23-Oct-15: Scenes from a stabbing/ramming/shooting war of terror

The "moderate" Abbas in front of poster
of his mentor, the arch-terrorist and Nobel Prize
laureate Yasser Arafat

A month ago, and several weeks before arranging for his wife's brother to be admitted to Israel's best private hospital as a VIP patient ["23-Oct-15: When the people inciting the knifings/rammings/shootings need really good doctors, where do they turn?"], the highly-immoderate "moderate" president of the Palestinian Authority, made some public statements that ignited a firestorm.

"Al-Aksa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They [the Jews] have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet. We won’t allow them to do so and we will do whatever we can to defend Jerusalem... Each drop of blood that was spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood as long as it’s for the sake of Allah. Every shahid (martyr) will be in heaven and every wounded person will be rewarded, by Allah’s will." [Abbas quoted in Jerusalem Post, September 16, 2015]

Thoughts of pure blood, of filthy feet, of heaven and of being rewarded for the spilling of blood have propelled an onslaught of Palestinian Arab savagery against Israelis, overwhelmingly against non-uniformed Israelis and visitors, since Mahmoud Abbas uttered those words.

Some selected scenes from the past 36 hours of this savage war of terror directed at Israelis. (And to be clear - we don't claim to be reporting all the terror attacks; nowhere near it, in fact. There are too many of them in too many parts of our beautiful country, and it's simply depressing to list them in the numbers in which they are happening.)

Irish news report about the "alleged" Beit Shemesh attack on a
Jewish school bus on Thursday morning [Source]

