09-Jun-16: The Tel Aviv killings: Hamas claims credit but Fatah/PA demands some of the glory too

The Arabic caption, depicting a sweet, traditional Ramadan
dessert and a bullet, reads “Tel Aviv operation.” Shehab Agency
is known as the media face of the Hamas terrorists [source]. 
This season is known as peak time for acts of Pal Arab jihadistry

It's a bright and sunny Thursday morning here in Jerusalem - idyllic weather, calm in the air, a festive atmosphere as residents are busy with the pleasures of this coming weekend's Shavuot festival.

In Tel Aviv, the murderous attack last night on the Max Brenner chocolate store in the busy and popular Sarona open-air market precinct is still being scrutinized - by those who were there and survived, by the hundreds of thousands who work nearby or pass by daily, by the authorities responsible for preventing threats to public well-being, by the news media trying to find (and often failing) to sound the right tone. (And note that there are reports of a gag order preventing disclosure by the media in Israel until June 16.)

Ynet names those murdered last as:

• Idan Ben-Aryeh, 42, from Ramat Gan; 
• Ilana Nave, 39, from Tel Aviv; 
• Dr. Michael Feige, 58 from Midreshet Ben-Gurion; 
• Mila Mishayev, 32, from Rishon Lezion.

As for who did the killings, a statement was issued early this (Thursday) morning claiming the two armed shooters who launched the frenzied machine-gun attack on diners were acting in the name of Hamas.

The Islamist terrorist group posing as a government has claimed credit - via its official Twitter account (yes, such a thing exists) - for the killings and injuries, and has praised the assailants both of whom are alive and in the hands of the appropriate Israeli authorities. It calls the shootings “heroic” and it suggests - via a chilling cartoon image [here] - more attacks are going to follow during Ramadan, the month-long Muslim religious observance that began this week. The Arabic caption, depicting a sweet, traditional Ramadan dessert, reads “Tel Aviv operation.”

Times of Israel assesses the human price this morning this way:

At least four people were killed in the terror attack Wednesday night at [Sarona]... another 16 were injured, including three in serious condition... 

The Sarona mall website (click to enlarge)

Ma'an News Agency gives their names as Muhammad Ahmad Moussa Makhamreh and Khalid Muhammad Moussa Makhamreh. They are 21 year old cousins from Yatta, a village near Hebron. One of them is said by Hamas to be a student at a Jordanian university.

Ismail Haniyeh, one of the leaders of the Hamas terrorists, is widely quoted this morning calling one of the two terrorist-shooters a “hero” and intimated, for those concerned with the finer aspects of the Islamist outlook on life, that he was "praying for his soul". Times of Israel says Hamas called the killings of diners seated in a cafe “a message from children of the resistance to leaders of the occupation, especially [Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman]”...

Another Hamas statement, quoted by Ma'an, says the shooting attack

was the first “good omen” for Palestinians and the first “surprise” for the “enemy” during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began on Tuesday. Hamas spokesman Hussam Badran applauded the shooters, adding that the fact that they were able to enter Israel from the occupied West Bank showed the failure

of the Israelis. This Hamas Arabic-language article is entitled "Tel Aviv the first signs of the holy month". You learn a lot once you understand what holiness means in the lexicon of this religion-based organization.

Unable to take the risk of appearing less blood-lusting than their Islamist rivals, Fatah - the party that controls the Palestinian Authority and that is headed by the PA president, Mahmoud Abbas - also issued a statement today: Israel is “reaping the repercussions of choosing violence against the Palestinian people.”  According to Ma'an, Fatah media committee head Munir al-Jaghoub said the shooting was an “individual and natural response” to Israeli state violence and that "Israel must realize the consequences of its persistence to push violence, house demolition policies, forced displacement of Palestinians, raids by Israeli settlers to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, and the cold-blooded killing of Palestinians at checkpoints”. Fatah's expert made no observations on the morality of opening fire on unarmed non-combatants in a public space crowded with innocent people,.

Palestinian Arab society is in a social-media frenzy this morning adding two fresh candidates [here] to its lengthy list of weapon-toting role-models for their children and heroic figures to be praised by their political and religious leaders.

