09-May-22: No more excuses, Jordan [Guest Post]

Soldiers of Jordan Armed Forces and U.S. military service members
salute during playing of the national anthems at dedication ceremony

for expanded Jordan Armed Forces Joint Training Center
October 10, 2018 [Image Source]

[This guest post is authored by Bennett Ruda. His background is below.] 

Back in June 2020, it seemed as if the US had finally turned the corner on the issue of extraditing an Arab terrorist to the US for the murder of a US citizen.

Ahlam Tamimi is the confessed mastermind of the 2001 Sbarro massacre that killed 15 Israelis, including Malki Roth, who was also an American citizen. 

Jordan had a 1995 extradition treaty with the USwhich had already been honored by Jordan to bring Eyad Ismoil, a Jordanian citizen who assisted in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, back to the US. 

But in the case of Tamimi, the Jordanian courts claimed the treaty had not been ratified by the parliament and refused to hand her over. This despite the fact that, in 2017, a criminal complaint was unsealed against Tamimi in the US against Tamimi for conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against US nationals. 

But in 2020, it seemed that things were going to change.

During his confirmation hearing to be US ambassador to Jordan, Henry T. Wooster told Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) that the US would apply pressure on Jordan to extradite Tamimi:

The United States has multiple options and different types of leverage to secure Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi’s extradition. We will continue to engage Jordanian officials at all levels not only on this issue, but also on the extradition treaty more broadly. US generosity to Jordan in Foreign Military Financing as well as economic support and other assistance is carefully calibrated to protect and advance the range of U.S. interests in Jordan and in the region.

Wooster added:

If confirmed, I would explore all options to bring Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi to justice, secure her extradition and address the broader issues associated with the extradition treaty.

This was the day before Jordan's King Abdullah II was scheduled to speak to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee via video.

Whatever was said during that meeting with the Jordanian ruler, nothing was done afterward to follow up on the promise to pressure Jordan to hand over the terrorist.

* * *

It is not as if the US does not have leverage. According to the US State Department website, the US is Jordan's largest provider of assistance, providing more than $1.61 billion in 2021 alone.

After lengthy negotiations, the US and Jordan signed a new defense agreement in January 2021, allowing US forces free entry into Jordan, including both aircraft and vehicles.

Islamist member of Jordanian parliament Saleh al-Armuti

And once again, as in the case of Jordan's extradition treaty with the US, the agreement was signed and approved without going through the Jordanian parliament:

Islamist lawmaker Saleh al-Armuti decried the lack of parliamentary oversight and called on the government to cancel the accord, claiming it “violates the constitution and affects Jordan’s sovereignty.” But [Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman] Safadi pushed back, saying the agreement “in no way affects Jordan’s sovereignty, and everything it contains is subject to Jordanian law and is compatible with international law.” [emphasis added] [Source: Al-Arabiya, March 21, 2021]

There is no indication the Jordanian courts are going to try to claim this agreement is invalid.

* * *

Clearly, Jordan needs the US both militarily and economically.

At a time when the US is struggling in the Middle East in competition with both Russia and China, a recent poll finds that the US has the inside track when it comes to Jordan.

According to the poll by David Pollock of the Washington Institute:

A modestly larger proportion of Jordan’s public says good relations with the United States are either very (18%) or somewhat (34%) important. This is roughly on a par with China, as has been the case in other recent polls. But the United States has a clear advantage over either Russia or China, or any other foreign nation, in several key subcategories. A plurality (43%) pick the United States as “the country that can best help protect us against our foreign enemies.“ A smaller plurality also see the United States as the outside power that “can best promote human rights and democracy in our country” (37%). [emphasis added]

Jordan's trust in the US is in sharp contrast with the Arab states in the Gulf who see themselves as abandoned by the US -- and facing the Iranian threat alone, with the help of Israel.

On the one hand, Jordan does not perceive Iran as a threat on the level that the Gulf Arab states do. According to the poll, only 17% of Jordanians responded that good ties with Iran were "somewhat important" and they are evenly split, at 47%, as to whether "a renewed nuclear deal with Iran" is good or bad for the area.

Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Kadhimi (R), Egyptian Pres Al-Sisi (L) and King

Abdullah II of Jordan (C) attend a Tripartite Summit in Baghdad, Iraq

June 27, 2021 [Source: Iraqi Prime Ministry Press Office/Anadolu Agency]

And just last year King Abdullah II met with Egyptian president Sisi and Iraqi Prime Minister Kadhimi to announce an agreement for transporting Iraqi oil via pipelines from Iraq to Jordan to Eqypt, where it will be taken to Europe via the Mediterranean.

But maybe Jordan is not that sanguine about Iran. It is making a point of forging ties with Iran, just as Saudi Arabia has opened up to the idea of talks with Tehran.

Writing for the BESA Center, Dr. Edy Cohen notes:

Because Iraq is a puppet state under Iran’s control, this agreement represents King Abdullah’s “coming out of the closet” with the Islamic Republic. Exporting Iraqi oil through Jordan to Europe is simply exporting oil controlled by Iran, which rules Iraq through its network of Shiite militias and controls the country’s resources.

The day after the announcement, Jordanian state media began promoting full financial cooperation with Iran.

In addition, there is talk of allowing up to one million Iranian religious tourists to visit the village of Kerak to visit the shrine of Jaffar Ibn Abu Taleb and according to the Jordanian press, Iran has proposed building an airport in Kerak.

Nevertheless, a Jordanian TV broadcast at the time warned of the dangers of allowing Iranians into the country as tourists.

Harold Rhode, a longtime former adviser on Islamic affairs in the Defense Department, agrees:

Rhode draws attention to how Tehran became the dominant force in both Lebanon and Syria. It seems to be using the same strategy to take over Jordan. In doing so, “Iran is attempting to surround Israel and Saudi Arabia further.”

At a time when the US is clearly making a point of supporting Jordan as an ally (unlike the Gulf Arabs), King Abdullah is playing with fire. 