• From this morning (Friday) here in Jerusalem, Times of Israel says police thwarted yet another terror attack directed (as usual) at civilians, this time in Jerusalem’s Nof Zion neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Local residents noticed a suspect surveying homes in the area and called for police help. A Border Police patrol unit soon arrived and stopped the suspect, asking him to show his hands. He he kept his right hand behind his back and refused to show it. When pressed, the report says, he kept it in a fist. An officer "subdued" him, and found a knife concealed in the suspect's sleeve. He turns out to be a 21-year-old male from Jabel Mukaber, a village inside the city limits of Jerusalem, and the source of a considerable flow of hatred-driven terrorism now and in the past. Past mentions in our blog include "16-Sep-15: Jerusalem Watch | Not-so-new New Year violence"; "19-Sep-15: Jerusalem Watch | Yet more rage"; "13-Oct-15: A bloody day and the malevolence behind it"; "17-Oct-15: Bloody Saturday". The vile killers of several rabbis in a synagogue in Jerusalem's Har Nof section came from Jabel Mukaber, and massacre of unarmed men at prayer caused an eruption of celebration there in its immediate aftermath ["26-Dec-14: The ongoing search for Arabic-language outrage at the men with the meat-cleavers and knives"].
• It's October, which is the time for the olive harvest season in our part of the world. The IDF, alert to the tensions that often erupt during the Palestinian Arab olive harvest, provides secure coverage for the picking in selected locations. Ynet says that early this morning (Friday), at one of those spots in the Gush Etzion area a few kilometers south of Jerusalem, a company of IDF soldiers arrived, "as they do every morning during this season, to open the separation barrier near the settlement of Geva'ot to let Palestinian olive farmers cross the barrier and work their olive groves located west of the fence.  After soldiers opened the gate, a Palestinian attacked one of them, a tracker from the Etzion Regional Brigade, and stabbed him in the upper body. His fellow soldiers immediately shot the terrorist in the foot and neutralized him. The terrorist is a 16-year-old from the village of Surif." The assailant who plunged a knife into the soldier's back was shot in the leg and lightly injured. He is now being fixed in Hadassah Ein Karem Medical Center, Jerusalem. His victim is in Jerusalem's Shaarei Zedek Medical Center.
• Thursday afternoon, a Palestinian Arab made an unsuccessful stabbing attack on an IDF soldier close to the Hassam Shoter checkpoint in Hevron's Tel Rumeida neighborhood. He fled and a search failed to find him. The site of the attack was mentioned in a post [here] a few days ago.
• In Beit Shemesh yesterday (Thursday) morning, a terror attack plot that could easily have cost a terribly high price ended up as something less painful, though certainly worrying and with victims. In the Haaretz account, officers at the Beit Shemesh police station received an early morning report that two terror suspects had tried to board a private school bus with young children on board and had been frightened away by the yelling of nearby civilians. Police were sent to the area (according to locals, only after an unreasonable delay) and spotted the suspects just as they launched a stabbing attack on a young man standing at a bus stop on Yehezkel Hanavi Street. The police promptly opened fire in accordance with the new shoot-to-kill rules of engagement when confronting terrorists in the act.  Palestinian Arab sources now say the attackers were Mahmoud Ghanimat and Makdad Heeh, both about 20, both from the village of Tzurif, near Hebron, and both construction workers engaged at a construction site in the rapidly-developing Ramat Beit Shemesh Gimel section of town. Haaretz says: "Under their t-shirts, police found they were wearing a second t-shirt with the emblems of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. The Shin Bet security service said one was a Hamas activist and the other had been imprisoned from 2012 to 2014 after being apprehended with a knife in the area of the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron." One of the attackers died of his wounds; the other is injured and in a bad way. Their victim is described as "a young Haredi man, aged about 18". The police and the municipal authorities are now saying they will increase enforcement of the law regarding the presence of Palestinian Arab workers in the city: "The investigation into the attack will include determining how the two reached Beit Shemesh from the area of the southern Hebron hills, which is considered a prime place where Palestinians illegally enter Israel.  Because of various breaks in the fence in the area, many Palestinians enter Israel there daily.  The regional council has complained about this for a long time, and the daily transit of Palestinians into Israel there is well-known to the security forces, but nothing has been done.  Defense sources estimate that about 34,000 Palestinians illegally enter Israel every day through the various breaks in the fence, not only in the Hebron area."
  Notice the screen shot we posted above, taken from the website of the Irish Independent news site. We think the Palestinian Arabs must occasionally ask themselves what they did right to be on the receiving end of so much undeserved journalistic benevolence by Irish reporters, editors and analysts. It's an ongoing scandalous disgrace.
• In the very early hours of Thursday morning, just after midnight and a block away from Jerusalem's Central Bus Station on Yirmiyahu Street, a Jewish man was shot to death (Haaretz says) after he was suspected of being a terrorist and, according to testimony, tried to snatch a weapon from an Israel Defense Forces soldier. The IDF Spokesman's Unit said it was a soldier that fired at the man, and that "the security services are investigating details of the incident."
• On Wednesday, a young female soldier serving in the Home Front Command's Kedem battalion was severely wounded in a stabbing attack at Adam Junction, on Jerusalem's northern edge. Jerusalem Post says a second female soldier shot and killed the knife attacker. He is identified as Ibrahim Mu'taz Zawiya, 21, from Azarya, near Ma'ale Adumim. An additional suspect was apprehended near the scene. The injured young woman is being treated at Hadassah Ein Karem hospital, and though her injuries were critical at first, she is said to be doing better.

It's an intense and difficult time, with considerable fear in the air, as well as anger and deep resentment at the overt nature of the incitement emanating from the political leadership of the Palestinian Arabs. It's hard for ordinary Israelis to comprehend how the people on the other side - chief among them Mahmoud Abbas, the mis-named "moderate" - show such willingness to weaponize their own children and place them in the front lines of the attacks on mainly-civilian Israeli targets.

