01-May-16: Hatred of the Jews - and the Leftist Problem

A thinking person is likely to learn a great deal from understanding
the impact made on various populations, some of them Arab (as in this 2001
news image of celebrations in Lebanon) and others Americana or British,
by the massacre at the Sbarro pizzeria

National Review currently features a useful and well-framed short essay ["Israel and the Jewish diaspora make progressive pieties look silly", April 29, 2016] by Kevin D. Williamson. The journal's roving correspondent, he covers "the intersection of economics, culture, and politics". His bio says he also serves as director of the William F. Buckley Jr. Fellowship in Political Journalism at the National Review Institute.

The subtitle of this highly recommended piece gets right down to the question Williamson addresses: "Why does the Left hate the Jews?"

Hatred of that sort is, of course, hardly news. But we seem to be at one of those moments (again) where, as it periodically does, it's making waves. 

Williamson is writing against a background in which a recent Lord Mayor of London, a man with his own pungent record of public antisemitic statements, has been suspended by his party for things he said (that involved bracketing Zionism and Hitler) while speaking up for a British Labor MP who had suggested the conflict in the Middle East could be solved by liquidating Israel and getting the Jews to re-settle, voluntarily or not, in the United States. The party leader, playing the role of disciplinarian, is himself a controversial figure who has famously called the blood-lusting Jew-hating jihadists of Hamas and Hezbollah his "friends". There's not much sign he especially wants to call these Israel-bashers to order.

The Williamson piece is short and well-crafted. We hope it gets plenty of pass-along attention. Here are two brief extracts:

The Israeli Jews commit the double crime of insisting upon being Jews and refusing to be sacrificial victims. They were okay, in the Left’s estimate, for about five minutes, back when Israel’s future was assumed to be one of low-impact kibbutz socialism. History went in a different direction, and today Israel has one of the world’s most sophisticated economies. For the Jew-hater, this is maddening: Throw the Jews out of Spain, and they thrive abroad. Send them to the poorest slums in New York, and those slums stop being slums. Keep them out of the Ivy League and watch NYU become a world-class institution inspired by men such as Jonas Salk, son of largely uneducated Polish immigrants. Put the Jewish state in a desert wasteland and watch it bloom, first with produce and then with technology. Israel today has more companies listed on NASDAQ than any other country except the United States and China. The economy under Palestinian management? Olives and handicrafts, and a GDP per capita that barely exceeds that of Sudan.

Mangled baby carriages removed from the scene of the Sbarro
human-bomb attack, August 9, 2001

And this, which touches on an aspect where we have an uncommon degree of familiarity: 

The Arab–Israeli conflict is a bitter and ugly one. My own view of it is that the Palestinian Arabs have some legitimate grievances, and that I stopped caring about them when they started blowing up children in pizza shops. You can thank the courageous heroes of the Battle of Sbarro for that. Israel isn’t my country, but it is my country’s ally, and it is impossible for a liberty-loving American to fail to admire what the Jewish state has done. And that, of course, is why the Left wants to see the Jewish state exterminated.

It's an uncomfortably toxic image he conjures up, of courageous Islamist resistance fighters launching a middle-of-the-day school-holidays armed attack on a pizzeria filled with Zionistic children and young mothers with Jewish babies. 

But while invoking the Battle of Sbarro will sound to some like a cynical, perhaps over the top, slap at the murderous bigotry of Hamas and its friends (who, by his own admission, include Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the UK's second-largest political party), there are prominent individuals who actually believe in it with genteel sincerity and religious conviction, and they don't all live in the Islamic world.

An example, from among numerous candidates, and one that especially sticks in our craw, is a man counted among the most influential figures in the world of American Christian public affairs, James M. Wall. An ordained minister in the United Methodist Church and a laureate of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, he served for decades as editor, president and a senior contributor to Christian Century magazine, "the flagship magazine of U.S. mainline Protestantism" [source]. He's evidently still contributing there. The reverend Mr Wall got our attention ["23-Aug-12: Theology and sociopaths" and "16-Dec-14: Anti-semites, lone-wolves, killers of school-children, and the people who appreciate and understand them"] with an essay romanticizing the principal engineer of the Sbarro massacre, the killer of our daughter Malki. 

In focusing his Christian charity on the notorious 2011 Shalit Deal in which 1,027 terrorists, most of them convicted of homicide, were released in a massive Israeli capitulation to Hamas extortion, Mr Wall was moved to address the sad way in which

The Western public saw and read virtually nothing about the 477 Palestinians who were released from Israeli prisons [in phase 1 of the deal], except for those stories that reminded the public that many of the prisoners, to use the term so popular among Israeli politicians, had “blood on their hands”. This bias against Palestinians was so blatant that Jewish activist Noam Chomsky was moved to accuse the media of treating the released Palestinian prisoners as “unpeople”. It is time to tell their stories, and to do so without apology. [The Rev. Mr. Wall's blog, October 29, 2011]

To understand why people with James M. Wall's mindset, or for that matter the political views of certain British public figures now in the news, find apologies superfluous, we suggest to go back and read once again the subtitle of Kevin D. Williamson's short National Review essay.

