New York Times

In the following 24 hours, the Times found itself in the midst of a storm of protest. We have little sympathy for how the NYT's public editor summed things up today.

A side issue: Barghouti's English is poor. Yet "his" op ed, datelined Hadarim Prison, is a slickly-written piece of eloquent self-promotion. We think there's a teensie-tiny possibility it was written by professional pubic relations people in his name. But then who pays attention to such trivia when the cause is just so compelling?

Barghouti has an interesting group of admirers who help his self-promotion process move forward. Here are just a few.

Desmond Mpilo Tutu, the South African church leader who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, regularly sings Barghouti's praises. On one view, this is exceedingly odd, given how the Nobel committee specifically noted Tutu's own "nonviolent path to liberation" in its citation. So then is Tutu unware of Barghouti's lethal criminality, as widely outlined in the media for anyone who cares to look (for instance Dr Emmanuel Navon's cogently argued "Desmond Tutu is Wrong about Marwan Barghouti")? No, it does not seem that he is unaware. Instead, like many at that extreme end of the political spectrum, he seems to feel criminality of Barghouti's kind just doesn't count. And to show he means it, he has lately been touting the deeply offensive notion that Barghouti ought to get the same rich prize that Tutu himself did ["Bishop Tutu Nominates Jailed Palestinian Leader Barghouti for Nobel Peace Prize", Michael Friedson, June 8, 2016].

Al Jazeera, referring to the noble hero of the South African struggle to defeat apartheaid, calls Barghouti "the Palestinian Mandela". So do the Ma'an News Agency and a commentator at The Guardian. On the other hand, Le Monde, in the course of an interview with Barghouti, calls the comparison "debatable".

Adolfo Perez Esquivel, an Argentine human rights activist who received the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize and is a leader of the non-violent Latin American Christian group Servicio Paz y Justicia, is another supporter of a Barghouti Nobel [May 2016 source]. So is the parliament of Tunisia [source]. And so are sixteen mayors of towns in France [source] including Valenton and Bergerac (unfortunately we don't know the names of the other metropolises).

A cluster of Belgians, all of them involved in their country's national politics, followed suit and wrote to the Nobel committee in May 2016, improbably calling Barghouti "a peace activist":

“Peace requires the freedom of Marwan Barghouti and of the political prisoners, and more generally the freedom of the Palestinian people living for decades under occupation.”

Thinking logically, we might have surmised that the Belgians meant to exclude homicidal thugs from the list of those to be freed because what possible basis can there be to label such felons "political prisoners"? But then they do seem serious about wanting Barghouti to go to Oslo. So evidently they - like Tutu - don't see a conflict between being (a) a convicted murderer and (b) a peace activist. Sort of like being both a cheese-burger addict and an activist for veganism.

But for those to whom facts and realities still mean something, here's a brief excursion through the contemporary reports that accompanied his journey into the Israeli penal system. To emphasize the point, we refer to news reports carried by Haaretz which is much closer to Tutu's views than to ours.

The capture:

Wiretapping revealed that Barghouti was hiding in a safe house. The commander of the army’s Ramallah Brigade... told Haaretz: “When the intelligence arrived that he was in a building in the heart of a Ramallah neighborhood... an armored brigade surrounded the site and the baton was passed to me. The Duvdevan unit was under my command. We understood that he was in the building. One of the soldiers saw him through the window, taking cover close to what looked to us, at least, like an old woman who was lying on a bed. We removed everyone from the building... ["Will Marwan Barghouti be the Palestinian Nelson Mandela?", Haaretz, July 5, 2016]

The conviction

The Tel Aviv District Court convicted former West Bank Tanzim commander Marwan Barghouti in the deaths of five people on Thursday. Barghouti was convicted of three terror attacks in which the five were murdered, as well as in another charge of attempted murder, membership in a terror organization and conspiring to commit a crime. However, the court acquitted him of 33 other murders with which he was charged, noting that there was no evidence that he was a full partner to those incidents...  The court ruled that Barghouti was directly responsible for a January 2002 terror attack on a gas station in Givat Zeev in which Israeli Yoela Chen was murdered. The attack, the judges said, was carried out at his direct order in revenge for the assassination of Raed Carmi. Barghouti had admitted his responsibility for this attack. The attack in which a Greek monk was murdered in Ma'aleh Adumim on June of 2001 was also carried out at the instruction of Barghouti, the judges said. The former Tanzim leader, the court ruled, also approved the March 2002 attack at Tel Aviv's Seafood Market restaurant in which three people were murdered, as well as a car bomb attack in Jerusalem... [He] was charged with leading dozens of terror operations against Israeli targets since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising, including suicide and shooting attacks that led to the death and injury of hundreds of Israeli citizens and Israel Defense Force soldiers. According to the charge sheet, Barghouti headed the Fatah, Tanzim and Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade terror groups in the West Bank and was subordinate to Arafat... The state prosecutor said Barghouti funded and planned terror attacks and is not the political activist he claimed to be... Barghouti's supporters in the European parliament were expected to show up for the ruling... ["Barghouti Convicted in Deaths of Five People", Haaretz, May 20, 2004]

