1-May-14: Striking back at the rising terrorist violence in Jerusalem

Isawiya viewed from Mt Scopus, Jerusalem [Image Source]

If you refer back to previous posts here (for instance "6-Apr-14: Scenes from an ongoing war"), you will know that serious and rising levels of violence have become part of life in several Jerusalem neighbourhoods that border on Arab communities.

Yesterday, after several months of investigation, the police along with the Israel Security Agency (Israelis know it as the Shin Bet), announced the arrest of several members of what they are calling a terror cell. It was based in Isawiya, an Arab neighbourhood in the eastern part of Israel's capital that borders on the Hadassah Mt Scopus hospital campus.

The members of the cell are charged with a string of violent attacks on Israelis focused on Jerusalem's French Hill quarter and the adjoining Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University. Those include the hurling of firebombs (media reports often call these Molotov Cocktails though that makes them sound too benign) at a synagogue six months ago, at a residential apartment two months ago, and at a dance club in April - all in French Hill. Israel National News, one of the few news channels to regularly report on this sort of attack, says 

Attacks from Isawiya have become so violent over the past several months that students at nearby Hebrew University Mount Scopus Campus have declared the area a "war zone"... Residents of the French Hill area stated earlier this month that they felt "abandoned" by the State and the IDF over the waves of terrorism in their neighborhood. Arab [residents] of Issawiya routinely harass female students at the university as they make their way from the dormitories to the campus...

It's not disclosed at this stage whether these men see themselves as under the command of Hamas, the PA or anyone else. That may come out later.

Astonishingly, another Jerusalem terror cell was uncovered earlier the same day. The Shin Bet and the IDF said the charges this time involve shootings and attacks by explosives based on agricultural fertilizer inputs. One of the members is an Arab Israeli; he exploited that status to acquire the materials needed for the explosives and to obtain weapons. It appears the funding came from Hamas. INN says additional cell members are likely to be indicted in the coming days. It adds that before the men were arrested, they had been investigated by the Palestinian Authority's security forces, held for a short time and then released even though a remote detonator for explosives was found in their possession.

6-Apr-14: Scenes from an ongoing war

Mt Scopus campus of the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, immediately
adjacent to Jerusalem's French Hill
neighborhood [Image Source]

From Israel National News, "Arab Rock-Throwers Tried to Kill Me":

Raphael Delarosa, a Jerusalem resident and father of well-known journalist Emily Amrousi, was attacked Tuesday [April 1, 2014] while driving his car in the French Hill neighborhood of the capital. The attackers, from the Arab neighborhood of Issawiya, threw stones and bricks at his car, shattering the rear windshield... "I was on my way to a building supplies store right behind the Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital, on the border between two Jerusalem neighborhoods - Issawiya and French Hill. I left the store, said thank you to the pleasant Arab salespeople, drove 50 meters and suddenly was attacked by a hail of blocks and stones thrown by 16- to 17-year-old youth," noted the Jerusalem man. Delarosa emphasized that he didn't try to escape the area, but rather left his car and went to the Arab store owners standing around, saying "Look at what they did to me, no one will make us run from here, from sovereign Jerusalem..." [Israel National News]

From "Police prevent stabbing in Ma'ale Adumim", a Times of Israel article published Saturday night:

A Palestinian man was arrested in... Ma’ale Adumim Friday as he prepared to carry out a stabbing attack, it was announced Saturday evening. Police detained the suspect after receiving reports of a suspicious man, possibly drunk, standing near the town’s entrance. He was found to be carrying a 30cm-long (12-inch) knife. The man, a 34-year-old resident of Abu Dis, told policemen he had intended to stab someone in the town.