16-Dec-14: Antisemites, lone-wolves, killers of school-children, and the people who appreciate and understand them

A timeless question

Over at the Gatestone Institute's website, Dexter Van Zile from CAMERA takes a penetrating look at a high-profile Christian magazine that "caters to liberal (mainline) Protestants in the United States" (his words) while helping to advance a notoriously anti-semitic website. 

Oh, and a major search engine is involved too. 

His essay is called "The Stubborn Antisemitism of Yahoo and The Christian Century", and one of its central characters is James M. Wall. Unlike most Christian theological writers and their thinking, this Wall is someone about whom we have actual views. Strongly negative views, naturally, based on articles he has published and positions he has advocated. A sense of what we think can be gotten from a post we published here a year and a half ago: "18-Jul-13: When he lionizes child killers, is James M. Wall speaking for mainstream Christians".  In honor of Dexter's new piece, following, is an excerpt.

...James M. Wall, an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church.... exemplifies, to us, a deeply disturbing trend in the world of ultra-liberal religious thought: the willingness to really, really, really understand and theologically empathize with the people who hate Jews and who do awful things to them... Anyone not already familiar with what we said about this troubling individual earlier is invited to see

• 3-Jul-13: Stonewalling? The Christian Century and the thundering silence

• 5-May-13: Self-confessed jihadist murderer: "With my media card, I was able to enter back and forth, undetected..."

• 23-Aug-12: Theology and sociopaths

In the earliest of those posts, we noted that he was editor of a prominent American journal of thought and ideas called The Christian Century for the 27 years between 1972 and 1999... Our interest in Wall was aroused when we saw a rambling article on his blog entitled “Ahlam and Nezar, A Palestinian Couple Released in The Prisoner Exchange”. In it, Wall makes the argument that Ahlam Tamimi, who proudly takes credit for a terrorist atrocity in 2001 which targeted Jewish school-children and extinguished the lives of 15 people including our daughter Malki, did what anyone would do if they saw themselves at war. What she did was merely logistic. It was therefore perfectly understandable. Murder? Hatred? Deeply visceral antisemitism? Terrorism? Not, it seems, in Wall's lexicon... How Christian is it to embrace the unrepentant murderer of children who says she prays for the chance to do it again?

The original post is longer of course. And the three other posts listed above may cause the blood of some of our readers to warm up, if not boil. But please do read them if you haven't already.

Wall is far from alone in advocating the deeply offensive line he does. Lionizing the murderers of innocent people, including school children, has almost become a commonplace thing as we saw in the past few hours in Peshawar. And diminishing the seriousness of the threat posed by so-called isolated, lone-wolf jihadists like the man behind yesterday's Sydney siege (see "Sydney siege: Don't call Man Haron Monis a 'terrorist' - it only helps Isis", The Guardian, December 16, 2014] is a trend that's growing almost as fast as the number of so-called isolated, lone-wolf jihadist attacks. 

And as we are seeing right now over the river in Jordan, appreciating the heroic and the inspirational in the actions of a convicted and unrepentant killer (who prays for the day when she can kill again) is something even world-class journalists and Western governments have little problem supporting [see ["11-Dec-14: Is it newsworthy when journalists make a terror-addicted murdering colleague their role-model?"]  Still, the case of James M. Wall and those who acquiesce in his hatefulness with their silence and passivity continues to cause damage because of how little attention and criticism it has attracted.

18-Jun-14: Sharing some thoughts with Christian advocates of an Israel boycott

Click for the video page

Presbyterians for Middle East Peace [website] asked two Israelis whose lives, in the group's words, have been forever changed by senseless violence to speak about their experience, the importance of reconciliation, and their hopes for the future.

They are Arnold Roth and Kay Wilson. Their two testimonies are online here in video clip form.

"For those of who truly care about peace, and I see them wherever I go in this country, we know that what's needed is to build bridges and not to blow them up." [Arnold Roth, speaking in the video clip]

The background is described today in a Commentary Magazine piece by Jonathan Mark: "Will the Presbyterian Church USA Vote for Divestment (and Irrelevance)?"

The Israel-Palestine Mission Network was formed by the PCUSA General Assembly in 2004, the same year in which it passed a resolution calling for “phased selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel.” While the Assembly was at it, it claimed that the “occupation” was “at the root of evil acts committed against innocent people on both sides of the conflict” and lectured Israelis on the importance of making peace with the Palestinians... In 2012, they almost persuaded the Assembly to disinvest from Caterpillar, Hewlett Packard, and Motorola for “profiting from non-peaceful activities in Israel-Palestine.” They lost 333 to 331. Encouraged, they are back at it again at this year’s General Assembly, which is meeting this week... Those members of the General Assembly who are merely foolish, rather than hostile to Jews, may vote for the resolution, which is admittedly much narrower than the one passed in 2004, thinking it relatively benign. That is the BDS strategy. Get what you can get, then publicly marvel at your momentum, even if what you got is less than what you were able to get ten years ago... The more likely result, momentum-wise, is even more departures from the church... Presbyterians may notice that they have leaders, and that these leaders are, increasingly, radicals and fools. Even devoted churchgoers can’t be blamed for leaving a church when it starts to smell this bad.

