06-Jan-16: Perceptions and realities at the BBC

Inside the BBC newsroom in Broadcasting House, London
[Image Source: BBC]

The BBC ("the largest broadcaster in the world"; "the World's Radio Station"; home to a close-to-incredible 22,000 employees) has much for which to answer in relation to how it systematically fails to call terror "terror". 

It's a painful subject not only because of the damage the BBC's resort to aggressive euphemisms does to people's understanding of terror, but also because of the blatant hypocrisy inherent in the way it adheres to the policy sometimes and ignores it other times. To deeply concerned observers like us, it's plain that the BBC's rule book [BBC Editorial Guideline: Language when Reporting Terrorism] provides a fig-leaf for journalistic values that do no credit to BBC management.

The estimable BBC Watch today posted the kind of well-written and penetrating article that makes its work so valuable. We're referring to "More evidence of BBC News double standards on use of the word terror". There, the writers remind us of what the BBC itself and the laws under which it operates say it's supposed to do, and then expands on

the BBC's inconsistent application of those editorial guidelines and the resulting two-tier system of reporting is evidence of precisely the type of “value judgement” it supposedly seeks to avoid and indicates that the choice of language when reporting acts of terror is subject to political considerations which undermine the BBC’s claim of impartiality. If further evidence of those double standards were needed, it could be found in an article published on the BBC News website on January 3rd under the title “Israelis charged over fatal West Bankfamily arson attack”.

Those are obviously serious allegations. The chronic, systemic issues to which they relate are among the most weighty and consequential that an organization with the mission

to ensure that the BBC gives information about, and increases understanding of, the world through accurate and impartial news, other information, and analysis of current events and ideas.

ever faces.

In its reporting of arrests made this past week following the deaths of three members of a single family in a house fire in Duma, a Palestinian Arab village, the BBC's news reporters and editors used

the words “Jewish terrorists” not in quotation marks and not as quoted text. This was the BBC speaking in its own voice.

Calling the Jewish Israelis who were taken into custody over the Duma deaths “suspected terrorists” is unexceptionable. Israel's government has referred to the lethal fire at the Duma home as terror from the outset. See, as an illustration, "PM condemns ‘horrific, heinous terror attack’ on Palestinians" in Times of Israel on July 31, 2015.

BBC newsroom [Image Source: BBC]

BBC Watch reminds us that other terror attacks, some of them among the most horrifying this country has ever known, stunningly failed to reach the BBC's call-it-terror threshold:

• The almost-unimaginably horrific throat-slitting murders of five members of the Fogel family from Itamar. Three little children, the youngest only 3 months old, along with their parents, killed in their beds as they slept at home in March 2011 (BBC report);
• The murder by shooting of Na'ama and Eitam Henkin of Neria in front of their four little children (the youngest 4 months old) in October 2015 (BBC report)
• The early-morning slaughter - by men using knives, axes and meat-cleavers - in a quiet Har Nof, Jerusalem, synagogue of four worshipers and a police officer in November 2014 (BBC report)
• The shooting death of Malachi Rosenfeld in June 2015 - three other Israelis were wounded in the terrorist gunfire. That attack in fact was never reported at all by the BBC.

BBC Watch says, and we certainly agree, that in deciding not to call these acts of murder "terror", while using "terrorist" to describe the unconvicted Israeli Jews arrested in the Duma case, the BBC ought to be required to tell its funding public why. 

Its management should also be called on to justify their engaging (as we say they are) in highly-politicized decision-making whose contours are influenced more by unspoken policy considerations than by the obligations imposed on the BBC by the laws under which it operates.

Here's some further reading from past posts of ours dealing with the BBC and its terror strategy:

• 08-Aug-15: Another BBC moment
• 01-Apr-15: A question for Jeremy Bowen and his morally-challenged BBC handlers
• 20-Dec-14: BBC, unable to call him "terrorist", says French police killed an "Allahu Akbar attacker"
• 01-Sep-14: Gaza, Israel, the BBC: What children - and their parents - ought to know
• 15-Aug-13: To promote something truly hideous, can't do better than adopt the BBC's approach
• 24-Mar-13: Seed of evil: Whitewashing terror at the BBC
• 10-Jan-13: When terror is ignored by news reporting agencies, the BBC for instance, what can we learn?
• 17-Feb-12: It's final: the BBC is relieved from having to reveal the results of in-house inquiry into whether it is biased against Israel
• 16-Aug-11: When the powers at the BBC put this much effort into something, they must really care
• 15-Jun-07: Journalistic Objectivity from BBC and Other Oxymorons
• 18-Jul-06: What Is It About the BBC?
• 14-Jul-06: A word about the BBC

Finally, on a more generous note, let's a take a moment to offer congratulations to BBC management for having just won a well-deserved major award from Honest Reporting. The prize and the attainments that earned it for them are detailed here.