Barghouti was sentenced by judges Sarah Sirota, Amiram Benyamini and Avraham Tal to five consecutive life terms plus an additional 40 years. The judges observed that

Barghouti used to receive reports of the attacks carried out by his associates only after they were completed. This was an effort to preserve his image as a political leader not involved in armed attacks against Israelis... [Haaretz, June 6, 2004] 

And some occasionally overlooked points, via JTA:

When Israeli authorities chose to put Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti on trial in a criminal court rather than a military court, prosecutors may have set the stage for an even bigger prize: Yasser Arafat. That possibility was given a boost last week with Barghouti’s conviction on five counts of murder, for Israelis killed in three separate shooting ambushes... The judges said Barghouti could be convicted only in cases where it was proven that he had prior knowledge of imminent terrorist attacks and that he approved the attacks... [He] was acquitted on 21 other counts of murder for lack of evidence. Both outcomes bolstered the argument for putting Palestinian terrorists on trial in regular Israeli courts rather than in military courts, where the standards of evidence are not as strict. Barghouti’s conviction shows that there is sufficient evidence to put terrorists behind bars using standard criminal procedures, and his acquittal on the other counts lends legitimacy to the argument that even Palestinian terrorists will get fair trials in Israel... ["Barghouti conviction could foretell Arafat trial", JTA, May 24, 2004]

Some additional overlooked dimensions:

• Marwan Barghouti publicly boasted of his role in igniting what many call the Second Intifada in 2000. We published his direct quotes (translated to English at the archived Wayback Machine]. This may come as a surprise to those who think of Ariel Sharon visiting the Temple Mount in September 2000 as being the real story. 
• He personally laid out $500 [source: the archived Wayback Machine quoting a November 30, 2004 Margot Dudkevitch report in the Jerusalem Post] 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 bombmaker was Abdullah Barghouti, Marwan's clansman.
• We sat through Marwan Barghouti's trial in a Tel Aviv court.
• When another clansman 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.
• And since we're mentioning the Barghouti clan, let the record show that Ahlam Tamimi, the Jordanian Hamas agent who boasts of taking the central role in the 2001 Sbarro massacre and who faces terrorism charges in Washington that were made public on March 14, 2017, is the daughter of a woman named Hasna al-Barghouti [Arabic source]

Leader and parliamentarian, battler for non-violence and peace, candidate for the world's most important reward for bringing peace to the world. And also a cold-blooded thug closely directing other thugs. A man happy to appear in public gripping a sub-machine gun as he claims credit for the blood-drenched Intifadeh years from 2000 onwards.

We don't think it's all that difficult to distinguish between Barghouti the plastic-coated fantasy and invention of parts of the media, and Barghouti the loathsome killer of innocents. 

In the end, it seems to come down - tragically - to whom and what you want to believe.

04-Apr-17: Something you rarely read about Marwan Barghouti the killer

Marwan Barghouti, the reality: on trial in an open court, convicted
and sentenced to life Image Source: Getty

Times of Israel has a report today ["Jailed Fatah terrorist organizing hunger strikes, protests"] by Avi Issacharoff, its high-profile Middle East analyst, that focuses on the latest manouveurings by Marwan Barghouti to stay in the public spotlight.

We added this to the comments section at the foot of the article:

News sites ought to be very careful about how they describe convicted felons who have a political role to play. How they're labeled in the news has a strong impact on how they're viewed. Almost no one goes back and does their own research. They rely on the "experts". 

Marwan Barghouti and his Fatah handlers must be pleased by the headline of this story. They are probably also happy for him to be described as "jailed for life by Israel for orchestrating a string of murders during the Second Intifada..." as he is in this report. 

But a more accurate way - the right way - to say why Barghouti is spending the rest of his life behind bars is this from BBC: "But it was his arrest by Israel in 2002 and conviction on five counts of murder two years later that turned his into a household name." [BBC News] 

Barghouti, the terrorist thug, is not an orchestrator. He's not (just) a jailed terrorist. He's a convicted murderer.  

From experience, it's exceedingly rare for him to be called that in news reports.

Marwan Barghouti, the icon: A concoction of "resistance"
fantasy and an army of waiting supporters

For a range of reasons, there has been a series of efforts to paint Marwan Barghouti as an apostle of non-violence, as an emerging alternative to the thuggish Palestinian Arab political class. The reality is he is as demonstrably thuggish as the worst of them, and efforts to present him differently are cheap spin.

Here's a good illustration from, of all sources, Haaretz, which happens to be the preferred forum for much of the propaganda seeking to give birth to a new, kinder, gentler, bogus Barghouti:

In the early days of the second intifada, Barghouti led mass demonstrations. When the confrontations escalated, he declared, “The time when only we sacrifice victims is past. We must take revenge. We must kill Israelis. Yes. We have bullets. We have rifles, and they will be aimed at the occupation.” ["Will Marwan Barghouti be the Palestinian Nelson Mandela?", Haaretz, July 5, 2016]

For personal reasons, we (Frimet and Arnold Roth) have strongly negative personal feelings about Barghouti. We sat through his 2003-4 trial in a Tel Aviv court-room.

