23-Feb-22: Weaponizing Turkish teenage girls: What the Sbarro bomber did next

Tamimi's Istanbul audience in October 2021:

Eager young Islamist women and girls, anxious
to know about killing Jews

She has been called the most wanted woman in the world. Here, for instance. 

But in America's news industry, there is little sign of interest in the life and doings of Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi. This is surprising. And also a real shame.

What she does and how it's perceived in the Arab world would surprise, perhaps even shock, many if they knew.

Tamimi, our daughter's killer, is a Jordanian who lives in a modern apartment in her country's capital, Amman. She has a masters degree in journalism and was the presenter of her own successful TV show for some five years. 

Adoring tributes to her appear on Aljazeera and much of Jordan's mainstream media as well as in major social media including Facebook and Instagram. Her op-eds are published on Arabic-language news sites and the BBC featured her in an absurdly sycophantic news report in 2020. 

The innocents she murdered are never mentioned in any of those articles. 

Shrewd maneuvering by the Hashemite Kingdom's leadership has enabled her to stay safely out of the reach of US government law enforcement efforts. That's at the heart of what we write here.

HER OPERATION

Tamimi became a fugitive from US law enforcement when the Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint and arrest warrant against her on March 14, 2017. She faces trial in Washington under a US federal law [18 U.S.C. 2332a - Use of weapons of mass destruction] that criminalizes acts of terror involving a weapon of mass destruction outside the United States and - the key provision - whose victims are Americans. 

In a massacre she later called "my operation", Tamimi brought a human bomb - a young Islamist zealot called Al-Masri with an explosives-filled guitar case on his back - from Ramallah to Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria, located at one of the city's busiest pedestrian crossings. 

She later recounted how she left him there after imparting instructions on how to proceed. She herself fled on foot to the Old City's Damascus Gate where she boarded a ride-share taxi van back to Ramallah and her night job as a TV newsreader. 

She heard the thunderous explosion from a safe distance. Initial news reports via the van's radio suggested the death toll was lower than she wanted: 

I admit that I was a bit disappointed, because I had hoped for a larger toll. Yet when they said 'three dead,' I said: 'Allah be praised.'  ...The driver was translating [from Hebrew to Arabic] for the passengers... Two minutes later, they said on the radio that the number had increased to five. I wanted to hide my smile, but I just couldn't. Allah be praised, it was great. As the number of dead kept increasing, the passengers were applauding. They didn't even know that I was among them. On the way back [to Ramallah], we passed a Palestinian police checkpoint, and the policemen were laughing. One of them stuck his head in and said: 'Congratulations to us all.' Everybody was happy... [Source]

The toll kept rising and many dozens more were injured. The majority of the dead and maimed were, as Tamimi intended, Jewish children. 

By the time her ride reached Ramallah, it was clear she had produced the largest news story of that day. The key piece, the crowning achievement in her terms, was the murders of 14 "zionists". 

Malki, our teenage daughter, was in the center of town that afternoon with a friend, heading for a summer-camp counselors' meeting when they stopped on the way for lunch at a place they both loved. They were standing at the pizzeria's counter when Al-Masri entered the unguarded shop and walked up behind them. 

And then exploded.

We spent twelve nightmarish hours desperately searching for her. Eventually, with the help of a social worker, our two oldest sons located their sister's lifeless body in the small hours of the morning in a cold storage drawer at the Abu Kabir pathology center in Jaffa. Malki was the fifteenth victim. 

Of the many killed, two were American nationals: Malki, 15; and Judith Lillian Greenbaum (known to her family and friends as Shoshana), 31, a tourist and pregnant with her first child. A sixteenth victim, also a US citizen like Malki and Shoshana, remains unconscious in a Tel Aviv long-term care center today.

MEDIA CELEBRITY

Tamimi was born in 1980, the daughter of a career soldier in Jordan's military. She was raised and educated in Jordan and then, at 21 and a student at the Palestinian Arab Birzeit University near Ramallah, she became the first female admitted to the ranks of the Hamas terrorist forces. 

Once in, she was assigned to blow up a central Jerusalem supermarket with an exploding beer can. She failed and demanded a second mission. That's how some ten days later she spearheaded the Sbarro savagery that propelled her to fame. 

In 2001, and in the wake of the Sbarro devastation, Tamimi was arrested, tried and convicted by an Israeli military court on the basis of her full confession. A panel of three judges sentenced her in 2003 to sixteen terms of life imprisonment with an unusual recommendation that she never be released - no parole, no political deals, no swaps. 

No one paid attention and she was stunningly freed eight years later in October 2011 as part of an extortionate deal, ill-judged and catastrophic in our view, made by Israel with globally-outlawed terrorists of Hamas, the organization whom Tamimi was serving.

She was 31 when she walked out of her Israeli prison cell and returned triumphantly to Jordan and months of wide jubilation and public appearances. She was young enough to marry a few months later and to dramatically expand her career. 

THE HASHEMITE FACTOR

Early in 2012, from Jordan, she began presenting her own television program called "Breezes of the Free" (in Arabic “نسيم الأحرار”). The hour long celebration of terror and terrorists went to air weekly via the Hamas satellite network to a vast and ardent Arabic-speaking audience spread all over the world. 

Tamimi on the set of her TV show

Anyone aware of how tightly the King Abdullah governments ruling Jordan since 1999 manage the country's media will realize a show like Tamimi's could never happen unless that was what the king and his advisers wanted.

The context is important. Jordan is rated Not Free in Freedom in the World 2021, an annual study of worldwide political rights and civil liberties compiled by Freedom House. And the trend has grown stronger: a year earlier, Jordan was rated Partly Free as it was in 2019, 2018 and 2017. 

Plainly, Jordan is not one of those places where subversive voices can sneak under the regime's radar. If a message is getting transmitted, that reflects the Royal Hashemite Court's will.

THE FUGITIVE

In 2013, a year after Tamimi's horror show began going to air, the US filed terror charges against her in Washington. 

And promptly sealed them without any pubic announcement, keeping them absolutely secret. 