Jewish clergy from right across the political spectrum have paid attention, and are expressing themselves about as clearly and unitedly as independent-minded leaders ever do: see "Jewish leaders from every state urge Presbyterian Church to choose partnership and reconciliation over divestment and division" (via Religion News tonight), and the forcefully expressed "Enough! Why we won’t be at the Presbyterian General Assembly" (Jerusalem Post today).

A Christian journal, The Layman Online, says that

"Since 2004 the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been second only to sexuality issues in generating controversy at PCUSA assemblies. And judging by the volume and ferocity of the overtures advanced this year, the intensity of the anti-Israel activists will again almost match that of the same-sex marriage champions... These measures will create the impression of a popular groundswell of Presbyterians demanding that their denomination rebuke the Jewish state. In fact, however, the overtures come from a handful of presbyteries that have a record of pro-Palestinian advocacy. PCUSA members in general are more moderate, and more divided, on Israeli-Palestinian issues."

If the boycott Israel campaign decision does pass, Presbyterian Church (USA), a mainline Protestant Christian denomination, would be the largest religious organization in the country to impose sanctions on Israel, writes the religion correspondent at Voice of America. He quotes the Rev. John Wimberly, a retired church pastor, urging Christians to think twice before imposing sanctions on Israel. “There is a 2,000-year history of economic sanctions being used by Christians aimed at Jews and it's a bloody, nasty history and that is kind of my bottom line opposition right there..."  The proponents of BDS ignore Palestinian attacks on Israel, he observes, while the divestment proposal at the church's General Assembly has been pushed by lobbyists from outside the denomination. Wimberley, by the way, is now on the steering committee for Presbyterians for Middle East Peace, the people who posted the Arnold Roth video.

Jonathan Mark's observation about a dwindling church membership is supported by numbers we saw today over at Wikipedia. There were 1,760,200 members of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 2013 according to PCUSA's own data. There had been 3.1 million of them in 1984. The decline since 2000 (by our calculation) exceeds 30%. 

While being boycotted by Presbyterians (if that turns out to be their decision this week) is no great honour, we expect the State of Israel will somehow survive it. 

We do wonder though about the future of a mainline church in steep decline which puts its name to a publication like "Zionism Unsettled: A Congregational Study Guide", promoted via the church's online bookstore, and aimed at "advocating for the human rights of Palestinians under military occupation". The editors at CAMERA point out that it promotes some serious lies: that Zionism and Israel have been sheltered from debate, particularly in mainline churches in the US; that Jews were well treated in Muslim countries in the Middle East until Zionism arrived in the region in the 19th century; and that Israel is singularly responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians. 

CAMERA also notes that the Presbyterian booklet is endorsed by James M. Wall (of whom we wrote here: "18-Jul-13: When he lionizes child killers, is James M. Wall speaking for mainstream Christians") which, for us, pretty much speaks for itself.

18-Jul-13: When he lionizes child killers, is James M. Wall speaking for mainstream Christians

Source: theoptimisticconservative's Blog

In the past year, we have three times devoted attention to a prominent theologian and commentator on American Christianity, James M. Wall, an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church. This is not because of a new found interest in the sorts of issues that keep him busy. Rather it is because he exemplifies, to us, a deeply disturbing trend in the world of ultra-liberal religious thought: the willingness to really, really, really understand and theologically empathize with the people who hate Jews and who do awful things to them. (We will illustrate below.)

Anyone not already familiar with what we said about this troubling individual earlier is invited to see

• 3-Jul-13: Stonewalling? The Christian Century and the thundering silence
• 5-May-13: Self-confessed jihadist murderer: "With my media card, I was able to enter back and forth, undetected..."
• 23-Aug-12: Theology and sociopaths

In the earliest of those posts, we noted that he was editor of a prominent American journal of thought and ideas called The Christian Century for the 27 years between 1972 and 1999. Wikipedia calls that "the flagship magazine of U.S. mainline Protestantism" [source]. On retiring, he remained there as a regular columnist until a few years ago. Though it appears he no longer contributes to its pages, his name remains on the masthead as Senior Contributing Editor. 

And that's what has gotten the attention of some other good people, because it turns out that while he remains on the Christian Century masthead he has developed some collegial ties with some very hateful friends, blogging at a site where anti-Semitism is rampant (to quote the very well-written and readable source, theoptimisticconservative's Blog). 

The Christian commentator Dexter Van Zile, who has an uncommon sensitivity to Jewish issues and especially to the Jewish connection to Israel, has written several penetrating articles removing the mask from the face of both Wall and the journal he led for a generation. You might want to read what he wrote on this just a week ago: ‘The Christian Century’ Must Remove Anti-Semite from Masthead, including this:

Between May 2003 and mid-June 2004, a period in which more than 100 Israeli civilians were murdered by Palestinian terrorists, Wall wrote 15 commentaries, eight of which dealt with or mentioned the Arab-Israeli conflict. All of these commentaries were critical of Israel.

