23-Nov-20: Four Arab-on-Israeli terror attempts; close to zero media attention

Qalandiya Crossing, the pedestrian part - seen in a 2019 photo
[Image Source]

No one was hurt. But that was surely not the intention of the perpetrators behind four terror attacks directed against Israelis in the past few days. 

In four separate attempts this past weekend, terrorists sought to carry out lethal attacks directed at Israelis targeted at random. 

Two happened on the edges of the capital, Jerusalem, a third in the country's south and the fourth in the Samaria District. None of them individually got much attention, and we don't see any media saying that four in the space of a single weekend means something.

It's reported ["Explosives placed by terrorists near Jerusalem over weekend" | Jerusalem Post. November 22, 2020] that at the Qalandiya Crossing on Jerusalem's north-eastern entrance, two explosive packages were concealed Friday night close to where vehicles drive through. One exploded but failed to cause injury or damage. Witnesses spotted two suspects arriving at the crossing, placing the explosives and fleeing from the scene. A chase ensued with Border Police eventually arresting two under-age suspects in a nearby convenience store. This Arab source names them as Khaled Salim and Ismail Abu Zaidiya, both residents of the Qalandiya "refugee camp".

It didn't end there. In taking the prisoners away, the security people were confronted by dozens of Palestinian Arabs hurling rocks at them. Riot dispersal measures were used and the melee - which could easily have become the story - ended with no injuries.

The second attempt, on Friday night at the ancient Rachel's Tomb near Bethlehem, was thwarted when a lookout spotted a suspect placing an explosive close to the walled complex and running away from the scene. He was pursued by Border Police who caught up with him and placed him under arrest. He is an 18-year-old male from a so-called refugee camp in the Bethlehem area. His explosive failed to detonate.

IDF forces apprehending a terror suspect this past weekend.
No one was hurt which - being Israelis - was the intention.
[Image Source]

A media release quoted in the Jerusalem Post report says "Border Police are working in the Jerusalem Envelope area to strengthen deterrence and thwart terrorism while increasing the deployment of forces in sensitive places where there have been recent attempts to harm civilians and security forces."

Then Saturday night around 9:30 pm, a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel set off the Tzeva Adom (Color Red) missile attack sirens in the southern coastal city of Ashkelon, according to a Ynet report. The resulting explosion caused damage to a warehouse in an industrial zone of the city. But fortunately no injuries - and to state the obvious (whenever missiles are fired into cities by malevolents totally indifferent to outcomes) this could have been a far more troubling event.

Then on Sunday morning in a third hidden explosives incident reported by Jerusalem Post - making it the fourth terror event of this weekend - IDF combat soldiers carrying out routine searches uncovered camouflaged explosives placed just outside the village of al-Mughayyir, south of Jenin. The military assessment is the intention of those who planted the explosives was to harm Israeli soldiers.

Seems a good time to mention that, for the Palestinian Authority, "...rewarding terrorists is not about social welfare. It is about incentivizing and rewarding terror and murder. “Pay for slay” is an abomination that should enjoy universal condemnation." Those sentiments, which are easy to agree with, come from "Lies, damn lies and Palestinian Authority’s ‘pay for slay’ policy", an op ed published by Jewish News Syndicate four days ago. It's authored by Maurice Hirsch who served in past years as director of the IDF Military Prosecution for Judea and Samaria. 

He's the kind of hands-on expert who can be expected to have some well-founded sense of what foreign aid funding achieves once it's handed over to the terror-addicted kleptocrats of the PA.

As it happens, Yossi Kuperwasser of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a former Director General of the Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs and past head of the Research Division of IDF Military Intelligence, released a brief the same day as the Hirsch piece. It's called "Will the Palestinian Authority Stop Paying Terrorists? End the “Pay to Slay” Program?" and he leaves readers with the impression that no they won't. 

With predictable consequences.

11-Jun-18: A young woman is a multiple-stabbing victim in Afula; the assailant fled and is caught [Developing]

Video still shows the moment the alleged stabber,
still in possession of his knife, is shot and
stopped [Source video]

Local news reports starting just before noon today (Monday) said there had been a serious stabbing incident in the Israeli city of Afula. The victim is a still-unnamed young woman in her late teens (that's an estimate by the medical personnel) and the attacker, who feld the scene and was then caught by security personnel, is a Palestinian Arab from Jenin.

Not surprisingly, the suspicions being raised at this hour in the media point to this being a terror attack. But no official statement to that effect has issued yet.

As told by Israel National News

An Israeli teenager is in serious condition after being stabbed multiple times in the northern city of Afula Monday afternoon. The incident occurred outside of the local Aroma cafe at around noon on Monday. The 18-year-old woman who was stabbed was treated by MDA emergency first responders dispatched to the scene. Medical teams then evacuated the victim to HaEmek Medical Center in Afula in very serious condition. Police have opened an investigation into the stabbing incident, and are currently investigating if the attack was in fact terror-related...

Her condition when this was first reported is defined as moderate-to-serious and she is getting emergency treatment at HaEmek hospital in  Afula.

Times of Israel says

Police arrested her suspected attacker, who had fled the scene, after a brief manhunt. The suspect was identified by police as a Palestinian man in his 30s from the northern West Bank city of Jenin. “Police shot the suspect in the leg after calling upon him to stop,” a police spokesperson said. “The suspect was arrested with a knife in his possession.” Police said they were working to determine the motive for the stabbing. Videos of the suspected terrorist’s arrest were quickly posted to social media by bystanders.

Here for instance.

More details when we know them.

11-Mar-18: Why do so many thwarted Arab-on-Israeli terrorists survive?

The IDF Samaria Military Court compound [Image Source]

If you're a regular visitor to this blog, you won't need reminding that when it comes to the deaths of Palestinian Arabs in circumstances that involve the Israeli military, there's rarely just a single agreed version of the facts. Our question in this post is: why are such deaths so rare?

Bear with us.