We learned off the record and long after the fact that this was supposed to allow high-level discussions to take place with Jordan about extraditing her into the hands of the FBI as required under the 1995 Jordan/US Extradition Treaty. Jordan had extradited fugitive Jordanians to the US multiple times since the treaty took effect. It similar and active treaties with numerous other states. 

But if indeed there were talks, they were unproductive. And on March 14, 2017, nearly four years after a federal judge had signed the charges, senior officials of the Department of Justice in Washington finally unsealed and publicized them [here]. 

Because of our involvement, the DOJ people did us the courtesy of an in-person briefing some hours ahead of the public announcement. Even so, we were unprepared for the distressing frustration that followed. 

The day those US federal charges were made public in 2017, the FBI added Tamimi to its Most Wanted Terrorists List. It's a small and exclusive list, currently made up of just 25 individuals, only two of them females. Some time later, the State Department's Rewards for Justice program posted a $5M reward for relevant information about Tamimi - whose home address and daily whereabouts were and are known to the media, the Jordanian authorities and the US government.

But just six days after the unsealing of the federal charges, Jordan's Court of Cassation, the kingdom's highest judicial body, ruled, as part of proceedings in which Tamimi was the centerpiece, that the 1995 treaty had a fatal flaw. Incredibly, they decided that in Tamimi's case, the US demand for extradition was unenforceable against Jordan. 

The details of the flaw are technical and irritating. It's beyond dispute that the Jordanian legislature could have easily fixed the problem then, and still can now. 

In a soft, almost inaudible voice, the US rejects the Jordanian position that the flaw and the invalidity let Jordan off the hook and leave Tamimi free to go about her life. The Jordan/US pact continues to be listed in Treaties in Force, an authoritative online State Department publication that underpins the American view. 

Throughout the five years since Jordan repudiated the treaty, no American official has addressed the matter publicly. Our repeated requests to a stream of US politicians and officials to tell the Jordanians publicly and out loud that harboring Tamimi disgraces them, fall on deaf ears. No such statement has been made by any of them. 

Instead, as Fox News reported during another of the many official visits by Abdullah to Washington, this one in July 2021, the State Department issues what can reasonably be called mantras. Vague assertions of fact blended with fond wishes and zero action. Fox showed this slide when it interviewed us live last summer:

In essence it's the same message the Trump administration issued. And it means as little today as it did then. 

For all practical purposes, the Sbarro victims have been swept under the carpet. 

OVER TO TURKEY

Now we jump to October 2021. 

In the intervening years, Tamimi has appeared multiple times on Aljazeera's multiple media, on BBC Arabic, on lesser known Arabic news channels, on Jordan's commercial RoyaTV channel and on numerous additional platforms where she has been interviewed, showcased and glorified as an icon. 

Her op-eds have appeared in the pages of multiple Arabic newspapers and news websites as well as on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and less-known Arabic-only social media sites. Arabic-language criticism of anything she has said, written or done is published nowhere.

Our occasional interactions with US government officials have been frustrating, sporadic, largely unproductive from our point of view and hard to arrange. Our experience with the US Embassy in Israel throughout the Trump years exemplifies the approach: as bereaved parents of a murdered US national expecting to be guided and assisted, we are mostly ignored. Not in a polite way and certainly not because we are rude. Persistent and raising an irksome issue, certainly. But never rude and not hostile.

By video, Tamimi speaks to the young Islamist

women in Istanbul - October 2021

Among the crumbs of information that we have gotten in these sometimes deplorable interactions is that the US government believes Jordan - because Jordan says so - has Tamimi under control. She's not inciting any more, we're assured. Her toxic influence has been neutralized. The problems are behind us.

From what we see, such claims are untrue.

In October 2021, Tamimi spoke in Arabic via video conference to an Islamist event in Istanbul, Turkey, held under the banner of الملتقى العلمي الدولي للشباب [“Gathering4youth”]. We spotted a video clip of the seminar that was uploaded to YouTube and promptly passed it along, with selected Arabic-to-English text translation, to senior US officials. If they are doing something with it, they're not telling us.

We asked a professional translator to review Tamimi's presentation. Here's the part we think captures the essence of her message:

...Allah let me have a membership in the ‘Izz ad-Deen al-Qassam battalions and [allowed me to] participate in two jihad operations that produced, by the Lord’s virtue, the deaths of fifteen zionists with 122 zionists wounded in two Jihad operations. We ask Allah to accept this. 

These two jihad operations are a crown on my head. By Allah’s virtue, I entered history by doing the finest of deeds, the finest operations, in the finest of ways, which are the ways of jihad. 

Praise Allah, He has prescribed me this fate. And when I met the "suicide bomber" [the Arabic expression translates literally into "the martyrdom-seeker"] ‘Izz ad-Deen Al-Masri, this was not a matter of such ease to stand next to a bomber. There are many lessons I learned. Many lessons which ‘Izz ad-Deen Al-Masri taught me without talking, [just by] being a road companion from Ramallah to Jerusalem, to the center of the [Jerusalem commercial] center where the Zionist entity is found, at the Jaffa and King George Avenue [corner]. This drive which lasted about an hour, from Ramallah to Jerusalem, or 90 minutes, [during] much of it I was learning from suicide bombers.

What does it mean to be a suicide bomber? It means that your spirit, your senses, your feelings, all of you, are pending against the Lord. Which is a difficult matter for us in this life to work out. But Hamas’s suicide bomber unit was able to spiritually train these suicide bombers.

What does it mean to sit for years [with] your sole mission to prepare your soul with effort, to train your soul? How do I become a spiritual character, how do I make my soul pending against Allah? And uproot all other attachments to this world. Only then shall I be worthy of the suicide bombers unit, and put my spirit forward in Allah’s path.

This is what ‘Izz ad-Deen Al-Masri taught me.

However until now I have not reached even half a degree of the character of ‘Izz ad-Deen Al-Masri and all suicide bombers who decided to put their souls forward in Allah’s path.”