By contrast, Jordan is anything but friendly with Israel, despite their peace treaty. In his poll, Pollock found that

Israel remains even more unpopular than Iran among Jordanians today. A mere 10 percent or so, young and old alike, have even a “somewhat” favorable opinion about the late 2020 Abraham Accords between Israel and four other Arab states (the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan). And the same very low percentage of Jordanians agree, a quarter-century after their own formal peace with Israel, that “people who want to have business or sports contact with Israelis should be allowed to do so.” 

* * *

The FBI wants Ahlam Tamimi but Jordan says no

But this is not an issue between Jordan and Israel. It is between Jordan and the US. 

While the US government has not publicly explained its reticence to enforce the treaty, the excuse offered by some is the concern that forcing the issue is too controversial, especially among those Jordanians with Palestinian roots. 

According to this theory, due to the popular support of Tamimi in Jordan, extraditing her to the US to face justice could lead to the fall of the kingdom.

The US consistently justifies aid to Jordan by claiming that Amman is a US ally in the Middle East. If that is true, then at the very least the US should be able to publicly address the issue of Tamimi instead of avoiding and ignoring it. 

In the fight against terror, the US has the opportunity to get a win. As an ally, Jordan should be willing to prove itself.

* * *

Our thanks to guest blogger Bennett Ruda who has blogged as Daled Amos since November 2003. His posts also appear on the Elder of Ziyon site as well as The Jewish Press. Bennett has been involved for some years in helping Frimet and Arnold Roth analyze and respond to government and other authorities in the context of the efforts underway to see Sbarro massacre monster Ahlam Tamimi brought to US justice.

13-Jun-17: We think we now have a deeper understanding of the human rights industry

The UN official previously known as His Highness Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein

When it comes to politicians, being the parents of a child murdered in the name of a political ideology can make a person, trust us, something of a cynic.

We're more sensitive now to how public figures like to get up on their soap-boxes and preach to others about what they ought to be doing. When they do, our strong inclination is to take a look behind the scenes and see whether the values of the speaker match the high rhetoric of the speechifying.

Take the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein as an example.

Once Jordan's ambassador to the UN and to the United States, he was appointed by acclamation to the HCR role by all 193 members of the UN General Assembly in June 2014, amidst flattering compliments and expressions of unbridled optimism. We have seen it described as a unanimous appointment but even if some people had their doubts, no one spoke out against.

He happens also to be a member of Jordan's royal family - a prince, in fact - as well as the pretender (an actual title) to the throne of Iraq. (Arab kingdoms tend to be both more complex and less complex than most people realize.)

Mr Ra'ad al-Hussein is busy this month as the notorious United Nations Human Rights Council over which he presides meets for its latest three-week-long gathering in Geneva. The HRC is made up of "47 States responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe".

Sounds worthy, of course. But the reality tends towards the shabby. As one report noted in March 2017:

According to the U.N.'s top human rights body, Israel is the worst human rights violator in the world today. That’s the result of the latest session of the UN Human Rights Council which wrapped up in Geneva on Friday by adopting five times more resolutions condemning Israel than any other country on earth... The Bush administration refused to join the Council when it was created in 2006. On March 31, 2009, President Obama – fully aware of its entrenched anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias – made jumping on board one of his very first foreign policy moves. Moreover, in an unscrupulous attempt to control his successor, the former President obtained yet another three-year term for the United States on the Council that began on January 1, 2017... The Council plays a leading role in the demonization and delegitimization of the Jewish state by the United Nations. In its history, the Council has condemned Israel more often than any other of the 192 UN states. Comparative totals after this session’s pogrom tell the story:  Israel – 78 resolutions and decisions, Syria – 29, North Korea – 9, and Iran – 6.  As for Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China, there’s nothing at all.

Lately, some member states have noticed. The British, for instance:

The UK has put the United Nations Human Rights Council "on notice" over what it called its "disproportionate focus on Israel". On the final day of the council's 34th session the UK mission to the UN said it would vote against all resolutions about Israel's conduct in the occupied Syrian and Palestinian territories if things did not change... [Independent UK, March 25, 2017]

The Americans have too:

Washington has long argued that the Geneva forum unfairly focuses on Israel's alleged violations of human rights, including war crimes against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The United States "remains deeply troubled by the Council’s consistent unfair and unbalanced focus on one democratic country, Israel", Erin Barclay, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, told the U.N. Human Rights Council. Barclay said that no other nation had a whole agenda item devoted to it and that "this obsession with Israel" threatened the council's credibility... "In order for this Council to have any credibility, let alone success, it must move away from its unbalanced and unproductive positions," Barclay said. "As we consider our future engagements, my government will be considering the Council's actions with an eye toward reform to more fully achieve the Council's mission to protect and promote human rights." The United States is currently an elected member of the 47-state Geneva forum where its three-year term ends in 2019... ["U.S. seeks end to U.N. rights council's 'obsession' with Israel", Reuters, March 1, 2017]

That was in March. What's changed since then? Not that much. Here's a report from just 6 days ago:

…In a speech opening a three-week session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein observed the 50th anniversary of when he "first heard the sound of war" as a boy in Amman, Jordan. He said Palestinians were now marking "a half-century of deep suffering under an occupation imposed by military force" and marked by "systematic" violations of international law. Israelis also deserve freedom from violence, Zeid said, adding: "Maintain the occupation and for both peoples there will only be a prolongation of immense pain..." ["End of Israeli occupation would benefit both sides: UN right chief", Reuters, June 7, 2017]

And this from yesterday:

“The High Commissioner notes the repeated failure to comply with the calls for accountability made by the entire human rights system and urges Israel to conduct prompt, impartial and independent investigations of all alleged violations of international human rights law and all allegations of international crimes,” the report said. Zeid's report also noted “the State of Palestine's non-compliance with the calls for accountability and urges the State of Palestine to conduct prompt, impartial and independent investigations of all alleged violations of international human rights law and all allegations of international crimes.” The report looked set to ignite further debate at the U.N. Human Rights Council, where the United States said last week it was reviewing its membership due to what it calls a “chronic anti-Israel bias.” ["Israel, Palestinians have failed to prosecute war crimes: U.N.", Reuters, June 12, 2017]

Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein first got our attention in April 2017. It was one of those cases we described above - a public figure lecturing others, in this case the authorities in Jordan where Prince Zeid (his other name) is (as we mentioned a few paragraphs up) a member of the royal Hashemite family.