Students on the Mt Scopus campus [Image Source]

From "Student nightclub firebombed near Hebrew University", this morning (Sunday):

A nightclub in Jerusalem’s French Hill neighborhood was firebombed at around midnight Saturday night, police said Sunday morning. One person was lightly injured from smoke inhalation in the attack. Arrests have been made in the case and police are working on determining if the attack was criminal or politically motivated. Just before midnight, three Molotov cocktails were thrown at the club, which is in an area frequented by students from the nearby Mt. Scopus campus of Hebrew University, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told the Times of Israel. He added that police opened an investigation into the attack, “three suspects were arrested for being connected to the incident” following a search of the area... The French Hill area has seen numerous firebombings and incidents of stone throwing in the past, mostly perpetrated by residents of adjacent Arab neighborhoods and often directed at students at the university, many of whom live in nearby dormitories. There was a surge in petrol bombings and stone throwing incidents around French Hill in January and February, police said, and then after an investigation 16 arrests were made.

UPDATE: In a follow-up report on April 7, 2014, Israel National News says:

Although initial reports said that the firebombs targeted a nightclub or dance hall, it now turns out that they were actually thrown outside a Conservative synagogue. A section of the synagogue is rented out on Saturday nights and serves as a dance hall for senior citizens. There have been four firebomb attacks in the neighborhood since January, and all are seen as nationalist terror acts... The attacks have concentrated on a part of the neighborhood that includes the kindergarden, the synagogue and the school. 

It goes on to quote a resident who says: “Our children have become targets... I am worried every time my daughter stands at the bus station.”

Haaretz estimated in 2012 ["Israel to launch campaign to attract more Arab students to universities"] that Arab students constitute about 12% of the student body at the Hebrew University. Does anyone imagine the stabbings, bombings and assaults will cease when that number rises?

01-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?

Mahmoud Abbas' official television station expresses what they want

us to know about the convicted and unrepentant killers

in our prisons [Image Source: PMW]

The Jordanian parliament is so keen to have Palestinian terrorists freed from Israeli prisons where some of them are serving multiple life-terms for hideous atrocities that they are seeking to expel Israel's ambassador and cancel the Israel/Jordan peace treaty if they can't get their way.

A report posted on a Jordanian government website last night (Sunday) says they are demanding that Israel

respect the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty and to respond to the Jordanian demands and release all Jordanian prisoners. They stressed that "soft diplomacy" with Israel can not solve the issue of prisoners, therefore, the government is required to use all political and legal papers its has to ensure the release of the prisoners. 

The notion that Israel must "release all Jordanian prisoners" because of "the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty" is nonsense. No such obligation has ever existed: not legally, not morally, not diplomatically. We are aware that the notorious "chief negotiator" for one of the two Palestinian Arab statelets, Saeb Erekat, claims it does. But as IMRA explains here, he achieves this only by twisting the plain words of the 1999 Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum which in reality says something quite different.

So whom are the Jordanians so keen to free? Well, it's a long list, but it includes the man sentenced to the longest term of anyone in the Israeli prison system. 

We're speaking of a person about whom we have written in the past [see here]: Abdullah Barghouti, a Kuwaiti who is the self-confessed murderer of 66 people including 9 in the July 2002 bombing at the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; 11 in the March 2002 bombing of Jerusalem's Cafe Moment; 10 in the December 2001 triple-bomb outrage on Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall; and 15 (most of them children, including our 15 year old daughter Malki) in the August 2001 massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria in August 2001.

The judges who sentenced him expressed regret that the death penalty was not an option. This is a not common occurrence in Israeli jurisprudence. The one time a death penalty was carried out in Israel was that of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 1962.

From prison, Barghouti has done an exemplary job of reminding anyone listening of the bestiality that underpins his psychopathic nature. 66 innocent people killed? Not enough. In 2006, in the intimate setting of a quiet interview beamed throughout the world by CBS television's '60 Minutes' program, Barghouti famously 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]

To emphasize the point, in an Israeli court in 2010, he reiterated his dedication to killing more if (when?) he is freed again.

Hard to imagine anyone seriously trying to turn this sick killer of children into something heroic and worthy of emulation. But of course that is precisely what has been happening during the past decade.