18-Oct-15: Being aware of our neighbours' passion for terror is the first step

Knives, axes, meat-cleavers: Not a  movie scene but Palestinian Arab reality

Terrorism confounds people. 

Too often, it produces bad decision-making by political decision-makers. Sometimes it evokes visions of one-slap solutions (in Hebrew, we call this the zbeng-ve'gamarnu approach) when in reality the hatred and violence stem from passions that have huge sticking power. And far too frequently it brings out silliness, superficiality and befuddlement on the part of reporters and their editors. And we're not speaking of terror in Israel specifically; in great measure, it's a universal phenomenon.

The op-ed below appeared four days ago in Times of Israel. It speaks of terror from the perspective of those to whom it's being done. That's a vantage point with which we are too familiar. David Horovitz, who founded Times of Israel, expresses his message with his customary eloquence. We don't agree with every word, but sincerely hope readers readers will share it widely. (The accompanying pictures were selected by us, not Times of Israel.)

What do you do when the people trying to kill you live around the block? | Ultimately, the only way to thwart people bent on murder, with their minds poisoned by racism and religious extremism, is to curb the flow of toxicity

David Horovitz | Times of Israel | October 14, 2015

What do you do when the people who are trying to kill you live in the neighborhood down the street?

Or when they live in the same village as that lovely man your son’s been working with?

Or when they work for the phone company?

When they try to kill anybody - uniformed soldiers and police, ultra-Orthodox Jews, all the passengers - on a city bus?

When they target men and women and children.

When they are men and women and children?

When their leaders - politicians, spiritual leaders, teachers - lie to them about us, lie about our history, lie about our ambitions?

When some of their leaders tell them they will go to paradise if they die in the act of killing us?

Palestinian Arab religious leader, October 2015 [Image Source]

When they (sometimes) lie to themselves about the killings they carry out - claiming that it is we who are rising up to kill them, that their bombers and stabbers are being attacked in cold blood by us - and thereby widen the circle of embittered potential killers?

When they (sometimes) lie to themselves about who it is they are killing, falsely claiming in widely circulated social media exchanges, for instance, that Na’ama Henkin, gunned down with her husband in the West Bank two weeks ago, was deliberately targeted because it was she who had insulted the prophet, calling Muhammad a pig, on a visit to the Temple Mount this summer?

When all they need in order to kill is a knife or a screwdriver and a mind that’s been filled with poison?

And when that poison pours into them from most every media channel they consume, and from the horrendous Facebook postings of their peers and their role models?

What do you do?

First, acknowledge the scale of the problem.

After decades relentlessly demonizing and delegitimizing the revived Jewish state, the Palestinian leadership has produced a generation many of whom are so filled with hatred, and so convinced of the imperative to kill, that no other consideration - including the likelihood that they will die in the act - prevents them from seeking to murder Jews.

The false claim pumped by Hamas, and the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, and Fatah, and many more besides, that the Jews intend to pray on the Temple Mount - a place of unique sanctity for Jews, but one whose Jewish connection has been erased from the Palestinian narrative - has all too evidently pushed a new wave of young Palestinians, urged to “protect al-Aqsa,” into murderous action against any and all Jewish targets, using any and all weapons.

Instructional poster designed by Waleed Zohid [more of his blood-lusting
graphic work here]. The self-delusion in such incitement is that it urges
the killing of soldiers and police, but Israeli civilians know better

The suicide bombings of the Second Intifada were carried out by West Bank Palestinians; the onslaught was drastically reduced when Israel built the security barrier. Today’s terrorism is largely being carried out by Palestinian Arabs from East Jerusalem, some of whom have blue Israeli identity cards. The relative neglect of East Jerusalem since 1967, by an Israel that expanded the city’s municipal boundaries but signally failed to ensure anything remotely close to equality between Jewish and Arab neighborhoods, only made the lies and the incitement spread more easily. In an Israel where Jews and Arabs live utterly intertwined lives, this new level of potential danger in every seemingly banal encounter is rendering daily life nightmarish.

Second, tackle the problem in all the spheres where it is exacerbated.