We emailed a cluster of his senior staff people - this is the unedited full text:

April 4, 2017

Re: Extraditing Ahlam Tamimi 

We were pleased to see the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, speak forthrightly [link] four days ago about how states must (a) honor their treaty obligations, (b) act on legitimate arrest warrants and (c) respect the great importance of the global struggle for justice and against impunity.

Prince Zeid was addressing the failure of his own homeland, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, in relation to a notorious fugitive from justice, the president of Sudan, who ought to have been arrested when he came to Jordan. 

We are the parents of Malki Roth who was murdered in 2001 in the horrific Hamas attack on women and children in a pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem. Malki was 15. Fourteen other people were killed and 130 terribly injured. 

The mastermind of the attack is a Jordanian woman. She was eventually arrested and confessed to all the charges. She was convicted on 15 counts of murder and was sentenced to multiple life terms. Her sentence was drastically commuted eight years later in the 2011 deal Israel made with the Hamas terrorist organization to secure the release of an Israeli captive. She has lived free in Jordan since then, proudly taking "credit" for the murders and basking in the status of celebrity. 

Our daughter was a US citizen. Under US law relating to acts of terror, her killer must face justice in the US. The US formally requested some time ago that she be extradited by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. But Jordan has refused. The woman, Ahlam Tamimi, is subject to a US arrest warrant and appears on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list. 

We are respectfully asking that the High Commissioner speak as clearly and forcefully to the King and government of his homeland, Jordan, about Tamimi as he did four days ago in that other matter. We ask him to tell Jordan that, in relation to Tamimi, it must (a) honor its treaty obligations, (b) act on legitimate arrest warrants and (c) respect the great importance of the global struggle for justice and against impunity.

We appreciate you conveying this to the High Commissioner.

Sincerely
Frimet and Arnold Roth
Jerusalem, Israel

What happened next? Nothing. So we wrote to the same people a second time on April 6, 2017:

In case this slipped by. An acknowledgement of receipt would be appreciated. 

Then again:

Third try - sorry to note that we have no acknowledgement from any of you. In our view, the issue we have raised is a serious one, and the sort that ought to be addressed by the High Commissioner's office. With great respect to your roles and responsibilities, unless we have something from you today, we will assume no response is going to come and proceed accordingly.  

A few days later, this nice reply arrived:

Dear Ms and Mr Roth,
Thank you for your message and sorry for the delay in acknowledgement - I can assure you that all messages received by this office are taken seriously, with only one problem being that there are too many of them from across the world, with many serious crisis and violations still ongoing, and too few people and resources to handle all of them.
Your message is of course well received, including by the Executive Office of the High Commissioner (where I belong) and the MENA section of the Office. It will be given proper attention - I can assure in this - and you will receive a response upon due consideration.
With full understanding and sincere sympathy for your loss.
Kind regards,
Anton Nikiforov
Human Rights Officer
EDM
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

We waited until April 12, 2017 - a month and a half later - and sent this:

Dear Mr Nokiforev,
Consistent with your OHCHR's slogan, we sincerely support the idea of "Stand up for someone’s rights today" [that's the business slogan that appears on the OHCHR's website]. We hope today will be the day the High Commissioner conveys to Jordan the message we outlined in our letter to the Office of the High Commissioner of April 4. As you know, it has still gotten no response.
Sincerely,
Frimet and Arnold Roth
Jerusalem, Israel
(Grieving parents of Malki Roth) 

The kind Human Rights Officer didn't have an actual answer but replied nonetheless, and promptly - in fact the same day:

Dear Ms and Mr Roth,
Thank you for your support to our campaign worldwide. Your message is acknowledged and my response to you still stands. There is really no need to send reminders, all messages are taken seriously but they require proper consideration among many, many tasks and urgencies with inadequate resources to handle them all at the same time.
Sincerely,
Anton Nikiforov 

We felt sorry for the OHCHR whose annual budget for 2017 is US $253 million and which is beset with "many, many tasks and urgencies with inadequate resources to handle them". So we sat patiently and then sent this on May 28, a month and a half later, with copies to the same senior OHCHR people whom we had originally approached on April 4 and who were all otherwise engaged:

Dear Mr Nokiforev,
Six weeks after your last memo assuring us that we are not overlooked or forgotten, we think we are now privileged to have a fuller understanding of what OHCHR means by the word "someone" in your slogan "Stand up for someone’s rights today".
We again express the sincere hope that eventually, the High Commissioner will convey to Jordan the message we outlined in our letter to him of April 4 even though it has gotten no response.
But perhaps you or your colleagues copied on this email will acknowledge that OHCHR's silence until now speaks eloquently for itself.
We see ourselves free to now air this issue in public places.
Sincerely,
Frimet and Arnold Roth
Jerusalem, Israel
(Grieving parents of Malki Roth) 

No response so far from any of them. Those "urgencies" and the "many, many tasks" - which happily did not get in the way of the prince chastising his Jordanian friends over the matter of the Sudanese butcher all the way back on March 31, 2017 - seem to still be keeping the OHCHR team pre-occupied.

The bright side is we think we have a better gasp now of how the human rights industry sorts out its priorities. Bringing the murderers of Israeli children to justice does not rank all that high up, it turns out. We're very surprised by that.

If we're wrong, we hope Prince Zeid (in case he's reading this) or one of his staff people will still get back to us. But to be really frank, we're not holding our breaths.

03-Dec-15: Near Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, another Arab-on-Israeli knifing attack tonight

Screen shot from Channel 2 news coverage of the stabbing scene, Street of the
Prophets (Heb: Rehov Hanevi'im) Jerusalem, near Damascus
Gate [Image Source]

Incredibly, there has been yet another stabbing attack close to the Old City of Jerusalem's Damascus Gate tonight. A uniformed police officer is injured. This happened just after dark, around 5:30 this evening (Thursday).

Times of Israel says:

The suspected assailant, a 21-year-old resident of the Palestinian West Bank city of Tulkarem, was shot dead after he approached a police car and stabbed the officer, security officials said. The stabbing occurred on Hanevi’im Street, a main road near Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate... The officer, a man in his thirties [is] a member of the Israel Police’s Special Patrol Unit...