The Palestinian Arab side are currently - as they have periodically for years - urging news readers to accept that an innocent fisherman ["High Court delays release of Gaza fisherman’s body", Times of Israel, March 8, 2018] was killed in cold blood by Israeli naval forces. That he's dead is sadly beyond dispute, but the circumstances are not:

“We are sure that the wounded are fishermen who went out to sea to make a living – and nothing else,” the head of the union told Haaretz daily... Incidents involving IDF using excessive or deadly force against the Palestinians have been on the rise since US President Donald Trump announced his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the US embassy there." [RT, February 25, 2018]

Another Gazan fisherman was shot dead by Egyptian forces [Al Araby, January 13, 2018] a few weeks earlier. But for reasons that most readers can intuit, considerably less media attention has been paid to that.

Which brings us to events that unfolded in Israel's Gaza-envelope communities this morning:

Gaza resident arrested after crossing into Israel with grenade, knife | Times of Israel | March 11, 2018, 10:04 am | The IDF arrested two Palestinians early Sunday after they separately crossed the border fence from the Gaza Strip into Israel, one of them carrying weapons. The military said in a statement that troops apprehended the two Gazans shortly after they had crossed the fence. One was found carrying a grenade and a knife. The army said he is suspected of planning to carry out a terror attack in Israel. One of the suspects is from the north of the Strip while the other was from the south. The army said the two incidents appeared unrelated due to the different locations. The two were transferred to security forces for interrogation, likely by the Shin Bet security service. Gazans are apprehended crossing into Israel fairly regularly, many of them apparently seeking to escape an increasingly difficult humanitarian situation in the Strip. Suspects are believed to sometimes carry weapons in the hopes of being sent to Israeli prison rather than back to the Palestinian enclave.

It's too soon to categorize today's two Gazan Arab arrivals. Are they terrorists? Social climbers? Economic refugees?

But it's not too soon to absorb the fact that both are alive. And that at least one of them came equipped with weapons. And that Gazans entering Israel always arrive without badges stuck to their foreheads announcing that they are on jihadist missions and looking to create mayhem. That assessment has to be made in the heat of the pursuit by IDF service personnel.

Given the blood-curdling ideology which Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other like-minded terror organizations successfully pump into the heads of their followers and subjects, it's usually strategically wise to assume the most malevolent interpretation.

The intercepted pipe-bomb from the February 13, 2018 attack. The metal
ball bearings are there to rip apart the flesh of the victims [Image Source]

Just to reinforce that point, all of these incidents of terror-centered Arab-on-Israeli violence were recorded in the past 14 hours - and all were almost certainly intended to produce deaths:

• Three Palestinian Arabs armed with Molotov cocktails were apprehended by IDF forces near Route 90, one of Israel's most strategic arteries, running from the northern border all the way to Eilat in the south. It's Israel's longest road. Israel National News says: "The possibility that they are members of a terror cell that threw Molotov cocktails along central roads over the past month is being investigated."
• Around 10:55 pm last night, an IDF post located just outside Psagot, an Israeli community of about 2,000 residents, came under shooting attack.
• Then near midnight, shots were fired at soldiers manning the busy Beitunia Crossing, a short distance north of Jerusalem and close to Givat Ze'ev (no injuries, no serious damage). A manhunt is underway in both cases. The distance between the sites of the two shootings is only about 30 km.
• Police, quoted by Times of Israel, say two Palestinian Arab children, both of them 16 years old and living in Jenin, were stopped this morning by Border Police guards at the security checkpoint next to the entrance to the Samaria Military Court. It's in northern Israel in the village of Salem and close to Megiddo (called Armageddon in the Bible). They were found to be carrying pipe bombs - one per boy - concealed on their bodies. Each one also had a lighter "with which officers suspect they intended to ignite the bombs. The entrance to the court was temporarily blocked while a sapper inspected the devices, which contained explosives, and neutralized them." The background is extraordinary: though it may come as a surprise to even dedicated followers of news from our area, this morning's weaponized children were carrying out the seventh thwarted attempt at pipe-bombing that same court complex in the past four months. Previous intercepts happened on February 14, 2018 (three Palestinian Arabs arrested); February 13, 2018 (single attacker, his pipe bomb packed with metal shards); February 7, 2018 (single Palestinian Arab male attacker);  December 28, 2017 - again, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy with a pipe bomb); December 17, 2017 (a Palestinian Arab with two pipe bombs - one attached to his body under his clothing, and a second one in his coat pocket); October 15, 2017 (single attacker, one pipe bomb). Again - all aiming at the same target.

Motives don't get enough attention in this part of the world. Perhaps that's because the urgency of the task at hand and the potential price of the security people failing to act quickly enough. The result is  that there's always a premium on decisiveness and on certain prevention.

Fortunately for those Gazan infiltrators who come across the border for the personal benefits of the experience, and for the pipe-bombers turning up like lemmings at the doors of the Samaria Military Court compound, the IDF usually doesn't shoot first and ask questions later, at least when circumstances permit. If they acted differently, the number of dead thwarted terror-attackers would be substantially greater.

Let us know if you ever see a mainstream news article that reaches the same conclusion.

18-Jan-16: Multiple Arab-on-Israeli attacks and a Jewish mother is murdered at her front door

Kiryat Moshe's Harav Reines Street in Jerusalem [Google Maps]

Sunday was a hard day here, and made harder still by the way life-and-death events affecting Israelis are being routinely swept under the carpet or simply ignored by the vast swathes of the global news-reporting industry.

The day's first notable violence came early Sunday morning here in Jerusalem. What could easily have become a repeat of a terrible tragedy that struck this city 14 months ago ["19-Nov-14: In the wake of Tuesday's murderous attack on Jewish worshipers in Jerusalem"] was averted. The line between what might have been and what was, and the impact on many lives, is terrifyingly thin.

Three Palestinian Arab men were stopped and arrested outside the Heichal Yaakov synagogue on Harav Reines Street in the capital's Kiryat Moshe quarter soon after dawn - peak hour in many synagogues - after arousing suspicions among people who watch for precisely such threats. The three turned out to be armed with crude but lethal knives and according to an Israel National News report

are believed to have planned to carry out an attack on the synagogue as it was packed with worshipers attending morning prayers.