The point of this post of ours is to say that, despite some quite frontal approaches from critics, the management at The Christian Century have considered matters and taken a very clear stand in the face of the evidence of hatefulness and vicious antisemitism in the writings of Wall and the journalists whose company he keeps. David Heim, Christian Century’s executive editor now says explicitly that he will not address the issue. “James Wall did a lot for our magazine... He deserves to be on our masthead.”

And as Dexter Van Zile wrote yesterday, the chairman of the Christian Century Foundation's board of directors has backed that view to the hilt. Rev. Peter Marty, former host of Grace Matters, a Lutheran radio show, and current pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Davenport, Iowa, emailed the following explanation for why Wall is going to stay on the Christian Century masthead:

The board of directors for the Christian Century magazine holds as its primary objective the advancement of the Century's print and web communications... The board does not assume a role in limiting any past or present editor's freedom of expression, or in determining what they may publish in other forums. [Source]

Our interest in Wall was aroused when we saw a rambling article on his blog entitled “Ahlam and Nezar, A Palestinian Couple Released in The Prisoner Exchange”. In it, Wall makes the argument that Ahlam Tamimi, who proudly takes credit for a terrorist atrocity in 2001 which targeted Jewish school-children and extinguished the lives of 15 people including our daughter Malki, did what anyone would do if they saw themselves at war. What she did was merely logistic. It was therefore perfectly understandable. Murder? Hatred? Deeply visceral antisemitism? Terrorism? Not, it seems, in Wall's lexicon.

Wall, Heim, Marty and the writers of this blog all live in free societies where you can say pretty much whatever you want to say provided no laws are broken. Given that they see themselves as expositors of a particular brand of Christian thinking, we're sure they will be perfectly comfortable with the disdain, rejection and contempt which those of us holding very different views about terrorism and antisemitism feel about their radical opinions and deeds.

Now that we see the firm support given to Wall by the leadership of Christian Century, we wonder whether they would answer the same way if he had been advocating anti-liberal standpoints. We have asked previously whether their views are Christian. Are they? How Christian is it to embrace the unrepentant murderer of children who says she prays for the chance to do it again?

3-Jul-13: Stonewalling? The Christian Century and the thundering silence

Do mainstream American Protestants
share Wall's terror-worshipping adoration of our daughter's
killer? Do his editors? Screenshot of James M. Wall's website

Nearly a year ago, we wrote here ["23-Aug-12: Theology and sociopaths"] about James M. Wall who

is not marginal to the public discourse of the United States. Nor is he regarded (as far as we can tell) as a shrieking crank or a red-neck. He served as editor of a prominent journal called The Christian Century for 27 years, from 1972 to 1999. Wikipedia calls it "the flagship magazine of U.S. mainline Protestantism" [source]. He continued there as a regular columnist until a few years ago, even after his retirement. Though it appears he has stopped writing for it, his name remains on the masthead as Senior Contributing Editor.

Over at CAMERA  they have been looking at some of Mr Wall's more recent writings and associations, and have connected him [see more background here] to some of the vilest, most primitive Jew hatred you are likely to see outside of Iran, Egypt and Gaza. (No benefit in our repeating the disclosures. See CAMERA's report to appreciate the baseness of those whose company he seeks.)

Today, they publish a post reporting that, despite the depths to which his work output has descended, Wall

will remain on the masthead of Christian Century, a magazine that caters to mainline Protestant clergy and intellectuals in the United States. That’s the verdict from Christian Century’s executive editor, David Heim, who described Wall’s work as “prophetic”. [CAMERA today]

Here's what got him onto our radar screen. In October 2011, Wall posted a lengthy article to coincide with the extorted release from prison of Ahlam Tamimi, our child's murderer. At about the time he wrote it, in October 2011, an Arab newspaper dotingly quoted Tamimi - a confessed mass murderer - making this statement: 

“I have never regretted what I have done, and if given another chance I’ll do it again” [source]. 

Yet extraordinarily, Wall lionizes her. (Lionize is the term used by the clear-eyed Christian analyst who pointed us to it). With loving attention to the human aspects of her story, Wall urges his readers to resist the Israeli view of the Jordanian woman's "crimes"; note that those quote marks around the word crimes appear in Wall's essay. 