In the short term: Arrest the preachers who spout hatred. Ask Facebook to close down the pages that disseminate it, and find the people behind those pages. Monitor hateful sentiment on social media more effectively; several of this month’s terrorists made no secret of their murderous intentions.

Make plain, via every mainstream and social media avenue, in Arabic, that Israel has no plans to change the status quo at the Temple Mount. Involve King Abdullah of Jordan. Involve anybody else who can credibly address that incendiary lie about Al-Aqsa.

Boost security, of course, as Israel is doing, but know that there can be no hermetic prevention of these kinds of attacks.

Efforts at more strategic change, inevitably, run into the 48-year dilemma of what Israel wants and needs to do about East Jerusalem in particular, and the Palestinians in general. It is unforgivable that Arab neighborhoods of the city lie decades behind the Jewish neighborhoods in everything from city services to education to job opportunity. But in some neighborhoods, addressing such inequalities is impossible. Physically impossible. As in, Jewish city officials would be taking their lives into their hands to set foot in Shuafat refugee camp.

"Moderate" PA president, Abbas: His overt support for terrorism and concrete
encouragement of its practitioners is a matter of record [Image Source]

By contrast, handing control of such areas to the PA, whose leader Mahmoud Abbas insists that all Jerusalem territory captured by Israel in 1967 be part of a Palestinian state, becomes ever less palatable and viable, as he becomes ever more extreme in his pronouncements and as the Palestinian-Arab population becomes ever more of a threat.

Only “resistance” will liberate Palestine, Hamas has always argued. In fact, it is “resistance” that keeps the Palestinians from statehood

Ultimately, the only way to thwart people bent on murder, with their minds poisoned by racism and religious extremism, is to curb the flow of toxicity. Different lessons at school; different priorities and values from spiritual leaders; different messages from political leaders; different approaches on mainstream and social media.

But all that, of course, is far easier said than done. A different tone, a different approach, from the Israeli government, might have helped until recently. Then again, we’ve tried different tones and different approaches. As former prime minister Ehud Barak once said, it’s doubtful, when the Jews in their exile through the millennia prayed for a return to Jerusalem, that they were thinking of Shuafat refugee camp. But Yasser Arafat rejected Ehud Barak’s peace terms in 2000, and opted instead to foment the Second Intifada. And Mahmoud Abbas, eight years later, failed to seize Ehud Olmert’s offer to withdraw from the entire West Bank (with one-for-one land swaps), divide Jerusalem, and relinquish sovereignty in the Old City.

And so we still run the lives of millions of Palestinians, hundreds of thousands of whom are on the “safe” side of the barrier we built to protect ourselves from what has now evidently morphed into yet another phase of vicious, futile bloodshed.

Only “resistance” will liberate Palestine, Hamas has always argued, proudly citing the prisoner releases it extorted when kidnapping Gilad Shalit, and the control of Gaza it achieved when expediting Israel’s withdrawal via terror attacks and rocket fire. But in fact, it is “resistance” that keeps the Palestinians from statehood. Most Israelis want to separate from the Palestinians — want to stop running their lives, want to keep a Jewish-democratic Israel. “Resistance” in each new iteration tells Israelis that they dare not do so. Had Gaza been calm and unthreatening after Israel’s 2005 withdrawal, the late Ariel Sharon would likely have withdrawn unilaterally from most of the West Bank. The Hamas takeover in Gaza, the incessant rocket fire and the frequent rounds of conflict told Israel that it could not risk another such withdrawal — that it could not risk another Hamas takeover in the West Bank.

Education, Palestinian Arab style [Source: MEMRI]
“I will shoot the Jews!” the little child says. “All of them?” the host asks.
“Yes,” the girl says. “Good,” the host answers.

The international community peers shortsightedly at a strong Israel - very strong indeed compared to the Palestinians - and concludes that the onus is upon us to take the calculated risk and grant them full independence. But step back a little - to a perspective that includes Hamas, the rise of Islamic extremism in the Middle East, the threat posed directly by an emboldened Iran and via its terrorist proxies, the anti-Semitism and hostility to Israel rampant across this region - and it should be obvious that a miscalculation by “strong” Israel would quickly render it untenably weak and vulnerable. We might get better international media coverage, but we also might face destruction; Israelis aren’t about to vote for that.

There are two peoples with claims to this bloodied land. Neither is going anywhere. Only conciliation, however reluctantly achieved, is going to enable either and both of these two peoples to live normal lives. And that’s what anybody truly interested in addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be working for.

