16-Mar-20: Israeli Arab mother is arrested; allegedly posed as welfare worker while serving Hamas

Protestors demanding the suspect's release [Image Source]

A news report published yesterday ["Shin Bet says it nabbed Arab Israeli Hamas agent who posed as aid worker", Jacob Magid in Times of Israel, March 15, 2020] raises the case of an Israeli Arab woman in her early thirties now facing serious criminal and terrorism charges.

A resident of the Israeli town of Ar’ara and a mother of two young children, the woman was arrested last month. Ar'ara is a town in the Wadi Ara region of northern Israel, south of Umm al-Fahm and just north-west of the Green Line. Israelis know the area, inhabited mainly by Arabs, as "the Triangle". In 2018, Ar'ara's population was about 25,000.

The suspect's name and other details had remained confidential until yesterday (Sunday) and are now public. Described in parts of the Arab media (here for instance) as a "Palestinian holding Israeli citizenship", she is charged with offences connected with "scamming aid organizations she worked for as well as civilians who donated money to the needy population in Gaza" [Ynet].

Reports name the woman as Aya Khatib, 31. Ynet says she was arrested two months ago in "a special operation" and that she admitted under interogation to taking part in "terrorist activity against Israeli targets".

As reported by Times of Israel, the charges against her are based on the allegation that she was recruited by a pair of Hamas terrorists active in Hamas’ so-called “military” wing, the Izzadin al-Qassam Brigade and that she used her position as a humanitarian worker to divert money and supplies intended for the needy in Gaza. Donors were  evidently told the funds were going to patients claimed to be suffering from cancer.

She is charged as well with providing field intelligence to the terrorists of Hamas including details about the movements of IDF forces during what the Shin Bet, which carried out the investigation leading to her apprehension, called "one of the fighting rounds with the Gaza Strip”.

This is said to be Aya Khatib

The Jerusalem Post names them as Muhammed Pilpel, 29 from Beit Lahiya, and Mahmoud Halua, 32, from Jabaliya. Other news reports give their names as Mohammed Filfel and Mahmoud Halawa.

Through the two Hamas men, according to Israel's Shin Bet, she is said to have transferred hundreds of thousands of shekels to the Hamas terrorists

“while scamming aid organizations and innocent civilians who donated funds with the aim of reaching patients and the needy”

in the Gaza Strip.

The Jerusalem Post report says an indictment is expected to be filed against Khatib in the Acre Magistrate’s Court in the next few days.

Acccording to the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat news site ("the world’s premier pan-Arab daily newspaper, printed simultaneously each day on four continents in 14 cities"):

On Sunday, the Haifa District Court extended Khatib’s detention period until next Wednesday, on charges of cooperation and intelligence with al-Qassam brigades. The Israeli Public Prosecution submitted Monday the prosecutor's statement to the court. Khatib's lawyer said she denies the charges attributed to her.
Khatib has complained about the conditions of her arrest before the court, which ordered that this matter be examined, her lawyer noted. The court also allowed her two children to meet her.
Khatib has been active on her Facebook page to collect donations for patients, particularly children from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, who are receiving treatments in Israeli hospitals. She also collected donations for male and female university students whose economic conditions prevented them from paying their university fees.

It's a news item worth keeping in mind the next time demands are made - as they are regularly and often - for Israel to free Palestinian Arab female prisoners.

06-May-18: Explosive weekend in Gaza

Shortly after Saturday's explosion [Image Source]

The terrorists of Hamas are expressing fury over two fatal Gaza events involving their agents in the past 24 hours.

Just before 3 this afternoon (Sunday), reports emerged of another infiltration attempt by armed and hostile Gazan Arabs into Israel. An IDF statement issued shortly afterwards, quoted by Times of Israel, said:

“A short while ago an IDF unit opened fire at three terrorists who tried to cross the security barrier from the southern Strip toward [Israeli] territory, and to damage security infrastructure in the area of the fence... Two of the terrorists were killed.”

There is confirmation from Hamas' Ministry of Health in Gaza - the highly problematic sole source of all reports about Palestinian Arab casualties in the course of the current Gaza Riots battles - that two Palestinians had been killed. At this stage, there does not seem to be any public information about the fate of the third thwarted infiltrator.

UPDATE 5:30 pm Sunday May 6, 2018: An updated Times of Israel report, quoting an updated IDF statement now says three Palestinian Arab infiltrators, part of a group of four, were killed in today's thwarted attack. There's no clear word yet on what happened to the fourth. It says: "The Israel Defense Forces said the men were found to be in possession of an ax, two bottles of lighter fluid, a lighter, a bolt cutter and a GoPro camera... From an initial investigation it appears the four-man cell arrived at the security fence in order to infiltrate into Israeli territory in an attempt to carry out a terror attack...” It appears the attack was an attempt "to damage the security infrastructure along the Gaza border or potentially attack IDF soldiers."

Yesterday (Saturday), there was a powerful explosion - whose cause is still the subject of back-and-forth contention - in the central Gaza Strip area:

Gaza's health ministry confirmed six people were killed on Saturday's explosion, with three others wounded in what residents said appeared to be an accidental explosion in the Zawayda area of the central Gaza Strip. The health ministry said the explosion may have been caused by the handling of explosives. In the past some explosions in the Gaza Strip have resulted from the accidental detonation of explosive materials belonging to militant groups. However a statement from the Palestinian Islamist group's armed wing insisted that the incident was a "deplorable Zionist crime". The Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Gaza's rulers, said the fatalities were members of their group and blamed Israel for the explosion but did not provide details or proof. The incident occurred during a "complex security and intelligence operation", the group said in a statement, calling it "serious and large security incident" and blaming the "Zionist enemy". The statement added that it was a "serious crime against our fighters". ["Six members of Hamas military wing killed in Gaza explosion", The National, May 6, 2018]

The video clip below, embedded in a Tweet [here]. captures some of the drama: 

The first moments of the explosion in the center of the #Gaza Strip. pic.twitter.com/b7fiWyQrsg

— Abdulwahed AbuAbed (@Conteaic) May 5, 2018

---

A BBC report ["Gaza explosion leaves six Palestinians dead", BBC, May 5, 2018] said

The Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, military wing of the Hamas militant group, blamed Israel, but the Israeli military said it was not involved. A Palestinian source quoted by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said that the victims appeared to be members of Hamas... It is not clear what caused the blast in Deir al-Balah... The explosion could have been caused by the handling of explosives inside a building, the source added... Following Saturday's explosion, TV images showed a pillar of smoke rising near the coast. "The IDF (Israel Defence Force) is not involved in this incident in any way," an Israeli military spokesman said. Correspondents say explosions in Gaza in the past have been caused by Israeli air strikes, by feuding between Palestinian factions or by the mishandling of explosives by militant groups.

Whatever the cause, the dead have been claimed with certainty by Hamas. All six are said - by the terrorist organization - to be from its Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the so-called armed wing of Hamas. 

But to judge from how their images are being marketed in Palestinian Arab society today, there's some difference of opinion whether to have them viewed as (in our words) peaceful, rights-seeking ordinary protesters, as Palestine Chronicle appeared to be presenting them in this image posted a few hours ago [here]

Image Source
The accompanying text gives their untimely demise this context: "Saturday’s blast follows
weeks of protests along the Israeli-Gaza border as part of the Great March of Return movement."