After interrogating them, the police say they are open to a far milder interpretation: that the weapons were for car-theft purposes, but that the investigation remains ongoing [Times of Israel, January 17, 2016].

The would-be knife-attacker: Unharmed though
her lethal intentions were thwarted,
perhaps postponed

A stabbing attack was thwarted at the western entrance to Kiryat Arba, near Hebron a little later in the day. A Palestinian Arab woman - named in Arab media as Nivin Muhsin al-Jaabari, and said to be 18,.was intercepted with a knife secreted in her handbag. Forced at gunpoint to crouch on the road and remove her coat, her concealed weapon was revealed, and she was arrested; no one was hurt.

Another attempted stabbing attack took place during Sunday afternoon at the Samaria Regional Brigade Junction, better known here as Bahad 3. Wikipedia explains that Bahad [in Hebrew: בה"ד‎] stands for Basis Hadrakha meaning training base. There are several Bahads around the country; Bahad 3 is a school for infantry.

Alert soldiers opened fire before he could harm any of his intended victims. The attacker is now dead. An Associated Press bulletin names him as Wissam Qasrawi, 21, from a village called Mesilyeh near Jenin.

By far the most serious of today's Arab-on-Israeli violence is the murder of an Israeli woman, the mother of six children, in a horrific stabbing attack at the door of her home in Otniel, a town in southern Har Hevron.

The victim of today's murder in Otniel, and her husband

We now know the murdered woman is Dafna Meir, 39 (though it's striking that her name is absent from many of the non-Israeli news reports - like that of AP - that mentioned the killing). She was a hospital nurse who, with her husband, adopted two children to add to the four to whom she gave birth.

Her killer is on the loose, and a major manhunt is now underway. Says the BBC, without ever resorting the use of the word "terror":

Security forces are hunting for the attacker using helicopters and military vehicles.
Roadblocks have been set up, residents were told to lock themselves inside their homes and flares lit the night sky as the manhunt went on.

Witnesses to the attack, quoted by Israel National News, say the killer worked in the town "and used his familiarity with the community to carry out the attack." From other sources, we understand he worked in construction. His victim will be remembered as a woman of principles and constructive activism - as well as fierce and heroic determination:

Initial investigations indicated that Meir wrestled with the attacker in an effort to protect the three of her children who were in the home during the attack. The stabber fled the scene without continuing the attack and before he could reach the children. Media reports said her teenage daughter witnessed the attack and described the terrorist to authorities... [Times of Israel, January 17, 2016]

Mrs Meir, of blessed memory, will be laid to rest later today (Monday) in Jerusalem's Har Hamenuchot cemetery, just a short walk from Kiryat Moshe where Sunday's violence began.

19-Dec-15: Saturday afternoon terror-knifings in Ra'anana

Today's stabber was pursued and caught in a
Ra'anana backyard [Video image grab]

In these stressful times, the departure of the Sabbath - at sundown on Saturday evenings - is more and more accompanied by a degree of trepidation for those of us who disconnect ourselves from news sources during the 25 hours of holy withdrawal. Tonight unfortunately the news is disturbing.

Police in Ra'anana, a Tel Aviv suburb, pursued and arrested a Palestinian Arab late this afternoon after he attacked several Israelis, inflicting serious knife injuries. The city is no stranger to such malevolence, having been the scene of two other Arab-on-Israeli stabbings in a single day on October 13, 2015 (see our post).

Today's terrorist is a 20-year-old male from a village near Jenin, illegally in Israel according to the IDF (quoted by Times of Israel). He was evidently delivered into Ra’anana by an accomplice with a car; he or she fled the scene and is the subject of a manhunt at this hour.

There are three Israeli victims: a seriously injured 40-year-old man and a lightly injured woman both stabbed on Ra'anana's Anielewicz Street. Another woman was injured about a block away on Ramchal Street. Witnesses, quoted by Ynet, say the knife-man attempted to get inside a synagogue, presumably in search of additional victims, some 300 meters from where he was apprehended. The Ynet report identifies him as Mahmoud Faisal Basharat, from a village called Tamun. The English-language edition of the Ma'an News Agency report on the attack says he is from Tammum. We suspect both have it wrong and that his home town is Al-Yamun.

No one has the right to be surprised by today's attempted murders. We noted in a post this past week ["14-Dec-15: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?"] that stabbing attacks on Israelis, a feature of Arab/Jewish co-existence for more than a century, have phenomenal support among today's Palestinian Arab public:

There's no room for doubt that terrorism has the Palestinian Arabs firmly in its grip. The numbers show clear, unambiguous and widespread support for a violent, armed intifada against the Israelis: 60% support it today, up from 57% in the PSR September 2015 poll. The cohort most opposed to a two-state solution and most supportive of "an armed intifada and stabbings" is the one aged between 18 and 22. Two-thirds of Palestinian Arabs say they are in favour of stabbing attacks on Israelis. There's no number published for how many of them support those other violent means (shootings, vehicle-rammings, nuclear bombs, poisoning the wells.)

There is close-to-zero likelihood that the Palestinian Arab political leadership or any part of it will criticize, let alone condemn, today's stabbings. That's something to bear in mind the next time the appalling head of the Palestinian Authority ["Palestinian violence is justified popular uprising, says Mahmoud Abbas", December 14, 2015] is quoted in the news saying how opposed he is to acts of terror.

Also a reminder of where the prime minister of Sweden, a noted expert on events in Ra'anana and other parts of the Jewish state, stands on these matters. Here's how he was quoted by Israel National News two weeks ago:

Amid rapidly-deteriorating relations between the two countries, Sweden's prime minister has come under fire for declaring that the recent spate of stabbing attacks in Israel are not terrorist attacks. Speaking to the Swedish TT news agency, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said of the Palestinian attacks, which have claimed the lives of 22 people and left hundreds more wounded in just over two months: "No, it is not classified as [terrorism]... There is an international classification regarding what constitutes or does not constitute [terror]. As far as I know, the [stabbing attacks in Israel] are not defined as terror." Soon after, however, the Swedish PM reached out to TT and attempted to clarify what he described as a "misunderstanding" regarding his remarks, likely realizing the potential for backlash.