Case in point - the official public television station of the Palestinian Authority headed by the 'moderate' Mahmoud Abbas. Just four days ago, it broadcast a program which Palestinian Media Watch has now translated to English and is streaming from its own site [here]. The host, a woman called Manal Seif, launches with visible enthusiasm into a paean of worhip and praise for three figures - all of them sitting in Israeli prisons, all of them convicted of acts of mass-murder. Let's listen:

I want to tell the Israelis that our prisoners are heroes and not terrorists. What I saw reminded me of an Israeli website called PMW or Palestinian Media Watch, a site that monitors the Palestinian media. Of course every visit that we film for a prisoner gets them angry. I was surprised a week ago that [regarding] brother Ibrahim Hamed (54 life sentences), brother Abbas Al-Sayid (35 life sentences), and brother Abdallah Barghouti (67 life sentences), they [PMW] objected, they were upset, they slandered these heroes and claimed that they are terrorists. If they see Abdallah Barghouti as a terrorist, Abbas Al-Sayid as a terrorist, Ibrahim Hamed and Nasser Awais (14 life sentences), if they see all these prisoners as terrorists, we see them as heroes... I salute you, all you heroic fighter prisoners, and of course I always wish you freedom. [PMW]

The good people at PMW told us that Manal Seif hosts a weekly PA TV program called "For You", where 'you' means 'prisoners'. Each week, she visits homes and families honoring/glorifying prisoners as heroes. She is a civil servant, paid a PA salary that is principally funded, as we keep reminding readers here, by the EU, Norway and the US. Without that funding, the hateful and distorted bile she delivers into the airwaves could simply not get there.

In those night-is-day, evil-is-good parts of the Arab world, Seif is not alone.

From a 2006 article on the Keren Malki website

• A December 2012 profile of Barghouti on a Palestinian website provides an astounding example of the self-delusion fueling the hatred industry in their world. Barghouti "was charged with organizing a series of attacks against Israel, which resulted in the death of up to 70 Israeli soldiers" they absurdly write. And so Israel "sentenced him to serve seven life sentences", which is also nonsense; he was sentenced to 67 life terms. In reality, there were few if any soldiers among those killed by Barghouti's bombs, all of which were deployed in deliberately mundane places: popular restaurants, mostly. The engineer of the Sbarro massacre, the woman called Ahlam Tamimi, makes plain that her explicit goal in delivering a Barghouti bomb to the center of Jerusalem was to kill and maim Jewish religiously-observant children [video]. Soldiers never came into the calculation. These people are terrorists, and that's how terror works.
• In May 2013 [source: PMW], mass-murderer Barghouti's family was honored with a media-drenched visit by a delegation of government officials from the Abbas regime headed by PA Minister of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake and District Governor of Ramallah, Laila Ghannam. It was termed a 'solidarity' visit, from which we deduce (but of course we knew this already) that significant parts of the PA government feel solidly connected to the killer of our daughter.
• Ten days ago, in a post here ["21-Jun-13: In dark corners, remorseless killer of 66 innocents is called 'administrative detainee' and 'captive'"] we quoted reports that Barghouti has been on a hunger strike since May. He is being treated in Ha'emek Medical Center (aka Afula Hospital) in northern Israel. 

A report published today by another Palestinian Arab website, Alray, calls him a "Palestinian-Jordanian detainee", but not a Kuwaiti for some reason even though Kuwait is where he was born. It reveals that Barghouti is sadly now

"in a critical condition... Barghouti‘s heart rate is very weak; only 40 beats per minute and he suffers from a liver failure which might lead to liver cirrhosis. Doctors of Internal Committee of Red Cross expressed their concern over Barghouti’s health deterioration, warning that his heart might stop at any time." 

Some years ago, on the Keren Malki website we created to honour the memory of our daughter, a victim of Barghouti and of others like him, we wrote this at the time the CBS interview went to air:

As ugly and repugnant as the words of Barghouti will likely be to the viewers of "60 Minutes", we urge them and CBS not to focus on the man. He is irrelevant, except that he creates a context. Barghouti's evil deeds are the concrete expression of the desires of a government which wants to be accepted as an equal by the community of nations. The anger and revulsion which his interview creates should be redirected at them - at the terrorists in business suits who plot and scheme every day to increase Barghouti's 66 to the largest number they can think of. 