What do you do when some of your neighbors are trying to kill you? Protect yourself. Stop them. Do what you sensibly can to help create a different, better climate - to moderate your enemies. 

Meanwhile, hang tough. Refuse to be terrorized. Get on with living. That, not killing, is what people were born to do.

10-Oct-15: There has never been and never will be a war on terror, and why this matters so much

Mourning at the Henkin couple's graves in Jerusalem [Image Source]

We were not able to attend, but at the heart-breaking funeral of Naama and Eitam Henkin on Friday October 2, 2015, some powerful thoughts were shared by Dr Yagil Henkin in memory of his murdered brother and sister-in-law. The whole text is online here, and appears as a full-page paid notice on page 3 of yesterday's paper edition of Haaretz. 

We think these few paragraphs extracted from Yagil Henkin's eulogy below get right at the heart of why Israel's struggle with incitement and glorification of the perpetrators is producing so few tangible results.

There's nothing new in this, but most (by far) of the news reporting we have seen since the latest outbreak of malicious savagery directed principally at ordinary, non-uniformed Israelis is superficial, un-curious as to motivations or detail, and misleading. The same can be said for most of the observations about the wave of terror attacks expressed publicly by non-Israeli political figures.

The murdered Henkins pose for a family shot 
just before the onset of Yom Kippur, two 
and a half weeks ago [Image Source]

...Eitam and Naama became involuntary fighters in this struggle. Eitam and Naama are person slain by acts of hostility. They are not “terror victims.” Do not call them “terror victims”. Do not say that Israel has a war on terror. Israel has no war on terror. There was never a war on terror, and never will be such war. 

Bernard Lewis, the great Middle-East scholar, once said (regarding the US’s “Global War on Terror”), that to declare war on terror is comparable to imagining Churchill, in the dark days of 1940, declaring in his famous speech to parliament something along the lines of: “We are fighting against submarines and warplanes, against tanks, against bayonets, against guns and three inch mortars! We will fight them on the beaches…” 

Technically this would have been correct. It would have also been complete nonsense. 

It was not the planes who fought the battle of Britain, but the pilots – British and German – and the nations – Britain and Germany – who sent them. Britain was fighting Nazi Germany, not planes and not submarines. There is no such thing as “terror of stones,” just like there is no “terror by individuals,” no “car terror,” nor is Jerusalem “plagued by stone throwing”. And similarly Eitam and Naama were not murdered (in contrast to a headline on a certain media site) – by a passing car firing at them. 

These are all methods. Not enemies. Terror is a tool. The one who uses terror is the enemy. Terror is the enemy’s tactic, knives and bullets – its weapons at hand. To say “We fight terror” is to say “We do not know who the enemy is; or we are not willing to define them as such.” In other words, “We have no strategy.” 

Do not fight terror, fight those who dictate it. I don’t mean, God forbid, to call for acts of vengeance against innocent Arabs. I’m also not implying that we should give up on war ethics and laws of war. My intention is that we should not pretend that there is no hostility, hatred, ideology, or agencies who manage terror. Nor should we pretend that there is no widespread support for terror. We should not forget that there is a religious and national conflict that has laid and continues to lay the foundation for terrorism.

Behind those murderers there is a society who supports this kind of warfare. A society which supports targeting civilians, a society which supports finishing off a young couple.
We ourselves say, rightly, “We should not be like them.” Then why do we lie to ourselves and say that there are no “them,” that there is no enemy but only an abstract and faceless “terror”? If we are fighting “terror,” then who are those “them”?  Do not promise that our hands will reach the murderers. Behind those murderers there is a society who supports this kind of warfare. A society which supports targeting civilians, a society which supports finishing off a young couple. (Thanks to God their children were not hurt; but do not credit the murderers with “mercy.”) The murderers are the hangmen. 

But those who preach that ‘here is a Jew and therefore he deserves death,’ - they will not be imprisoned. And those who today will give candies to children in order to celebrate the murder in cold blood of two more Jews, will pay no price. 

Eitam and Naama were not killed by “terror.” They are victims of an act of hostility. It was hostility behind the murder. Human beings driven by hatred went out to the road in order to murder Jews, and they succeeded. They took my brother from me and from my siblings; from Yishai they took his sister Naama; from my parents and from Naama’s parents they took their children; from the children – Matan, Nitzan, Neta and Itamar – they took their parents, they took the right to grow up in a family, with the experiences and memories of a warm, unified, and loving family. They took from you, who stand here, a talented and optimistic couple, who were destined to greatness. And they continue to take from everyone the sense of security. They were Arab murderers, backed by a too-large segment of Arab society, with far too little principled opposition to murder. 