It's hard to predict how much lethal damage is done when an eager and evidently impressionable audience of Islamist girls and young women, some of them about the age Tamimi was when she had her great moment at Sbarro, or younger, are exposed to a charismatic celebrity-jihad preacher with copious amounts of blood on her hands. 

The potential is horrific. Why has this not made headlines?  

ANTISEMITISM

From watching Ahlam Tamimi preach, we know political issues play almost no part in her messaging: no occupied territories, no green lines, no give-us-a-state. Theology seems to interest her more.

As she has said elsewhere, her brief and only conversation with ‘Izz ad-Deen Al-Masri took place as they walked along central Jerusalem's Jaffa Road on their way to the Sbarro corner. She says he asked her a question:

Are there religious Jews in the place where we are going to conduct the attack?

Tamimi: 

That was his question and I said yes. There are religious Jews there and also other people. I had been to the area before. I knew there was a Jewish religious school near there. He asked how many religious Jews would be there. 

Interviewer:

Why did he ask about religious Jews?

Tamimi:

Because the base of the conflict between the Israelis [she does not use the Arabic word for Jews] and the Palestinians is a religious struggle. When we came to the place, he looked at my eyes and I told him: There is no god other than the mighty Allah. He went on his way and I went on my way... My emotions and thoughts focused only on [Al-Masri]  and his strong personality and his vision and his action. I could only think about him and about his great personality and I didn't think about anything else.

Interviewer: 

Do you feel sorry?

Tamimi:

No, absolutely not. Why? For what?

In fighting for justice, there has been no alternative for us but to watch the cold barbarism of our gentle daughter's hard-faced murderer. As difficult as this is, we do it so we can urge decision-makers to understand that what chills people like us actually inspires and incites people in that other world across the river. 

[For some additional context about Tamimi's views on the Jews, see "08-Oct-17: Why kill religious Jewish children? Because, says Hamas celebrity-jihadist, this is a religious struggle" on our blog.]

AND JUSTICE?

No one in power says it but the American prosecution of Tamimi is stuck. The party doing the obstructing is a needy and highly dependent ally of the United States. It's the world's second-largest recipient of annual US foreign aid amounting to billions of US taxpayer dollars each year. 

Jordan is also bound by treaty to hand fugitives over to the FBI on request. It has in fact done that repeatedly in the other fugitive Jordanian cases that came before Tamimi. 

The US is bizarrely quiet about Jordan's egregious breach of the solemn 27 year-old legal obligation. This plays into the hands of dark forces in Jordan and elsewhere in the Arab world. They propagate the offensive notion that when done in the name of Palestinian Arab "resistance", terrorism isn't terror at all. It's bravery, heroism, religious devotion and a reflection, as Tamimi puts it, of a great personality.

Let's also factor in the reality that Jordan, as documented by the Anti Defamation League, has sky-high levels of antisemitism. We have argued ["27-Aug-21: Peace, terror and Jordan's under-reported attachment to anti-Jewish bigotry"] that the kingdom's comprehensive failure to address this has consequences. Either Jordan wants peace and understands that this comes with a significant commitment to change. Or it wants to allow hatred and violent extremism to go on. Via its rhetoric, its actions and its inaction, and especially by harboring the monster who bombed Sbarro and allowing the unconscionable benefits she has gained from Jordan' tolerance of her lethal bigotry, Jordan signals that it wants both. 

And that cannot be.

Malki HY"D

We don't understand the US lawmakers, diplomats and officials who sweep justice in the Tamimi case under the rug. 

We don't understand the State Department with its self-incriminating mantras about how they're trying so hard for years to get her out of the clutches of the Jordanian juggernaut. 

We don't understand Congressional lawmakers on both sides of the divide. We don't know how, given their stated principles, they can fail to demand that this Jordanian woman be immediately brought to justice in Washington.

We don't understand America's organized Jewish leadership. Their failure, an especially painful one, to stand with us on an issue that ought to be a priority, an opportunity to speak truth to power (and let's be clear that the power in this challenge is not Jordan), raises concerns they ignore.

We're ready to explain this to them. But not here.

22-Oct-17: The mass-murdering savage, an FBI fugitive, sends her apologies

Happy "pioneers of Jerusalem" in Istanbul yesterday. The
jihadist savage Tamimi is missing from the photo - the explanation
is below in her own words [Image Source]

An Arabic-language report on a government-controlled Kuwaiti news site informs us that a conference under the headline "Fourth Pioneers of Jerusalem Forum" took place in Istanbul, Turkey, this weekend. (If there was Turkish media coverage, we haven't found it yet.)

This caught our eye because one of the speakers was our daughter's murderer, the on-the-run savage Ahlam Tamimi, now relatively well-known as the youngest fugitive Most Wanted Terrorist on the FBI's list . She currently lives in Jordan (the place she was born and raised) and is the subject of an unsatisfied extradition request by the United States government.

Tamimi interviewed in Kuwait's Al-Rai TV studio in July 2012,
gloating over dead Jewish children and how she killed them

As we have written before, the circumstances in which Jordan chooses not to comply with its 1995 treaty obligations make clear to us and to experts we have consulted that Tamimi is being afforded special protection by the monarch of Jordan, King Abdullah II.

[See the background at "23-Mar-17: Looking for justice in Jordan, Jerusalem and Washington"]

The Kuwaiti report, published by an arm of Kuwait's Ministry of Information, says this of the female jihadist (machine-translated from the original Arabic which explains the jerkiness):

Released prisoner Ahlam al-Tamimi said in a recorded speech that she was unable to attend the forum because she was listed on the wanted list of the International Police (Interpol), that Palestinian women played the main and most important role during the popular uprisings, viewing many of the old and modern jihadist roles of women. Al-Tamimi called on Arab women to break the silence and support Palestinian women by organizing weekly demonstrations and supporting their steadfastness in various ways. Women's organizations and human rights organizations also demanded that Palestinian women in general and women prisoners in particular be allowed to take their rights... The International Women's Coalition for Jerusalem and Palestine [evidently the organizer of the event] was founded in 2014 on the sidelines of a forum for pioneers in the Islamic world to support the steadfastness of Palestinian women and expose the Zionist violations that are being inflicted on Al-Aqsa Mosque in addition to activating projects and activities aimed at supporting Jerusalem and Palestine in all countries and resisting normalization with the occupation in all its forms.