Not for the first time, we're obliged to point out that there is a great amount of willful silliness expressed about terror by politicians and analysts. In a literal sense, they threaten the lives and welfare of all of us.

10-Nov-15: Qalqilya where the strings are pulled by Hamas and Qatar

Marching for Hamas in the center of Qalqilya, May 13, 2011
[Image Source]

Hamas controls the Gaza Strip. But it's often not fully appreciated how much Hamas' Islamist tentacles now reach well inside the second of the Palestinian Arab entities, the one supposedly controlled by Fatah and the Mahmoud Abbas clique.

In the 2006 Palestinian Arab municipal elections, Qalqilya, a city of more than 40,000 located right on the edge of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, elected a Hamas candidate as mayor. He was subsequently replaced in the course of intra-Arab intrigues and Fatah has been in charge since then. But in some significant respects, Hamas is still the local force to be reckoned with.

In the early hours of this morning (Tuesday), Israeli security forces - a blend of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), the IDF, and personnel of the Israel Police - converged on Qalqilya. From reports, the impression is of a massive operation including the elite Duvdevan unit undercover soldiers Egoz commando unit of the Golan Brigade, undercover Border Police officers from the Judea and Samaria district, and soldiers of the IDF's Kfir infantry brigade's Duchifat battalion, and the Artillery Corps' Reshef and Namer battalions.

No secret about the Hamas presence in Qalqilya [Image Source: 2011 march]

The Jerusalem Post's report says the raiders

targeted, among others, the alleged local Hamas commander, who worked to renew Hamas activity in the Kalkilya region and in surrounding villages. The activities allegedly included "preparing the ground for terrorist activities," the Shin Bet said. The Hamas operatives were orchestrated and received instructions, as well as a high degree of funding, from Hamas headquarters in Qatar and in the Gaza Strip, "which assisted in building up the infrastructure," the Shin Bet added. Security forces raided addresses and arrested 24 Hamas operatives, some of whom served repeated past jail terms for past Hamas military activities, the intelligence agency said. Security forces also seized more than NIS 35,000 during the raids... "The Hamas infrastructure in Kalkilya is one of Hamas's oldest in the West Bank," the Shin Bet said. "This episode uncovers the ongoing activities of Hamas headquarters abroad and in the Gaza Strip, as well as the activities of local West Bank infrastructures, to realize their goal of building up their forces, with a view of reaching organizational and military readiness... Their end goal is to carry out terrorist attacks and engage in military activity against Israeli targets..." [Jerusalem Post, November 10, 2015]

A total of 36 terrorism suspects, including the 24 Hamas people from Qalqilya, were taken into custody overnight. along with firearms and ammunition. Other Israeli raids this morning led to arrests of Palestinian Arabs in Shechem/Nablus (2 arrests), Bethlehem (3), Hebron (5), Jericho.(1) [source: Ma'an News Agency]

Is there any realistic Israeli expectation that Hamas has been uprooted from those places? No. Hamas is clearly present and embedded throughout Judea and Samaria - the mis-named West Bank (west of what? Jordan), and growing in influence.

But note also the malign influence of Qatar where the First Lady of the United States spent several days last week, departing on Friday after canceling ("because of bad weather") a second Middle East stop in Jordan. The cancellation left her "extremely disappointed", according to a Gulf Times report.

Head of Hamas, Meshaal lives far from the rigours and dangers of Gaza
in Qatar. Why? Ah, that would require a long explanation about the central
role of money in his brand of terror [Image Source]

Khaled Mashaal, the most inside of the Hamas terrorism insiders and a man with a personal fortune measured in the billions of dollars, has lived luxuriously in Qatar since 2012.

Qatar is, in many ways, the ideal perch from which to safely oversee the spread of Hamas' influence and tentacles inside the arch-rival PA's roiling fiefdom.

Which leaves us to observe that Qatar has to be an odd place for Michelle Obama to spend time. Astoundingly rich because of the gas located deep below its arid sandy landscape, Qatar (to quote Wikipedia)

buys influence in Western countries through investments and donations...  [investing its money] extensively in London real estate, and the regime has also made donations to prominent research centers in the United States. At the same time, Qatar maintains ties to Western adversaries, including Iran, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and extremist elements in Syria...

That kind of balancing act probably explains why Qatar is so careful with what it reveals to its friends and citizens. To illustrate, if you look now at the current edition of the local newspaper, the Gulf Times (online here), you will see it carries a detailed report of the Israeli raid on Qalqilya, based on a syndicated AFP article (here). The AFP version mentions the connection to string-pullers in Qatar. The Qatar version (here) does not.

If you're wondering - yes, other publications that subscribe to AFP's syndication service, like Al-Arabiya (based in Dubai), The Malaysian Insider, and Daily Mail UK among others - also published the AFP report but did include the reference to Qatar.

03-Nov-15: Adequately-equipped knifer intercepted en route

The security crossing [Image Source]

The Jalameh/Gilboa security crossing is in the news this morning for the third time in a few days [yesterday, and Sunday]. Israel National News reports today that a Palestinian Arab male -

was arrested on Tuesday morning at the Gilboa Crossing in Samaria, located near Jenin. The terrorist had a pipe bomb and a knife on his possession and was clearly on his way to conduct a terror attack, likely in the urban coastal region where the crossing leads to and where two attacks took place on Monday. Security forces stationed at the crossing identified the terrorist as he approached the checkpoint in a suspicious manner and proceeded to arrest him, firing in the air to get him to stop and submit. Upon investigation, he was found to be carrying a knife and pipe bomb...

The Jerusalem Post says the suspect

was arrested on the Palestinian side of the crossing, and confessed to soldiers that he was planning an attack, an army spokeswoman said. Security forces took the suspect in for questioning. There were no injuries in the incident.