• Marwan Barghouti personally paid for the design and the making (by Abdullah Barghouti, a clansman of his) of the explosives-and-nails-filled guitar case that destroyed Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria on August 9, 2001 and along with it the lives of our daughter Malki and many other innocents. Marwan Barghouti paid Abdallah Barghouti US$500 for his work. That sum came on top of the $117,000 he received for his product engineering work from Hamas, according to evidence [Jerusalem Post - Archive, November 30, 2004] given to the court in Abdullah Barghouti's multi-murder trial.
• Quote: The senior Hamas activist behind the Sbarro restaurant bombing in Jerusalem, Bilal Barghouti, told interrogators that Marwan [Barghouti] hid him for a few days while Israel was hunting for him and gave him a weapon when he left. ["Barghouti's Top Aide Incriminated Him in Tanzim Terror Strikes", Haaretz, April 26, 2002] 

An elderly South African social activist ["Archbishop Desmond Tutu nominates imprisoned Palestinian for Nobel Peace Prize"] often expresses [here for instance] how he thinks the world  [Twitter link] of Barghouti. We're fairly certain he knows most of the things we have just mentioned, along with the fact that one of the victims of Barghouti's murders was a Greek Orthodox priest whose beard gave him a vaguely Jewish appearance.

But we're confident that, like many people of similar outlook, the South African doesn't give a damn. We offer some little-publicized background here ["09-Jun-16: The convicted killer, the churchman, the prize"]. 

Click here for additional past Barghouti posts of ours.

10-Aug-15: Reminders that terrorist savages have a sentimental side

Remembering the Sbarro massacre - from the savage's
standpoint [Image Source]

(A modified version of what follows appears at Times of Israel as "The sentimental side of the savages".)

Yesterday, we commemorated the anniversary of a massive explosion that ripped through a pizzeria crowded with children in the center of Israel's capital city. It was a catastrophe that upended lives, futures and attitudes and - in relatively small measure - influenced public policies, at least for a time.

We are the parents of one of the children murdered there that day. In fact, a majority of the 15 lives lost in the attack by an Islamist terrorist gang on Sbarro in Jerusalem were children. (A 16th victim, a mother whose child was then two years old, remains in a vegetative state to this day.)

August 9, as it has been for the past fourteen years, was a time for writing and tweeting and receiving back messages of strength and support from the people in our lives who care for our well-being. But if we take a brief look at the Arab world - parts of it, at any rate - yesterday was a day of memories for them too.

But of a very different kind, as we found by Googling today:

• This Facebook account [the post to which the following words relate has now been removed from this location, with neither comment nor explanation] celebrates the anniversary because of the 19 "Zionists" killed at Sbarro Jerusalem. That most of them were children goes unmentioned, perhaps because of the sheer transcendental joy of the celebration. And if they overstate the death toll by 4, so what? The human bomb is offered hearty congratulations on his fine achievement. The page has gotten 190 Likes and 13 Shares between the time it was launched on Sunday morning and 5:00 pm today, Monday, Jerusalem time.
• The Sahafah Arabiah website, based in Egypt, has a tribute page honoring the killing of 20 "Zionists" at Sbarro. (Actual death tolls are evidently a minor detail once the Islamists have crossed the "massacre" threshold.) Referring to the guitar case carried on the human bomb's back and in reality filled with thousands of nails along with ten kilograms of tightly-packed explosives, the writers of the page wax lyrical about "playing melodies of revenge". It seems music does that to you, if you're inclined a certain way.



Islamic Bloc

• Over at Nablus Live, their commemorative article focuses, at great length, on the personality of the human bomb (we don't feel the need to type his name - may his memory be forever erased), and his short career as a covert member of the ranks of Hamas. He is described as "not an ordinary man... a person of calm and tranquility". Dead children do not appear in this account. Nor, as far as we can see, is there a word of condemnation, embarrassment or regret. It's simply a paean to heroism, to an acclaimed hero, and his attainment.
• The Islamic Bloc at Hebron University has its own Facebook page too. It's where they paid tribute on the 14th anniversary of the killings to the main killer, Ahlam Tamimi, the plotter who survived. They display a photo of her meeting Khaled Meshaal, the de facto fuehrer of the Hamas Islamists, on the day she was freed from her Israeli prison cell in 2011. It's here, and has scored 106 likes since Sunday as of the time we wrote this post. The accompanying message, translated from Arabic, reads: "Freed prisoner in a deal... Ahlam Tamimi, by the Qassam martyr Izzedine Al Masri allowed him and identified the site, the Sbarro restaurant, in which he carried out the martyrdom operation..." Readers may be interested to note that Hebron University is part of Global University Network for Innovation via which, in its own words, it "applies for the European Union Academic partnership programs and it is currently partner of several projects", including several focused on "peace". (We're not sure what they mean by that out-of-context word.) The Islamic Bloc, the "students wing" affiliate of Hamas, has had a dominant position for years in the student government of Hebron University, despite the heavy hand of the Fatah/PLO regime that rules over the city.
• Not so surprisingly, the Twitter account of the woman who personally engineered the massacre and proudly accepted credit for it, who brought the human bomb into Jerusalem; who walked him to the target before slipping away in time to save herself; who celebrated with sincere joy the blowing to pieces of fifteen innocent victims most of whom, by her design, were Jewish children; who pleaded guilty to all the murder charges with zero remorse; who was convicted and sentenced to 16 life terms but is now free; focuses on the glory of the killing. That is what it does, here. Tamimi, a television performer with her own weekly show, is another who adopts a musical metaphor (in her native Arabic tongue which we have translated to English) to pay poetic homage to the cultured young religious fanatic with the dual-purpose guitar case on his back and to the uplifting devastation wrought by its explosive contents:
  