The Arabic version of the FBI Tamimi
Wanted poster [Online original here]

Machine translations often have problems with expressions that possess special and distinct meanings in their original languages. When the Kuwaiti editors put words like "steadfast", "pioneers" and "take their rights" into the mouth of a self-confessed and boastful murderer of fifteen innocent people, most of them children, it's entirely possible that in Arabic she was saying things far more blood-curdling and hate-filled than the bland English that comes out at the end.

The Kuwaiti site does have an English-language edition. But for reasons only its editors and the commissars to whom they report know, the Tamimi quote and the report of those happy pioneers in Turkey are an Arabic-language exclusive. They go unreported in the English-language edition. (The editors and government officials evidently know what their markets want.)

We already knew that in Kuwait, they admire Tamimi and the murders she engineered: she was an honored and highly publicized visitor there, including being interviewed at length on one of their television stations, first in July 2012 (on Iqraa TV - transcript here and reported by us here) and then again in March 2014.

As for Tamimi's mention of Interpol, here's what we think she means:

Jordan's absolute ruler

So long as she stays within the borders of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, she's safe. That's provided King Abdullah II, the ruler of the kingdom who single-handedly appoints every last one of its judges and exercises total control over its lawmakers by dissolving the country's parliament roughly once every fifteen months (that's according to the US Congressional Research Service), keeps blocking US extradition efforts. As long as he does, and keeps ignoring the plain language of a 1995 extradition treaty his father signed with the Clinton administration 22 years ago, the boastful murderer will be safe.

But the minute she gets on a plane to travel - and she has done lots of travel since her freedom was extorted by Hamas in the Shalit Deal of 2011 - then she is at risk of being taken into custody.

That's the result of an arrest order announced in March 2017 ["14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and extradition is sought"] and made by a Federal judge four years earlier in Washington DC. In Istanbul, Turkey, she's a steadfast pioneer. In Amman, Jordan, she's a national hero and symbol of the resistance.

In Washington, and via the eyes of the US Justice Department and the FBI, she's one of its most wanted fugitives.

02-Jan-17: At the World Council of Churches, a stunning theology of terror

WCC's Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit [Image Source]

We have devoted a dozen or more posts to things the World Council of Churches has said or done [click here] about terror. Frankly, and with sincere respect for a value system of which we are not a part, it's been hard to say anything positive about them. Here's the latest example of why.

Yesterday, the WCC secretariat, based in Geneva, issued a statement to the media in relation to the Istanbul New Year's Eve Reina nightclub massacre. You might have noticed that credit for those brutal and cruel killings was today claimed by an Islamist terror group ["The Latest: Islamic State claims Istanbul nightclub attack", Associated Press, today].

Here's the Council's statement:

WCC condemns terrorist attack in Istanbul on innocent New Year revellers | 01 January 2017 | World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary, Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, condemns the latest terrorist attack against people in Istanbul celebrating the New Year. At least 39 people were killed and dozens more were wounded when a single gunman attacked a crowded Istanbul nightclub... "Innocent people are suffering again and again. This is an evil act. This attack is particularly shocking, in the first place because there seems to have been a clear intention deliberately to target people who were simply enjoying themselves at the New Year’ Day,” said Tveit... “In the face of this brutality, the human family, all people of faith and of good will, must stand together to recommit to respecting and caring for one another, to protecting one another, and to preventing such violence.” The WCC offers its deepest condolences to the bereaved and injured. Tveit said “God in your mercy, be with the victims and their families and those who accompany and help them.” [Online here]

Most reasonable people will agree it's right for a highly influential religious group to call on the Almighty to come down on the side of the victims. It would be incomprehensible if the Reverend Mr Tveit had taken the opposing view and called for compassion for the murdering savages of ISIS.

But wait.

We want to point out how differently the same Mr Tveit expressed himself in relation to a different collection of savages who. unlike the perpetrators of the Istanbul barbarism two days ago, have been caught and in most cases tried and convicted on terrorism charges. In relation to those savages, Mr Tveit very publicly urged the Christian faithful who seek leadership from his office to pray and to help them in practical ways and not to give any thought to the things those prisoners had done to be locked up. 

The scene outside Istanbul's Reina night-club [Image Source]

That nauseating appeal for sympathy for actual and thwarted murderers got our attention in April 2014 [here] when the WCC called for solidarity by its faithful with what it disingenuously terms 

"some 5000 Palestinian men, women and children, languishing in Israeli jails". 

For their benefit, believer-members ought

"to pray for, visit, and tend to the needs of all prisoners, no matter the reason for their detention. For Israel and Palestine, prisoners have taken on even greater significance than in the past."

Just turn those words over in your mind: "no matter the reason for their detention". It makes us wonder what kind of evil faux-theology this man amd his cohort practice. 

He and they certainly don't view themselves as a satanic cult. By their own account, they are: 

the broadest and most inclusive among the many organized expressions of the modern ecumenical movement, a movement whose goal is Christian unity.  The WCC brings together churches, denominations and church fellowships in more than 110 countries and territories throughout the world, representing over 500 million Christians and including most of the world's Orthodox churches, scores of Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist and Reformed churches, as well as many United and Independent churches. While the bulk of the WCC's founding churches were European and North American, today most member churches are in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East and the Pacific. There are now 348 member churches. For its member churches, the WCC is a unique space: one in which they can reflect, speak, act, worship and work together, challenge and support each other, share and debate with each other... [From the WCC website today]

It didn't matter to Olav Fykse Tveit, the WCC's chief executive, an educated and cultured man on a mission and a Norwegian Lutheran clergyman, that many of the Palestinian Arab prisoners for whom he intervened are convicted, self-confessed killers of innocent people. 

Mostly of innocent Jewish people, if you're already asking. 