Pre-emptive security measures like the one that stopped this morning's attacker get far too little credit for the life-saving results they quietly achieve. This isn't a free-speech or equal-opportunity matter but a recognition that we are surrounded by people who individually and as a society have a deep and poorly understood commitment to causing us the greatest possible harm. And with no red lines.

[Highly recommended background reading: "What Do Palestinians Want? It’s time to take a close look at an often ignored subject: what ordinary Palestinians think about Israel, Jews, and terrorist attacks on civilians" | Daniel Polisar, Mosaic Magazine, November 2, 2015]

19-Oct-14: Human bomb intercepted by IDF near Jenin? [UPDATE: He was not armed]

A news flash from the Jerusalem Post, the substance of which is unconfirmed as we write this (Sunday, 12:20 pm):

Defense Ministry personnel arrested a suspicious Palestinian at the Jalameh crossing near Jenin in the West Bank on Sunday. Police sappers were on the scene checking if a device that the suspect was wearing on his person is an explosive device.

Times of Israel has more:

Israeli security forces arrested a Palestinian man Sunday near the northern West Bank city of Jenin on suspicion that he was planning to carry out a suicide bombing attack in an Israeli city across the Green Line. The man was apprehended at a checkpoint next to the Palestinian town of Jalameh on the northern border of the West Bank, after security forces noticed what appeared to be an explosive vest strapped to his torso, Israel Radio reported. Sappers were attempting to dismantle the device while police interrogated the man at a facility adjacent to the checkpoint, according to the report. The checkpoint was closed to traffic and security personnel were searching the area for additional explosives.

And here's an update as of 2:30 pm Israel time, Sunday:

The Jalama crossing north of Jenin was closed after a Palestinian wearing a suspected explosive device arrived at the area. Investigators from the Ministry of Defense, responsible for the crossing, examined the suspect, while police dealt with the device. However, it was eventually revealed that the man was in fact unarmed. [Israel National News]

Sidenote: While this may read like a strange narrative for those unfamiliar with daily life here and the phenomenon of "hefetz hashud" (Hebrew for suspicious object) - and the turmoil that follows - this kind of thing happens often. Most people here realize being constantly alert implies being wrong some or even much of the time, which works out far better than failing to identify those not-quite-sure-about-them dangers. But beware of media sources that report suspicions as certainties.

11-Apr-14: A gunfight and its far-away victims

Al-Hija: The Telegraph could have reproduced
this martyr poster as easily as we have. But
the editors there know how this messes with
the narrative they seek to spin [Image Source]

Here in Israel where reporters tend invariably to speak Hebrew and often Arabic as well, they don't always get the facts perfectly right. They also don't always avoid putting a political spin on things. But at least they usually have the professional skill and outlook to take the trouble to provide context for the consumers of their reports, particularly when the story concerns fighting and/or terrorist actions.

Over at the Telegraph newspaper in London, we have the impression they operate according to a much lower set of expectations to judge from a report in yesterday's paper.

An article called "'It's over': Palestinian militants in Jenin believe peace process is at an end", written by Robert Tait, a reporter, paints a picture of Arab despair in the face of Israeli belligerence. It reflects a fairly clear agenda that encourages readers to sympathize with the plight of the residents of the city that Israelis have come to know as a major center of terrorism:

An ear-splitting explosion in the dead of night seemed to herald the moment when Palestinian residents of Jenin refugee camp decided that negotiations with Israel were not taking them on the path to peace. The blast was caused by a massively-armed Israeli anti-terror unit blowing off the doors of the "safe house" where Hamza Abu Alheja, a wanted Hamas militant, had been tracked down after months of hiding in the densely-populated West Bank camp. A fearful fire fight followed in which a torrent of heavy missiles wreaked destruction on the two-storey dwelling, where another 15 people, including women and children, had been asleep... The mayhem ended with the death of Mr Abu Alheja, 22, who fired back at his pursuers and then tried to escape by jumping from an upstairs window before being shot through the head by a sniper. Two other men, Mohammad Abu Zena, 19, described as a member of Islamic Jihad, and Yazan Jabarin, said to have been on his way to work in a bakery, were killed later after the Israeli force clashed with Mr Abu Alheja's supporters as they tried to carry his body to his family home.

This Alheja is key to the account. Who is he, apart from being 22 and now deceased?

Mr Abu Alheja, the son of a prominent Hamas militant serving nine life sentences in Israel after being jailed in 2002, was described by an army spokesman as "a ticking time bomb" responsible for past attacks on Israelis and in the process of planning more.

You now know everything that Tait wants his readers to know about the departed man. But there's more that he and his editors chose not to share.

In Israel, the dead man is known as Hamza Al-Hija, and as an active Hamas terrorist operating under the noses of the Palestinian Authority officials who govern Jenin.

A Times of Israel report from Saturday March 22, 2014, says that early that morning a joint IDF, Shin Bet and Border Police raid in Jenin sought to apprehend him on suspicion of involvement in a plot to carry out a major terrorist attack which, as Israelis know too well, means an attack on Israeli civilians.

The house in Jenin was surrounded by armed Israeli security people. The men inside evidently decided to shoot their way out. In addition to Al-Hija, two other Arab men were killed in the ensuing fire fight: Mahmud Abu Zeina, 25, connected with Palestinian Islamic Jihad; and Yazen Jabarin, 22, a terrorist in the Fatah al-Aqsa Brigades. A not so unusual symmetry with one representative of each of the three major armed terror groups active in the PA's domain.

It's notable that Tait fails to mention the foreseeable consequence of the gunmen deciding to shoot their way out, notwithstanding the many civilians inside. Tait says "15 people, including women and children". One wonders why he somehow neglected to mention that none of them, other than the gunmen, were harmed by the IDF. Is that irrelevant? Does that say not something about the intentions and capabilities of the Israeli security people who find it necessary to enter Jenin on occasion and to apprehend armed practitioners of terror in densely populated neighbourhoods? Would referring to this somehow mess up the narrative for Tait and his editors?