Or instead - the very same six as fierce warriors, heroes of their people and, as the Palestinian Information Center website terms them, "martyrs" of the notorious al-Qassam Brigades terrorist section of Hamas. 

Image Source: Palestinian Information Center website

The PIC report has this to say in support of its version:

Hundreds of Palestinians marched on Sunday in Gaza provinces for the funerals of six martyrs of al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas movement. Al-Qassam Brigades said in a brief statement on Saturday evening that six of its fighters were killed during a "complex security operation" in al-Zawaideh town in the central Gaza Strip. Further details on the incident will be revealed later, the statement noted.

It gives the names of the dead terrorists as Mahmoud al-Ostaz, Wesam Abu Mahrouk, Taher Shahin, Mousa Salman, Mahmoud al-Tawashi, and Mahmoud al-Qishawi.

Times of Israel says Hamas, naturally enough, 

blamed Israel for the explosion, without providing details or proof. Palestinian media, by contrast, said it was a “work accident” — that is, that the terrorists were killed by their own explosives.

As we often do, we will go with the Palestinian Arab version - the one quoted in that last paragraph. Keep in mind that generally we don't get to see news reports in which Hamas owns up to its freshly deceased martyrs having been interrupted with extreme prejudice by the Israelis while they, the "resistance" fighters, were busy preparing themselves to do terrorism. Mostly we need to figure that out between the lines.

01-Jun-17: Outside Mevo Dotan, another weaponized Pal Arab child/attacker and her victim

Mevo Dotan [Image Source]

Yet another Arab-on-Israeli stabbing this morning, and the attacker is again a child; a girl too young to vote or drive a car and armed with whatever came to hand - in her case, a screwdriver. Her victim has relatively mild injuries. The attacker was fended off by armed soldiers, and was shot.

Today's attack was at the entrance to Mevo Dotan, a community established in 1977 in the northern Samaria district and located about 40 kilometers due east of Hadera. Much - though not all - of the stabbing attack and its aftermath was captured on security camera video and has been uploaded for viewing on YouTube.

The attacker is initially reported to be a girl of 16 from Ya'bad, now fighting for her life in an Israeli hospital where her injuries are said to be critical. Ya'bad is where Izz ad-Din al-Qassam - a terrorist whose name is memorialized in a Hamas jihad unit - along with several of his men was killed by British forces in a cave nearby in 1935. (But we see that a different Arab media source [here] describes her as "said to be in her twenties", and does not give her name.)

The girl's victim is a young Israeli of 20, serving his compulsory IDF tour of duty. His injuries are being treated in that same Israeli hospital.

From Times of Israel's report:

Closed circuit video footage from the settlement shows the assailant walking calmly up to the front gate, before she goes out of frame. A few moments later, she can be seen running from the scene with one uniformed soldier and an armed off-duty soldier in pursuit. The moment the assailant was shot does not appear in the footage... The soldier, who is approximately 20 years old, was taken to Hadera’s Hillel Yaffe hospital for treatment, Magen David Adom said. He suffered a stab wound to the upper body, medics said. The assailant received first aid on the scene, before also being taken to Hillel Yaffe for treatment, the medics said.

Haaretz, quoting Palestinian Arab sources, says the attacker is Nof Ikab Abed al-Afar, age 16, from the nearby town of Ya'bad:

Afar arrived at the Mevo Dotan guard post, where she approached a soldier and stabbed him. She was then shot. Local settlers said that the she approached the gate to the settlement, carrying on even after a soldier at the post demanded that she stay away. 

The Arab media outlet Ma'an News Agency, adopting a familiar approach (allegedly), reports on "the alleged assailant" who "allegedly carried out a stabbing" and the security camera footage that "allegedly showed" whatever it showed. Then the editors get to their point:

Activists, and rights groups have denounced what they have termed a "shoot-to-kill" policy against Palestinians who did not constitute a threat at the time of their death, or who could have been subdued in a non-lethal manner... [Ma'an News Agency]

For a full-time, lavishly-funded (to a great extent by European governments, meaning in reality unwitting European taxpayers) news-gathering organization, they're rarely sure about anything at Ma'an when it comes to terror attacks on Israelis - except for being consistently certain that the Israeli reaction - usually while under actual frenzied attack by an armed, murder-minded Arab - was disproportionate and that whatever the Arabs did (allegedly) was no threat to anyone.

As for reporting on the real story here - the way school-age Palestinian Arab children keep appearing in these Arab-on-Israeli attack reports as the perpetrators - Ma'an is totally oblivious along with all of the Arab news organizations that we see and a large part of the mainstream non-Arab news companies.

Politely looking the other way as children are groomed to murder and be killed is a very large part of the reason why this horrifying reality keeps happening.

24-Oct-16: Gazan rocket and tunnel attacks on Israelis: Monday update

The vast investment of manpower and cash being made by
Hamas in tunnels is often concealed by media reporting that emphasizes
how cows and goats are moved around via those tunnels. In reality, as this image
shows, they exist to serve an attack-focused terror strategy [Image Source: BBC]

The annual High Holydays season - including Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah - has just ended with sundown. The traditional greeting exchanged by observant Jews tonight is "Have a healthy winter!" We extend that to all our readers.

At least some of the challenges of the year ahead are not so hard to divine. From this morning (Monday) and Times of Israel:

Sirens warning of an impending rocket attack blared early Monday morning in communities in the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council in southern Israel. The projectile reportedly landed inside the Gaza Strip. The Code Red alarm sounded just before 7:00 a.m. on Monday. The IDF said in a statement shortly thereafter that they didn’t identify any rocket impacts in Israeli territory...

Yet another Gazan "fell short" rocket (there's a long history of those, though the fact they fall onto Arab heads is rarely remarked) with no indication of the Arab-on-Arab damage that almost certainly followed in the tightly-packed Gaza Strip.

Reuters reported this morning ["Israeli aircraft strikes Gaza after militants fire rocket - military"] not on the rocket attack but on Israel firing back at Hamas targets:

No casualties were reported following the air strike, Gaza residents said. The rocket fired towards southern Israel set off sirens after tracking systems monitored the launch but it landed inside the Gaza Strip, a military statement said. Small jihadist cells in the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by Islamist group Hamas, sometimes launch rockets into Israel.
Hamas has observed a de facto ceasefire with Israel since 2014, when 2,100 Palestinians and 73 Israelis were killed in a war. But Israel says it holds the groups responsible for all rocket launches from the territory. [Reuters, today]

Responsibility for another Arab-on-Israeli rocket attack earlier this month ["05-Oct-16: A Gazan rocket crashes into a residential street in southern Israel"] was claimed by one of the non-Hamas terror organizations operating under the aegis of Hamas:

The Islamic State-affiliated Ahfad al-Sahaba-Aknaf Bayt al-Maqdis terrorist group took responsibility for that attack. In a statement, the group said the attack on Sderot was a response to Hamas arresting several members of the organization...  A Hamas official said [today] the group told Israel it would not allow other terrorist groups within Gaza to further inflame the situation, according to Israel Radio... [Times of Israel today]

The Turkish news agency Anadolu inadvertently insults its Hamas friends with a brief news report today that includes this whopper:

Though Hamas fighters rarely launch the rockets, Israel strikes their locations in response, arguing the Palestinian group is responsible for controlling other armed groups because it governs the coastal enclave. In July and August of 2014, Israel waged a weeks-long military offensive against the Gaza Strip with the ostensible aim of staunching rocket fire from the coastal enclave. [Anadolu Agency, today]

A pity the editors at Anadolu pretend to be unaware of the intense rocket war - which Amnesty (of all people) called "war crimes" - waged by Hamas against Israelis in 2014, and since:

Rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian militant groups during last summer's conflict in Gaza amounted to war crimes, Amnesty International says. Militants displayed a "flagrant disregard" for the lives of civilians during the 50-day war, a report found. Six civilians in Israel and 13 Palestinians are believed to have been killed as a result of such attacks. Hamas, which dominates Gaza, said Amnesty's report contained many inaccuracies and false allegations... According to UN data, more than 4,800 rockets and 1,700 mortars were fired from Gaza towards Israel between 8 July and 26 August. Around 224 projectiles are believed to have struck Israeli residential areas... ["Amnesty: Hamas rocket attacks amounted to war crimes", BBC, March 26, 2015]

How seriously should Hamas declaring its opposition to inflame the situation (see that Times of Israel reprt above) be taken? Not very. Here's another dimension of current Hamas realities:

A Hamas operative died while working in a tunnel in the Gaza Strip Monday, the second death reported in recent days in the Palestinian terror group’s ranks. Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, announced that Ameir Jaber Abu Tuaima, 22, died during construction of a tunnel beneath the Palestinian coastal enclave. The announcement posted on the group’s website didn’t mention the cause of death, merely stating the Tuaima died in an “accident” near the southern city of Khan Younis. It wasn’t clear whether Tuaima died in a tunnel collapse, as another member of Hamas did on Saturday. The collapse on Saturday was the latest in a series of cave-ins to claim Palestinian lives. Over a dozen Palestinians, most of them reportedly members of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, have been killed in collapses since the beginning of the year. The official Palestinian news agency WAFA identified the man killed over the weekend as Anas Abu Lashin, 22, and said he was a member of Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. He was reportedly working in a tunnel in the al-Maghazi area in central Gaza when it caved in. The Brigades in a statement said Abu Lashin was killed “during preparation” of a tunnel, but did not provide further details. The [Hamas] Islamist terror movement which controls the coastal enclave has a network of tunnels in the territory, both for smuggling and attack purposes. It was not clear which type of tunnel Abu Lashin was killed in. ["Second Hamas man dies in tunnel ‘accident’ since Saturday", Times of Israel, October 24, 2016]

Ma'an News Agency says the Hamas person killed in the tunnel today was

...a member of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement... According to a statement released by the Brigades, one of their fighters died during a “mission” when the tunnel collapsed on him. The statement identified the fighter as Amir Jaber Abu Tuima from the town of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.

On a mission. Right.

Just two days ago, Yediot/Ynet published an interview with one of the IDF's key people in the war against those Gazan attack tunnels ["The colonel's tunnel war", Ynet, October 22, 2016]. Some points lifted from the article:

• [Hamas are] "investing thousands of man hours into this. It's taking over a large portion of the Gaza Strip's economy, and pulling Gaza downward—literally. They've developed a high level of expertise in the field over the past 20 years. That takes almost every resource that has entered the strip from its residents: Wood, concrete, tools. It leads to high taxes on residents, who are already greatly suffering... We've been investing great resources to locate them, particularly over the past year. We are becoming smarter on the topic of tunnels every day, due to the friction. We manage to understand the idea, and identify the weakpoints and find solutions. That's the most I can say."
• The State of Israel is investing NIS 2.5 billion in what's called the "Barrier project," meant to block Hamas tunnels. It includes an underground wall that goes dozens of meters deep into the earth, a smart fence along the border, and advanced means of detection. 
• "The project is meant to be a pretty decisive answer, and will change the situation when it comes to all types of threats, especially the tunnel threat. It will ensure security at a very high level. This is a complex system, which handles threats above and below ground, watches the enemy's possible actions, and responds as needed. However, I cannot say that the barrier we're building will provide 100 percent protection, because there is no 100 percent."

All those news photos [Google] showing goats, cows, brides, fast-food and cigarettes being conveyed via those Hamas tunnels essentially conceal from news-consumer minds the reality that Hamas' tunnel empire is a capital-intensive and highly dangerous way of attacking Israelis. The people at World Vision probably know this better today than they did in the past.

14-Aug-16: Who actually cares that foreign aid is diverted from needy Gazans to terror? Not who most people think

A Hamas/Gaza tunnel under construction, October 2013 [Image Source]

Audit firms, governments and Christian aid groups are sorting out their post-exposé strategies following the arrests of several Palestinian Arabs on charges of illegally and surreptitiously siphoning vast sums into Palestinian Arab terror.

But strangely those who are most identified with doing humanitarian good for the Palestinian Arabs don't appear to be in the front lines of those expressing deep concern at the harm such diversions have caused. And that's an understatement.

One of the most visible signs of where the cash goes (that's present tense - no one believes the scandal has been stopped) is the tunnels of Gaza. The latest news from there - just this month and just from Palestinian Arab sources indicates this vast engineering project is not going smoothly:

• August 6, 2016: "The al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, has reported that one of its fighters was killed, Saturday, when a tunnel collapsed on him, in the Gaza Strip. In a statement, al-Qassam said the fighter has been identified as Khaled Methqal al-Hoor, 23... According to the al-Qassam Brigades, ten of its fighters have been killed in several tunnel accidents in several parts of the Gaza Strip, since the beginning of this year." [IMEMC, a Palestinian media source which "combines Palestinian journalists’ deep understanding of the context, history, and the socio-political environment with International journalists’ skills in non-partisan reporting."]
• August 10, 2016: "Eight Palestinians were injured when a tunnel collapsed in the al-Shujayya neighborhood in eastern Gaza City, local sources told Ma’an. They were taken to al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City to be treated for light to moderate injuries, according to Gaza Ministry of Health spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra. The incident came after three Palestinians died over recent weeks in tunnel collapse accidents in the Gaza Strip. On Saturday, a member of Hamas' military wing the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades was killed, and in mid-July, two members of the Islamic Jihad were killed in separate incidents..." [Ma'an News Agency, based in Bethlehem]
• August 14, 2016: "...A member of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, was killed by an electric shock on Saturday while working inside a tunnel in the besieged Gaza Strip. The military wing released a statement confirming the death of Muhammad Shlouf from the city of Gaza... The Hamas movement which governs the blockaded Palestinian territory has been allegedly reconstructing a vast tunnel network intended to be used for carrying out attacks on Israeli military targets and civilians, swathes of which were destroyed during the war... The Institute for Palestine Studies reported in 2012 that Hamas authorities had counted 160 deaths inside the tunnels since the Israeli blockade began in 2007, and in August 2014, al-Jazeera reported that figure to be as high as 400." [IMEMC]

Setting aside the appalling matter of lives thrown away (many of them, probably hundreds, are children) in the cause of expanding the terrorist infrastructure and earning Hamas tunnel-traffic royalties from smuggled cigarettes to benefit Hamas insiders, there's a colossal amount of tunnel building going on in Gaza.