12-Jul-15: In confronting terror, Tunisia's government tells visitors to trust them and ignore the advisories

Poster in Tunisian booth at a March 2011 international tourism show,
in Berlin [Image Source: "Tunisia sees tourists return 
after revolt" Reuters, 2012]

If there are tourists from the UK - or from anywhere - still intent on taking their holidays in Tunisia, there are a few things we feel they ought to know. Let's start with a British news report published on Friday:

Britain's advice that tourists should leave Tunisia because of the risk of another terror attack will "have repercussions", the country's prime minister has said. Habib Essid said he would telephone David Cameron on Friday to respond to Foreign Office advice that the North African nation was unsafe for holidays. Tunisia's ambassador to London has already warned Britain is playing into the hands for terrorists with the new threat warning, which is likely to devastate the Tunisian tourist industry. Mr Essid said: "We will ring the British prime minister to tell him we have done everything we can to protect all British interests and those of others countries - that's our duty."
"Britain is free to take whatever decision it likes - it's a sovereign country - but we too are a sovereign country and we have a position to take."
He did not elaborate on what that position might be but he told politicians that the British decision would "have repercussions." [Tunisia backlash against Britain as PM warns of terror 'repercussions' | The Independent UK | July 10, 2015]

Britain is not alone in issuing travel advisories:

"Tunisia's Prime Minister has said his country cannot defeat terrorism without foreign support. Habib Essid confirmed that the gunman who murdered 38 tourists on a beach in the resort of Sousse - including three Irish people and 30 British - did not act alone." [Irish Examiner, July 11, 2015]

and

The Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a travel advisory for Serbian citizens, warning them to "abstain from travel to Tunisia." [Tanjug, July 10, 2015]

and

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has not upgraded its risk rating for New Zealanders in Tunisia after a terrorist attack near Sousse... An MFAT spokesperson said the ministry had updated its travel advisory in light of the attack but there were no changes in the analysed level of risk to travel there. The "significant threat" of terrorism in Tunisia meant there was still "some risk" for security, MFAT said... Further attacks could not be ruled out, particularly in large cities and popular tourist destinations, MFAT warned on its website. [New Zealand Herald, June 30, 2015]

On the other hand

According to the State Department website, the US has issued no specific warnings since the attack. On Saturday afternoon, a map on the website of the French foreign ministry ranked the terrorist threat in Tunisia below that in Libya, Algeria and parts of Egypt. A spokesman confirmed that France had not called on its nationals to leave Tunisia, reiterating advice that travellers should be “particularly vigilant”. [From an opinion piece in Independent UK, July 12, 2015]

Still, we think anyone with Tunisian plans ought to take a close look at some of the background, as viewed via the lens of some recent posts on this blog:

• "26-Jun-15: A month of disasters for the infidels on at least three continents and that's just today"
  Extract: In Tunisia, gunmen opened fire at a beach resort, killing at least 27 people, officials said. At least one of the attackers was killed by security forces...
• "03-May-15: Israel sees concrete signs of a terror threat in Tunisia while the government there says it's actually nothing"
  Extract: The Tunisian government on Saturday shrugged off a warning from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel had learned of "concrete threats" of terror attacks against Jewish or Israeli targets in the Arab country... A senior official in the Tunisian interior ministry told Agence France-Presse that no such threats existed. "We have nothing on that. There are no threats," the unnamed official said... And for the record, we don't plan to include Tunisia in any upcoming travel.
• "19-Mar-15: In Tunisia, terrorists target tourists... again" 
  Extract: A murderous attack by terrorists in broad daylight yesterday (Wednesday) left at least 19 people killed on the streets of Tunis, the capital of Tunisia... The new Tunisian prime minister, Habib Essid, who took office last month... urged "national unity", calling the massacre “the first operation of its kind ever to occur in Tunisia”. The first? That's true only if we ignore (and ignore is exactly what most parts of the news media are doing) the April 11, 2002 Djerba synagogue bombing in which terrorists operating on behalf of Al Qaeda deployed a human bomb and a truck full of explosives to attack people, most of them tourists, visiting a historically-significant (and exceptionally beautiful) Tunisian synagogue. The death toll was heavy: 14 German tourists, 3 Tunisians, 2 French.  