IDF Spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, quoted in the Times of Israel, said al-Hija opened fire on the IDF forces before he was killed. Also, that he was “wanted for numerous shooting and bombing attacks as well as planning future acts of terrorism... a ticking time bomb” who was intent on killing Israelis.

Times of Israel goes on to quote

A Gaza-based media outlet associated with Hamas [that] tweeted shortly after Abu al-Hija’s death that sources said the dead man had been “preparing a major operation” against Israel. 

This is not unusual; the Palestinian Arab terror industry thrives on the making of what it terms 'martyrs'. Not only are they not shy of the savagery in which these men engage; they enthusiastically celebrate it.

A senior Israeli political figure, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, is also quoted by Times of Israel. He calls the Jenin raid

“an important thwarting which prevented a planned terrorist attack that was meant to be carried out against Israeli targets, and thus saved lives.” 

Perhaps this might have been mentioned in passing by the Telegraph's man on the spot. But to be frank, we're guessing that Tait has a political outlook that differs from Israel's defense minister, and from the army's official spokesperson. He's probably less interested in the saving of innocent Israeli lives than we are.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. But no one - and that certainly includes newspaper reporters with pretensions to objectivity - is entitled to their own reality. There's background on the dead gunman that anyone with Google could have easily found. Tait's story delivers almost none of it.

Now on to the father mentioned in the Tate piece: Jamal Abu al-Hija. Tait's readers know only that he is:

a prominent Hamas militant serving nine life sentences in Israel after being jailed in 2002

leaving many/most of them to believe Al-Hija senior is yet one more in that endless, sad parade of political prisoners and other Arabs unfairly thrown behind bars because of Zionist political whims. A militant. An activist. A dissident, perhaps.

In reality the father

is a convicted Hamas leader who is currently incarcerated in Israeli prison. He was arrested in 2002 and sentenced to nine life sentences for involvement in at least six bombings, including the Meron Junction attack that killed nine Israelis in 2002 and the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria bombing that killed 15 in 2001.

Tait and the editors at the Telegraph can gloss over such blood-drenched history but the Times of Israel's editors and reporters can't and shouldn't and didn't. We - the parents of a child murdered in that Sbarro bombing in which Al-Hija Senior played a role - won't.

Tait's piece goes on to provide, in that sadly familiar way in which so many European news channels indulge, a megaphone for the voices of terror in Jenin, wrapped up in the language of threat and doom that alert readers will understand is the result of Israeli wretched excess etc.

Yet another morality fable - emphasis on fable - from the mills of the agenda-driven section of the news industry, the part that is up to its eyebrows in lethal journalism.

8-Apr-14: When PA's "peace" negotiator says Hamas savages are not terrorists, what does this say about "peace"?

Erekat, Kerry [Image Source]

It seems there's yet another round of let's-set-aside-our-little-differences-and-just-get-on-together going on between the terror-loving Fatah movement and the terror-obsessed Hamas organization. Here's a taste of the creative thinking that it has now produced.

A Middle East Monitor report published on Sunday quotes Saeb Erekat, a perennial insider in the Palestinian ruling elite, speaking this past Friday at a two-day conference in Ramallah of The Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Strategic Studies. Here's what the great man, speaking in Arabic, pronounced:

"Hamas is a Palestinian movement, is not and will never be a terrorist organisation".

From a different source but referring to the same event, Israel National News says that he

called on Hamas to implement all previous agreements with Fatah in order to "fight together against Israel... The political movements have an obligation to resolve their differences at the ballot box, and not through bullets... I hereby declare, in the name of President Mahmoud Abbas and the directorate of Fatah, that Hamas is a Palestinian movement, and is not and never was a terror group..."

Before taking this apart, let's tune in to a recent, stunningly sharp analysis of Erekat from the Turkish think-tank SETA:

Having resigned eight times in the last 20 years over peace talk impasses, Dr. Erekat has a long history of saying one thing and doing the other. In the 45 minute conversation [for Al Jazeera's "Head to Head" program] the disquieting chief negotiator demonstrated a worrying case of incoherence and disharmony of thoughts... Dr. Erekat's incoherence mirrors the lack of harmony between what the PA says it is doing and what the PA is actually doing. This cognitive dissonance is perhaps the greatest burden on the Palestinian people today..." ["The Cognitive Dissonance of Saeb Erekat", March 15, 2014]

Erekat and ever-attentive reporters,
June 2013 [Image Source]

Reading Erekat say Hamas "is not and never was a terror group" does not mean he knows less about that thuggish group than we do. 

• We know from the Wikileaks papers that he made his contempt for the Hamas savages known in 2007 when he told a European politician “I can’t stand Hamas." 
• As for being aware of their actual nature, a program broadcast on the Hamas-controlled Al-Aqsa television network told its viewers in Erekat's native tongue that "killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah". 
• And as we know, Hamas proudly took full credit for the massacre at a central Jerusalem pizza shop that took the lives of fifteen innocent victims in 2001. Since one of those victims was our daughter, Malki, we're in a position to invite anyone who wants text or video of the numerous celebrations by Hamas of that achievement to be in touch with us. And if anyone seriously doubts that pure, unadulterated terrorism is what Hamas teaches Arab children in the formal, informal and summer educational programs carried out in the terror-infested Gaza Strip in its name, we are ready to oblige.

Erekat, a well-connected person, knows these truths no less well than the rest of us do. It's clear he doesn't mean to dispute them. He's comfortable with them. For a man of his moral flexibility and political chutzpah, terrorism in the name of a cause for which he is deeply sympathetic is simply not terrorism.

But none of that is the actual problem; the issue is not with Erekat. As the Turks said, he is a man of "incoherence", and they were being polite and restrained. The problem - the far greater problem - is with all those editors, analysts, politicians and civil servants who deal with this disgraceful man as if he were the genuine article, as a man seeking peace. 

He resigns again. The 2011 edition of
an Erekat performance with so many encores.
And media professionals don't know this?