      "When the (musical) melodies are turned into explosions, 
      Then hearing the music is pleasant to us. 
      Your time has come, oh ye who play the harp (referring to Masri, the human bomb).
      All that remains is the memory of you."

The chief plotter and arch murderer's Tweet - we translated the Arabic text

There are more. But we feel we should devote the remainder of the space available in this post to a complete and comprehensive listing of the various anniversary-driven condemnations of the Sbarro massacre that we were able to find online in the Arabic language. The list begins here.

And ends here.

Is there anything a reasonable person can learn about terrorism and what it does to people - especially to those who worship it and its practitioners - by considering this small handful of reactions to just one Islamist massacre?

09-Jul-15: When incitement to murder is financed by foreign aid, where will the accounting come from?

Sitting in an Israeli court, the bomb maker who has murdered 66 people
until now says he wants to kill some more. Makes his father
so proud. [Image Source]

Our daughter Malki - graceful, pretty, smiley, a musical prodigy, a social activist on behalf of children with severe disabilities - will never reach her sixteenth birthday.

That privilege was stolen from her (and us) by a gang of Islamist men and women on August 9, 2001. A thunderous, sickening flash of explosives and thousands of flesh-ripping nails destroyed Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria and with it the bodies and lives of fifteen innocents, the majority of them children. Malki (whose photo is over there on the right of this page) was one of them. Her best friend, the girl who lived next door and was standing at the counter with her, was another.

The explosive device was concealed inside a guitar case carried on the back of a man. He was a human bomb, brought to the center of our city - Israel's capital, Jerusalem - by the engineer of the massacre ["17-Nov-11: A monster walks the streets and she has many accomplices"]. He is of course dead, but the planner of the massacre is not. She hosts a TV program that is produced in Amman, Jordan, and since 2012 has gone to air on Fridays to an eager global audience of Arabic speakers.

Rejoicing in streets of Lebanon as news of the
massacre in Jerusalem is announced, August 9, 2001 [Image Source]

The man who constructed the diabolical guitar-case bomb, and several others similar to it, has haunted our thoughts through the years since we first learned of his monstrous savagery. Abdullah Barghouti, a Kuwaiti with Jordanian citizenship, sits in an Israeli prison cell today, serving 67 life terms to which he was sentenced in a 2004 trial. 

From inside, Barghouti has reminded every possible audience of the bestiality that underpins his murderous nature. 66 innocent people killed? Not enough, he declares - explicitly. In 2006, in the intimate setting of a quiet interview beamed throughout the world, Barghouti notoriously said

"I feel bad because the number is only 66. This is the answer you want to hear? Yes, I feel bad because I want more." [Quoted on a CBS site]

The panel of judges who sentenced him expressed regret that the death penalty was not an option. (The only time a death penalty has been carried out in Israel was that of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichman in 1962.)

What he did was horrifying. But hardly less horrifying are the reactions of wide parts of Arab society who stood solidly with the killers, rejoicing at the deaths. Major news services carried photos that day of macho men expressing their joy in Arab streets (like the one above). Children were provided with platters of candies to hand out in celebration of the massacre of Jewish youngsters. 

Every last member of that gang of jihadists became a celebrity in the societies in which they live. And the Mahmoud Abbas-controlled Palestinian Authority ("chronically short of funds... perpetually requesting handouts") has been paying the bomb-maker, along with all the others in the gang, a rich salary since at least April 2011 ["20-May-11: Rewarding the Palestinian Arab terrorists: is this being done in your name?"]

Having researched this, we know of not a single article in the Arab language published anywhere in the world that condemns the perpetrators and their act, or bemoans their corrosive impact on Arab and Moslem societies. If anyone among our readers can point us to even a single instance (an offer we have made numerous times already), we would showcase it here and let people know. 

CBS promo for the still-online 60 Minutes platform it gave
our child's killer in 2006. The voice, the pain, the anger of victims 
like us interests them much less [Image Source]

We pointed out eight years ago ["10-Apr-07: Regarding Abdullah Barghouti"] that he pleaded guilty to all charges at his trial on 66 counts of terror-inspired murder. He told the court he "did this to kill as many Israelis as possible".

Reporter Bob Simon fronted a segment called Terror Behind Bars on the CBS "60 Minutes" television program in 2006 which did much to elevate Barghouti to celebrity-dom outside the Arab world (he was already a global Arab hero).