Beyond the bluster, the assurances and the threats, some Tunisians are dealing with the serious commercial fall-out from the collapse of their tourism industry via some in-your-face marketing:

According to an article in the Travel section of Telegraph UK ["Images of 7/7 bombings used to promote Tunisia tourism" | July 7, 2015],

The images are deliberately provocative, according to Selim Ben Hadj Yahia, managing director of Ramdam, an agency based in Tunis... The campaign – which was not endorsed by the Tunisian Ministry of Tourism – was not created for an agency client or for profit. Mr Hadj Yahia – whose work usually focuses on political crisis communications rather than tourism – said that his intention was rather to convey hope and willingness: “We are the only country in the region building a true democracy and we will succeed at whatever cost.”

There's no doubt that pride, hope, willingness are all great motivators. But Tunisia has serious Islamist terrorism problems on its hands. Underscoring this, a BBC report on Friday, quoting AP, said Tunisian forces had killed  an additional five "suspected Islamist militants" in what it called an ongoing operation. Another British source [Independent UK, July 11, 2015] calls them "suspected jihadists":

Security forces killed the men yesterday during a counter-terrorism operation near the town of El Ktar in Gafsa governate. The alleged extremists were reportedly found with four Kalashnikovs, the same weapon used by beach gunman Seifeddine Rezgui, a pistol, two grenades, several mobile phones, documents and a large sum of cash... [But] Philip Hammond, the [British] Foreign Secretary, appeared to criticise Tunisian counter-terrorism efforts in his statement... “While we are working with the Tunisian authorities to further strengthen those measures, we judge that more work is needed to effectively protect tourists from the terrorist threat.”

Tunisia's reluctance to be open about such matters is likely to tell very heavily in their efforts to stay in close touch with the civilized world and its travelers. As we keep saying here, being wrong about terrorism comes at a terribly high price.

4-Oct-13: An Irish op ed as a microcosm of a larger pathology

Irish Times, October 3, 2013

The mainstream media rarely perform in ways that match their self-generated expectations. A lack of genuine objectivity, an inclination towards the politically-correct and to knee-jerk liberalism ("stand up for the weak, resist the strong and let the chips fall wherever"), editorial and reportorial silliness, poor grasp of the facts and a shortage of the necessary passion to uncover them, and - in far too many cases - insufficient professionalism are all parts of the problem. It's by far a much larger issue than can be addressed in a brief blog post, and a serious one.

We often feel the need to remind ourselves of how things are. This morning offers up one of those moments, by means of a sickening piece of scurrilous op-ed writing in the Irish Times yesterday. (We will provide the link to anyone who asks; we prefer not to embed the link here.)

Someone we greatly respect wrote from the UK this morning urging an informed response from an Israeli source. We wrote this to him in reply just now:

There are times when the sheer mindless foaming-at-the-mouth prejudice of people like this hater need to be left to stand alone for open-minded individuals to see and to reflect on. Responding by means of dialogue almost always has a legitimizing effect, as if his were just one of a number of acceptable viewpoints in a robust society. In reality, this article should never have gotten past a responsible newspaper's editorial processes. That it did is the outrage, and not the distorted, invented and unverifiable facts.
The Irish (not uniquely, sad to say) have a problem which cannot be solved by delivering up counter-facts in a he said/she said way. That would be a mere sticking plaster when surgery and long-term therapy is called for.
The problem is systemic. A systemic response - starting with the Church and schools that teach journalism like the School of Communications at DCU, both of which ought to be approached - is called for. Anything less is futile and (forgive me) self-deluding.

Based on experience in other places - and without inquiring into his background or past achievements, we have the sense that the Irish columnist who wrote the article linked in our second para thinks he did something to benefit the Palestinian Arabs by writing what he wrote. With people blinded by their own hatred of the other, alerting them to factual errors and the weakness of their basis assumptions is often a waste of time, as well as being a kind of unjustified megaphone for their hateful viewpoints. Far better to invest that energy in thinking about what's wrong with the system that makes that hatred a reality, and pondering how to remedy that.