When they describe him in their speeches and articles as the chief Palestinian "peace" negotiator for the past two decades, they are willingly buying into whitewashing a public career characterized over decades by dishonesty and malevolence. They also overlook the man's drama-queen tendency that has produced a series of highly public Ereket resignations [see "Erekat: 20 years of goodbyes"], all of them quietly reversed when the media's attention moved on.

To give just a couple of fact-related instances from a long list...

Speaking live to CNN in 2002, Erekat said Israeli forces were attacking Arafat’s compound in Ramallah. He described shooting, shelling, an injured Palestinian policeman that the Israelis were preventing from being evacuated by ambulance. CNN then crossed live to its correspondent at the Arafat compound while the interview was still underway to report on what was going on there, which was absolutely nothing. [Source: Honest Reporting].

Erekat, cynically exploiting his media credibility, notoriously promoted the fiction during Operation Defensive Shield (Israel's response to a crescendo of Palestinian Arab human bomb attacks on civilian Israelis) that Israeli forces had savagely killed "523" people in Jenin. "I have 1,600 names, missing people from the refugee camp. I have mothers calling me speaking about missing their daughters, their sons. I have husbands missing their wives. I have parents missing their grandparents." Putting it beyond doubt, he told the news media (according to a CNN transcript): "A real massacre was committed in the Jenin refugee camp". 

The impact of his histrionics is reflected in key news reports such as the one from The Guardian that asserted "Israel's international reputation slumped to its lowest point for two decades yesterday..." Erekat was at the heart of that blood libel. As a CAMERA report pointed out at the time, no one in the mainstream media seriously challenged the man's facts or motivations. The subsequent findings, that several dozen Palestinian Arabs were killed in the Jenin battle, the majority of them combatants, came too late to reverse the damage caused by this assault of pure, unadulterated propaganda, as CAMERA's report termed it.

Close ties to the terrorists. Reuters image from a Damascus
meeting of Hamas politburo deputy chief
Moussa Abu Marzouk, Khaled Meshaal of Hamas,
Mahmoud Abbas, Saeb Erekat

It's neither surprising nor especially problematic that Erekat says the blood-drenched Hamas "is not and never was a terror group..." unless you think he is a reliable source of facts and someone who strives to bring peace to the conflict. People can choose to believe this and ignore the evidence. 

But real questions need to be directed at certain others.

• Since it's unreasonable to think those who package and distribute the news are less aware of what Saeb Erekat does and says than we are, why do they continue to provide him with the indispensable credibility and exposure that he craves and exploits?
• In this light, how surprising is it that the Palestinian Authority demands the release of growing numbers of convicted murderers and publicly celebrates their crimes as great achievements and heroic deeds? In what parallel universe would this be central to something called a peace process?
• Why does the US State Department continue to decline to answer this simple question? Those convicted, imprisoned and unrepentant Palestinian Arab murderers whose freedom is being demanded by the Abbas regime who see them as heroes - are they freedom fighters, as Erekat implies? Or are they terrorists?

23-Mar-14: Peace, trust and Mahmoud Abbas

Demonstrating the utility of utterly flexible principles, the man at the top of the Palestinian Arab power structure, Mahmoud Abbas, is quoted in an Associated Press report tonight calling for the Obama administration "to intervene to save the peace talks".

Alert readers may recall yesterday's somewhat different message from Abbas, one in which he "rejected most of the proposals made by Obama during their meeting at the White House"... and presented himself to the Palestinian 'street' as the political figure with "the guts to say no to Obama..."

This Saturday variation on the Friday man is connected to what happened in Jenin today. The AP version events comes in a Mohammed Ballas report:

"Israeli troops killed three Palestinians in an early morning raid that was followed by a clash with angry protesters in a West Bank town on Saturday, the military and Palestinian security officials said, in the deadliest incident in months... [It] started with an Israeli raid, which the military said aimed to arrest Hamza Abu el-Heija, a 22-year-old Hamas operative wanted for involvement in shooting and bombing attacks against Israelis. Lt. Col. Peter Lerner described el-Heija as a "ticking bomb" and said he was wanted for months and was allegedly in the final stages of planning a major shooting attack against Israelis. Palestinians officials said the military ringed the house in the Jenin refugee camp overnight and ordered el-Heija outside. When he refused to come out, the soldiers stormed the building and a shootout ensued. Lerner said everyone but el-Heija had left the building before the shootout. The military says el-Heija first shot an attack dog that was sent inside and then opened fire on the troops outside, wounding two soldiers. When he attempted to escape while still shooting at the Israelis, the troops returned fire and killed him, Lerner said. [AP]

So just where was Abbas and his PA forces in all this? Avi Issacharoff, writing in the Times of Israel today, explains that there's a "new reality in the refugee camps of the West Bank", and here's how it looks:

Palestinian Authority security forces generally stay out of the camps, and especially those in Jenin and Nablus. PA forces did try to arrest Abu al-Hija a few months ago, an incident that prompted intense Palestinian public criticism of the PA. Lesson learned, PA security personnel have since stayed away. Israel, as Saturday’s events showed, however, has not. Hamza Abu al-Hija is from his family’s second generation of wanted Hamas operatives, the son of one of the icons of the Islamist group in the West Bank, Jamal Abu al-Hija, who’s been in prison in Israel since 2002. The father, who lost an eye and a hand in an explosion at the beginning of the Second Intifada, is serving nine life terms for involvement in at least six bombings, including the Meron Junction attack that killed nine Israelis in 2002 and the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria bombing that killed 15 in 2001. Israel had tried in December to arrest Abu al-Hija the younger, but he escaped, and fierce clashes ensued between IDF troops and hundreds of Palestinians at the time. [Times of Israel]

In another report tonight, Israel's Channel 2 News expanded on the comprehensive rejection put forward by Abbas in Washington earlier in the week:

Abbas rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that he recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He also refused to abandon the Palestinian demand for a “right of return” for millions of Palestinians and their descendants — a demand that, if implemented, would drastically alter Israel’s demographic balance and which no conceivable Israeli government would accept. And finally, he refused to commit to an “end of conflict,” under which a peace deal would represent the termination of any further Palestinian demands of Israel.