This is one of the Middle East's most ambitious current undertakings, ignoring the mind-blowingly, astronomically-expensive preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar about which we wrote here: "11-Jul-13: Football and barefaced hypocrisy". And in a world where there are no free lunches, someone's paying for it. Paying for the construction and materials, that is. Essential safety equipment is evidently still looking for a donor.

This is infrastructure investment on a truly serious scale. So, in hideous terms, is the pay-off:

"A Hamas operative who was captured in June after illegally crossing into Israel revealed that the terrorist group’s fighters can travel underground throughout the entirety of Gaza." [The Tower, August 11, 2016]

This is Gaza too: the Al-Mashtal Hotel as it looked some years
ago [Image Source: Reuters]

An important piece this weekend in the Wall Street Journal by one of its editorial writers, David Feith, reaffirms the depressing point ["Your Tax Dollars Fund Palestinian Terror", August 11, 2016] that none of this could happen but for the willful blindness of governments, foremost among them the United States.

It's a weighty charge if true. The WSJ analysis is driven mainly by recent events here in Israel where sensational criminal prosecutions have recently been brought against Palestinian Arab individuals alleging they succeeded in diverting aid money into the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorist organizations. Many millions of dollars are involved.

Sounding an ambitious note, Feith addresses the scandal we have long called here the PA's Rewards for Terror Scheme:

This revelation should spur a broader reassessment of American aid to the Palestinian government... [since] the Palestinian government has used U.S. and other foreign taxpayers’ money to pay generous rewards to the families of terrorists. The deadlier the crime, the larger the prize, up to about $3,100 a month, or several times the average salary of a worker in Palestine’s non-terrorist economy... No U.S. official can plead ignorance. Palestinian law has sanctioned these payments since at least 2004, specifying how much money is earned depending on the circumstances of the attacker and the body count. [WSJ, August 11, 2016] 

Should spur a broader reassessment. But almost certainly will not.

This happens while the Hamas regime in Gaza, along with its humanitarian-aid-industry co-conspirators and principally UNRWA ["Gaza Emergency"], continues to make the case that the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza are undergoing prolonged suffering from a lack of housing reconstruction. Yes, there's a connection. Cash, cement and goodwill have been pouring into Gaza yet those houses remain piles of rubble. UNRWA's most recent Gaza Situation Report, dated August 12, 2016, like all those before it, makes approximately zero references to the malevolent hand of Hamas in repurposing humanitarian aid into terrorist resources. (Repurposing in this context means stealing.)

The reassessment of foreign aid programs and charitable subventions ought to, but almost surely will not, be affected the factors disclosed in those recent Israeli revelations.

Israel has discovered that Mohammed El-Halabi, currently employed as director of the Gaza branch of World Vision, is actually a major figure in the terrorist/military arm of Hamas... World Vision is an international NGO, one of the largest charitable and humanitarian aid organizations in the world, which operates in more than 100 countries. It receives support primarily from the UN and from Western governments...  El-Halabi has been taking advantage of his position to divert the humanitarian organization’s funds and resources from the needy to benefit Hamas’ terrorist and military activities... More than half of World Vision’s resources in the Gaza Strip – originating in aid money from Western states such as the United States, England and Australia – were transferred to Hamas to strengthen its terrorist arm... During the investigation, El-Halabi revealed that he has been a Hamas member since his youth and had undergone organizational and military training in the early 2000s. In 2005, Hamas dispatched El-Halabi to infiltrate World Vision. El-Halabi related that Hamas believed that he had a good chance of infiltrating the humanitarian aid organization because his father works for the UN and he himself had worked in UNDP... Over the years, El-Halabi advanced in the charity’s hierarchy until he was appointed director of the Gaza branch. In this capacity, he controlled the budget, equipment and aid packages which amounted to tens of millions of dollars... [Foreign Ministry of Israel Backgrounder, August 4, 2016]

El-Halabi's methods were not the most sophisticated. But then neither do the checks and balances of World Vision and others among the world's humanitarian aid giants appear to be.

To divert the funds, the Shin Bet said el-Halabi initiated fictitious projects meant to help farmers, the disabled and fishermen. He would falsely list Hamas operatives as workers on those projects and write up inflated receipts, according to the Shin Bet. Companies hired to carry out certain projects under fictitious tenders were “made aware” that 60 percent of the project’s funds were destined for Hamas, the Shin Bet statement said, adding that some of World Vision’s budget was used to pay the salaries of Hamas operatives. The Shin Bet also said el-Halabi would transfer to Hamas materials such as steel, digging equipment and pipes that were meant for World Vision agricultural assistance. Thousands of packages with food and medical aid received monthly would allegedly be diverted to Hamas operatives and their families rather than reach Gazan civilians. Beyond arms purchases and tunnel digging, the funds also helped build military bases, including one constructed in 2015 built entirely from British aid money, according to the Shin Bet. The security agency also said that since his arrest, el-Halabi divulged intelligence about employees working for United Nations agencies and other aid groups who were also assisting Hamas, without elaborating. [Associated Press, August 4, 2016] 

Little publicized (for some reason), the el-Halabi indictment included a paragraph devoted to suspected malfeasance at another humanitarian aid agency active in Gaza:

An official from Save the Children was also allegedly turned to Hamas, according to Halabi’s charge sheet. [Times of Israel, August 11, 2016]

There quickly followed further Israeli charges said to implicate the United Nations via its UNDP arm:

Israeli authorities have announced charges against a Palestinian employee of a United Nations agency, accusing the Gaza resident of providing "material assistance" to Hamas. According to a statement released on Tuesday by the Israeli Security Agency (ISA), or Shin Bet, 38-year-old engineer Waheed Borsh was arrested on July 16 and charged in a Beersheva court on Tuesday. The indictment accused the UN Development Programme (UNDP) staffer Borsh of abusing his position to renovate Hamas members' homes, having been recruited by "a senior member of the Hamas terrorist organisation to redirect his work for UNDP to serve Hamas' military interests". The ISA claimed that Borsh had confessed to the charges, and admitted that "other Palestinians who work for aid organisations are also working for Hamas". According to the ISA, the case exemplifies "how Hamas exploits the resources of international aid organisations at the expense of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip"... In a statement, UNDP said it was "greatly concerned" by the Israeli allegation that Borsh had "complied with a request from a senior Hamas individual to transport 300 tonnes of rubble from a UNDP rubble removal project site to a Hamas-run location at the Northern Gaza Hamas-operated port". UNDP added that it will be "conducting a thorough internal review of the processes and circumstances surrounding the allegation". [Aljazeera, August 09, 2016]

It's good to know of the "great concern" and the "thorough internal review" now said to be on the way. The problem is that allegations of these kinds have been made by Israel for years, and no response ever occurred.

Matters are considerably worse, as we view them, when you consider that the diverted and abused funds are charitable and/or characterized as foreign aid, making a reasonable person think the trustees of the cash would have bent over backwards to defend their probity.

But that reasonable person would be wrong. Nothing - for all practical purposes - has happened until now, even though the consequences are huge.