"I get my best piece, the guitar. I have it, I like it, I respect it... I open it, make a bomb inside it, close it, send it with the guy. And he make the bomb. And it's done." [Abdullah Barghouti boasting on CBS News' 60 Minutes program, April 2006]

We wrote an open letter at the time to his TV network, CBS, in New York (published here) expressing our deep pain and fierce anger in calm and fairly reasonable terms. CBS ignored us.

There is no room for doubt about this: the massacre at Sbarro, along with the untold number of similar acts of murderous barbarism carried out against Israelis and Jews in the past decade and a half in the name of Palestinian Arab 'resistance' have had the widest support right across the Arab world. We offered some evidence here, referring to Barghouti: "1-Jul-13: 66 acts of murder make him a hero in parts of the Arab world. What does this tell us about parts of the Arab world?"

We learned of another public display of this today.

The self-styled 'independent' Palestinian Arab news network Ma'an broadcast a television program in June focused on Barghouti. Ma'an TV broadcasts its content live via the web [here] and by satellite throughout the Arabic-speaking world. The tone of this particular Ma'an show is plain from the text, rendered into English by Palestinian Media Watch.

PMW's report begins with this brief introduction:

The independent Palestinian news agency Ma’an, on the TV program In a Prisoner’s Home, interviewed the father of the terrorist in his home. Both the TV host and the father referred to the killer of 67 as a “hero.” Barghouti’s father added he was “proud” of his son, who he sees as a “noble fighter” who acted “generously” for “Palestine.” He encouraged “every Palestinian of noble soul to follow in the footsteps of Abdallah Barghouti for Palestine and Jerusalem”:

The convicted, confessed, proud, hungry murderer has a father
with a message [Image Source: Video clip via PMW]

The original Arabic of the interview, as rendered by PMW's translators into English:

• Independent Palestinian news agency Ma’an’s TV host: “We are now in the home of the heroic prisoner Abdallah Barghouti, in the month of the blessed Ramadan.”
• Father of bomb maker Abdallah Barghouti: “Abdallah Barghouti, I am proud of him, because everyone knows of Abdallah Barghouti and what he generously did for Palestine. I am proud of him and I say: Praise Allah who gave me this hero, noble fighter for Palestine and its cause. I say: Praise Allah, Lord of the Universes, Abdallah fought for Palestine and left his family, his father and mother, and left behind three children, two girls and a boy, and sacrificed everything for the Palestinian cause. I ask every Palestinian of noble soul to follow in the footsteps of Abdallah Barghouti for Palestine and Jerusalem.”

We feel no need to say anything to the father or to the host. They are what they are. The message they intend to convey via the interview is about as clear as messages get: Barghouti the son murdered dozens of Jews, and Barghouti the father says it's something noble to do the same, again, now. 

Barghouti: Serving 67 life terms in an Israeli
prison. His advocates call him a 'detainee' and want him
freed. The 66 murders? No big deal.

Incitement to murder, and glorification of the killer, rarely come much clearer than this.

Now we have some questions for those who fund Ma'an, an organization entirely dependent on its foreign supporters. They include (according to NGO-Monitor and to the Ma'an website):

• The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs
• The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark
• United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
• European Commission Technical Assistance Office (ECTAO) 
• United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
• The Danish Representative Office to the Palestinian Authority (PA) 
• The Netherlands Representative Office to the PA

None of these bodies ever spends private money. In every case, it comes from taxpayers - by far the easiest form of money for ideologically-motivated people to spend (as we have observed here over and again). Our questions:

• Do Danish, Dutch and other European tax-payers know that civil servants funded by them are passing along serious money, millions of Euros and of dollars, also funded by them, to encourage murder? For turning a confessed killer of 67 innocent people into a figure to emulate?
• Does this shock them? 
• Do those civil servants and public officials have anything they would like us - the parents of a victim of the beastial killer at the heart of the interview above - to know about their complicity in Ma'an's incitement to ongoing and new acts of murder? 
• Do they need to know our email address? Here it is. We're waiting.

25-Jun-13: Dogs, psychopaths and the Internet

Source

There's a wry expression that says "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog". It was the caption to a cartoon by Peter Steiner published in The New Yorker on July 5, 1993. We think it stands for the way ideas can be freely exchanged via the Internet; its anonymity and ease of access let people air the widest range of viewpoints with little fear of repurcussions: the outlandish, the offensive and everything in between and beyond. 

This post is not actually about cartoons or dogs, at least not in the conventional sense, but how evil is done again and again when ordinary people tolerate it or - worse - give it their active support.

Two individuals, more than anyone else we know, inflicted brutality, pathological hatred and lethal violence on our family, leaving us devastated and in constant, enduring pain. 

One is Abdullah Barghouti, a Kuwaiti holding a Jordanian passport who built and delivered a cleverly-engineered bomb disguised as a guitar case and intended to kill civilians and - by means of a thick layer of nails - to maim and disfigure the greatest possible number of people in range. 