For the record, President Barack Obama - plainly ignoring the photos we published here ["20-Mar-14: Questions to visiting politicians about what lies at the heart of a peace process"] on Friday - summed up Abbas in the White House this week by calling him:

a leader who “has consistently renounced violence, has consistently sought a diplomatic and peaceful solution that allows for two states, side by side in peace and security — a state that allows for the dignity and sovereignty of the Palestinian people and a state that allows for Israelis to feel secure and at peace with their neighbors.” [TIME Magazine]

Even relatively well-informed observers of the Arab -v- Israel conflict might admit to some surprise at elements of today's events:

• Abbas, who is already unable to visit his own home in the Gaza Strip, has been unwilling and/or unable to send his forces into key parts of the areas he purports to control.
• In parts of the PA-controlled West Bank - Nablus, Jenin, Hebron at least - Hamas demonstrably has free rein. Only the IDF is willing to do anything about this and then only when they have to. Abbas and his forces no longer even pretend.
• Both criticizing and embracing the Obama administration's strategy within a single 24-hour period is no problem at all for a man like Abbas. So long as there are reporters out there who have little factual background, no clue about context and little or (more usually) no familiarity with the Arabic language, he will say and do whatever advances his immediate short-term interests.
• Even if he signs on to peace in some form, it's not a resolution of the dispute/s. He makes it clear this would be just another stop en route.

How anyone can seriously urge Israel to place its trust in this man's good faith and ability to deliver on a peace that requires painful compromise on both sides is simply beyond our comprehension.

14-Nov-13: To really understand about terrorism's victims, can't beat the New York Times

A murderer's mother: The one photo that the editors at the
NY Times chose to publish tells its readers what the editors
believe they need to know [Today's NY Times story]

The editors at the New York Times remind us again today of where to focus our attention and sympathies when the subject is the savagery that terrorists do.

Note: After reading this post, you might be interested to know about what happened afterwards. It's here: "19-Nov-13: After today's NY Times apology, a request of its Public Editor"...and also "22-Nov-13: More than most readers want to know about behind-the-scenes editorial decisions at NY Times"

An Israeli teenager, freshly recruited into the military to do his national service, is dozing on an intercity bus in the early morning hours when without warning a knife plunges into his upper chest and neck, leaving him critically injured. Despite the best available medical attention, he dies of his horrendous wounds a short while later.

At the world's newspaper of record, the story is composed with input from the reporter, the news editors and the people who make the decisions about whether to add a photograph, and if so, of what. The decision is made, the story is published, and the visual - and therefore emotional - focus in this tragedy of two worlds colliding is determined to be... the mother of the killer.

There's plenty more that's nauseatingly wrong with the way this act of terrorist murder - butchery, actually - is reported, starting with the opening para:

A Palestinian teenager fatally stabbed a 19-year-old Israeli soldier on a bus in northern Israel on Wednesday, according to the police, shocking Israelis who have grown unused to such killings in their cities and further clouding a peace process that was already severely strained by Israeli settlement plans in the West Bank.

Obviously there were less-ideologically-spun ways to say what happened. But these were the editorial decisions taken in Times Square:

• Israelis are shocked, they write. And this would be because Israelis ought to have gotten used by now to savagery of this sort from the foreigners who get on our buses with little interference or review?
• Two persons are involved in the event: one who is a soldier and the other who is a teenager. Does any normal person, faced with this choice of descriptors, identify with a teenager? Or with a soldier? Both happen to be teenagers, except for the one who is now dead: slashed and stabbed to death by a thug with a knife clutched in his fist while his unsuspecting victim was asleep.
• By being murdered, the young Israeli is part of what the NYTimes editors term "clouding a peace process". And that murderer? Not so much.
• Further down the page, the report purports to address why this Palestinian Arab kid became a murderer. It was because (and we of course are quoting) "he had two cousins serving terms in Israeli prisons, one of them a life term, apparently for killing two Israelis." Apparently? Those two cousins were convicted and sentenced for two separate acts of murder more than a decade ago, as we noted here this morning. (At the NY Times, they don't deny this. They simply advance their ideological crusade by resorting to a cynical "apparently".) The young knife-man from Jenin almost certainly never met them, doesn't know them. A far more plausible motivating factor is the steady ramping-up of murder-friendly incitement by the regime headed by Mahmoud Abbas who, in addition to being the president of the Palestinian Authority, is also head of Fatah. That happens to be the terrorist organization which sent the Jenin killer's two clansmen out to kill them some Israelis a decade ago. 

But the photograph! That part of this nasty piece of agenda-driven news-distortion stands on its own. The one emotional note in this New York Times story is devoted to zooming in on the mother; the mother of the killer. Her name is Silwa Gawadreh. Another of her children is already behind Israeli bars. The published details are thin. But from experience we know young Palestinian Arab men are rarely sent there for jaywalking.

At Haaretz, where they too have a photograph of the mother poring over childhood photos of the son, they say all of this is so confusing to the parents who have no idea, see no pattern, wonder what could possibly have happened.

Eden Attias, aged just 18 when his life ended
in an act of savage murder yesterday

Once again, for the record: the victim of yesterday's cold-blooded murder of a sleeping teenage boy is Eden Attias. Here, on the right, for the benefit of the New York Times' readers who will not find his portrait in the pages of their daily guide to the world, is how Eden looked before the jihadist hate-machine of the Palestinian Authority picked him out for liquidation.

We have written on this blog in the past about other decisions taken at the New York Times when its journalistic over-achievers were confronted with how to report on murder by terrorists. You might care to see what we wrote at "28-Jun-07: About sweet-faced young women" and "7-Jul-07: A Palestinian Terrorist". 

Finally, for everyone wondering how the managers and editors of the New York Times respond when people (we, for instance) call them to account for their terror-friendly editorial policies, we would very much like you to read what we wrote here:

30-Mar-13: To see the NY Times gloss over this travesty of justice is journalism of the most amoral sort 

(Hint: they simply ignore the criticism, as they certainly will again today.)