18-Jun-10: Some comments from other places

Why Do the Peace Activists Ignore the Violence of Hamas?
Lindy McDowell (Belfast Telegraph-UK)

Gaza, where the flotilla boats were headed, is under the control of the terrorist grouping Hamas which has been responsible for pounding Israeli towns (and Israeli civilians) with increasingly sophisticated missiles for years. It was to protect Israeli families from Hamas suicide bombers that Israel began erecting its security fence in 2002.
    In 2005 Israel (in the interests of peace) moved out of Gaza. The thanks it got were even more rockets (often supplied by Iran) raining down on its civilian population courtesy of Hamas, which charmingly declares itself dedicated to wiping the Israeli people off the face of the earth. Israel, understandably, has insisted on monitoring what materials go into Gaza and, thus, what (potentially lethal) materials Hamas could have access to. All of us in the West live in countries which maintain a similar right to ensure the safety of their own civilian populations. Most countries have reasons why they would not be confident to leave this role up to the international community. Israel has at least six million extra reasons.

Hamas: A Terrorist Thug Group, Through and Through
Anath Hartmann (Washington Times)

"I do not think that Hamas is a terrorist organization," Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan told a June 4 rally. In fact, Hamas has perpetrated bombings and other violence that have killed hundreds of people inside Israel and wounded more than 1,300. Hamas' charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, saying Israel "will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors" and vowing to "raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine."
    But Hamas tyranny is not limited to Jews. Hamas has long had a practice of lynching, maiming and executing Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel or the rival Palestinian political party Fatah. After winning the 2006 Gaza elections on a platform of change and an end to corruption, Hamas forcibly took control of the Strip and blew up Fatah headquarters. The U.S., Canada, Israel, Japan and EU all classify Hamas as a terrorist entity.

Hamas Is to Blame for Gaza Tragedy
Eamon Delaney (Irish Independent)

In a Guardian interview, published on the very day of the flotilla-storming, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal almost jauntily looked forward to the next round of "fighting with Israel." Meanwhile, Hamas continues to be funded by the Syrians and Iranians, anxious to stoke bloodshed, but suitably far away enough not to suffer the consequences. The reality is that Hamas should be blamed for bringing ruin and destruction to the people of Gaza. Hamas now enforces an authoritarian regime and has imposed a repressive Islamic culture. Hamas has cancelled elections and forcibly and bloodily evicted its rivals in the Fatah movement.

Gaza Activists Were Pawns in a Much Bigger Turkish Power Game
Stephen King (Irish Examiner)

For a generation to whom Vietnam and South Africa are either faint memories or battles only read about in history books, Palestine is the most perfect cause. For rebels looking for a cause, Israel makes a classic enemy. Being a Jewish state makes it racist, right? Aren't its most vociferous supporters in the U.S.? What more is there to know? Only the Holocaust prevents even respectable opinion in Ireland from labeling Israel a fascist state. And it helps that Gaza seems so much more winnable than the Tibetan fight for autonomy.
    These individuals who joined 400 Turkish Islamists on a voyage to break the Israeli blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza came, they said, on a genuine, if misguided, attempt to relieve Gaza's suffering. But for the Turkish activists who drove the mission, the flotilla was all part of a much bigger game - a premeditated provocation by a gang of wannabe martyrs bent on violent confrontation and on realigning Turkey away from the West. The impression that Israel/Palestine is the root of all the Middle East's problems is as misguided as it is pervasive. The conflict with Israel merely serves as an effective cover for the region's collective failure to build stable, just and prosperous societies.

26-Feb-07: The Real Threat to Islam

Yehuda Litani, a journalist for the Yediot Aharonot newspaper and a noted film-maker, published this first-person insight into what motivates the leadership of Jerusalem's Islamic religious establishment, the Waqf.

Litani writes:

In the years 1992-3 the late King Hussein of Jordan financed the renovations of the golden dome, which was carried out by a construction company from Northern Ireland. On a visit to the site during those renovations I discovered a story that wasn’t known until then, regarding the Jewish-Ottoman-Palestinian connection to the mosques on Temple Mount.