How much did it matter that most of the rest - other than the actual killers - are unrepentant terrorists? Or that Palestinian Arab society from president Mahmoud Abbas on down embraces all of them as heroes, as we have noted with utter revulsion in this blog dozens of times over the past decade? 

The answer: not one little bit. (For other comments we made at the time, see "17-Apr-14: Christian solidarity with unrepentant murderers: where's the outrage?")

So now let's play "what if". 

What would the reaction have been yesterday in Istanbul - or in Paris or Brussels or Sydney or Nairobi - if the head of the World Council of Churches had called for 

• the freedom of the Istanbul killers to be restored; 
• the justice of the Istanbul gunmen's cause to be respected; 
• the dignity of the Istanbul shooters - with their high-powered weapons firing point-blank at innocent, unsuspecting and unarmed revellers in the night-club - to win faithful Christian people's solidarity. 

Mourners prepare to bury one of the Istanbul massacre victims [Image Source]

Freedom, justice, dignity, solidarity. Mr Tveit asked his flock two years ago to beseech all of those from Heaven so as to benefit, and deliver solace to, Palestinian Arab prisoners behind Israeli bars. (Full disclosure: Several of those convicts happen to be the murderers of our fifteen year-old daughter Malki. So yes, we do lack a certain scientific objectivity on this.) 

Would he have dared make a request like that from his Geneva pulpit for the Istanbul shooters and plotters? The answer is obvious. He can do what he did because, and only because, the victims of the Palestinian Arab terrorists are who and what they are. Do we need to be more explicit than that? We hope not.

With time, it gets clearer that this important Christian group has developed and propagates a theology of terror and of terror-victimhood that deserves unsparing critical scrutiny but doesn't - as far as we know - get it.

And in case anyone's wondering why we don't try to get the World Council of Churches to give its viewpoint - we actually did. We wrote to them several times back in 2014. As noted here, the only substantive reaction we ourselves ever got from our efforts came as a couple of polite personal notes on behalf of Mr Tveit from the WCC's then director of communication, a certain Mr. Mark Beach who no longer holds that position. 

In an email from Geneva to us dated June 5, 2014, this Mr Beach addressed - in a not-too-helpful way - the questions and the sharply critical comments we directed over and again at his boss. Now please note, as we asked him to, that we were writing not only as members of a concerned public but as parents of a beautiful child of 15, murdered by the very thugs for whose dignity the Christians of the WCC had been asked to pray. 

Probably not that moved by our letters, Mr Beach informed us that:

"Yes, I believe we would have nothing further to say."

And indeed we never did hear from him again. The background is here ["6-Jun-14: Fear and loathing at the World Council of Churches"]. 

To be clear about this: we don't expect Mr Tviet or the World Council of Churches insiders to change their spots. 

But we're baffled by how ordinary religion- and morality-minded Christians who see the rank hypocrisy and genteel bigotry of the WCC leadership don't demand that the WCC leadership be kicked down the stairs of their exceedingly well-appointed Swiss headquarters and out into the street.

Call us perplexed.

P.S. As happened in 2014, the managing clique at World Council of Churches has remained silent and egregiously unresponsive to the criticisms aired here and elsewhere. So... interested members of WCC-affliated churches - there are millions of you out there - are invited to make contact with us [thisongoingwar (at) gmail (dot) com] so we can confidentially share some plans for expanding this protest of WCC malevolence.

UPDATE January 8, 2017: We found it important to add some observations in the wake of a gruesome and cruel Palestinian Arab terror attack. See "08-Jan-17: Where the World Council of Churches stands as Israelis are rammed to death"

29-Jun-16: Footnotes to the Istanbul human-bomb horror

From ABC NEWS television coverage [here]

It's striking to read, on the morning after an awful massacre carried out by terrorists in one of the world's dozen busiest airports, that the first instinct of the politicians is to reach for a fig-leaf. And to be clear, it's surely not a uniquely-Turkish phenomenon.

What do we know now? According to Associated Press this morning

Suicide attackers killed dozens and wounded more than 140 at Istanbul's busy Ataturk Airport, as Turkish officials blamed Tuesday's massacre at the international terminal on three suspected Islamic State group militants. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said 36 were dead as well as the three suicide bombers. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said 147 were wounded. Another senior government official told The Associated Press the death toll could climb much higher...
Yildirim said the attackers arrived at the airport in a taxi and blew themselves up after opening fire... Another Turkish official said two of the attackers detonated explosives at the entrance of the international arrivals terminal after police fired at them, while the third blew himself up in the parking lot. The official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government regulations, cited interior ministry information and said that none of the attackers managed to get past security checks at the terminal's entrance. Turkish airports have security checks at both the entrance of terminal buildings and then later before entry to departure gates...
Yildirim said there was no security lapse at the airport, but added the fact the attackers were carrying weapons "increased the severity" of the attack.

A BBC report today (archived here) points out that

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said early signs suggested the so-called Islamic State was behind the attack... Ataturk airport was long seen as a vulnerable target, our Turkey correspondent adds, reporting from a plane stuck on the tarmac in Istanbul. There are X-ray scanners at the entrance to the terminal but security checks for cars are limited.

Children run out of the airport terminal to safety
[Image Source]

BBC also points out that a US state department travel warning for Turkey, originally published in March and updated just this past Monday

urges US citizens to "exercise heightened vigilance and caution when visiting public access areas, especially those heavily frequented by tourists."

Our hearts go out to the Turks (where one of our children acquired some first-rate professional training at an Istanbul university a few years back), especially to those hurt last night, and to the families of those who tragically will not be coming home. The process ahead of them, adjusting to life after being the targets of a terrorist attack, is not simple and comfort is likely to come only in the far-distant future, if ever.