According to Ynet, the policeman who was the target of the stabbing

fought the attacker, and his fellow officers, who saw the ongoing struggle, opened fire and shot the attacker dead. A Palestinian doctor from a nearby clinic who heard the commotion on the street went outside, noticed the wounded policeman and gave him initial medical care until Magen David Adom paramedics arrived at the scene. "We did our job. We gave him first aid and called an ambulance," said the doctor from Silwan. The 35-year-old wounded policeman suffered a stab wound to his hand and a gunshot wound to his leg, the latter likely caused by Israeli forces' fire when working to neutralize the terrorist. Magen David Adom paramedics evacuated the wounded policeman to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in the capital, where he was taken into surgery.

The attacker traveled some distance to reach the highlight of his short life.

Tulkarem is only 30 kilometers from the Tel Aviv metropolis, and twice that distance from Jerusalem. But distances can be deceiving in this part of the world. In Israel's life-and-death War of Independence, which, as a function of extreme Arab enthusiasm for a war of devastation and expulsion (of us Jews), got underway even before Israel managed to declare its independence on May 14, 1948, Tulkarem was under the control of the Arab forces of... Iraq. It may surprise younger readers to know that Iraq's army played a significant role -  an expeditionary force that eventually numbered 8,000 men along with 100 Iraqi Air Force planes - part of the massive Arab military invasion from the north, the east and the south, Once the 1947-49 war was over and Israel survived, Tulkarem - along with all the other Arab towns and cities of Judea and Samaria - fell under Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan occupation. Jordan's rule lasted for 19 years until its forces were routed by Israel in 1967's Six Day War, another life-and-death experience in the Israeli view.

We expect today's knife-man from Tulkarem will quickly be declared a martyr by those interested in creating more dead Palestinian Arabs. When we know more about his identity, we will update this post.

18-Sep-15: Someone stabbed a policewoman in Europe: Anything here to learn?

The now-deceased assailant had been living in Germany for 14 years when
he was convicted in 2008. How well had he absorbed the culture, values
and language of his asylum? The earphones in front of him
could be a clue [Image Source]

Police in the Spandau district of Berlin were alerted yesterday (Thursday) morning to the presence of what people were reporting as a “madman with a knife” threatening people in the area. Officers were dispatched and, according to Telegraph UK, the suspect

attacked a woman police officer as she got out of her patrol car, stabbing her in the neck just above the top of her protective vest... For several hours after the incident, police were treating it as a random act of violence by a mentally disturbed man.

The woman officer’s partner drew his weapon and shot the assailant four times. Four additional patrol cars arrived at the scene and additional gunfire ensued. A "stray bullet" hit the injured police woman, who was rushed to emergency surgery and was out of danger by Thursday evening.

Then the authorities started acknowledging that this might not have been random violence.

Turns out the man with the knife has a back-story. Associated Press says he is "a known Islamic extremist", as does Washington Free Beacon. The BBC, surprisingly forthright this time, says he was "an Islamist who stabbed and seriously injured a policewoman". But Daily Express UK isn't too sure of his faith or outlook and contents itself with "a member of a terror group linked to al-Qaeda" (delicately refraining from any mention of Islam, Moslem or Muslim except as part of the name of a violent group).

At the bashful Voice of America, they say

German police have shot dead an Iraqi man who had wounded a policewoman with a knife, with prosecutors saying he was a suspected "Islamist." [Voice of America, September 17, 2015]

with quote marks suggesting audiences should figure it out for themselves.

Germany's state broadcaster seems a little surer (though not much) that faith-related issues fit into this somewhere:

A 41-year-old man of Iraqi origin has been shot dead in Berlin after he stabbed a policewoman. State prosecutors say the man was an "Islamist." [DeutscheWelle]

In Morocco, the story's headline conveys some facts without much insight: "German Police Shoot Knife-Wielding Iraqi Man After he Stabbed a Policewoman".

And CNN, which to remind us all is working from the same set of facts as everyone else and has updated the story at least once since yesterday afternoon, seems to have a case of journalistic paralysis. Quoting the official police spokesperson, it says he

told CNN it's too early to say what might have motivated the suspect, who was released from jail in 2013. The unidentified man was convicted of attempting an attack on Iraqi's prime minister during a visit to Berlin in 2004... "He was under supervision and wears an electronic tag. But he was not under any surveillance," said Berlin prosecutor Michael von Hagen, describing the suspect as someone "belonging to the Islamic scene." ["Police kill Iraqi man in Berlin after knife attack on street", CNN]

AP provides a few notable details

Security officials confirmed to The Associated Press that the attacker was Rafik Mohamad Yousef, who was convicted seven years ago of belonging to an al-Qaida-linked terror group... Frank Henkel, the interior minister for the state of Berlin, said the reasons for the attack were still unclear. "There are indications that this wasn't a planned act," Henkel said in a statement, but added that due to the man's history "a religious motif can't be excluded."
Yousef, an Iraqi national, was arrested in December 2004 after German officials suspected him and two others of being part of a plot by the Ansar al-Islam group to attack former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi during a visit to Berlin.
German authorities wanted to deport him to Iraq after his release in 2013 but were unable to do so because he could have faced the death penalty in connection with the attempted assassination, Henkel said.
Yousef was ordered to wear an electronic tag, which he removed on Thursday morning.

The AFP caption reads: "Men, women and children break a police cordon rushing towards waiting buses at the train station in the city of Tovarnik, close to the Croatian-Serbian border, Sept. 17, 2015." [Image Source]

Given the openly-admitted impotence of the German security people, it would not surprise to know that anxieties are on the rise throughout Europe over how well things are going to work out. The 2015 tsunami of in-bound undocumented Arab migrants has brought Germany some 800,000 asylum-seekers this year alone. That's four times last year’s non-trivial total, and there's little sign of these numbers getting smaller. We think there's good reason to expect them to grow.

Can the system cope? Germany's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF in German)

is said to have more than 250,000 unprocessed asylum applications with the average turnaround time averaging more than five months... [DeutscheWelle, yesterday]

Telegraph UK says that the knife-man had been

sentenced to eight years [and] released early in 2013 but electronically tagged and allowed to remain in Germany.

