22-Oct-20: Whose business is it if BBC engages in advocacy journalism?

Arnold Roth (left) and Phil Dave, 
the Jewish News UK podcast presenter

It's been a busy couple of months - and there is quite a backlog of blog posts that we still hope to publish in the coming days.

This stems from how Arnold Roth, one of this blog's two authors, has been invited to speak at a steady stream of public events, TV and radio stations, Zoom gatherings and podcasts on the unfolding developments in our quest to see our child's killer brought to justice in the United States.

The Jewish News, a British newspaper and online news platform, gave considerable prominence, its front page in fact, to reporting on the scandalous way BBC Arabic had showcased Ahlam Tamimi, the Jordanian who confesses to being the bomber of the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria. 

Our daughter Malki was one of the many children murdered there on August 9, 2001.

Arnold Roth was interviewed for the Jewish News podcast which went to air on October 22, 2020. Here's the audio.

Click the arrow above left to hear the audio 

The remainder of this blog post is a re-run of the news report as covered by the paper and digital editions of Jewish News UK.

‘BBC lost its moral compass’ by giving mass murderer a platform 

Father of teenage girl who was among 15 killed in a Jerusalem suicide bomb attack condemns the broadcaster for giving the unapologetic killer a sympathetic platform | Jewish News UK - October 21, 2020

Front page of the print edition

TALI FRASER 

The father of a teenage girl who was among 15 people killed in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem condemned the BBC this week for giving the boastful killer a platform – despite the broadcaster issuing a fulsome apology.

Arnold Roth, whose 15-year-old daughter Malki died in the attack on the Sbarro pizza restaurant in 2001, told Jewish News that the BBC’s apology for inviting convicted Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi onto its Arabic TV service was “empty, cruel and pointless”.

BBC Arabic programme Trending reported that Ahlam Tamimi, who masterminded the deadly attack, was appealing to Jordanian King Abdullah II to intervene after her husband’s Jordanian residency was revoked. The report said: “The staff of the [BBC] programme Trending reached out to Ahlam to hear her request to the Jordanian king. Let’s listen.”

Tamimi’s personal appeal for clemency for her husband was broadcast, followed by a short account of her sentencing. The report, since removed from the BBC’s YouTube account, was shared online with the description: “‘Ahlam Tamimi, your voice is loud’ – responses of solidarity on Jordanian and Palestinian sites with Palestinian Ahlam Tamimi”.

A BBC spokesperson told Jewish News: “Following an editorial review we found that this segment was in breach of our editorial guidelines and we removed the clip from our digital platforms last week. We accept that the segment should not have been shown and apologise for the offence caused.”

Despite the apology, Roth said that he was “stunned by the coldness of the BBC’s formalistic, paint-by-numbers reaction to the torrent of criticism they received from an enraged public”.

He added: “I urge everyone with a sense of justice to re-read the detached, distorted, disingenuous response they issued (not to me or my wife – we haven’t heard a word from them) and ask themselves whether this empty, cruel, pointless and evasive ‘sorry not sorry’ note ought to close the chapter.

Following an editorial review we found that this segment was in breach of our editorial guidelines and we removed the clip from our digital platforms last week. We accept that the segment should not have been shown and apologise for the offence caused.

“They didn’t get the name of some capital city somewhere wrong. They misplaced their moral compass. They didn’t even mention that this woman boasts of killing… the killing of which she boasts is of children. Jewish children, as it happens. My Jewish child among them.”

The presenter of BBC Arabic's Trending turns the
focus over to the world's most wanted female fugitive

Tamimi proudly claimed credit for the attack in 2001. Admitting to scouting the location of Sbarro – a popular eatery in downtown Jerusalem – because it was known to be a favourite for families, she previously said that she only felt disappointed as she had “hoped for a larger toll”. 

She was released from an Israeli prison as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011, her husband was also released in the Shalit prisoner exchange after being convicted of terrorism for murdering an Israeli student in 1993.

Lord Michael Grade, former chairman of the BBC, told the Jewish News there were “very serious issues of balance and impartiality raised” by the broadcast and the corporation, and possibly Ofcom, should investigate.

Bob Blackman, the Tory MP and Conservative Friends of Israel officer, had written to the BBC Director General Tim Davie asking for an apology to the families of Tamimi’s victims, after Roth told Sky News Australia that he was “nauseated” by the BBC coverage.

Blackman, the MP for Harrow East added: “Giving a platform for Tamimi’s appeal to be reunited with her husband is understandably deeply distressing for the families of her victims, who will never be reunited with their loved ones”.

The Tory MP instead suggested that the BBC should dedicate more coverage to ongoing extradition attempts by the United States, where a reward of up to $5million for information that leads to Ahlam Tamimi’s arrest or conviction has been offered.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office were approached for a comment.