Wall leaves readers in little doubt that the atrocities to which Tamimi confessed in court - atrocities to which she confesses afresh frequently, proudly and in public over and again - were not crimes at all but something far more benign. Some excerpts from Wall's rambling article entitled “Ahlam and Nezar, A Palestinian Couple Released in The Prisoner Exchange” capture the logic of his case:

• “This bias against Palestinians [in the news reports about Israel freeing 1,027 killers and terrorists] was so blatant that… Noam Chomsky was moved to accuse the media of treating the released Palestinian prisoners as “unpeople”. It is time to tell their stories, and to do so without apology.”
• “The Palestinians who were sent to jail… saw themselves as resisting an occupying army, taking actions they believed appropriate to deal with that occupation. What Israel did is what all occupying, colonizing armies do. They punished those who resisted their colonizing... What this comes down to is a conflict of narratives, based on who is telling the story, the military occupiers or those who are resisting occupation/colonization.”
• “From Israel’s perspective, Ahlam played a role in causing a massive act of murder [but] she saw it, initially, as an act of war. And of course, war itself is organized, sanctioned murder.
• “[Tamimi’s] crime, for which she was sentenced by a military court for multiple life terms, was for “choosing the location and securing transportation to reach that location”.

Concerning that last bullet, Wall probably missed out on reading the court papers. Tamimi was indicted on 23 charges. One is for possession of explosives and three concern related offences. 19 relate to deliberate killing and conspiracy to kill. She pleaded guilty to them all. As prisoners in this country may, she addressed the court:

"The deed which I did… leaves me happy. Why? The anger expressed in your faces regarding what I did is the same anger that lies within me and within the entire Palestinian people and is surely even greater than that. 15 killed, 122 injured, this is a small number relative to the many, large numbers of those who are gone, because of you." [From our translation of the Hebrew transcript]

Wall must also have missed a blog post of ours a few weeks back ["5-May-13: Self-confessed jihadist murderer: "With my media card, I was able to enter back and forth, undetected..." in which we said of Wall that

he engages in  advocacy for self-admitted murderers and their deeds. In open societies like the US and Israel, it’s something he has the right to do freely, obnoxiously and even offensively. But what does it mean that The Christian Century still has him on its masthead? Does the editorial board agree with his ‘understanding’ of the actions of people who murder children in the name of jihad? Do they disagree? Will they disavow him and them? Are his views Christian? How Christian is it to embrace the unrepentant murderer of children who says she prays for the chance to do it again?

No one, certainly not James M. Wall, can have thought this woman was framed or tortured into confessing her crimes or misquoted. Wall must have known what every other news reporter and political pundit knew: that Ahlam Tamimi was - and is - unstoppably proud of causing the deaths of Israelis. But it didn't move him.

And now, as CAMERA says, 

Wall, the associate editor of a magazine that prints polemics that come straight out of pre-Holocaust Germany, can also serve as “contributing editor” for Christian Century.

We say: still more disturbing than what Wall and his editor say is the cold absence of critical comment from their own community. Is this stone-walling? Does silence denote consent?

05-May-13: Self-confessed jihadist murderer: "With my media card, I was able to enter back and forth, undetected..."

Convicted and unrepentant murderer Ahlam Tamimi (in July 2012),
explains her outlook on high-profile Kuwaiti talk-show

Anyone who reads our blog, even occasionally, knows that the double-standards, circumlocations and hypocrisy so manifest in the way certain people, certain institutions, certain major broadcasters, certain other parts of the mainstream media, deal with terrorists, terrorism, terror and the murder of children simply enrage us. 

We don't see the issues as political. Terrorism is beyond politics. In fact, it's a sort of litmus test. How you deal with terrorism - after you peel away all the double-talk and jargon - determines the sort of human being you are and how others ought to view you. 

Thoughts like these were on our minds when we wrote eight months ago about an American, a senior and influential journalist in the world of Christian thought, and a man of letters. He is James M. Wall and in a blog post ("23-Aug-12: Theology and sociopaths"), we wrote this about him:

Wall is not marginal to the public discourse of the United States. Nor is he regarded (as far as we can tell) as a shrieking crank or a red-neck. He served as editor of a prominent journal called The Christian Century for 27 years, from 1972 to 1999. Wikipedia calls it "the flagship magazine of U.S. mainline Protestantism" [source]. He continued there as a regular columnist until a few years ago, even after his retirement. Though it appears he has stopped writing for it, his name remains on the masthead as Senior Contributing Editor. These days, Wall writes a blog under the title “Wall Writing”. From where we sit, his output has some quite unpleasant tones. In a December 2011 piece on US politics, for instance, he characterizes pro-Israel Republican candidates as “wear[ing] the Jewish kippah”. But as we learned, Wall is capable of advocacy journalism of a far more pungent sort. In October 2011, he posted a lengthy article to coincide with the extorted release from prison of Ahlam Tamimi, our child's murderer... At about the time he wrote it, in October 2011, an Arab newspaper dotingly quoted Tamimi making this statement: “I have never regretted what I have done, and if given another chance I’ll do it again” [source]. Yet extraordinarily, the Wall piece 'lionizes' her. (That’s the term used by the clear-eyed Christian analyst who pointed us to it). With loving attention to the human aspects of her story, Wall urges his readers to resist the Israeli view of the Jordanian woman's "crimes"; those quote marks around the word crimes appear in Wall's essay. Wall leaves readers in little doubt that the atrocities to which Tamimi confessed in court - atrocities to which she confesses afresh frequently, proudly and in public - were not crimes at all but something very different.