An enemy. An enemy who utilizes Terror. 

Do not degrade their memory by turning them into victims of a force of nature. Debate about policy, not about the murdered. Do not find justification and sympathy for murderers. Keep your empathy for the children who were left orphans, to the parents who were left bereft. And for the people of Israel, who still have a long way before being able to sit peacefully beneath their vines and fig trees.

The people who stand behind the terror, those who incite terror, those who glorify and excuse and explain away the terror - each of them is complicit in the terror attacks that have left inconsolable mourners and devastated lives in the wake of their sickening actions. These are people, with addresses and job titles and responsibilities. They depend for their power on the consent and support of ordinary citizens, paying customers, non-governmental organizations, foreign aid, public opinion.

Until terrorism is better understood, they will keep getting away with their evil.

05-Oct-15: On safeguarding a nation

Our plea addressing the prime minister - one of numerous
such unheeded letters and articles we published prior to Israel's mass
freeing of convicted killers in October 2011 [Source]

In the flow of reports tonight about the apprehension of a terrorist gang from Nablus in relation to the murders of Naama and Rabbi Rabbi Eitam Henkin this past Thursday night, there's now this official statement by Israeli prime minister Netanyahu:

We have brought an additional four IDF battalions into Judea and Samaria, and thousands of police into Jerusalem. The police are going deeply into the Arab neighborhoods, which has not been done in the past. We will demolish terrorists' homes. We are allowing our forces to take strong action against those who throw rocks and firebombs. This is necessary in order to safeguard the security of Israeli citizens on the roads and everywhere. We are not prepared to give immunity to any rioter, inciter or terrorist anywhere; therefore, there are no restrictions on the action of our security forces. We will also lift restrictions regarding action against inciters. We will act against the Islamic Movement which, together with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, is the main source of incitement.

Sounds like the right approach. We only wish that the same prime minister, faced with the opportunity to sound as determined as this, had acted with equal purpose before these latest murders instead of after.

Perhaps a sincere-sounding apology for some of those past catastrophically bad Israeli government decisions might have been in order today.

Terrorism requires uncompromising determination, and a clear-eyed view of the people who incite and the messages of incitement they propagate. Far too many Israeli families are today paying the hugely-painful price for unforgivable, irreversible errors on these matters by officials of our government.

05-Oct-15: More on the perpetrators of the Henkin killings

Nablus city center (from the municipality's website)

Information is emerging in stages. And both Hamas and Nablus take a starring role.

The text of an official statement made by the Government Press Office tonight includes some key pieces of information for those, like us, concerned to spotlight the role of Hamas in ongoing terrorism warfare against Israelis. These are all verbatim quotes from that report:

• The ISA [better known as the Shin Bet], IDF and Israel Police have arrested members of the cell that perpetrated the attack. The detainees have been transferred for investigation by the ISA and have admitted their involvement in the murder of the Henkins.
• The cell – affiliated with Hamas in Nablus – numbered five terrorists, each of which had a defined role. One terrorist checked the route. Three terrorists were in the attacking vehicle – a driver and two attackers. The cell commander was not in the vehicle. Several additional suspects have been arrested on suspicion of aiding the cell.
• The cell commander was Raeb Ahmed Muhammad Alivi [we think Alawi might be a better transliteration], born in 1978, and active in Hamas's military wing. He recruited the members of the cell, instructed them and provided them with weapons.
• Members of the cell included: Yehye Muhammad Naif Abdallah Haj Hamed, born in 1991, a resident of Nablus. A Hamas member, he carried out the shooting in this attack and has been active in others. Samir Zahir Ibrahim Kusa, born in 1982, a resident of Nablus. A Hamas member, he drove the attacking vehicle. Kerem Lutfy Fathi Razek, born in 1992, a resident of Nablus. A Hamas member, he set out on the attack armed with a pistol but was mistakenly wounded by his colleague during the carrying out of the attack. Zid Ziad Jamil Amar, born in 1989, a resident of Nablus. A Hamas member, he checked the route.
• During the shooting, one of the cell members was accidentally shot by one of his colleagues and dropped his pistol, which was left at the scene and found by Israeli forces. After carrying out the shooing, the terrorists fled toward Nablus.
• The cell members also said that they had been involved in two shooting attacks in recent weeks, neither of which resulted in casualties, including the 30 August attack near the entrance to Kedumim.
• The investigation of the cell members is continuing.