That's expressed well in a statement published last week by Robert Piper, an Australian development aid coordinator for the UN who, since May 2015, has been the Jerusalem-based Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and the Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, with the rank of UN Assistant Secretary General. He said:

Israel’s accusations against el-Halabi “raise serious concerns for humanitarian organizations working in Gaza.” “Redirecting relief away from its intended beneficiaries would be a profound betrayal of the trust put in a senior manager by his employer and by the organization’s donors,” Piper said. “Everyone would pay a high price for such acts – beneficiaries and the wider aid effort alike. If proven by a due legal process, these actions deserve unreserved condemnation; Gaza’s demoralized and vulnerable citizens deserve so much better.” ["World Vision: ‘Huge gap’ in Israeli terror funding allegations", Times of Israel, August 08, 2016]

Unfortunately there have been few signs from the aid agencies themselves that they acknowledge the problems (other than the problem of facing accusations from the unloved government of Israel) and in particular that their internal checks are lacking. At the UNDP, they are now saying they have

zero tolerance for wrongdoing in all of its programmes and projects [The Guardian, August 9, 2016]

so look elsewhere for solutions, they seem to say. This is bold and brave of them considering that two years ago, an internal UN audit report found serious short-comings including

• Their Gaza operation should have been using an electronic funds transfer system with local banks that would have allowed the UNDP program to “be notified electronically when any bank transactions take place,”  including, as the report delicately puts it, “transactions not made by UNDP.” But it didn't use it. Why? Good question.
• Core procurement  processes for ordering up “significant” civil construction activities that were supposed to be handled strictly by staffers - were not. Outsiders somehow got into the process. Why? Anyone's guess. The auditors called this a “critical” lapse and demanded “prompt action... to ensure that UNDP is not exposed to high risks. Failure to take action could result in major negative consequences for UNDP.” We will watch to see whether this fault gets mentioned in future media reports. 
• "The office’s internal financial tracking system — a UNDP-wide system known as Atlas — was improperly recording at least $8 million worth of civil construction spending at far less than its full value, a practice that UNDP auditors noted could keep the activity under the radar of higher-level U.N. officials who must approve purchase orders above defined cost threshold levels."
• Expenditures and receipts were not adequately tracked in the financial system. For instance, a sampling of 41 payment vouchers showed 12 purchase orders had no receipts recorded. “This practice,” the report noted, “increases the risk of paying for goods that are not delivered.” [Fox News, August 11, 2014]

At World Vision, senior management

has cast doubt on Israel's accusations, saying they seemed implausible... [NPR, August 9, 2016]

And at Hamas, they amazingly

denied that Halabi was a member... [as well as] denied the allegations. A spokesperson, Sami Abu Zurhi, called the accusations “false and baseless”, saying they were designed to allow Israel to strengthen its “siege” of Gaza... [The Guardian, August 9, 2016]

Prof. Gerald Steinberg, an authority on transparency and the lack thereof in funding across borders (and president of the esteemed NGO Monitor, a research institute based here in Jerusalem) had some points to make on this in a powerful op ed in the Wall Street Journal three days ago:

World Vision leaders such as Tim Costello of the charity’s Australian branch, which provided a significant portion of World Vision JWG’s 2014 budget of more than $20 million, took refuge in distant accounting firms. “We have PricewaterhouseCoopers that audit us each year,” Mr. Costello said. But Mr. Costello and his peers at other aid groups should be aware that no international auditing firm can independently track funds in terror enclaves. In Gaza, there are no receipts for the numerous cash transactions that were conducted via World Vision. Even if there were, how would the auditors verify their authenticity? Indeed, the audit claim wasn’t enough to convince the Australian government, which immediately froze the $5.7 million annual budget granted to World Vision. Germany soon followed suit. The broader problem is that due diligence for humanitarian aid in war and terror zones requires the allocation of significant resources and a professional staff capable of detaching itself from the pressures and sympathies of the local environment. World Vision, like most aid groups operating in Gaza, clearly failed in this respect... Mr. Halabi’s arrest should be cautionary moment for other international aid organizations with operations in Gaza such as Care, Christian Aid, Oxfam and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. The need to deal realistically with operations in a terror-controlled zone like Gaza, and the costs of failing to perform due diligence, should be apparent. World Vision’s auditing claims notwithstanding, cash payments in Gaza are a direct path to corruption and diversion to terror. They should be ended immediately... ["The Palestinian Charity Trap", WSJ, August 11, 2016]

The charges of malfeasance have not stopped coming. We know, for instance, from an AFP report, that

Aid workers privately admit to feeling pressure from Hamas, with the powerful group seeking to influence how projects are organized. In a few rare cases NGOs have seen their offices temporary closed by Hamas... ["Foreign aid workers fear the impact of Hamas allegations", AFP/Saudi Gazette, August 11, 2016]

That 2014 Fox News report [online here] we just mentioned also implicates the highly problematic UNRWA (the UN's pseudo refugee agency whose existence is predicated on a never-ending "Palestinian refugee problem") about which we have written often and with passion). Turns out

the main purpose of the UNDP program, based in Jerusalem and like all U.N. activities operating under diplomatic immunity from any national authorities, was to provide funding and support for what the document chastely calls “another U.N. entity” that coordinates the world organization’s activity in Gaza. That “entity” is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, which has been accused for years... of allowing Hamas to divert humanitarian supplies to its own military purposes. UNWRA has some 13,000 employees in Gaza, the overwhelming majority of them local Palestinians... [Fox News, August 11, 2014]

The problems at UNRWA, unique but hardly new, stem from factors outlined in sharp terms two years ago in the Wall Street Journal (again). That piece shows how the multi-billion-dollar agency agency is unusual, and unusually unaccountable compared with other UN operations, by reason of at least these three factors:

1. All other refugees world-wide fall under the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Only the Palestinians have their own dedicated U.N. refugee agency, offering special access to the perquisites of the U.N. logo, stage and fundraising. 
2. Almost all other U.N. agencies report to an executive board, allowing at least some chance of functional oversight. Unrwa reports directly to the entire 193-member General Assembly, where responsibility is broadly dispersed and easily avoided. According to a paper in 2010 by the agency's own chief of legal affairs, Lance Bartholomeusz, UNRWA enjoys the added flexibility of having no clearly defined mission: "its mandate is not conveniently stated in one place and must be derived from all other relevant resolutions and requests."
3. Thus unencumbered, UNRWA has ensured its own survival by transforming itself into the patron of Palestinian grievance, conferring refugee status down the generations... ["The U.N. Handmaiden of Hamas", Claudia Rosett in the Wall Street Journal, August 07, 2014]

Israel's concern for the well-being of the Gazans, suffering for years already under the jackboot of a kleptocratic Fatah regime and then, for the past nine years, under the ruthless Islamists of Hamas, may not be top of its list of concerns. But it's undoubtedly a concern. Whether out of altruism or self-interest, there are few voices in Israel calling for an enlargement of Gaza's undoubted plight.

Here's an instance of the sort of Israeli voice Israelis are hearing even if the Arabs aren't. Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai is Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Unit, better known as COGAT. It's a hybrid civilian/military body with a mission

to promote and implement the policy of the Israeli Government in civilian matters, to facilitate humanitarian issues and economic and infrastructure projects in Judea and Samaria and in the Gaza Strip. In addition, the unit leads the coordination and liaison with the Palestinian Authority and with the Palestinian population the West Bank and the Gaza Strip... [fuller description here].