The other, Ahlam Tamimi, a Jordanian student of journalism and 21 years old, scouted suitable sites during several undercover visits and eventually picked a site - a pizza restaurant in the center of the city where we live, popular with teens - for delivering the bomb right up to its doors. She then walked the bomb there before fleeing for her own safety back to Ramallah where she was working as a television news-reader. 

The explosion and killings they engineered - in short, their barbarism - are detailed in a piece we wrote, "The massacre at the Sbarro restaurant". In addition to those killed, more than 130 others suffered serious injuries.

Barghouti and Tamimi, heroic figures in the estimation of many, are spoken of in reverential tones in  large parts of the world. Their victims, including our fifteen year old daughter Malki - not so much. 

The Facebook page that honours Barghouti the bombmaker

Since we are now in the age of social media, notice that Abdullah Barghouti's Facebook page (above) has attracted (as of Tuesday morning) more than a hundred Likes for each of the 66 innocent Israelis he murdered. His career is not over. To stay in touch with recent developments, consider reading what we posted here a few days ago: "20-Jun-13: Abdullah Barghouti, terrorist, bomb-maker, killer of 66 innocents, has some demands".

Ahlam Tamimi, the woman who delivered the bomb to the restaurant, and who was sentenced to 16 life terms, walked free as one of the 1,027 terrorists exchanged by Israel for the life of Gilad Shalit in October 2011. This happened even though the court that convicted her strongly recommended to the authorities that she never be eligible for pardon or for early release "by any other means". (We fought a campaign to have her name removed from the go-free list. But we failed.) She now lives a public and unfettered life, newly married, according to Arabic social media reports pregnant, a regional celebrity, an invited speaker at rallies and on television programs throughout the Arab world, and proud of the children she killed. 

She is the host of her own weekly TV program beamed via YouTube and a Hamas-owned satellite network to all parts of the Arabic-speaking world and widely promoted because of the pro-terror message it disseminates.

Ahlam Tamimi on Facebook

Her Facebook page also attracts its share of Likes. She was convicted (on her own admission) of the murder of 15 people, but there was also a sixteenth - a young mother who had brought her two year old child to Sbarro and has been in a vegetative coma from that hot August 2001 afternoon until today. So if we say 16 victims, then Tamimi's hit rate for Likes is 177 per murdered victim. Is this a Facebook record? Her TV show and video recordings of her speeches are all over the web. Her YouTube presence is prodigious.

The unfathomable evil that these two people, and their deeds, represent is clear. It almost goes without saying. For civilized people, self-confessed murderers are their own advertisement. The barbarism they do, and encourage others to do, removes them from the realm of decency and common morality. End of discussion.

But what happens when civilized people send messages to those for whom the Tamimis and the Barghoutis are genuine heroes, figures of mass adulation? And what if those messages convey understanding? Or sympathy? Or support? What does this mean for such cornerstone societal values as justice? 

It's not an academic question. By not facing up to such matters, we - as a society - do huge harm to ourselves. Being wrong about terrorism and those who do it causes real and irreparable damage to our societies. 

Ahlam Tamimi: No obvious signs of moral ambiguity or angst
for this mass-murderer [Image Source: MEMRI video screen grab]

Two small and little-noted instances from the past 24 hours:

• Under pressure from the US, Israel is said today to be considering the further release from prison of an unspecified number of convicted Palestinian terrorists [Times of Israel]. No one is suggesting this is because they have repented of their crimes. On the basis of an argument that is 100% political, it's proposed that convicted killers and other long-term prisoners be released to freedom even while justice is not being served, judicial sentences are being ignored and the civilian population of our side, Israel, are going to be exposed to an increased threat from deeply committed and unrepentant perpetrators. Does this make sense to someone?
• We learned that, next week, a prominent Anglican church will host a well-publicized photo exhibition honoring the children of Tamimi's ancestral village in order "to promote constructive dialogue around the challenges faced by Palestinian youth... in order that they reclaim hope and build a positive future for themselves". We would want to explain to the organizers that standing up for the rights of disadvantaged people (if that's what people choose to believe about Nabi Saleh and its inhabitants) is one thing. But willfully turning away and averting one's gaze so as not to have to confront the violence and the hatred that infects the population of Nabi Saleh is another. We intend to explain, if we can find someone there who will listen, that if they think this is simply about standing should to shoulder with the weak, there is a very dark other side to this.

As for the social media, they are, of course, not the problem. But they sometimes express something larger. It would be encouraging to hear expressions of outrage from time to time at the way Facebook, YouTube and other such channels play a central role in placing hate-filled psychopaths on pedestals. 

Meanwhile it seems the terrorists and their friends know how to leverage them considerably better than the rest of us do.

05-May-13: Self-confessed jihadist murderer: "With my media card, I was able to enter back and forth, undetected..."

Convicted and unrepentant murderer Ahlam Tamimi (in July 2012),
explains her outlook on high-profile Kuwaiti talk-show

Anyone who reads our blog, even occasionally, knows that the double-standards, circumlocations and hypocrisy so manifest in the way certain people, certain institutions, certain major broadcasters, certain other parts of the mainstream media, deal with terrorists, terrorism, terror and the murder of children simply enrage us. 