Fatah, Hamas' sworn enemy, earlier claimed credit. Such is life among the savages.

Ynet is reporting that Alawi, the ring-leader, spent time inside Israel's prison system but does not elaborate. Was he released in a deal? We are checking.

There's some graphic security-camera video [via YouTube] from inside a Nablus hospital of armed Israeli forces entering and apprehending an injured attacker. Ynet is reporting that the person being arrested is Karam al-Masri, 23. (He is not named among the five arrested suspects.) Al-Masri happens to be the name of the human bomb planted by the infamous terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, whose explosion in the center of Jerusalem on August 9, 2001 destroyed the Sbarro pizzeria and the lives of dozens of Jewish families. We don't know whether there is a close relationship, but we're checking.

From social media posts tonight, we see that the hospital where the suspect was picked up is Arab Specialist Hospital, Nablus which

was established in 1997 and included the most important sections multiple medical treatment center and cardiac surgery center and blood diseases and bone and runs these sections Kadrozifa trained and qualified and has a high efficiency. Runs the hospital Arab specialists with expertise and high efficiency and management of distinctive always strives to be the best. [The hospital's website]

Haaretz is reporting tonight that four additional Israel Defense Forces battalions have now been sent in to Nablus which is now locked down to facilitate the ongoing search for the terrorists responsible for the attack.

05-Oct-15: Arrests are reported in the Henkin murder investigation

Israel National News says it has now been cleared for publication that arrests have been made of the members of a terror cell accused of carrying out the murders of Rabbi Eitam and Naama Henkin last Thursday night.

Five terrorists were arrested, all of whom Hamas terrorists from Shechem (Nablus).  The terrorists responsible have been named as: Ragheb Ahmad Muhammad, 37, terror cell leader, who recruited terrorists who had instructed them to implement attacks and provided them with weapons; Yahya Muhammad Nayif Abdallah Haj Hamad, 24, who carried out the shooting in this attack and other attacks; Samir Zahir Ibrahim Kusa, 33, took part in the three attacks as a driver; Karam Lutfi Fathi Razek, 23, fired during the attack with a pistol and accidentally harmed another Hamas terrorist in the process; and Ziad Ziad Jamil Amer, 31, who enabled the attack. 

May justice be done.

04-Oct-15 Jerusalem Watch | The "moderates" of the Abbas-run Palestinian Authority condemn... the victims

Palestinian Authority spokesman Ihab Bseiso

Mahmoud Abbas told the United Nations General Assembly on September 30, 2015 [full text here] that his regime sees itself as now no longer bound by the mutual undertakings of the mid-1990s Oslo Accords [text here]:

“We cannot continue to be bound by these signed agreements with Israel and Israel must assume fully all its responsibility as an occupying power.” [New York Times, September 30, 2015]

Nonetheless

We do not respond to the Israeli occupation’s hatred and brutality with the same. Instead, we are working on spreading the culture of peace and coexistence between our people and in our region... My hands remain outstretched for the just peace that will guarantee my people’s fights, freedom and human dignity. I say to our neighbors, the Israeli people that peace is in your interest, in our interest, and in the interest of our future generations. Narrow vision is destructive. I hope that you will consider the dangerous reality on the ground and look to the future... [Text of Abbas speech via Times of Israel]

What did he actually mean?, asked numerous commentators (like this one). Evidently the great man himself believes he made himself perfectly clear:

"I stand behind everything that I said on the UN stage, and will work to implement the decisions." [Abbas quoted in Ynet, October 2, 2015]

Today we have a slightly better sense of his intentions. Times of Israel reports that

After days of silence amid a string of terror attacks and skyrocketing tensions in Jerusalem and the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority on Sunday condemned Israel for its “policy of escalation,” after two Palestinian assailants were killed as they carried out terror attacks. In a written communique published on the official news agency Wafa, PA government spokesman Ihab Bseiso called on the international community to intervene following “the killing of two young men in occupied Jerusalem and the series of incursions into cities and villages in the West Bank.” The statement made no mention of the fact that the two dead Palestinians had been killed while carrying out stabbing attacks against Israeli civilians... [and] did not condemn or mention the killings of Naama and Eitam Henkin, who were shot to death in a Palestinian terror attack on Thursday in the West Bank.

The PA's condemnation of Israel is especially galling when it's recalled who took responsibility for the murder-by-shooting of the Henkins on Thursday ["02-Oct-15: Google the name of the young Israeli parents murdered in their car last night..."].