Sign the petition to demand Jordan extradites Ahlam Tamimi – http://www.change.org/ExtraditeTamimi

24-Jun-18: Chilling: In boasting of those she killed, the fugitive terrorist can barely control her excitement

Ahlam Tamimi lies, exaggerates, thrills to the excitement of murdering Israelis, and especially Jewish children. Here she is - the fugitive from US justice for whom the Kingdom of Jordan is prepared to risk everything, including the flagrant breaching of its 1995 Extradition  Treaty with its most important ally.

For background to the July 2012 Kuwaiti television interview of which the clip above is just an excerpt, see our post "5-May-13: Self-confessed jihadist murderer: "With my media card, I was able to enter back and forth, undetected..."

(Some of the sources for that 2013 post seem to have disappeared. Here's an archived version.)

The cold-blooded interviewer is a Kuwaiti Islamic preacher, Dr. Mohammed Al-Awadi. His popular TV program is entitled “Bayni wa Baynkom” ("Between Me and You").

03-Nov-17: Jihad-minded vehicle rammers and what's expected of them

Tuesday's weapon [Image Source]

What can the people living in the cross-hairs of ruthless murder-minded terrorists (that includes every single person reading this post) learn from the vehicle-ramming attack executed by an Islamist terrorist in New York City this past Tuesday?

An article by Rukmini Maria Callimachi in yesterday's New York Times ["What New York Attack Suspect’s Words May Say About ISIS Ties"] offers some answers. She's a staff reporter at the Times, focusing on Islamic extremism.

Her analysis is based on detailed guidance published in the English-language ISIS online magazine, November 2016 edition. [There's a useful summary here: "New Islamic State Rumiyah Magazine Details Tactics for Jihadis in the US" Terror Trends Bulletin, November 12, 2016]

It provides a kind of Deadly Dummy's Guide for aspiring terrorists preparing to use a vehicle to wreak havoc on innocent people - referred as to "enemies of Allah" in the not-so-subtle language of this widely-distributed and easily-accessible journal. There are four principal stages to the carnage they advocate:

1. Keep driving the car or truck for as long as possible. "To ensure the most carnage", it advises, don't exit the vehicle during the attack. Stay inside, "driving over the already harvested kuffar". (That  word means infidels, unbelievers and refers to almost everyone on earth.) "Continue crushing their remains until it becomes physically impossible to continue by vehicle.”
2. When the vehicle has been used to the full, move on to other weapons. Guns and knives are top of the list.
3. Ensure the public understands that the killing comes from the perpetrator's fealty to ISIS. The article tells the murder-minded attacker to write a note on paper, including the specific message that “The Islamic State will remain”. It's a slogan with roots in the Islamic doctrine of "baqiya". Then to throw the paper sheets out of the vehicle so they can be found and read after the murders have been done.
4. Record an oath of allegiance - either audio or video - addressed to an individual along the lines of how "early Muslims pledged fealty to the Prophet Muhammad, and later to the caliphs that succeeded him". Murderers inspired by ISIS are told to pledge to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Husseini al-Qurayshi. He's the figure described by the NYTimes ["U.S. Actions in Iraq Fueled Rise of a Rebel", August 10, 2014] as "a street thug" when American forces first apprehended him in 2004 and who has gone on to become "the self-appointed caliph of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and the architect of its violent campaign to redraw the map of the Middle East."

From the ISIS website: A user's manual for mass-murderers [Image Source]

In Tuesday's murderous rampage, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, a 29-year-old citizen of Uzbekistan living in New Jersey after scoring in a diversity immigrant visa lottery program, crushed pedestrians to death in a bike lane of Lower Manhattan. He stopped driving only after crashing into a school bus. Eight people were killed right away. Many more are terribly injured.

As the guidelines say, he was ready to move on to knives - a bag in his possession contained three of them. He flung pages from the window of his rented truck which claimed an affiliation with ISIS (who returned the compliment last night, saying the killings were theirs). And many photos of Abu Bakr were on his phone. An oath of allegiance will probably show up soon.

There's no book of guidelines for victims. We're all left to rely on common sense. The problem in the case of lethal rammings - as we have learned to our sorrow in Israel where we don't lack terrorists and victims - is that their vehicles rarely come with signs on them saying "I look innocent enough but I am planning to murder you and anyone else I can."

Trying to figure out what life-affirming, cultured and non-racist societies ought to do to safeguard innocent people from the lunacy of the rammers (and shooters and stabbers) is never going to be easy or elegant, and will require a much deeper understanding of what brings Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipovs into our midst than almost every society on earth is willing to try to achieve.