1-Jul-12: Among savages, this one is exceptionally barbaric

Ibrahim Hamed in handcuffs at the military court in Machane Ofer.
It's startling how murderous monsters often look like
ordinary human beings. The tragic and unforgivable mistake many make
is to believe they ought to be treated like members
of some political opposition group. [Image Source]

He's not exactly a household name, even here in Israel. But Ibrahim Hamed is a major figure, a hero,  a man of accomplishment in the world of Islamist terrorists/murderers and their very large number of supporters throughout the Arab world and beyond it. 

This morning in the exceedingly modest military courthouse at Machane Ofer on Jerusalem's northern edge (which we know well from our own bitter experiences), Hamed was sentenced to 54 life terms in prison. (There were reports last week that the prosecution had sought 56.) 

The history of Israeli sentences of this sort strongly suggests the man will go free at some early stage. But for now, the news media here - and almost nowhere else - are reporting in a straightforward way on the crimes he committed and the sentence imposed on him.

Hamed was captured after an eight year manhunt by Israeli forces in 2006 at a place within walking distance of where the sentence was pronounced this morning. Held in prison since that time, he is described in his Wikipedia entry as "a Hamas military commander in the West Bank who ordered suicide bombing attacks during the Al-Aqsa Intifada".  

Let's briefly parse that statement. 

First observation: the word "suicide" is entirely out of place in the description. The crime was murder. The killers, a selection of Islamist losers and dead-enders, may or may not have intended to die in the effort. But that is surely not the defining character of the terrorist outrage. Describing the crime, and by implication the victims, as having a character determined by what happened in the end to the perpetrator is wrong and offensive to the innocent people who were their victims, and unduly respectful of the evil parties.

Second note: a military commander? Like a lieutenant general or a field marshal? What absurd nonsense. We're speaking of the ring-leader of the grandiosely named Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas division that executes its terrorist intentions; a man who never wore a military uniform, since terrorists conduct themselves behind a massive human shield of the societies in which they live. And does Hamas constitute a military force? If so, what are their military objectives? If the suggested answer is "they want to win territory and set up a sovereign state", then show us how this fits with their highly public and well-analyzed political manifesto, otherwise known as the Hamas Covenant (where it's conveniently translated into English). 

They are interested in neither territory nor sovereign states. Read the Covenant - it's all laid out clearly enough.

He was and he is a terrorist. He seeks (present tense) to murder civilians by any means accessible to him or the people taking orders from him. Military commanders everywhere would be fully justified in taking the greatest personal offence at any comparison to the rule-constrained careers they undertook.

The charge sheet against Hamad, describes how he planned, organized, assisted and executed the killing of 46 people and the wounding of more than 400 more. The cowardly bloodbaths he initiated include these: 

• The December 1, 2001 staged, multiple bombings in central Jerusalem's Zion Square. Eighteen people were killed in the Saturday night crowd. A further 188 were injured. The gross savagery of the perpetrators was showcased by the way the first two bombs, detonated on the bodies of the two walking/talking pathetically-human explosives, were followed several minutes later - in accordance with the terrorists' plan - by the explosion of a nearby car bomb. That car bomb was timed to go off just as ambulances and first-responders arrived on the scene. When you are in the presence of barbarians, you must be very careful to distinguish their actions from those of a military.
• The March 9, 2002, bombing of Cafe Moment in Jerusalem. Twelve people sitting in the cafe were killed in the explosion. Fifty-four more were injured, ten of them severely.
• The attack on a social venue, the Sheffield Club, in Rishon Letzion on March 7. 2002. Fifteen were killed, 85 injured.
• The bombing of the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria on the campus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem on July 31, 2002. Nine students, most of them Americans, were murdered in that act of savagery.  About 100 others were injured. The nail-studded bomb was hidden in a bag that was planted under a cafeteria table and then detonated by remote control, allowing the killers to escape safely. The news media reported that day on street celebrations in Gaza.

How long before we see this creature's face on the posters held by "human rights activists"?