A unit within Fatah’s armed wing assumed responsibility for the murder... The Abdel Qader al-Husseini Brigades, a group affiliated with Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, announced on Friday that its men on Thursday night opened fire on the car of Eitam and Naama Henkin, a couple in their 30s, while they were driving home with their four children, aged four months to nine... Fatah, headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is the largest faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is the governing body in West Bank areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. “With Allah’s help and in keeping with our right for resistance and our duty to sacred jihad, our forces on Thursday night carried out a necessary action in which they fired on a car of occupying settlers..." The statement, translated into Hebrew by the Ma’ariv daily, also warned “the enemy against taking revenge on civilians,” as “any war crimes would be severely retaliated against.” ["Fatah armed wing claims responsibility for terror attack", Times of Israel, October 2, 2015]

It's baffling to see how blood-curdling threats to murder in the name of jihad, and evidence that they do it and are proud to have done it, keep getting discounted by observers and politicians.

Odd, too, that no one seems terribly vexed by the way Fatah, which claims to be secular, invokes the doctrine of sacred jihad in explaining why Jews must die.

02-Oct-15: Truth, honesty, love, murder... and useful idiots

The funerals of Naama Henkin and her husband Eitam, an Israeli couple in their thirties who were shot to death in an Arab-on-Israeli ambush last night while driving home with their four children (four months to nine years old) are underway as we write these words.

They are happening while a highly successful apologist for precisely yesterday's kind of violent, hateful terror acts that took the Henkins' lives is touring the United States on a roadshow inspired, sponsored and principally executed by Amnesty International. 

His name is Bassem Tamimi. We have written about him several times in the course of the past month and earlier.

Here is our translation of a Hebrew-language interview published a month ago. In it, Nariman Tamimi, Bassem's wife and frequent "activism" and "resistance" partner as well as being the mother of the precocious fist-in-the-soldier's-face, teeth-clamped-into-the-soldier's-arm Surly Temper, reveals her not-so-nuanced attitude to murder. She throws light as well on the role murder plays in her town's (more precisely, the Tamimi clan's) media-rich 'struggle'. 

As far as we know, no one else has published an English version. We would be glad to know it is getting some exposure.

The weapons of the Palestinians against the security forces: women and children | Assaf Gibor | NRG | September 1, 2015 | Our unofficial translation from Hebrew 

Nariman Tamimi with her husband the roadshow hero and

their daughter Ahed in a 2013 photo [Image Source]

Nariman Tamimi, mother of Muhammad, the youth who hurled rocks at an IDF fighter in the village of Nabi Saleh, has issued a call to Palestinian women to join in the struggle against the “occupation” and for its liberation. “We knew the media were present and that the army would not arrest women and children, and so I avoided arrest.” 

The latest weapon of the Palestinians? Against the background of Palestinian reports about the investigation and rapid release a short time later of the parents of the Tamimi family from Nabi Saleh - the women who clashed with an IDF fighter have issued a call to Palestinian women to join the fight against the “occupation”. Nariman Tamimi, mother of Muhammad, the boy who hurled rocks at the soldier, and the boy’s aunt Nawal Tamimi, claim the Israeli army will not arrest women and children and that they should therefore join the struggle. 

In the discussion the two women had with nrg in the village of Nabi Saleh, they admitted to being satisfied with their release by the security forces since, in their eyes, it signifies victory. According to their approach, images of the IDF soldier struggling with women from Nabi Saleh last weekend and distributed throughout the world amount to a weapon against Israel. "Our hope is that other women in other villages will see our struggle and the victory, and that they too will join in the fight. When all is said and done, we won. We managed by stubbornness to prevent the soldier from taking my son away," says Nariman, the mother. 

The aunt and the mother made clear that in Friday’s incident, men were also present. They however feared being arrested if they would try to prevent the arrest of Mohammad. They therefore permitted the women to be at the center of the fight. "We knew the media were present, and that the army would not arrest women and children, and so I avoided arrest. We decided to try and prevent his arrest, and we did,” she admitted. 

"Women and children have always been a part of the struggle in Nabi Saleh, as opposed to what has happened in Qadoum, Bil'in and Ni'lin. Here, it’s a cultural thing, something traditional and educational, and also the fact that everyone in our village belongs to the one family numbering about 500 people and in reality there’s no alternative. But we hope that women seeing the photos in the media will understand their power and join in the struggle", she emphasized. The two women explained further that ''When the ‘enemy’ wants to shoot at us, he shoots at everyone without distinction: women, children, men. So we all need to be fighting against the occupation." 