The people in charge of security knew this was a dangerous person but according to BBC (drawing different inferences from those of AP)

the German authorities were unable to deport him as he had refugee status and was at risk of being killed in his native Iraq. ["Germany police shoot Berlin Islamist after knife attack", BBC, September 17, 2015]

We imagine some Europeans, observing with horror the lengths to which their authorities go to guard the welfare of "asylum"-seeking migrants convicted of plotting murder and then left to walk their streets with removable tags on their limbs, must be wondering how well they and their loved ones are protected from repetitions of this lethal act and worse.

But not all Europeans. According to Wall Street Journal yesterday, nearly two-thirds of Germans say, according to a poll taken this past weekend "they don’t fear that too many refugees were coming to their country." Which leaves us wondering how to interpret yesterday's report that Germany's

Interior Ministry announced in a statement on Thursday that it had accepted the resignation of Manfred Schmidt, head of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF). The ministry cited "personal reasons" for Schmidt's departure from Germany's top migration authority.

15-Jul-15: Victory for resistance, a new chapter of hope, united against terror etc

Iran's Zarif [Image Source]

From the sublime to the ridiculous to the pollyannish, here's our brief overview of the spectrum of reactions to yesterday's announcement of an understanding between Iran and six world powers.

The BBC, reporting from Iran, provides a window into the jubilation there after yesterday's announcement:

There is a sense of pride on Iran's rolling news channels IRINN and Press TV, with patriotic music videos adding colour to rolling coverage of the build-up to Tuesday's announcement. State-owned Channel One is more reserved, presumably not to overexcite the audience over the agreement. But even Channel One is appreciative of the negotiators, while stressing that the deal came through the "resistance" of Iranians. In their morning editions, before the deal was formally announced, Iran's moderate and reformist papers celebrated the upcoming agreement, hailing Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif as a hero of near-epic proportions. The Qanoon newspaper carried a front-page report depicting Mr Zarif as Arash, a heroic archer figure from Iranian folklore... ["Iran nuclear deal shakes Middle East media", BBC, July 14, 2015]

Widely varying Iranian understandings of what to hope for [Image Source]

Reuters sees four paradigmatic views to this (all direct quotes):

• U.S. President Barack Obama hailed a step towards a "more hopeful world" 
• Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said it proved that "constructive engagement works". 
• Israel pledged to do what it could to halt what it called an "historic surrender"...
• Delighted Iranians danced in the streets of Tehran, while motorists sounded car horns and flashed victory signs in celebration... [Reuters, today]

Elsewhere Reuters quotes these insider assessments:

• Iran's foreign minister Zarif: "[W]e are starting a new chapter of hope"...
• US foreign minister (secretary of state) John Kerry: "This is the good deal we have sought."
• European Union foreign minister ("foreign policy chief") Federica Mogherini: "I think this is a sign of hope for the entire world."

Other voices:

Under Iran's reputedly 'moderate' Rouhani, significant ongoing advances in
diminishing the number of foes of the regime [Image Source]

• All the quoted Republican presidential candidates are critical and opposed [source: Reuters]. Most of them raise meaningful objections that are not contradicted by anything their president has said to the public. This is not exactly a moment for a full and frank exchange of American views.
• Syrian despot Assad, addressing Rouhani in Iran, looks forward to 'momentum' in the 'constructive role' played by Iran in supporting 'the rights of people' [Ynet today]
• The leader of one of the Syrian rebel groups (the Asala and Tanmieh Front) fighting the Assad forces in northern Syria fears "an increase in Iranian influence in the region and this is what is making Assad happy". Iyad Shamse says he worries that "US pressure would not be enough to stop Tehran from entering" the war. "We are worried," he is quoted saying [Reuters yesterday]
• "The lifting of international sanctions will allow Iran to consistently expand its oil and gas market,.. The deal will open new trade opportunities for Turkey, in particular in the energy field." [Anadolu Agency - Turkey, today] Turkey's imports from Iran were $10 billion in 2014; exports were around $4 billion [Hurriyet Daily, today].
• Iraq's prime minister Haider al-Abadi sees the "agreement signed Tuesday between Iran and world powers in Vienna" [note: in reality nothing was signed] as "a catalyst for regional stability... an important step" that "will lead to better unity in the fight against terrorism." [Alalam Iran, yesterday]
• Associated Press, reporting from Dubai today, says the deal "met with a profound wariness in the Arab world, where concerns are widespread that the easing of its international isolation could tip the already bloody contest for power in the region toward Shiite-led Tehran." [AP, today]
• Egypt's foreign ministry "expressed hope" that yesterday's deal "prevents an arms race in the Middle East as well as ensuring the region is free of all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons"... [Masress Arab News Agency, Egypt, today]
• "Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his US counterpart John Kerry could be possible candidates for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize over Iran's nuclear accord..." [Iran's PressTV news agency, last night]

So much hope. So much unfounded optimism. So little historical awareness.

27-May-15: The cheque for Gaza is in the mail, or whatever

The headline from Aljazeera's coverage of
the October 2014 donor conference in Cairo posed a question
to which we now have the answer [Image Source]

Money, who has it and who does not, along with the corruption that accompanies it, and the frequent silliness of those providing it, play a key role in the terrorism that has long been at the heart of the Arab/Israel conflict.

Exactly half a year ago, we wrote ["23-Nov-14: Gaza's wealth and where it is - and is not - going"] that Hamas had emerged as the world's second wealthiest terror organization; its annual income is on the order of a billion US dollars. 

Along with the wealth controlled by the organization itself, its kleptocratic, blood-stained leadership [details here: "27-Jul-14: Gaza's death toll keeps rising but for Hamas insiders it's all worth it"] has made out like thieves - in particular Mousa Abu Marzouk and Khaled Mashaal who despite their lowly origins are generally reckoned today to be personal billionaires. As we said last November, invoking one of the world's wealthiest despots, Arafat would have admired their cynical brazenness.