We don't see the issues as political. Terrorism is beyond politics. In fact, it's a sort of litmus test. How you deal with terrorism - after you peel away all the double-talk and jargon - determines the sort of human being you are and how others ought to view you. 

Thoughts like these were on our minds when we wrote eight months ago about an American, a senior and influential journalist in the world of Christian thought, and a man of letters. He is James M. Wall and in a blog post ("23-Aug-12: Theology and sociopaths"), we wrote this about him:

Wall is not marginal to the public discourse of the United States. Nor is he regarded (as far as we can tell) as a shrieking crank or a red-neck. He served as editor of a prominent journal called The Christian Century for 27 years, from 1972 to 1999. Wikipedia calls it "the flagship magazine of U.S. mainline Protestantism" [source]. He continued there as a regular columnist until a few years ago, even after his retirement. Though it appears he has stopped writing for it, his name remains on the masthead as Senior Contributing Editor. These days, Wall writes a blog under the title “Wall Writing”. From where we sit, his output has some quite unpleasant tones. In a December 2011 piece on US politics, for instance, he characterizes pro-Israel Republican candidates as “wear[ing] the Jewish kippah”. But as we learned, Wall is capable of advocacy journalism of a far more pungent sort. In October 2011, he posted a lengthy article to coincide with the extorted release from prison of Ahlam Tamimi, our child's murderer... At about the time he wrote it, in October 2011, an Arab newspaper dotingly quoted Tamimi making this statement: “I have never regretted what I have done, and if given another chance I’ll do it again” [source]. Yet extraordinarily, the Wall piece 'lionizes' her. (That’s the term used by the clear-eyed Christian analyst who pointed us to it). With loving attention to the human aspects of her story, Wall urges his readers to resist the Israeli view of the Jordanian woman's "crimes"; those quote marks around the word crimes appear in Wall's essay. Wall leaves readers in little doubt that the atrocities to which Tamimi confessed in court - atrocities to which she confesses afresh frequently, proudly and in public - were not crimes at all but something very different.

Mohammed Al-Awadi hosts a talk show on Kuwaiti television that
provided a platform for Ahlam Tamimi

Wall's rambling article, entitled “Ahlam and Nezar, A Palestinian Couple Released in The Prisoner Exchange”, makes the argument that Tamimi did what anyone would do if they saw themselves at war. And at the end of the day, what she did was merely logistic. For Mr Wall, it was therefore quite understandable:

[Tamimi’s] crime, for which she was sentenced by a military court for multiple life terms, was for “choosing the location and securing transportation to reach that location”.

We can argue, and we have certainly tried to say over and again, that this is an irresponsibly wrong view of what the convicted murderer Ahlam Tamimi did. 

Today, however, there is no need for us to say it again because she has now said it about as clearly as a person can. 

We have just seen an Arabic-to-English translation, published in the last few days, of what this psychopathic woman says about herself and about what she did. 

It’s in a video that has had wide dissemination via YouTube and other channels right across the Arabic-speaking world since its appearance in July 2012. [In case they disappear, the page is archived here. We archived the YouTube clip itself, the full length version, here.] 

For now, we rely on the translation that appeared Thursday on Walid Shoebat's site. Fluent in Arabic, he gives this intro to his transcript:

Tamimi first teaches Muslims how to best prepare their souls by instructing Muslims how to abandon secular life and worldly things, then how to smuggle terrorists, plant explosives in condensed areas, watch, document statistics, and monitor civilian movements in heavy traffic areas... Tamimi tours the Arab media now and provides expertise on how Muslims – both male and female – can become killing machines. [Shoebat]

Here is Ahlam Tamimi, the murderer of our child and of fifteen other innocents, in her own words: 

Tamimi: I studied all the ideologies of each [terrorist] group in order to decide which one I will join... With my media card I was able to enter back and forth, undetected, to do journalistic interviews in Jerusalem in order to avoid detection by the Zionists. 

Al-Awadi (her interviewer): So you get in and out as a journalist? 

Tamimi: Yes 

Al-Awadi: Beautiful! 

Tamimi: I entered a [terrorist] cell. A cell is constructed by having a leader, then there are different groups; each one is divided into itself... You do not know who the leader is... First, I scouted places to decide where to carry out Jihadi operations... I would wander into Jerusalem to find the best spots to carry out these missions... First, I would scout stores and major shopping malls… schools, restaurants… I would then present my findings to the leader of the cell... I would do a meticulous count on the numbers of people moving in these areas and study it mathematically. I would use my wrist watch and count how many were walking in an area within one hour. So I would make reports that if an operation is conducted in such and such area. Then I would estimate the numbers of casualties; in some cases my number would be 30 Israelis will die and other estimates it would be 50 Israelis that will die... So from this time to that time there would be 70 Israelis who entered this spot. So during lunch for example, from this time to that time, so many Zionists enter this area. The school for example, I would study the morning time when school children would enter. Of course the second phase would be the Jihadi operation itself. I would take the components to be filled up with explosives to Abdullah Barghouti. He of course prepares the explosive charges. I would choose the device myself, based on products that are most sold amongst the Zionists. So I would provide a report, for example, that said the best device is a favorite drink or product. So the explosive device is manufactured to look like this product. So the product on the outside would appear like something that easily looks like the products in the stores and on the inside, it would be a time bomb. Of course, I learned how to operate one of these devices... My other mission is to accompany suicide martyrs. [Archived source]