Mohammed Al-Awadi hosts a talk show on Kuwaiti television that
provided a platform for Ahlam Tamimi

Wall's rambling article, entitled “Ahlam and Nezar, A Palestinian Couple Released in The Prisoner Exchange”, makes the argument that Tamimi did what anyone would do if they saw themselves at war. And at the end of the day, what she did was merely logistic. For Mr Wall, it was therefore quite understandable:

[Tamimi’s] crime, for which she was sentenced by a military court for multiple life terms, was for “choosing the location and securing transportation to reach that location”.

We can argue, and we have certainly tried to say over and again, that this is an irresponsibly wrong view of what the convicted murderer Ahlam Tamimi did. 

Today, however, there is no need for us to say it again because she has now said it about as clearly as a person can. 

We have just seen an Arabic-to-English translation, published in the last few days, of what this psychopathic woman says about herself and about what she did. 

It’s in a video that has had wide dissemination via YouTube and other channels right across the Arabic-speaking world since its appearance in July 2012. [In case they disappear, the page is archived here. We archived the YouTube clip itself, the full length version, here.] 

For now, we rely on the translation that appeared Thursday on Walid Shoebat's site. Fluent in Arabic, he gives this intro to his transcript:

Tamimi first teaches Muslims how to best prepare their souls by instructing Muslims how to abandon secular life and worldly things, then how to smuggle terrorists, plant explosives in condensed areas, watch, document statistics, and monitor civilian movements in heavy traffic areas... Tamimi tours the Arab media now and provides expertise on how Muslims – both male and female – can become killing machines. [Shoebat]

Here is Ahlam Tamimi, the murderer of our child and of fifteen other innocents, in her own words: 

Tamimi: I studied all the ideologies of each [terrorist] group in order to decide which one I will join... With my media card I was able to enter back and forth, undetected, to do journalistic interviews in Jerusalem in order to avoid detection by the Zionists. 

Al-Awadi (her interviewer): So you get in and out as a journalist? 

Tamimi: Yes 

Al-Awadi: Beautiful! 

Tamimi: I entered a [terrorist] cell. A cell is constructed by having a leader, then there are different groups; each one is divided into itself... You do not know who the leader is... First, I scouted places to decide where to carry out Jihadi operations... I would wander into Jerusalem to find the best spots to carry out these missions... First, I would scout stores and major shopping malls… schools, restaurants… I would then present my findings to the leader of the cell... I would do a meticulous count on the numbers of people moving in these areas and study it mathematically. I would use my wrist watch and count how many were walking in an area within one hour. So I would make reports that if an operation is conducted in such and such area. Then I would estimate the numbers of casualties; in some cases my number would be 30 Israelis will die and other estimates it would be 50 Israelis that will die... So from this time to that time there would be 70 Israelis who entered this spot. So during lunch for example, from this time to that time, so many Zionists enter this area. The school for example, I would study the morning time when school children would enter. Of course the second phase would be the Jihadi operation itself. I would take the components to be filled up with explosives to Abdullah Barghouti. He of course prepares the explosive charges. I would choose the device myself, based on products that are most sold amongst the Zionists. So I would provide a report, for example, that said the best device is a favorite drink or product. So the explosive device is manufactured to look like this product. So the product on the outside would appear like something that easily looks like the products in the stores and on the inside, it would be a time bomb. Of course, I learned how to operate one of these devices... My other mission is to accompany suicide martyrs. [Archived source]

There are some life-saving lessons here for what is and is not legitimate to do with reporters in dangerous jihad-infected places and times. And when she cryptically says that the "best device is a favorite drink", she is referring to the bomb, disguised as a beer can, that she placed on the shelf of the basement supermarket in the Mashbir Latzarchan building on King George Street, central Jerusalem, ten days before the Sbarro massacre and only 200 meters up the street from the pizza restaurant. In a little-reported prequel to her career as a terrorist, it exploded but fortunately killed and injured no one.

Al Awadi, on whose program she appeared, is described in this US confidential cable as "a Kuwaiti Islamist commentator and regular al-Jazeera talking head". It's sobering to think how many major figures in the Arabic world take such a public, central role in the encouragement of terrorist outrages. (If only more non-Arabs understood Arabic.)

A word about Abdullah Barghouti whom Tamimi mentions in passing. [We have written about him here, here and here.] Barghouti was contracted to custom-assemble the bomb that destroyed the Sbarro restaurant. A clever man with golden hands, he embedded it inside a guitar case to minimize the risk that the man carrying the nail-filled explosive packaged would be intercepted before he brought it to ground zero in the absolute center of Israel's capital city. Tamimi and the young Islamist fanatic who had the bomb on his back passed through the busy Qalandiya security checkpoint en route to Jerusalem. The Israeli soldiers and Border Guard personnel manning the crossing did not stop them, even in a cursory way. Perhaps the sight of a woman dressed in a typically Israeli tank top completed the illusion of a harmless couple of youngsters with music on their minds. 