Mordechai, speaking in Arabic in the wake of el-Halabi's confession to the charges of subverting World Vision funding into the pockets of Hamas. addressed the Palestinian Arabs:

Hamas stole this money and passed it to its military wing to build bases, provide salary bonuses and dig the tunnels of death that have brought destruction upon you and the Gaza Strip... Hamas is burying you and your hope of living a normal life. [Associated Press, August 4, 2016]

We can't know what impact this speech had ordinary people in Gaza, or even whether they know it happened. (Freedom of information is currently scarcer in Gaza than Olympic-size pools.) But if a mission, which Israel plainly has undertaken, to produce greater benefits to ordinary Gazans from more efficient delivery of foreign aid and from less siphoning off into the maw of the terrorists, were genuinely shared by the humanitarian aid industry, there's little doubt that the benefits would be widespread and meaningful.

Israelis have always understood that the Palestinian Arabs need to have something to lose in order to be motivated to make the compromises from which peace is fashioned. Hamas and Fatah understand that too; hence the decades-long efforts to give their people literally nothing to lose from the conflict continuing.

But let's acknowledge that if that kind of sea change were to happen, it would likely lead to a rapid, substantial and irreversible cut in the headcount of certain high-profile, billion-dollar aid agencies.

And most of us know what sort of response that will trigger.

UPDATE August 17, 2016: For additional context, friends have suggested we re-post here a remarkable Tweet by the New York Times Jerusalem correspondent. We're glad to do that. Diaa Hadid and her editors seem to feel that what news consumers are missing is some self-justification by the man accused of embezzling World Vision - a disturbingly odd moral judgment but perhaps in tune with the ethos of today's journalism as practiced by the New York Times and others following in its path:

The man Israel accuses of diverting @WorldVision funds to Hamas lost 7 relatives in 2014 war, incl pregnant cousin https://t.co/sPOnhkfpHd

— Diaa Hadid ضياء حديد (@diaahadid) August 4, 2016

If it's no longer posted on Twitter (here), we have archived it here. We asked (via repeated Twitter posts) both the New York Times people and Ms Hadid to explain how these claims bear on the extremely serious charges against the World Vision man. No answer.

---

[Our thanks once again to Malgorzata Koraszewska for having translated this article into Polish. It now appears in that language on the Listy z naszego sadu site.]

http://www.listyznaszegosadu.pl/notatki/kogo-rzeczywiscie-obchodzi-gdzie-trafia-pomoc-zagraniczna

27-Jul-16: The Hamas terrorists who murdered Rabbi Miki Mark are located and forcibly retired

In the PA-controlled village of Surif this morning, the body of a
terrorist gunman is removed by IDF soldiers [Image Source]

Violent riots erupted in the PA-controlled village of Surif, north of Hebron, early this morning (Wednesday) as a joint IDF, Shin Bet and Israel Police operation trapped the four-person terror cell that murdered Rabbi Michael Mark, the executive director of the Otniel Hesder Yeshiva, on July 1 [link] and seriously injured his wife and children. The victims of that attack were traveling in a car that came under murderous gunfire on Route 60 ["01-Jul-16: The drive-by shooting near Otniel"].

Times of Israel reports that the members of the Hamas-aligned terror cell

opened fire at the Israeli troops from inside the house in which he was hiding, and the IDF responded by firing several anti-tank missiles... The IDF then used a bulldozer to knock down most of the building, and when the troops finally entered the destroyed home they found Fakih dead inside...

One of the cell members, Muhammad al-Fakih, 29, died and three others were taken into custody, unharmed. According to Reuters this morning

Islamist group Hamas identified the man killed in the raid as Mohammad al-Fakih and it said he was a member of its armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades

The Ma'an News Agency version follows the customary template, starting with the title of the piece: "Palestinian accused of Hebron shooting killed after Israeli forces bombard house":

The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that five Palestinians were shot with rubber-coated bullets during clashes in Surif. [IDF Spokesperson Avichai Edre'i] confirmed that a Palestinian woman sustained minor wounds during the military attack and was taken to a hospital for treatment, adding that a Kalashnikov machine gun and a grenade were found in the house. Locals said Israeli forces detained four Palestinians from Surif during the raid, identified as Ahmad Ibrahim al-Hur, Diyaa Khalid Ghneimat, and Muhammad Ali al-Heeh, the owner of the demolished house in which Faqih was hiding. Al-Heeh’s mother was also detained... Faqih himself was from the village of Dura in southern Hebron. [Ma'an, July 28, 2016]

The Arabic edition of the Ma'an story, again following the customary approach of one version for the Arabic speakers, a specifically different and carefully sanitized one for foreigners, says

The [Israeli] army claimed to find gun-type rifles and grenades next to the martyr... ["Martyrdom of a citizen after bombing and besieging of a home in Surif", Ma'an Arabic, July 28, 2016]

A martyr al-Fakih assuredly is becoming as we write these lines. Hamas, which de facto controls large swathes of the nominally Fatah/PA towns and villages of the mis-named "West Bank" (a name given to it for the first time by the Jordanian occupation forces who conquered it militarily in the course of the 1947-49 War of Independence in which the most of the Arab world sought to destroy the nascent state of Israel), is active now preparing for a showcase funeral and demonstrations of rage and power. These, as always, are intended not only as a token of how far away peace is, but to show that the PA - with all its foreign aid, its police and its European-supplied limousines for insiders - actually takes a back seat to the Hamas organizers on the ground.

06-May-16: From Gaza, escalating violence above and below ground

Image Source

The Israeli authorities announced yesterday (Thursday) the discovery of another Hamas attack-tunnel running from the Gazan side of the border into Israel, the second such attack-tunnel to have been exposed in a month. The earlier one was considered

the first to be detected since the end of the last war in Gaza in 2014. The tunnel – about 30-40 metres deep, lined with concrete slabs and equipped with communication lines, air supply and rails for further excavation – was uncovered last week although its existence was confirmed only on Monday. The tunnel reportedly entered Israel in an area some distance from Israeli military bases and civilian homes. Speaking at a media briefing, Lt Col Peter Lerner said the tunnel extended several hundred metres under Israel and was large enough for a man to stand in. ["Israeli military uncovers first Hamas tunnel into Israel since 2014 war", The Guardian, April 18, 2016]

This week's came accompanied with some interesting side stories:

• Israel's Shin Bet revealed just a few hours before Thursday's announcement of the second tunnel that it had captured Mohammad Atuna, 29, a terrorist from Gaza in the service of Hamas and possessing "large amounts of information about the tunnel network". He had been taken into custody in early April, before the report of the first tunnel discovery, though at the time, a Haaretz report, referring to him as Sami al-Atawna, implied that Hamas was denying that he was in Israeli hands.
• There were and are heavy hints in the Israeli media about the extent to which this Atuna has been helpful to their inquiries. He has detailed "the existence of a warren of Hamas tunnels within Gaza itself to be used to ferry fighters and equipment around the Gaza Strip, including rooms for relaxation equipped with showers and mess halls in order to improve the lives of the fighters." 
• It's reported that Atuna has also given up detailed tunnel locations and routes, as well as related information about the techniques used in tunnel construction and other logistical aspects of Hamas’ tunnel strategy. This includes disclosure of the workings of the so-called "Nakba" terrorist unit which is trained "for fighting within Israeli territory".
• Ynet says he gave up details of Hamas's use of private homes and other buildings to hide tunnel construction activity, and pointed out where digging projects were occurring, and the locations of tunnel shafts to be used in the planned attacks. In addition, he handed over the names of many Hamas operatives and their positions within the organization, detailed locations of weapons storage facilities, many of them inside civilian homes. 
• Ynet: "Atuna admitted to having massive amounts of arms at his house, including IEDs, rifles, and suicide vests. He was supposed to give these items out to fighters in the event of another round of fighting."
• He described two classes of tunnel; those within Gaza via which its terrorists can maneuver to hide and to outflank IDF forces; and cross-border tunnels for carrying out attacks on Israeli forces and civilians. "Hamas has invested millions of dollars to enable their Special Forces operatives to stay underground for weeks at a time, lying in wait until the order is given to attack Israel."