An integral part of the struggle 

One of the major Palestinian murderers who emerged from the village is Ahlam Tamimi who transported the perpetrator of the terror at Jerusalem’s Sbarro pizzeria."What she [Ahlam Tamimi] did was an integral part of the struggle. Everyone fights in the manner in which he believes. There is armed uprising, and there is popular uprising. I support every form of uprising. I personally choose the way of popular uprising," explains mother Nariman.

Ahlam Tamimi, confessed and happy murderer of

children including ours, makes an appearance on

Mrs Bassem Tamimi's Facebook page

And lest anyone fear that Mrs Bassem Tamimi has any actual reservations about the particular form of "uprising" chosen by her cousin, the homicidal sociopath Ahlam Tamimi, a quick glance at the Nariman Facebook page, with images like the one on the right lionizing the multi-murdering, celebrity sociopath Ahlam Tamimi, will soon put that matter to rest. 

For the lethally hateful village of Nabi Saleh, Ahlam Tamimi, the confessed, exultant and entirely unrepentant murderer of our fifteen year-old daughter and more than a dozen other innocents, is a celebrity, a hero, and most of all - a figure to emulate.

But for Amnesty International, well - that's an altogether different story. 

For the extremists who have it and its massive budget in their control, Bassem Tamimi is a celebrity. When he served time in an Israeli jail, Amnesty put its substantial weight and influence behind a campaign that termed him "prisoner of conscience". He and they are leveraging that same bogus marketing claim now as they prepare for a series of roadshow events in the next two weeks. One in the Boston area next week, under the catchy brand "Our destiny is to resist" is typical of the genre. (Resist is a key word in the Tamimi lexicon. Read this to get a sense of its nuances in the world of the Palestinian Arabs.)

Does all this branding, selling, marketing, promoting have an effect? Of course. See for instance a fairy-floss op ed confection that appears today in the town newspaper where Bassem Tamimi's visit was seized upon by his handlers to win over some eight year old school kiddies (the story is here). As becomes clearer with each passing day, innocent little children are a key demographic for certain sorts of people. 

A large crowd accompanies the coffins in the Jerusalem funeral of the murdered Henkin couple today [Image Source]

This superficial article, under the subtle heading "Guest Viewpoint: Tamimi is champion of human rights" is signed off by "Maura Stephens... a Spencer resident". We guess her record in the town where she works, as an advocate for the Palestinian Arabs and other causes of a similar kind speaks for itself. It probably needed no additional elaboration in the Ithaca Journal. She's also Associate Director, Park Center for Independent Media, Department of Journalism, at Ithaca College.

Here's part of her fearless expose of the facts behind the scandalous Bassem Tamimi encounter with grade three children:

Tamimi is the kind of person we want our children to meet. His work revolves around inclusion, love, nonviolence and reconciliation. [Ithaca Schools Commissioner Luvell] Brown’s objection to Tamimi’s sharing of simple truths about life under ongoing oppression in an occupied land is an insult to many who actively champion human rights... Third-graders understand the healing powers of love. They can grieve and sympathize with those who’ve suffered loss. If we won’t speak truth to these children, on whose shoulders so much will soon rest, we’re doing their generation a grave disservice... The message to our children should be that U.S. residents can and should help persecuted people achieve not only self-governance, but also the most basic rights and dignities they lack under the current Israeli regime, which is propped up by our government. If we cannot model such work, we fail our children, our society and our future.

So in the interests of not failing your children, your society and your future - and ours too - will Ms Maura Stephens take these simple questions of ours (below) and put them to her idol of love, nonviolence and reconciliation? We began posing them some weeks ago ["04-Sep-15: Mr. Human Rights Defender, a question if we may"] but Tamimi and his handlers have avoided answering them. Probably they lack Maura Stephens' urge for speaking truth. Or just super busy.

Bassem Tamimi, tell us in simple words: are you as delighted by your cousin Ahlam Tamimi's massacre of Jewish children as she is? Have you criticized it ever, anywhere? Will you condemn it here and now?

The rest of us, very much less convinced than Ms Stephens is of Bassem Tamimi's dedication to love and reconciliation, can probably guess the answers. 

But it's important for the questions to be asked, even if those who proclaim a commitment to truth actually intend for these particular truths to be left under the rug. 

It's also important that the way they are ignored is factored into how we feel about the terror-laundering Tamimi and the useful idiots providing him a platform across the United States.