An  International Donor Conference convened in Cairo on October 12, 2014 to tap into the willingness of Gaza's (and Hamas') friends to fund a full recovery. As the BBC reported back then ["Gaza reconstruction facing obstacles despite aid"], the fund-raiser was an incredible success. The organizers had hoped to raise $4 billion, but ended with pledges to Gaza of an incredible $5.4 billion, 

a powerful signal that help was at hand... [A]bout half has been earmarked for the direct repair of war-damage - the reconstruction of buildings, roads, electricity supply lines and sewerage systems. It is not immediately clear how the rest of the money will be spent - but Gaza has no shortage of needs.

Whether clear or not, the Donor Conference website took a shot, so to speak, at clarifying the goals of the money-raising effort which were

to strengthen the basis of the ceasefire and improving political solution prospects for the conflict through (i) Strengthening the Palestinian government's ability to assume its responsibility in the rehabilitation of Gaza Strip. (ii) Enhancing the existing UN mechanism for import and export of goods and materials to and from Gaza. (iii) Providing the financial support required for reconstructing Gaza Strip.

Worthy ambitions. And you have to take your hat off in recognition of the donors' selfless generosity. Some of them may be astronomically wealthy but let's give credit where it's due: they really wanted to help. Their fraternal ties to the Arabs of the Gaza Strip provided a powerful incentive to do the right thing. As we noted, major pledges of funding came from Qatar ($1bn). Saudi Arabia ($500m), Turkey ($200m), United Arab Emirates ($200m), the European Union ($568m), the United States ($212m) and the United Kingdom ($32m).

Now it's six months later, and here's what we know. It comes from IRIN, an agency that used to be part of the United Nations, and is now an independent provider of 

unique, authoritative and independent reporting from the frontlines of crises to inspire and mobilise a more effective humanitarian response.

In a report datelined May 22, 2015, it updates us on what happened to all that Gaza-bound generosity.

As of late April, donors had given only 27.5 percent of the promised $3.5 billion, or $967 million... Gulf Arab states and Turkey have spectacularly failed to fulfill their pledges to Gaza...  Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Kuwait between them have handed over just over $50 million of the $900 million they pledged, according to a new World Bank report... IRIN asked Saudi Arabian, Qatari and Kuwaiti representatives for comment, but had not received responses by the time of publication... The release of the World Bank’s numbers comes a month after UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, said that not a single one of the more than 5,000 completely destroyed homes in Gaza had been rebuilt...  [IRIN, May 22, 2015]

Qatar is spending tens of billions of dollars on getting ready to host the 2022 FIFA soccer World Cup. Of the $1 billion it pledged to its Gazan brothers, it has delivered 10 percent. The Saudi Arabians have produced just one-tenth of the $500 million they promised. Turkey pledged $200 million and has sent $520,000. Kuwait, not to be outdone, also pledged $200 million - and has not sent a penny.

Such vast failure; such trivial media coverage [Image Source]

The unimaginably rich United Arab Emirates said it was giving $200 million; the World Bank says it has no data for how much arrived. But the United States which pledged $277 million has handed over 84% of that. The European Union promised $348 million, and 40% has shown up so far which, compared with the Arabs, is not too shabby.

(Essentially the same thing happened when the previous Gaza donor conference took place in 2009. See "10-Aug-14: Only a fraction of the Gaza reconstruction cash arrived last time, says Hamas insider".)

This might be a good time to remind ourselves of who does, and who does not, fund the world's strangest refugee organization, UNRWA: see "20-Nov-13: It's Wednesday. Time for yet another UNRWA funding crisis". Clue: if you're looking for Arab participation in the sharing of the financial burden, bring a magnifying glass. It's an open scandal, and an education for anyone wanting to comprehend the rank hypocrisy that has been part of the Arab world's "support" for the Palestinian Arab side in the conflict for the past several generations.

Which brings us to this evening and the fact that all of Israel came to a very nervous standstill this evening (Tuesday) around 9:00 pm when incoming-rocket sirens suddenly wailed all over our tiny country's south, indicating a rocket attack from Gaza.

Impoverished or not, money that enables the building of rockets, tunnels and luxury homes for the arch-terrorists who control the place is, was and probably always will be available in generous servings because, at the end of the day, they are what Hamas stands for.

Not for the first time, it's evident [as this post of ours makes plain: "6-Jul-14: For Hamas, Fatah and the PA, those rockets are about money, power, foreign aid and (naturally) corruption"] that the death and mayhem that results from Islamist hatred and jihad has cash at its heart.

And what of the rights, the interests, the well-being of the Gazans? We estimate they rank about as high up the ladder of Arab concern as the safety and security of  the Syrians, the Iraqis and the Libyans and the countries they lived in until mind-numbingly vicious Arab-on-Arab savagery descended upon them.

22-Sep-13: A quiet weekend

It's been a quiet weekend... unless the Islamist terrorists happen to be active in your neighbourhood. Some notes from some specific neighbourhoods this quiet weekend:

Nigerian Islamists kill at least 159 in two attacks

Reuters | BENISHEIK, Nigeria | Islamist Boko Haram militants killed 159 people in two roadside attacks in northeast Nigeria this week, officials said, far more than was originally reported and a sign that a four-month-old army offensive has yet to stabilize the region. In the first attack, on Tuesday, Boko Haram guerrillas wearing army uniforms stopped traffic on a highway between the cities of Maiduguri and Damaturu, dragging people out of their vehicles and killing them, with 143 bodies recovered so far... Tuesday's toll was initially given as "more than 20", but information often takes days to trickle out of the remote and sparsely populated region, where roads are bad, curfews are in force and the military has cut the phone network since May... Thousands have been killed since the shadowy sect launched its uprising against the state in 2009, turning itself from a clerical movement opposed to Western culture into an armed militia with growing links to al Qaeda's West African wing... Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sinful" in the northern Hausa language, wants to revive the medieval Islamic kingdoms that used to rule northern Nigeria, before its amalgamation with the largely Christian south by the British colonial authorities.