The Dome of the Rock was surrounded with scaffolding, and before ascending one of them a friend of mine drew my attention to an iron panel that lay on the floor and was inscribed in French. The foreman of the Irish construction company said the panel had been found between the two halves of the crescents at on top of the mosque, and was temporarily dismantled so that the dome could be coated in gold.

The words in French revealed that the Mosque had been renovated in 1899 during Turkish rule, and that the works had been assisted by the Jewish community in Jerusalem led by a public figure called Avraham (Albert) Entebbe, who among his numerous other activities was also the principal of the city's "Kol Israel Haverim" school.

Entebbe, who was the undersigned on the French inscription, was known for his courageous ties with the heads of the Ottoman rule, and the inscription noted that for the purpose of renovating the mosques on the Temple Mount five acclaimed Jewish artists had been invited to Jerusalem. The Jewish stone carvers, wood carvers and iron mongers from various cities in the Mediterranean basin, shared their skills with their Muslim brothers during months of work.

The inscription also noted that all the students at Entebbe's school were given a three-month leave in order to assist their Muslim brothers in the renovations works on Temple Mount. In the last lines of the inscription, Entebbe described the ideal cooperation and understanding that prevailed between Jews and Muslims in the Holy City, which reached its zenith when the Jews undertook renovations of the Temple Mount mosques in 1899.

I told the Irish foreman about my discovery, and asked him to look after the iron panel so that I could take a photograph of it. The foreman apparently told Waqf representatives about the panel, and when we came back to the site the next day the panel was no longer there. The foreman said the Waqf had taken it away. When I asked one of them a few days later where the iron panel was, he said that he didn’t know what I was talking about.

The iron panel, which told the story of the wonderful cooperation between the Jews and Muslims under Turkish rule, disappeared. There is no chance of it reappearing in the future, because it doesn't serve the Waqf's current interests. Yet at a time of harsh words and hatred it's rather nice to reminisce on days gone by.

Appalling. And the sort of analysis we will never see in the brand-name media, but that, if we did, would help our friends and neighbours make better sense of what goes on in this part of the world.

12-Sep-06: "Reasonable" Suicide

Frimet Roth's essay "Reasonable Suicide" is a front page lead article on the Front Page Mag website this morning. Here's the full text.