There are some life-saving lessons here for what is and is not legitimate to do with reporters in dangerous jihad-infected places and times. And when she cryptically says that the "best device is a favorite drink", she is referring to the bomb, disguised as a beer can, that she placed on the shelf of the basement supermarket in the Mashbir Latzarchan building on King George Street, central Jerusalem, ten days before the Sbarro massacre and only 200 meters up the street from the pizza restaurant. In a little-reported prequel to her career as a terrorist, it exploded but fortunately killed and injured no one.

Al Awadi, on whose program she appeared, is described in this US confidential cable as "a Kuwaiti Islamist commentator and regular al-Jazeera talking head". It's sobering to think how many major figures in the Arabic world take such a public, central role in the encouragement of terrorist outrages. (If only more non-Arabs understood Arabic.)

A word about Abdullah Barghouti whom Tamimi mentions in passing. [We have written about him here, here and here.] Barghouti was contracted to custom-assemble the bomb that destroyed the Sbarro restaurant. A clever man with golden hands, he embedded it inside a guitar case to minimize the risk that the man carrying the nail-filled explosive packaged would be intercepted before he brought it to ground zero in the absolute center of Israel's capital city. Tamimi and the young Islamist fanatic who had the bomb on his back passed through the busy Qalandiya security checkpoint en route to Jerusalem. The Israeli soldiers and Border Guard personnel manning the crossing did not stop them, even in a cursory way. Perhaps the sight of a woman dressed in a typically Israeli tank top completed the illusion of a harmless couple of youngsters with music on their minds. 

Barghouti was not there that day. He was in the midst of his busy season. Bombs delivered up by him to his Hamas clients during 2001 brought about the extremely violent deaths by murder of 66 people. The government of Norway, among the most generous providers of development aid to the Palestinian Authority, is currently wrestling with its conscience over the role it has played in funding the PA’s Rewards-for-Terror scheme. That’s not what they call it, but that assuredly is what it is. (There’s some background here. And keep in mind this is a program of the 'moderate' PA, lead by the 'moderate' Mahmoud Abbas'.) Under the scheme, Barghouti will receive a salary this month, and every month for as long as he remains a prisoner of Israel, equivalent to four times the average salary of a PA government worker. The scheme is highly publicized among Palestinian Arabs because the 'moderate' PA wants its citizens to understand the high priority it gives to acts of child-murdering heroism like those undertaken by Barghouti and Tamimi. 

Tamimi has always described herself as an agent of Hamas, though on the day she blew up the Sbarro restaurant, she was the on-camera news-reader for the other Palestinian Arabs, the faction that calls itself the PA, the 'moderate' side of the Palestinian Arab world. Few of the Palestinian Arab viewers watching her read the news that night (August 9, 2001) realized what a central role she took in the massacre on which she was reporting.

Click here to visit the site

And a word about James M. Wall as well. 

As we noted last summer, he engages in advocacy for self-admitted murderers and their deeds. In open societies like the US and Israel, it’s something he has the right to do freely, obnoxiously and even offensively. But what does it mean that The Christian Century still has him on its masthead? Does the editorial board agree with his ‘understanding’ of the actions of people who murder children in the name of jihad? Do they disagree? Will they disavow him and them? Are his views Christian? How Christian is it to embrace the unrepentant murderer of children who says she prays for the chance to do it again?

Ahlam Tamimi was sentenced to sixteen terms of life imprisonment after her conviction for planning and executing the massacre at central Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant. She walked free in October 2011 as one of the 1,027 murderers, jihadists and assorted other terrorists whom Israel bargained away for the freedom of a hostage, Gilad Shalit, held captive for five years by Hamas. Tamimi subsequently married another unjustly freed murderer (her cousin), and is living in total and unfettered freedom in Jordan from where she is a regular broadcaster on the Al-Quds satellite channel (operated by Hamas). She flies freely around the Arab world and YouTube features dozens of her speeches. Her relentless encouragement of acts of murder in the name of jihad has made her a figure of admiration and stature throughout the Arab world. 

We fought a campaign to have her name removed from the go-free list in October 2011. But we failed. At the time of the Shalit transaction, we wrote [here] that the "media celebrity" Ahlam Tamimi is a "religiously-inspired monster":

Dozens of photographs of her smiling and exultant face are syndicated by the major global newswire services. Her every statement is broadcast and analyzed not only by the terrorists of Hamas and Gaza to whose murderous strand of Islamism she long ago swore allegiance, but also by the mislabeled 'moderates' of Fatah and the PA who are not in the least moderate on the subject of the murder of Jews and the dismemberment of the society we have created here in Israel. The injustice of this person's freedom, and the hypocrisy of those who fail to scream out against it, overwhelm us. They choke us. 

And still do.