Pakistan: 75 killed, 120 injured in Peshawar church attack

By Web Desk / AFP Published: September 22, 2013 | PESHAWAR: A twin suicide bombing killed more than 75 people at a church service in northwest Pakistan on Sunday, officials said, in what is believed to be the country’s deadliest attack on Christians. The two attackers struck at the end of a service at All Saints Church in  Peshawar, the main town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province which has borne the brunt of a bloody Islamist insurgency in recent years. Sahibzada Anees, one of Peshawar’s most senior officials, told reporters the bombers struck when the service had just ended. “Most of the wounded are in critical condition,” Anees said... Former minister for inter-faith harmony Paul Bhatti and provincial lawmaker Fredrich Azeem Ghauri both said the attack was the deadliest ever targeting Christians in Pakistan... The small and largely impoverished Christian community suffers discrimination in overwhelmingly Muslim-majority Pakistan but bombings against them are extremely rare... Pakistan’s Ulema Council, an  association of leading Muslim scholars, strongly condemned the church attack and said killing innocent people violates the tenets of Islam. “It is an extremely shameful attack  which has shamed all Pakistanis and Muslims,” Allama Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, chief of the council, told AFP. “There is no room for such terrorist acts in Islam...”
Provincial lawmaker Ghauri said there  were about 200,000 Christians in the province, of whom 70,000 lived in Peshawar. “Now after this attack Christians across Pakistan will fear for their lives,” he warned... Only around two percent of Pakistan’s population of 180 million are Christian. The community complains of growing discrimination... Christians have a precarious existence in Pakistan, often living in slum-like “colonies” cheek-by-jowl with Muslims and fearful of allegations of blasphemy, a sensitive subject that can provoke outbursts of public violence.

Kenya: Standoff at Nairobi mall after gunmen kill at least 59

Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post | Updated: Sunday, September 22 | NAIROBI — More than 24 hours after Islamist militants stormed an upscale Nairobi mall, a tense standoff continued Sunday between the heavily armed assailants and Kenyan security forces, as the government announced that the death toll had risen to 59 with more than 175 injured in the deadliest attack in Kenya since the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings. The attackers, strapped with grenades and wielding machine guns and AK-47 rifles, remained holed up inside the Westgate Premier Shopping Mall, with as many as 30 hostages, Kenyan government officials said Sunday. An unknown number of people remained inside the building, hiding from the gunmen. Sporadic gunfire erupted at the mall Sunday morning as additional Kenyan security forces arrived to help defuse the crisis, which began Saturday afternoon.

Suicide bomber hits Iraq Sunni funeral, killing 16

Associated Press | Sunday September 22, 2013 A suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt among Sunni mourners attending a funeral in Baghdad on Sunday, killing 16 people and wounding 35 others, officials said, in the latest episode of the country's near-daily violence. Police officials said the evening attack took place when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt inside a tent where the funeral was being held in Baghdad's southern neighborhood of Dora. Two other attacks in the country's north left two policemen dead and 37 others wounded, the officials added. Sunday's bloodshed came a day after a wave of attacks killed 104 people, most at a double suicide attack on a Shiite funeral in Baghdad. Violence has spiked in Iraq during the past few months. More than 4,000 people have been killed between April and August, a level of carnage not seen since the country was on the brink of civil war in 2006-08.Earlier on Sunday, a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into a residential area in the city of Kirkuk, wounding 35 people... The bomber targeted both a Kurdish educational office and an adjacent house for a Christian lawmaker, Qadir said. Seven members of the lawmaker's family were wounded in the attack. 

Associated Press has a deeply depressing album of images that illustrate aspects of these weekend stories.

3-Aug-13: Prison breaks and terror threats

Indonesian police secure entrance to burning prison
compound in Medan, July 11, 2013 [Image Source: CNN]

Following on from what we posted here Friday ["2-Aug-13: That war against "terrorism"? How well are we doing, exactly?"], Interpol issued an alert today advising its 190 members to step up vigilance in the wake of a wave of prison breaks involving hundreds of terrorists and other criminals in 9 countries which "may be linked". These took place (among other locations) in

• Libya: More than 1,100 prisoners escaped from a facility on the outskirts of Benghazi on July 27 [NYTimes report] following a wave of political assassinations and attacks on political offices across the country
• Iraq: An overnight jail-break on July 22 in which 500 convicts, including senior al Qaeda terrorists, escaped from Abu Ghraib [NPR report]
• Iraq: Also July 22, Taji prison, north of Baghdad, was attacked by forces of The Islamic State of Iraq, the umbrella group for al-Qaeda in Iraq [Al Jazeera report] with numerous deaths and many prisoners freed
• Pakistan: A high quality military-style operation on July 31 in which, says NPR, Taliban forces numbering around 100 (or the Tehrik-e-Taliban, a Pakistani affiliate of al-Qaeda, according to RT) armed with explosives and automatic weapons attacked the central prison in the city of Dera Ismail Khan freeing (depending on who is to be believed) between 175 and 300 prisoners, among them 35 "high-profile militants". Al Jazeera correspondent Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from Islamabad, said that the infiltrators "were using loudspeakers and calling the individual names of inmates to come out of the badly damaged prison." Ahead of the prison break, officials received a letter threatening such action, but according to the head of the local prison department Khalid Abbas, "they didn't expect it so soon."
• Indonesia: BBC says 100 prisoners escaped (while CNN says "hundreds") on July 12 from Tanjung Gusta prison in Medan, Sumatra. Nine of them are reported to be terrorists.

Reuters says the Interpol warning refers to the anniversaries of several violent attacks over the past years during the coming month, including in Mumbai and Nairobi. Though they don't mention it, August 9 is the twelfth anniversary of Hamas' showcase attack on the Sbarro restaurant in central Jerusalem.

29-Dec-11: Who decides on the stories that get major headlines and prominence? And why?

Boy searches for shrapnel on Israel's Moshav
Sde Avraham after a rocket fired from Gaza
exploded near a moshav home, March 2011. This photo
was a leading contender for news image of the year, 2011
[Image Source]

Few people, even among those who follow the events in the Middle East closely, will be aware of the state of the frequent and ongoing rocket attacks on southern Israel. No, we don’t mean those of last month or last year, but this week.

Fewer will be surprised to see what the major news media consider to be the really important news from Israel this week. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

On Friday, two mortar shells fired into southern Israel exploded in open areas in the Eshkol region.