Barghouti was not there that day. He was in the midst of his busy season. Bombs delivered up by him to his Hamas clients during 2001 brought about the extremely violent deaths by murder of 66 people. The government of Norway, among the most generous providers of development aid to the Palestinian Authority, is currently wrestling with its conscience over the role it has played in funding the PA’s Rewards-for-Terror scheme. That’s not what they call it, but that assuredly is what it is. (There’s some background here. And keep in mind this is a program of the 'moderate' PA, lead by the 'moderate' Mahmoud Abbas'.) Under the scheme, Barghouti will receive a salary this month, and every month for as long as he remains a prisoner of Israel, equivalent to four times the average salary of a PA government worker. The scheme is highly publicized among Palestinian Arabs because the 'moderate' PA wants its citizens to understand the high priority it gives to acts of child-murdering heroism like those undertaken by Barghouti and Tamimi. 

Tamimi has always described herself as an agent of Hamas, though on the day she blew up the Sbarro restaurant, she was the on-camera news-reader for the other Palestinian Arabs, the faction that calls itself the PA, the 'moderate' side of the Palestinian Arab world. Few of the Palestinian Arab viewers watching her read the news that night (August 9, 2001) realized what a central role she took in the massacre on which she was reporting.

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And a word about James M. Wall as well. 

As we noted last summer, he engages in advocacy for self-admitted murderers and their deeds. In open societies like the US and Israel, it’s something he has the right to do freely, obnoxiously and even offensively. But what does it mean that The Christian Century still has him on its masthead? Does the editorial board agree with his ‘understanding’ of the actions of people who murder children in the name of jihad? Do they disagree? Will they disavow him and them? Are his views Christian? How Christian is it to embrace the unrepentant murderer of children who says she prays for the chance to do it again?

Ahlam Tamimi was sentenced to sixteen terms of life imprisonment after her conviction for planning and executing the massacre at central Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant. She walked free in October 2011 as one of the 1,027 murderers, jihadists and assorted other terrorists whom Israel bargained away for the freedom of a hostage, Gilad Shalit, held captive for five years by Hamas. Tamimi subsequently married another unjustly freed murderer (her cousin), and is living in total and unfettered freedom in Jordan from where she is a regular broadcaster on the Al-Quds satellite channel (operated by Hamas). She flies freely around the Arab world and YouTube features dozens of her speeches. Her relentless encouragement of acts of murder in the name of jihad has made her a figure of admiration and stature throughout the Arab world. 

We fought a campaign to have her name removed from the go-free list in October 2011. But we failed. At the time of the Shalit transaction, we wrote [here] that the "media celebrity" Ahlam Tamimi is a "religiously-inspired monster":

Dozens of photographs of her smiling and exultant face are syndicated by the major global newswire services. Her every statement is broadcast and analyzed not only by the terrorists of Hamas and Gaza to whose murderous strand of Islamism she long ago swore allegiance, but also by the mislabeled 'moderates' of Fatah and the PA who are not in the least moderate on the subject of the murder of Jews and the dismemberment of the society we have created here in Israel. The injustice of this person's freedom, and the hypocrisy of those who fail to scream out against it, overwhelm us. They choke us. 

And still do.

23-Aug-12: Theology and sociopaths

Our daughter Malki

We are an ordinary family who, for more than a decade, have known the identity of the murderer of our fifteen year-old daughter, Malki. She is a woman who appears in her own television program each Friday night. She is the central figure in hundreds of YouTube videos.

From a distance (since our own government never communicated with us about this, never allowed us to be heard, never consulted with us), we watched as the woman who brought unspeakable pain into our lives was charged, convicted and sentenced to many terms of life imprisonment. 

Then with a rising sense of horror, we saw a media campaign unfold which presented her as a hero and warrior and that sought her release. We were confident the famous 'red lines' of our government would never be breached and mass murderers of Israeli children would remain behind Israeli bars until the day they drew their last breath. That illusion irretrievably fell away in October 2011.

Even then, having endured the worldwide news coverage of the rapturous welcomes given to the woman in Cairo and Amman, we were unprepared for the steps that followed: the official reception held at Jordan’s Family Court [Corbis image]; the self-hosted weekly television program beamed by satellite throughout the world; the tumultuous crowds in Arab capitals proclaiming their adulation during her visits; the grand public June wedding in which she was the shining, smiling star alongside the convicted, unpardoned and unjustly freed murderer who is now her husband. 

All along, we knew that civilized people everywhere, at least those outside the Arab world, were revolted by the deeds, the declarations, the triumphalism of the barbaric woman with the lying, smiling eyes.

Now meet James M. Wall. His is a name we had never heard until this week. It turns out to be a name worth knowing if, like us, your fifteen year old child was murdered in cold blood along with fourteen other innocent patrons in a restaurant.

As comforting as it might be to think otherwise, Wall is not marginal to the public discourse of the United States. Nor is he regarded (as far as we can tell) as a shrieking crank or a red-neck. He served as editor of a prominent journal called The Christian Century for 27 years, from 1972 to 1999. Wikipedia calls it "the flagship magazine of U.S. mainline Protestantism" [source]. He continued there as a regular columnist until a few years ago, even after his retirement. Though it appears he has stopped writing for it, his name remains on the masthead as Senior Contributing Editor.