"Reasonable" Suicide
By Frimet Roth | FrontPageMagazine.com | September 12, 2006

Prepare for another Israeli retreat.
The prison gates are about to be flung open again and Hamas handed a victory greater than any territorial concession.
Sources say that the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit is imminent. The ransom demanded by Hamas reportedly now stands at 800 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
The absurdly skewed numbers make plain that this will be no exchange. While the first Palestinian to walk through those prison gates will be swapped, the seven hundred and ninety nine who follow him will be handed over gratis.
A mass release of this kind, if it takes place, will be catastrophic for Israelis. In its wake, terrorists would be insane not to carry out more such abductions in order to reap such bonanzas.
And past experience shows that released prisoners rejoin the ranks of their terror gangs with redoubled fervor.
Orit Adato, former Commissioner of the Israeli Prison Service, observed, in her 2005 article, "The Issue of Prisoner Release", that some security prisoners "left jail more extreme and better equipped ideologically and professionally."
But these sacrifices have long been accepted as the unavoidable price of "bringing our boys home."
Israeli soldiers and their families, facing the harsh realities of life here, know that no stone is ever left unturned in our government's pursuit of that goal.
Amnon Zichroni, a veteran negotiator for the release of Israeli soldiers, reflecting on this, said in a recent interview: "Perhaps the other side doesn't have the same attitude as we do to our people."
Based on his past involvement in trying to free European hostages held in Iran and Lebanon, he is convinced that even "the Europeans placed less value on their citizens' lives than we [Israelis] do."
This noble attitude should not be tampered with. However, it is essential that candidate prisoners be carefully selected and their release wisely negotiated.
Zichroni, a lawyer, has come by this wisdom over several decades. His experience in the field began in 1978 when PM Menachem Begin appointed him to handle the release of Israeli prisoners and hostages in Arab hands. He was also involved intensively with the cases of Ron Arad and the 1982 Sultan Yaakub MIA's.
Successful negotiation, he maintains, demands that government lay the groundwork immediately after the kidnapping. Interviewed by the Bitter Lemons forum shortly after Cpl. Shalit was taken hostage, Zichroni advised the Israeli government to "desist from targeted assassinations and deal instead with targeted kidnappings of people who are close to the organizations holding Shalit, who could be bargaining cards." Without leverage, we fail.
His advice was not heeded. Prime Minister Olmert's initial public stance was to refuse to negotiate at all. Zichroni says this increased the danger to Shalit's life.
Having since flip-flopped and with no ground-work, Olmert is negotiating from a position of weakness. Consequently, the deal being weighed threatens to be more loathsome than all those preceding it. If closed, it will cross a critical red line that has been observed in all of Israel's earlier prisoner exchanges.
To obtain Shalit's freedom, Israel has reportedly agreed for the first time to hand over prisoners "with blood on their hands". But the deal's brokers and Israel's political leaders are attempting to conceal this with the lulling words "women and children."
The fact is that several of the women and sub-eighteen-year-olds who are candidates for release are no less lethal and murderous than the stereotypical twenty-something male terrorist.
Those who grieve – like me – for loved ones murdered at Jerusalem's Sbarro Restaurant are well aware of the dangers posed by female terrorists. One hot August afternoon five years ago, Ahlam Tamimi, then a twenty-year-old university co-ed, played a central role in the terror attack that took the life of my daughter and 14 other innocents, most of them children.
Tamimi selected the target and escorted the suicide bomber to the restaurant's door. 130 people were injured and maimed in that massacre.
Interviewed in her prison cell four months ago, she told reporters: "I'm not sorry for what I did. I will get out of prison and I refuse to recognize Israel's existence."
Tamimi has served less than five years of her 16 consecutive life sentences. Yet already in March 2006, she proclaimed, "I know that we will become free from Israeli occupation and then I will also be free from the prison."
I appeal to Prime Minister Olmert to resist the pressure of Palestinian and Western diplomats to succumb to the above terms. They are undoubtedly invoking populist comparisons between the IRA and the Palestinian prisoners and pointing to the success of the Good Friday Agreement, signed by the IRA and Britain in 1998. But our situation is fundamentally different.
The Good Friday document took into account several factors absent from the Palestinian case. First, there was no mass exodus of hundreds of Irish convicted terrorists. They were released gradually, in order of the severity of their crimes and the time remaining in their sentences.
In addition, only prisoners belonging to organizations that had signed the ceasefire accord were freed. The others were to be reassessed at a later stage in the peace process. And both sides, the Irish and British governments, were entrusted with re-integrating the prisoners both before and after release.
Clearly, none of those conditions apply in our region. No Palestinian terror organization has signed anything remotely like a cease-fire with Israel. On the contrary, they have reiterated, both in word and deed, their commitment to the destruction of Israel. There is no peace process to speak of.
Consequently, once the freed Palestinians have rejoined the ranks of their terror organizations, the only "re-integration program" they will attend is target practice and advanced Islamist indoctrination.
There is another significant distinction between the Irish and Palestinian experiences. In Ireland, the victim families were involved in the process from the start. They were notified of pending IRA prisoner releases and invited to respond. The pain of the Israeli victims has never been a factor in the prisoner release equation.
With Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev still held for ransom by terrorists, prisoner release is a hotly debated issue. Now is the time for the government to reassess this tactic. Once fine-tuned, it can become the key to "bringing our boys home" without being suicidal: without strengthening our enemies, endangering Israel, making a mockery of justice or infuriating the victims. The question is: Are our leaders up to the challenge?

Comments can be posted on FrontPageMag's website or here.