This past Saturday evening (Xmas Eve), it was reported that terrorists from Gaza were active again with their deadly missiles. They fired two Qassam rockets into Israel that crashed into the western Negev region, with one exploding in an open area in the Ashkelon Coast region, and the other in an open area in the Sha’ar Hanegev region. No injuries or property damage were reported, but this was certainly not the outcome the terrorists intended.

Then on Monday, this report says there was another Qassam rocket attack on southern Israel’s Gaza Belt region, a few kilometers from the Hamas-run Gaza terrorist enclave. This one crashed into open land in the Sha'ar HaNegev region and again – to our great fortune - no one was injured and no damage was reported.

Today (Wednesday), a Qassam rocket once again crashed into open space in Israel’s Sha'ar Hanegev region during the morning. Initial reports said the rocket was misfired and landed inside Gaza but it now appears it did in fact make it across the border and into the lives of ordinary Israelis. Then late this evening, a second Qassam rocket struck in roughly the same place. Fortunately, there are no reports of injuries or damage which means, in the eyes of those who did the firings, they were a failure, and therefore simply prelude to more and more and more attempts at a better, more bloody outcome.

Meanwhile the BBC via its website and the BBC World global radio service has been focusing to an astonishing degree for the past several days on an Israeli story that, in its own words, is about a tiny handful of malefactors and the response they are encountering from Israelis of every stripe. We’re not saying the reports of a certain extreme kind of orthodox Israeli Jews being rude and offensive to people living in the same town as them is not newsworthy. It is, or would be if the coverage included any journalistic insights. Reports of young Hassidic men in Beth Shemesh acting boorishly (yes, boorishly – no guns were fired, no punches were thrown, no houses burned down and no crowd-control devices were needed by the authorities) are interesting if you place them in a context (we won’t do it here or now). But there is precious little insight or understanding in the reports we have seen. Meaningful analysis of the socio-demographic or even political kind is far more challenging and much, much less interesting to the people who edit the BBC’s news than statements like this one:

“Many Israelis believe the country's character is at stake. They resent the fact that most ultra-Orthodox men don't work or serve in the army. Instead, the government gives them subsidies to carry out religious studies. One man here told me Jewish religious extremism posed a bigger threat to the country than Iran.”

Now do we know why BBC’s widely heard World Service news featured this as its main world news story for most of yesterday? Does its gravity come anywhere near to any of the following other stories of the past week, basically chosen at random?

• Iraq: 57 were killed, at least 179 people wounded, in simultaneous terror attacks on Baghdad this past Thursday. 14 locations were attacked simultaneously.
• Syria: More than 200 people including many women and children were killed by their own defense forces in a single day late last week on the eve of a visit by international observers monitoring Syria’s compliance with an Arab League peace plan. Syrian troops rounded up and shot civilians, and looted and destroyed houses according to The Washington Times. This was the deadliest week so far in a rebellion against Assad that started in March. The UN says it has exacted more than 5,000 lives so far. Nine more Syrians were killed by the Syrian Army today (Wednesday). Yes, the international observer group is there but so what? It’s an unfolding story drenched in blood, evil and intrigue. Yet most people in most places have only the vaguest sense, if at all, about what is going on. Foreign news agencies like the BBC are forbidden by the murderous Assad regime in Damascus from reporting directly from Syria. Most people don’t know this either.
• Gaza: The head of the Hamas terrorist organization, nominally the prime minister of the Gazan part of Palestine (the result of a forced and bloody power grab in 2007), has embarked on a grand tour of the Arab world. It’s the first time a Hamas leader has done this. Such minor news coverage as there is paints this as a kind of triumphal celebration of the new standing of the officially-outlawed Hamas terrorist regime in a post-Arab-spring world… a world in which repressive Arab rulers are replaced by Islamist, Moslem Brotherhood organizations – like Hamas. He will be feted in Sudan (today), then Qatar (which owns Al Jazeera), Turkey (the subject of this dismaying Christian Science Monitor expose of its current slide into authoritarianism), Tunisia and Bahrain at least. We’re wondering if any of the reporters who interview him will ask Ismail Haniyah to explain what he meant in a speech last week when he said that Hamas is working for interim objectives that include the “liberation of Gaza, the West Bank, or Jerusalem" the long-term "strategic" goal of his terrorist movement is, in plain language, eliminating all of Israel:
• Saudi Arabia, a family-run business/state featuring fantastical wealth driven by fossil-fuel riches and a despotic, misogynistic ruling family, announced an unexpected budget surplus of more than $80 billion for 2011. (The finance ministry was expecting to post a deficit of $10.7 billion.)
• Nigeria: Islamists murdered no fewer than 39 people in Xmas Day attacks on two churches. We have blogged (“Tentacles again in west Africa, and the toll is shooting upwards” and other reports) about the admitted perpetrators, the horrifying Boko Haram, after some of their previous massacres. Most people, including most reporters and their editors outside of Nigeria (population: 170 million), have never heard of them. They need to know. There’s a process going on, and it extends far, far beyond Nigeria.
• Somalia: Again and again, the gang-raping and stoning of women by Islamist thugs gets reported, though not often enough and not with adequate prominence. But where is the journalistic analysis that lets readers see the close connection between these bestial practices and the religion professed by the perpetrators? Does this being an African story make thoughtful reporting superfluous and un-needed? 

And if our focus is on how various societies treat their women, do the street protests in Israel's Beth Shemesh community rank higher, lower or at the same level in news reporting terms compared with, say, reports about how the military in Egypt has been routinely carrying out forced virginity tests on women arrested in the Tahrir Square protests? Yes, the BBC mentioned it. And it might stop now that a court has condemned it. But given the widespread journalistic enthusiasm for the events in Cairo this past spring, the virginity test practices got nowhere near the news prominence of the absurd Hassidim-taking-over-Israel confection.

We’ll close with an image (below) that, to our minds, got less exposure than it deserves. Additional words are not really needed. It’s an image captured in Gaza this week: a graduating class of young women, the future of their community, the wombs that will create the next generation of Palestinian Arabs. 

Graduating class of women in Hamas-controlled Gaza this week