Tunnel #2 is said to start some 100 feet, roughly 30 meters, inside the southern part of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, and to stretch from there some as-yet-unspecified distance into Israel. It is constructed about 30 meters below the surface of the ground.

The jihadists have much to lose now that the offensive apparatus is revealed and being dismantled. So on Tuesday, Hamas

directed cross-border gun fire at an IDF engineering vehicle near southern Gaza [Jerusalem Post, May 5, 2016]

And then during, and since, yesterday's uncovering, Israeli communities in the Gaza envelope area have continued to come under fire from the Gazan side for what Haaretz, quoting the IDF, calls

the first time since the end of the 2014 war that Hamas had opened fire on Israeli operations on the ground. Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad released statements warning Israel against any escalation. Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, said it was ready to respond to Israeli strikes. “We will not permit this aggression to continue and the enemy should not invoke any reason, and should leave the Strip immediately”... [Haaretz, May 5, 2016]

Vehicles have been damaged on the Israeli side but we're pleased to say there have been no injuries to Israelis up until this point.

An IDF spokesperson said yesterday that the shooting is "a result of Hamas identifying that the Israel Defence Forces were closing in on those assets" i,e, the attack-tunnels. That fire, mortars so far, has continued this morning. A Times of Israel report says a mortar attack on Israeli soldiers this morning working on Gaza's southern-most flank was the twelfth such assault in the past four days.

The Arab media carry reports this morning [like this one] of both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad where they have boasted of their tunneling strategy, warning Israel to back off lest the IDF's "violence... pushes the resistance to reciprocate" and issuing a reminder that "Israeli crimes will not break the spirit" of the Gazan Palestinian Arabs. Hamas' arch-terrorist Ismail Haniyeh says today that the Israelis have penetrated "150 to 199 meters on the pretext of searching for tunnels" [source] and that his murderous group "will not under any circumstance accept these incursions".

Putting Haniyeh's absurd use of "pretext" into a factual context, it has only been a few weeks - certainly long enough for most reporters to forget - that he said Hamas

will never stop digging tunnels and upgrading rockets in preparation for any possible confrontation with Israel [Jerusalem Post]

Hamas is seriously committed to tunnels. It's estimated they have more than 1,000 of its loyalists working to build and extend them at an overall cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars each month. Workers are paid US $300 to 400 per month. It's not such a great deal for them, though they probably have little option. Arab media reports quoted by Israel National News in mid-April said the death toll from a series of "mysterious" Gazan tunnel collapses since January 2016 had reached 20, most of them actual terrorists - and not merely laborers - from its Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

21-Apr-16: The Hamas jihadists claim the Jerusalem bus bombing as one of their own

Jerusalem: Not 1996, not 2001 - this week [Image Source]

When a Jerusalem bus went up in flames on Monday, causing serious injuries to passengers and damage to several vehicles, there was some question at first about whether to call it an accident, or - this being Jerusalem - to look for a terrorist behind the injuries and harm. The conclusions took time to emerge ["18-Apr-16: A Jerusalem bus has exploded"] as the security people gathered evidence and waited to interview some of the injured from the bus. But we now know.

A Palestinian militant from the occupied West Bank who was wounded when his bomb exploded on an Israeli commuter bus in Jerusalem on Monday has died, an Israeli hospital spokeswoman and a pro-Hamas website said on Wednesday. A spokeswoman for the Jerusalem hospital where the wounded man was treated confirmed he had succumbed to his injuries. Israeli authorities have placed a gag order on the investigation and declined to release any details. The pro-Hamas Palestinian Information Centre identified him as Abdel-Hamid Abu Srour from the Ayda refugee camp near Bethlehem and said he was a member of the Izz el-Deen Al-Qassam brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas militant Islamist group... Israeli medical sources said six people wounded by the blast were still being treated in hospital, the rest had been released by late Wednesday... ["Palestinian wounded in Jerusalem bus bombing dies, Hamas claims him", Reuters, April 20, 2016]

The "militant" is reported to be 19 and has permanently ceased to be an "activist". He will however remain a terrorist and, given the theological orientation implied by the Hamas connection, a jihadist. In Palestinian Arab society, he is now upgraded to "martyr". The shahid posters [click here - we won't reproduce it here] are already on the walls of Arab villages and cities this morning. They are indispensable to the ongoing efforts in every part of Palestinian Arab society to dredge up still more murder-minded bombers, stabbers, shooters and vehicle-rammers. (Small case in point: read what the mother of this week's bomber said, and knew, and didn't do: click.)

How young men and women with unlived lives and unattained achievements ahead of them choose unfathomable hatred as their path and endanger their own lives for the prospect of killing or maiming Jews doesn't get the attention it ought to. There is a process at work, as we wrote yesterday ["20-Apr-16: After Monday's Jerusalem bus bombing, questions (again) about education, children and money"]. That process is totally disguised by analysis like that on display in the same Reuters report, where readers are told

Factors driving the violence include Palestinian bitterness over stalled statehood negotiations and the growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, increased Jewish access to a disputed Jerusalem shrine and Islamist-led calls for Israel's destruction.

How differently that bloodshed would look if the news reporting industry placed it in a franker context and with a more comprehensive listing of motivations.

Perhaps editors ought to be encouraged to start with the reality that Arab-on-Israeli terrorism began decades before Israel gained statehood in 1948, and much earlier than the creation of this thing Reuters calls West Bank settlements. Yes, there are many factors, but presenting the grievances as if they were recent is a distortion of the bigotry behind the savagery.

And perhaps those editors might, from time to time, show dancing in the streets where Palestinian Arabs live - dancing for joy, chanting their appreciation for a murderer, declaiming their bigoted hatred for other people whom they don't know but who fit a certain category. Like this Arabic-language video clip from Wednesday - four and a half minutes of video focused on open, undisguised and enthusiastic celebration of murder on the streets of Bethlehem. Yes, Bethlehem.

None of this influences the essentially humane approach of Israeli society which understands why a murderous fanatic like the freshly-deceased jihadist gets treated in one of Israel's best emergency hospitals, Shaarei Zedek Medical Center. Along with Hadassah's two Jerusalem campuses, it's one of the easiest places in Israel to snap photographs of Arabs and Jews mingling with almost zero friction, if that's the sort of message a news reporter ever wanted to convey.

When did you last see that sort of news story?