Israelis, us among them, are asking, even as three of the Israeli victims are still fighting for their lives in intensive care at nearby Ichilov hospital this morning (one of the shooters is being treated there too), whether all the security that could reasonably be deployed was present last night, and whether it can currently be found in all the other locations where it may be needed. The evidence is that the jihadists and those who dispatch them know how to read news reports.

5-Nov-13: As they glorify their savages, who calls this the road to peace, and why?

A Fatah website published this tribute to another convicted murderer
Mustafa Ghneimat as he gets gift from PA Minister of Prisoners' Affairs,
Issa Karake, yesterday [Image Source: Palwatch]

Two years ago [see "18-Sep-11: National heroines, national catastrophes"] as our country prepared to set loose 1,027 convicted terrorists in order to win back the life of an Israeli hostage, we wrote here:

Understanding the choice of a people’s heroes can tell you a lot about those people and their values.

Events this week remind us again of how far away we are from reaching any mutual understanding with the people on the other side of the fence.

Most of us remember ceremonies that took place in our youth, sometimes at school, often in the local town square or television studio, once or twice a year. Heroes - usually veteran soldiers in their declining years - were embraced and honored for acts of bravery and dedication. Some public figure would make a solemn, respectful dedication, the honorees would perhaps say a modest word or two, and for us in the audience or standing around in a circle, gentlemanly and humanitarian values would be called to mind and become a source of inspiration - or at least momentary good feelings about ourselves.

The Palestinian Arabs have their own culturally-distinctive way of doing the same thing. But any resemblance to the dignified events of our societies are... remote. But just as our ceremonies said something about the world we came from and sought to build, so do theirs.

The good people at Palwatch (who by the way do fine and indispensable work) published a report today that records a ceremony organized by Fatah, the terrorist group at the head of which Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, stands. This happened in Hebron two days ago, and was broadcast live on official PA television. The keynote speaker is Abbas Zaki, a veteran Abbas apparatchik who serves on the Fatah Central Committee.

Three of Hebron's finest, men who had been sentenced to long prison terms for murdering Israeli civilians, and freshly released by Israel as part of an 'understanding' brokered by the United States, were the proud and not-so-modest honorees.

The Fatah man speaks:

"No one expected that Israel, which hands down life sentences and decided that they [the prisoners] would go from prison to the grave, [would release them]... We say to Israel: die in your rage. Go to your cemeteries and recite over your dead whatever you recite. Here they are [the men about whom Israel said they] 'have blood on their hands' [meaning murderers]. Here they are among their own people. Fighters! Knights! Free men!" [These unrepentant killers] have become medals of honor on the chest of this nation.

It's a term worth remembering: three men, convicted of murdering ordinary unarmed civilians, uplifted by a morally-bankrupt leadership to serve as medals of honor on the chest of a nation. Some honor. Some nation.

The event is recorded in this Palwatch/YouTube clip of the live PA television coverage:

Note also the widely quoted statement by the PA's chief peace negotiator, Saeeb Erekat, who says they are "symbols of Palestine". They are, we think, though not in the way he means it.

Jonathan Tobin, writing in Commentary Magazine last week, captures articulately and sharply the yawning gulf separating our side from theirs. Discounting (though not dismissing) the role played by divergent political strategies, Tobin focuses on the reality, highlighted by the ceremony we just described, that

the two peoples in this conflict seem to be driven by values that are not merely at odds but which represent a gulf between civilizations.
The focus of Palestinian nationalism is not on building up their putative state, making it a better place to live, or even in creating a political process that would allow them to express their views freely. None of that was on display in Ramallah as a “president” serving the ninth year of the four-year term to which he was elected did his utmost to identify his political fortunes with people who had stabbed, shot, and blown up Jews in cold blood. Abbas did so because the political culture of the Palestinians still venerates the shedding of blood as the essential bona fides of any patriot. That is why terrorists are Palestinian heroes rather than shameful remnants of a violent past that is supposedly finished...
Among Israelis, there is a debate about the wisdom of West Bank settlements even though few dispute the right of their country to build in any part of their capital. But Israelis don’t treat that tiny minority of Jews who have committed acts of lawless violence against Arabs as heroes. They are punished, not cheered. Until the same is true of the Palestinians, peace is nowhere in sight. [A Cultural Gulf Between Israel and Palestine | Jonathan S. Tobin | Commentary Magazine | October 30, 2013]

We expressed some similar sentiments here: "30-Oct-13: The bogus manufacture of heroes and legends"