These days, Wall writes a blog under the title “Wall Writings”. From where we sit, his output has some quite unpleasant tones. In a December 2011 piece on US politics, for instance, he characterizes pro-Israel Republican candidates as “wear[ing] the Jewish kippah”.

But as we learned, Wall is capable of advocacy journalism of a far more pungent sort. In October 2011, he posted a lengthy article to coincide with the extorted release from prison of Ahlam Tamimi, our child's murderer. We were referred to that article for the first time yesterday, in the wake of what we wrote here and here earlier this week.

At about the time he wrote it, in October 2011, an Arab newspaper dotingly quoted Tamimi making this statement: 

“I have never regretted what I have done, and if given another chance I’ll do it again” [source]. 

Yet extraordinarily, the Wall piece 'lionizes' her. (That’s the term used by the clear-eyed Christian analyst who pointed us to it). With loving attention to the human aspects of her story, Wall urges his readers to resist the Israeli view of the Jordanian woman's "crimes"; those quote marks around the word crimes appear in Wall's essay. Wall leaves readers in little doubt that the atrocities to which Tamimi confessed in court - atrocities to which she confesses afresh frequently, proudly and in public - were not crimes at all but something very different.

A small handful of excerpts from Wall's rambling article entitled “Ahlam and Nezar, A Palestinian CoupleReleased in The Prisoner Exchange” captures the logic of his case:

• “This bias against Palestinians [in the news reports about Israel freeing 1,027 killers and terrorists] was so blatant that… Noam Chomsky was moved to accuse the media of treating the released Palestinian prisoners as “unpeople”. It is time to tell their stories, and to do so without apology.”
• “The Palestinians who were sent to jail… saw themselves as resisting an occupying army, taking actions they believed appropriate to deal with that occupation. What Israel did is what all occupying, colonizing armies do. They punished those who resisted their colonizing... What this comes down to is a conflict of narratives, based on who is telling the story, the military occupiers or those who are resisting occupation/colonization.”
• “From Israel’s perspective, Ahlam played a role in causing a massive act of murder [but] she saw it, initially, as an act of war. And of course, war itself is organized, sanctioned murder.
• “[Tamimi’s] crime, for which she was sentenced by a military court for multiple life terms, was for “choosing the location and securing transportation to reach that location”.

Concerning that last bullet, Wall probably missed out on reading the court papers. Tamimi was indicted on 23 charges. One is for possession of explosives and three concern related offences. 19 relate to deliberate killing and conspiracy to kill. She pleaded guilty to them all. As prisoners in this country may, she addressed the court:

"The deed which I did… leaves me happy. Why? The anger expressed in your faces regarding what I did is the same anger that lies within me and within the entire Palestinian people and is surely even greater than that. 15 killed, 122 injured, this is a small number relative to the many, large numbers of those who are gone, because of you." [Our translation of the Hebrew transcript]

No one, certainly not James M. Wall, can have thought this woman was framed or tortured into confessing her crimes or misquoted. Wall must have known what every other news reporter and political pundit knew: that Ahlam Tamimi was - and is - unstoppably proud of causing the deaths of Israelis. She set out to find a corner of Jerusalem where the number of young Jewish lives that could be snuffed out by a bomb concealed in a guitar case was as large as possible. In this, she succeeded hugely. She says she will do it again if her god gives her the opportunity. We don’t know Wall, but we know he knew this. And yet what he writes about Ahlam Tamimi is imbued with admiration for her. 

What kind of Christian values inform the opinions of a man who cannot bring himself to condemn the murders of fifteen innocents? 

What theological insight brings a man with Wall’s prominence, intelligence, standing in the community, to look right past the overwhelming, explicit pride of a killer who says “I did well. I will do it again. And so should you”? 

If his appreciation of the deeds of this sociopath is not an obscenity, what is?

James M. Wall’s views are hardly the opinions of a nobody. They are uttered by one who speaks from the foremost ranks of Christian leadership in the US. As Senior Contributing Editor of The Christian Century and its driver for more than a quarter century, he and the journal lay claim to formidable credentials since it is

a progressive, ecumenical magazine based in Chicago. Committed to thinking critically and living faithfully, the Century explores what it means to believe and live out the Christian faith in our time. Founded in 1884 as the Christian Oracle, the magazine took its current name at the turn of the 20th century. Notable contributors in the early decades included Jane Addams and Reinhold Niebuhr. In 1963, the Century was the first major periodical to publish the full text of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail." The Century continues to inform and shape mainline Christianity...  [More]

Wall engages in unambiguous advocacy for the self-admitted murderer and her deeds. He has the right to express himself freely, obnoxiously and even offensively. But what does it mean that The Christian Century still has him on its masthead nearly a year after the Tamimi article? Does the editorial board agree with his line? Do they disagree? Will they disavow him and them? Are his views Christian?

Is it Christian to embrace the unrepentant murderer of children who says she prays for the chance to do it again?