14-May-15: Dozens more Hamas victims of unstoppable Hamas blood-lust

First victims arrive at a Gaza hospital tonight [AFP Photo]

AFP released this breaking news in the past hour:

50 wounded in blast at Gaza training camp | May. 14, 2015 | 10:53 PM | Agence France Presse | Gaza City, Palestinian Territories: At least 50 Palestinians were wounded in a blast that occurred Thursday inside a militant training camp in Gaza, Hamas officials, medics and witnesses said. "An explosion happened inside a post of the resistance in Beit Lahya," said interior ministry spokesman Iyad al-Bozum, in reference to the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. The health ministry spokesman in Gaza, Ashraf al-Qudra, said the blast wounded 50 people, five of them in a serious condition, and including children. Witnesses said the blast took place inside a training camp of the Ezzezdine al-Qassam Brigades in the northern Gaza Strip, where Hamas is the de facto power. A doctor in the Israeli-blockaded coastal enclave, Baker Abu Safia of Al-Awda Hospital, said 30 wounded people were brought to his establishment, most of them women and children. He said the hospital "declared a state of emergency" after the explosion took place.

Guide to abused language:

• "inside a militant training camp in Gaza" refers to a terrorist facility, one of the many funded by foreign aid to Hamas, designed to produce with roughly equal passion dead Israelis and dead Arabs. Both serve the designs of the Hamas regime.
• "a post of the resistance" obscures the reactionary Islamist lust for murder in the name of their understanding of a major religion
• "military wing of Hamas" falsely conveys the sense that there a non-military wing of the terrorist organization exists. Its charter is a public document. Though written in Arabic which many do not speak or read, English-language translations are widely available. Here's one. When it says "It is a brigade that must be reinforced by brigades upon brigades from this vast Islamic world, until the enemies are defeated and Allah's victory is revealed", those words do not define its so-called military wing, but define the essence of Hamas.
• "the blast wounded 50 people... including children" in a terrorist training camp. Children - alive and dead - are absolutely central to the Hamas concept of a fighting force. 
• "30 wounded people were brought to [hospital], most of them women and children" is the most important sentence in the report. An explosion at a terrorist training facility and the victims brought to hospital are mainly women and children. Can this have happened in any military training facility in any other part of the world? If not, does this say something about the ethics and motivating drive that propels the terrorists of Hamas? In defending against them, should an army (Israel's for instance) regard them as a military force like any other? Or does it represent a remarkable, utterly different form of organized savagery, with all that that entails in terms of defensive military doctrine?

30-Jun-14: The message of the murdering terrorists, its logical outcome and the indispensable support that enables it

A reminder - at this time of intense pain and anger - of the constant encouragement to engage in acts of terror, abduction and murder emanating from the Hamas terror organization and the men who stand at its head. But not only them.

• October 11, 2011: Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal, speaking on the day of the Gilad Shalit Transaction (1,027 imprisoned Palestinian Arab terrorists walked free in two tranches) said it was a "great achievement" to get so many prisoners in exchange for one man. His message to the remaining prisoners: "We will continue our efforts until we release all of you. Someone who agrees to release 1,000 prisoners will agree to release 8,000 in the future... This is a promise. This is our oath."
• October 12, 2011: Senior Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya: “The one and only solution is more resistance against the Israeli oppression, and more abduction of Israeli soldiers and settlers," he told the Al Quds satellite television network.”
• October 12, 2011: Abu Obaida, spokesman for the armed wing of Hamas, Izzadin al-Qassam: Gilad Schalit, set to be released as part of a prisoner exchange deal, "will not be the last soldier kidnapped by Hamas as long as Israel keeps Palestinian prisoners detained."
• October 21, 2011, Hamas TV: “A Zionist soldier = 1,000 prisoners. 6 Zionist soldiers = 6,000 prisoners. Capture of 6 Zionist soldiers = release of remaining prisoners. We are still thinking about you. Izz A-Din Al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas military wing)."
• December 8, 2012 Arch-terrorist Khaled Mashaal of Hamas: “We will not rest until we liberate the prisoners. The way we freed some of the prisoners in the past is the way we will use to free the remaining prisoners.”
• May 15, 2102: Spokesman for Hamas, Hammad al-Ruqab, speaking in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip: Calls on Palestinians to kidnap Israeli soldiers to use as bargaining chips in prisoner exchanges, the Palestinian Ma'an news agency reported. According to the report, al-Ruqab said militant groups (referring to terrorists), particularly Hamas's al-Qassam Brigades, should abduct soldiers, "whatever the cost."
• February 26, 2013: Addressing a rally in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Senior Hamas leader Salah al-Bardawil urged the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. The abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit led to the release of over 1,000 terrorists in 2011 in a prisoner swap deal between Hamas and Israel…"A new Palestinian Intifada is about to break out in support of prisoners" al-Bardawil said, urging all PA Arabs to join activities to support detainees.
• May 28, 2013, Abu-Ubaida, spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades: “Those who refuse to abduct Zionist soldiers renounce the pain and suffering of thousands of prisoners yearning for freedom…Operations to capture enemy soldiers and trade them for our heroic prisoners are at the heart of our people’s culture, and are a source of pride for them and their resistance.”
• June 30, 2013: Video clip produced by the Al-Qassam Brigades marking the seventh anniversary of Shalit’s abduction: The clip ends with a Hebrew text reading, “We have started toward our goal, and we will reach the end.”
• October 21, 2013: Abu-Ubaida, spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades: “This tunnel was made by the hand of the fighters of (Izzadine) al-Qassam and they will not sleep in their efforts to hit the occupation and kidnap soldiers… Kidnapping soldiers is the only way to succeed against the occupation."
• June 18, 2014: Khaled Mashaal gives a speech interpreted as a signal for further kidnappings, declaring about a top prisoner “Your letter has arrived. I am aware of your difficulties. The reply will be provided by Iz al-Din al-Qassam.”

(Hat tip: TIP)

We know from painful personal experience how utterly dedicated to the murder of Israeli children the terrorists with "free our prisoners" branded onto their foreheads are. In particular, the former prisoner and convicted murderer who hosts a weekly television program beamed throughout the Arab world, calculated to arouse hateful people to acts of extreme cruelty in the name of the prisoners. Background: "17-Nov-11: A monster walks the streets and she has many accomplices"

But they are far from alone. 

The moral stupidity that their campaigns have encouraged among their people are more than matched by the actions and failures of others located far from Gaza.

It's timely to remind ourselves of the clear and articulate encouragement by the World Council of Churches of the Palestinian Arab strategic focus on prisoners - many of them convicted murderers - held in Israeli prisons. See "11-Jun-14: Where does this strategic deafness and moral blindness at World Council of Churches lead?" It will be interesting to see if they can bring themselves to compose a public response that actually condemns the terrorists and empathizes with the Israeli victims. We expect something preposterously and dishonestly "balanced" and therefore meaningless, if they put out anything at all. We'll see.

And it's appropriate that we remember how the Kerry State Department, confronted with a choice between recognizing convicted Palestinian Arab murderers in Israeli prisons - charged, convicted and sentenced for their crimes - and looking the other way found it expedient last year to say it does not actually know whether those men are what the Israelis say they are, or are "political prisoners" and "freedom fighters". It's on video here ["14-Sep-13: Memo to Secretary of State Kerry: Your staff need some urgent guidance"]. 

We have sought, and failed to get, clarification from the State Department and its Diplomat in Chief on this for a year ["9-Apr-14: Analyzing the failure, what role did the Kerry State Department play?"]. Perhaps it will come, too late, now that the three innocent abducted boys are no longer alive.