To recap on the basis of the brief, but authoritative, reports above:

1. Notwithstanding the horrific loss of life, "no security lapse" happened. 
2. Very fortunately, none of the attackers managed to get past security checks at the terminal's entrance. That must have been a great relief, says nobody.
3. Leaving aside the quality of the airport security arrangements, Ataturk airport security's checking of cars is "limited". (When the US very properly call for "heightened vigilance" by tourists, are we meant to know which airports adequately check incoming vehicles? How?)
4. In some way that is somehow significant, the killers arrived by taxi. Are vigilant travelers expected to avoid airports that allow taxis to pull up at the terminal? (Does anyone have a list?)
5. The attackers carried weapons and that "increased the severity". That might even be a reasonable observation until you start to ponder whether the authorities have an actual plan for preventing such weapons-borne atrocities in the future. 
6. The terrorists carried bombs. We wish the news reports had said they were bombs - human bombs. That is what each of the three known attackers was. It's what they ought to be called.

Note that neither AP nor BBC mention "terror" or "jihad" even once, in accordance with addled editorial policies that contribute nothing to ordinary people's comprehension of the issue and, in our opinion, add to the likelihood of yet more lethal political decision-making in the future.

No report anywhere (at least none we have seen) calls the Istanbul attackers what they actually are: "human bombs". This is a mistake because whatever brought them to Ataturk last night, this was about murder; suicide was never their goal. That's true even if the nature of the ideology likely motivating them made them indifferent to the outcome so far as it affected their own well-being and lives.

Last night's horror was based not on the self-destructive motivations that characterize suicide but by a profound, overwhelming hatred, identifiable in many places inside and outside Turkey at this very moment. It stems as well from a theologically-inspired sense of massively-lethal religious mission - something that is being inculcated into millions of people's heads at this minute, right under our noses.

UPDATE June 29, 2016 at 3:30 pm: The toll keeps rising...

"At least 41 people were killed, 130 injured Tuesday in a triple suicide bombing and gun attack at Istanbul's main Atatürk airport, in the latest deadly strike to rock Turkey's most-populated city, which had many similarities with the deadly attacks carried out in Brussels in March. Flights partially resumed in the airport on Wednesday morning, while many of the schedule flights were cancelled or delayed. Reports have said that one Ukrainian and one Iranian national was among those who were killed by the terrorist attack in the airport. Among the 37 identified victims were 10 foreign nationals and three dual citizens..." [Daily Sabah (Istanbul), today]

15-Apr-16: Stand by for a united Islamic assault on terror... and possibly some other things as well

Erdogan addresses Muslim kings and prime ministers yesterday in Istanbul [Image Source]

Almost entirely unreported at this early stage, might it be that the Islamic world has decided, finally, to do something serious to curb terrorism? Perhaps, but in the circumstances (which we're about to describe) it would be wise to suspend judgment for a while. That's because it's not that clear what sort of steps they are planning to take. Or against whom exactly. Or frankly for what purpose.

It stems from a major announcement by Turkey's most powerful politician.

Today, Friday, is the second day of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) 13th Islamic Summit Conference. Held once every three years, the event is hosted this time by Turkey in Istanbul with the attendance of "prime ministers and presidents from over 30 countries".

The OIC, about which we have posted several times in the past [click], was formed in 1969 and is made up of 57 member states. It calls itself "the collective voice of the Muslim world" working to "safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony".

Peace and harmony, let's concede, are in notably short supply these days, and strikingly so in a significant number of the Muslim countries and even at the summit itself (see "OIC conference begins with Iran-Saudi spat"). Indeed Turkey's foreign minister, quoted today by Aljazeera ["Islamic world leaders seek to bridge differences"], reveals that

"the Islamic world is experiencing many disputes within itself. Fratricidal conflict causes great pain. Sectarianism divides the ummah," he told OIC foreign ministers on Tuesday, using the Arabic world for the Muslim community. "Hopefully, this summit will pave the way for healing some wounds." [Aljazeera, April 14, 2016]

Healing wounds? The Russian RT news outlet helps us understand how they are going about that. It reports this morning that terrorism (and not violent extremism, please note) has emerged as a core feature of this OIC summit:

Turkey is trying to unite the Islamic world and lead it in the fight against terror with a new Istanbul-based police force tasked with tackling extremism in the region... Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has accepted his proposal to create a multinational police center based in Istanbul to battle international terrorism. The new structure is to be called the OIC Center for Police Cooperation and Coordination... “It would be helpful to establish a structure among member states that will strengthen and institutionalize cooperation against terror and other crimes,” he said, during a speech... The aim, according to Erdogan, is to fight Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq, Syria and Libya and Boko Haram and Al Shabaab in Africa, as “all these terror organizations oppress and harm all Muslims."

Turkey's Davutoglu and PA's Abbas yesterday at OIC summit.
Probably preparing their attack on terrorists [Image Source]

However, and it's a rather big but, that's not all they want to fight. RT explains that

While the details of the new Islamic anti-terror police force yet to be made public, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is already calling to “liberate all Islamic lands under occupation.”

The Turkish daily Hurriyet expands: 

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has put forth a call to “liberate all Islamic lands under occupation,” while also asking for a common and broader view of Muslims in order to discuss the problems of the Muslim world with maturity. “We need a common stance for the liberation of all the Islamic lands that are under occupation, especially Palestine,” said Davutoğlu April 14, while delivering an opening speech... “The most important indicator which would show the effectiveness of the OIC is protecting Muslim minorities and liberating occupied lands such as Palestine, Karabakh and Crimea,” Davutoğlu said... [explaining that in these places] the Islamic identity is under threat of being demolished... “Despite differences of opinion, we need to maximize political relations and improve bilateral contacts in maturity so we can discuss all problems in the Muslim world,” he said. ["Turkish PM calls for broader view of Muslims", Hurriyet, April 15, 2016]

(In passing, we will mention that the editorial offices of Hurriyet, whose line is considered liberal and secular, were sacked by pro-Erdogan mobs screaming Islamist slogans several times in the past year. Still, they managed to escape the fate of their larger competitor Zaman, Turkey's biggest-circulating newspaper; it was shut down by court order last month and placed under state control. BBC says "no reason was given by the court for the decision", and quotes Davutoglu as cryptically explaining the takeover was "legal, not political".)

We have found relatively few mentions in online news channels today of the two-pronged strategy announced by the Turks. This report ["Muslim countries have agreed to work together to fight terrorism: Turkey President Erdogan"] for instance, from a respected Mumbai-based news service seems to have been written by someone who was out of the room when Palestine came up. The same with yesterday morning's Reuters despatch ["Muslim nations agree to work closely to fight terrorism: Turkey's Erdogan"] The Gulf News editors saw fit [here] to report how Erdogan "noted that the majority of the victims of terrorism are Muslims and called it a “source of shame” that most of those who risk their lives at sea to reach Europe are Muslims." But didn't mention the Palestine angle either.

Perhaps we'll be seeing some more-comprehensive news reporting later today. But it seems an odd dropping of the ball.

Being opposed to terror is one of those abstractions that tend to have more to do with prevailing cultural values than with the plain meaning of the words. Sometimes, too, the results of attitude polls into such matters as how people feel about terror and human bomb attacks just don't make sense without drilling down into how they understand some of the basic words.

To illustrate, this might be a good time to review how "terror" seems to mean radically different things at different times and in different contexts. For instance, "03-Nov-15: What do they mean when the Palestinian Arabs say they oppose terror?" And for a specifically-Turkish context, "6-Jun-10: It's not that complicated: Is IHH a humanitarian group or a terrorist group?"

Finally a reminder of how the juxtaposition of the words victim, terror and Israel tends to make some people loses their moral compass completely: "03-Mar-16: When the UN responds to terrorism, which victims does it entirely ignore?"

09-Apr-16: In Turkey, serious problems with terror and tourism

Three Israelis were among the four visitors murdered in the Istanbul
human bomb attack three weeks ago. From left: Simha Dimri, 60, 
Yonathan Suher, 40, and Avraham Goldman, 69 [Image Source]

It's now less than two weeks to the start of Passover, and in Israel that means hundreds of thousands of people are making out-bound travel plans. Two travel advisories issued in the past 36 hours are making justifiable waves here and beyond.

Times of Israel reported on Friday afternoon, just before the onset of the Sabbath here, that the government's Counter-Terrorism Bureau, a unit of the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem

issued a rare statement underlining a recent travel warning calling on Israelis to avoid visiting Turkey, and urging those currently there to leave as soon as possible... The warning, which raised the terror risk in Turkey from level 2 (high concrete threat) to level 1 (highest concrete threat level), came following a terror attack in central Istanbul last month, in which three Israelis were killed and several others wounded. The Islamic State terror group claimed responsibility for the attack... [Times of Israel, April 8, 2016]

The alert comes after a lethal attack, done in the name of ISIS, in the heart of Istanbul exactly three weeks ago ["19-Mar-16: In human bomb attack today in Istanbul, numerous Israelis among the victims"].

The Israeli warning comes not only after the March 19, 2016 attack but also in the wake of three others since the start of 2016,. A bombing in Turkey's capital, Ankara, just a couple of days earler killed at least 37 people. The Israeli travel advisory says the threat of jihadist attacks is valid for all of Turkey, not only Istanbul and not only the major tourist attractions.

Real and immediate terror threats remain throughout the country... [Israelis visiting Turkey should] avoid crowded tourist areas, follow instructions of local authorities and get out as soon as possible... There are immediate risks of attacks being carried out in the country, and we stress the threat applies to all tourism sites in Turkey... [Times of Israel, April 8, 2016]

Prior to the alert, it was reported (via Israel's Channel Two news on Wednesday) that more than 110,000 Israelis have plans to travel to Turkey during this Passover. The numbers were much larger in the not-so-distant past. An analytical piece in Haaretz pointed out some weeks ago that

Israelis used to travel in droves to Turkey... But travel plunged after the May 2010 raid by Israeli commandoes on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which was trying to break the blockade of Gaza. Diplomatic relations grew tense and tourism dived, never quite recovering. The record year for Israelis visiting Turkey was 2008, when some 540,000 arrived. But the year after the Mavi Marmara incident, the number plummeted to just 75,000. It has climbed since then, but last year the number of Israeli tourist arrivals was only 224,000 – well under half the record number. The Israelis who do travel to Turkey tend to be Arabs, with the rest of the seats on flights taken by business-people and travelers making connections to other destinations through Istanbul. ["Even Before Terror Attacks, Jewish-Israeli Tourists Were Avoiding Turkey", Rina Rozenberg, Haaretz, March 20, 2016] 

Naturally, Israel is not alone in its concern with what is happening in Turkey. The families of American diplomats and military personnel based in southern Turkey were ordered to leave in the wake of elevated security concerns two weeks ago:

"We understand this is disruptive to our military families, but we must keep them safe and ensure the combat effectiveness of our forces to support our strong ally Turkey in the fight against terrorism,” said Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, commander of U.S. European Command. [Wall Street Journal, March 29, 2016]

Tonight (Saturday), the US kicked up its concerns a notch, warning Americans of immediate "credible threats" to Turkish tourist areas

in particular to public squares and docks in Istanbul and Antalya... Please exercise extreme caution if you are in the vicinity of such areas,” read the statement. [Consulate General of the United States in Istanbul, this evening] 

The economic impact is serious. Foreign visitors to Turkey brought in almost $31.5 billion in revenues in 2015. But visitor traffic was already down by more than 10 percent in February 2016, prior to the human bomb attack in central Istanbul:

[T]ourism was hit by a crisis in relations with Russia and security fears after a series of attacks. The number of foreigners entering Turkey fell 10.32 percent in February from the same period the year earlier, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism said in its latest monthly statistics. Tourism from Russia recorded one of the biggest falls amid the crisis in relations following Turkey's shooting down of a Russian war plane in November, with visitor numbers plunging over 51.5 percent. Georgians -- who frequently head over the land border on shopping trips -- were the most frequent visitors to Turkey, followed by Germans and Iranians, it said. Tourism from Iran was one of the few sectors to show an upsurge, with visitor numbers rising almost 17 percent in the period. ["Turkey tourism dives amid security fears", AFP, March 29, 2016]

Istanbul [Image Source]

Since starting to write this post, we have gotten word of two more Istanbul terror incidents:

A small bomb left on the side of a road in central Istanbul exploded late Saturday, slightly wounding three people, Turkey's state-run news agency reported. The bomb, which was designed to create a loud noise, was left near an overpass in the city's central Mecidiyekoy district, the Anadolu Agency reported. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Three people were hospitalized, but were not in serious condition, the report said. [Associated Press, tonight]

And

Turkish police carried out a controlled explosion of a bag left in Istanbul's popular Taksim square on Saturday, a Reuters witness at the scene says, hours after the U.S. embassy warned of "credible threats" to tourist areas. Police cordoned off Taksim, a square lined with hotels and restaurants frequented by tourists, while a member of the police bomb squad was seen opening what appeared to be a bag, the witness says. The bomb squad later detonated it in a controlled explosion, causing a loud boom to echo across the square, the witness says. [Reuters, today]

(Click here for some of our previous Turkey-focused blog posts.)

Whatever Muslim-on-Muslim security concerns the authorities in Turkey already had, things are likely get substantially more tense for them Sunday when

The world's Islamic countries began their annual meeting Sunday in Istanbul, where they are set to focus on the Palestinian cause, conflicts in member states and combating terrorism. The meeting of the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) comes once again at a time of turmoil in many Muslim nations, with conflicts in Syria and Yemen dragging on, and several states including Turkey, bloodied by militant attacks. The 13th annual OIC conference began with senior officials adopting the agenda and will be followed by a foreign ministers meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday. Over 30 heads of state and government will attend the summit hosted by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday and Friday. With guests set to include Saudi King Salman, the event is taking place under the highest security, with police stationed all around the venue in central Istanbul. The OIC said the summit was to issue a resolution on the Palestinian issue and support for international efforts to relaunch a "collective political process". The gathering comes at a time of rising Islamophobia in many western nations in response to a spate of attacks by the Islamic State group. ["Islamic countries to focus on Palestinian cause at Turkey summit", The Arab Weekly, April 10, 2016]

We can assume the "rising Islamophobia" of this report does not affect the Erdogan regime since, notwithstanding the blood-letting on the streets of its largest cities, what's principally on their minds is fixing the Arab/Israel conflict. Good luck.

19-Mar-16: In human bomb attack today in Istanbul, numerous Israelis among the victims

Istiklal Street on much better days [Image Source: Wikipedia]

Headline reports of a human bomb terror attack in Istiklal Street precinct of central Istanbul today (Saturday) dominate the news tonight at the Sabbath ends. It's a popular area that we happen to know because one of our children lived nearby while completing his university studies a few years ago.

Hurriyet, a Turkish news source, says five people have been killed and 39 others injured.

All victims of the attack besides attacker were foreign nationals: Israeli citizens Simha Siman Demri, Yonathan Suher, Avraham Godman and Iranian Ali Rıza Khalman. Turkish Health Minister Mehmet Müezzinoğlu said 39 people, including 24 foreign nationals and a child, were injured, and seven of the victims in hospitals were in critical condition... In a later statement, the Health Ministry said six Israeli, one German, one Icelander, one Iranian, two Irish citizens and one Dubaian were receiving treatment at hospitals. [Hurriyet Daily News today]

Ma'an News Agency says six of the Israeli injured

were identified by Palestinian member of Israel's Knesset Ayman Odeh as Palestinians with Israeli citizenship.

The New York Times says, quoting Turkey’s health minister, that twelve of the wounded are foreign citizens. Times of Israel says eleven Israelis are among the wounded, meaning they make up almost all the foreign victims.

There's reason to think not all the relevant details have yet emerged. As the Hurriyet report says:

The pedestrian street was completely sealed off after the attack. Turkey's Supreme Board of Radio and Television (RTÜK) imposed a temporary ban on broadcasting pictures and video footage from the scene of the attack. According to a statement from the board, the ban includes live broadcasts from the blast site, footage from the time the blast took place and afterwards, and showing images of bodies.

On the CNN-Turk website, there is an extraordinary Turkish-language report (thanks to Google Translate) headlined "Be careful what you share after the terrorist attacks" (archived here in case it disappears later):

Internet Development Board Chairman Serhat Özeren, warning citizens about the shares held through social media, "especially the shared visual and interpretation of the terrorist attacks of terrorist attacks should be noted that the propaganda tools," he said. Özeren said in a statement to reporters, social media in emergency situations drawing attention to become a disinformation source, "Please note that this kind of sharing makes people and institutions to be reliable," he said... [T]he terrorist attacks of shared visual and comments should be noted that instruments of propaganda for a terrorist attack. Citizens information resources in these shares and must pay attention to the reliability of the information." 

Nonetheless there is now security camera footage of the human bomb and the seconds leading up to the explosion here. (The media blackout was called off by Friday evening, according to a WSJ report.)

Times of Israel says ten Israelis in the vicinity are unaccounted for. It says two Magen David Adom ambulance planes were due to leave Israel at 6:30 pm this evening for Istanbul to bring the Israeli victims back home for emergency medical treatment. The general director of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Dore Gold, is due to fly there tomorrow "in coordination with Turkish authorities".

It's possible he will be consulting with them about a public statement issued immediately after today's blast via Twitter by an AKP (Justice and Development) Party public relations specialist, İrem Aktaş:

The official from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party tweeted that she “wished the Israelis” who were said to be wounded in Saturday’s Istanbul suicide blast were dead. [Jerusalem Post today]

It has gotten considerable attention in Turkey:

Irem Aktas was reportedly removed from her role in the AKP party after making the comments on social media. https://t.co/pHL1UO9W7v

— madiandjaden (@madiandjaden_) March 19, 2016

As we have learned, terrorism tends to evoke strikingly different responses from people depending on who they are, the extent of their faith in acts of savagery and the ideas that guide their lives. Ms Aktaş and her obsessive focus on Israelis even as her own country struggles with terrorist barbarism on its streets are part of a much larger problem that is not specifically Turkish.

Were Israelis the target of today's terror attack? A Jerusalem Post article suggests the question is being asked.

Developing.