19-Sep-17: The UK has more consumers of jihadi web content than anywhere else in Europe

Today's British report, online here

While thoughtful parts of Western society ponder the need to find the right balance between personal security and personal liberty, and how and whether governments should interfere with the flow of information and ideas on the Internet, reality keeps intruding.

Like for instance the attempted bombing of an underground train in London in the last few days ["Bucket Bomb’ Strikes London’s Vulnerable Underground", New York Times, September 15, 2017] and the sheer good luck that explains why it did not end up as a massacre of innocents.

Not so surprisingly, public opinion gets impacted by encounters with the lethal bigotry that forms a core part of such barbaric assaults.

So - a brief update here on one of the rootest of root causes of jihadist terror in Europe and especially the United Kingdom:

Online jihadist propaganda attracts more clicks in the UK than any other country in Europe, a report has found | Britain is the fifth-biggest audience in the world for extremist content after Turkey, the US, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, Policy Exchange's study said. The think tank suggested the UK public would support new laws criminalising reading content that glorifies terror. The government has told internet companies like Facebook and Google to do more to to remove jihadist material. Former US military chief General David Petraeus, who wrote a foreword to the report, said efforts to combat online extremism were "inadequate". He said the bombing of a London Tube train last week "merely underscored once again the ever-present nature of this threat." "There is no doubting the urgency of this matter," he said. "The status quo clearly is unacceptable."
...Under section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000, it is currently an offence to possess information that could assist a would-be terrorist, but not material which glorifies terrorism... [BBC, September 19, 2017]

The Policy Exchange report itself [here], published today, is considerably more revealing than the BBC summary and worth delving into.

More than 130 pages long, it challenges the idea that the impact of ISIS as an online force is in decline. It notes that the "the death of key figures, loss of territory and ongoing fighting" have not prevented its production and dissemination from churning on and influencing the audiences it addresses:

The spate of terrorist attacks in the first half of 2017 confirmed that jihadist radicalisation is a real and present danger to the national security of the UK and its allies... ISIS is producing extremist content online at a consistent rate and this is spread across a vast information ecosystem: it is disseminated to core followers via Telegram, before being pumped out into the mainstream social media space (via Twitter, Facebook and other leading platforms). For this reason, we argue that more must be done to force jihadist content out of the mainstream. It is clear that the status quo is not working; it is time for a new approach... [W]e argue that society as a whole must act to overcome this serious threat to the security, vitality and prosperity of western societies. ["The New Netwar: Countering Extremism Online" (PDF), Policy Exchange, September 19, 2017] 

And this not exactly unrelated news snippet from a July 26, 2017 article in Independent UK:

A record number of anti-Semitic incidents have been recorded in the UK as monitors warn of “unprecedented” reports of attacks, abuse and harassment. The Community Security Trust (CST) recorded 80 violent assaults targeting Jews in the first six months of this year, as well as verbal abuse, graffiti, vandalism, hate mail and abuse via social media and the internet. A total of 767 incidents were reported between January and June – a rise of almost a third on the same period in 2016 and the highest since the CST’s records began in 1984... Gideon Falter, chairman of Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, said the CST’s report corroborates its own research, indicating that 2017 was “likely to be the worst year on record for anti-Semitic crime” and the fourth record-breaking year in a row. “The reason for this rise appears to be a failure to enforce the law,” he argued. “Over the past several years, anti-Semitic crime has been rising dramatically whilst there have only been a paltry number of prosecutions. This emboldens anti-Semites who increasingly fear no consequences for their actions.”
["Anti-Semitic attacks hit record high in UK amid warnings over rise of 'hatred and anger'", Independent UK, July 26, 2017]

As for current British attitudes towards Jews, a new report on anti-Semitism in the UK

caps the ‘hardcore’ anti-Semite population at five percent [but] detects a further 25 per cent who feel negatively about Jews and hold one or two viewpoints that most Jews would consider anti-Semitic. These include traditional Judeophobic tropes of undue influence, divided loyalty, and ill-gotten wealth... The study, a joint enterprise by the Community Security Trust and the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, is an in-depth exploration of anti-Jewish attitudes, the role of animus towards Israel, and the prevalence of prejudice in 2017... It is a sober analysis and the researchers tend towards restraint – sometimes a little too much restraint – in drawing conclusions from their data. It is this very interpretive modesty that makes the findings all the more concerning. The far-right remains the most anti-Semitic demographic but the far-left, by the force of numbers and its new-found influence over British politics, is roughly on an even keel with reactionaries when it comes to hating Jews... ["Britain has an anti-Semitism problem. Here are the numbers that prove it", Stephen Daisley, The Spectator, September 13, 2017]

And finally two related sound-bytes about how Britain's Jews view the political landscape. One:

The vast majority (83%) of British Jews believe the Labour Party is too tolerant of anti-Semitism among its MPs, members and supporters, a poll suggests. This compared with 19% for the Conservatives and 36% for the Liberal Democrats, according to the YouGov survey for Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA). [Jewish News UK, August 20, 2017]

and two: how they are translating this into personal life-changing decisions:

Almost one in three British Jews has considered moving abroad in the past two years, a survey [of] nearly 4,000 members of the community during 2016 and 2017 [has found.] One in six British Jews (17%) reported feeling unwelcome in Britain and over a third (37%) said they had felt the need to conceal their Judaism in public... 31% of British Jews had considered moving abroad, a rise from 28% during their last survey two years ago. ["More British Jews considering move abroad as anti-Semitism fears grow - poll", SKY News, August 20, 2017]

19-Aug-17: Two women stabbed to death in a central city square and Finland confronts a new reality

The attack scene on Friday afternoon [Via Twitter]

Finland's oldest - and these days its sixth largest - city Turku (population 190,000) rarely makes the news. But it's there now.

Yesterday (Friday) afternoon, initial reports emerged that in one of its main central squares a man had stabbed two people to death and injured half a dozen others. He was shot and apprehended by police and members of the public were being urged to avoid the city center while authorities continued their investigation. The New York Times assured readers that

The authorities emphasized that the attack was not being treated as a terrorist act, but they did not offer any other information about the assailant’s motives. The suspect, who was not identified, was hospitalized with a gunshot wound to one of his legs... “We are not looking for other perpetrators at the moment, but we are looking into who might have helped him,” Markus Laine of the National Bureau of Investigation said. “We cannot rule out that others might have assisted him. We cannot say for sure if he is a Finnish citizen or a foreigner yet, but we are following several leads regarding his identity.”

But readers might have been perplexed by some of the details further down the page:

Wali Hashi, a journalist who saw the episode, said in an interview that a group of people chased the knife-wielding man, who was screaming “God is great” in Arabic. “I was shocked and terrified to see such a horrible incident,” Mr. Hashi said. The police declined to confirm whether the assailant had yelled anything in Arabic. The man then ran to another city square, where the police apprehended him and recovered the knife.

On the other hand, this report suggested

others say that he’s yelling “watch out” in Finnish.

Terrorism or not, security was promptly tightened at transit hubs including the local airport and the train stations in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, 180 kilometers away.

Tonight, Saturday, some nuances have been added to the record and the killings are now being called Finland's "first suspected terrorist attack". These details are from a prominent Finnish news service:

The attack is now being treated by Finland's National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) as murder and attempted murder with a terrorist intent... The two [people] killed were Finnish citizens... The main suspect, an 18-year-old Moroccan man, remains hospitalised in critical condition after being shot in the hip by police. Police took four other individuals into custody overnight. Three people remain in intensive care, including the suspected assailant... ...The three foreigners injured in Turku were from Britain, Sweden and Italy... Police believe the attacker apparently specifically targeted women, but otherwise chose his victims at random. Some of the victims have serious injuries, but none are considered life-threatening. The victims ranged in age from 15 to 67... The main suspect has so far been unwilling to speak to police, who plan to try again later on Saturday. ["Finnish police: Main suspect in Turku attack is 18-year-old Moroccan", YLE, August 19, 2017]

It goes on to say that the other four detainees are, like the man shot while allegedly knifing his victims, all Moroccan. They were arrested in private homes and at an asylum-seekers' reception centre. There is now an international warrant out for "a fifth Moroccan", in the words of the Finnish report.

The Helsinki Times adds that the "behaviour" of the attacker prior to the killings "gives reason to investigate the attack as an act of terrorism" and the attack was, to use their word, "premeditated". But none of the suspects was on any police surveillance lists. And no links to terrorist organisations or criminal groups have been confirmed. The police won't say if their attacker or any of those arrested had prior criminal records in Finland.

About the alleged stabber/killer, the police say he -

arrived in Finland early last year and was "involved in the asylum seeking process" - but say they cannot provide further details. The suspected attacker was living at a reception centre for asylum seekers in Turku... [YLE]

And this intriguing postscript

Europol is looking into whether there were any possible connections between the Turku incident and two deadly terror attacks in Spain on Thursday and Friday. Some of the suspects in those attacks are or were Moroccan men of around the same age as the Turku suspect. [YLE]

A Reuters report nearly a year ago ["Asylum seekers protest in Helsinki against Finland's tightened policy", Reuters, September 8, 2016] noted that "more than 1 million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe last year, many fleeing wars and poverty in the Middle East and beyond. About 32,000 came to Finland... almost two thirds of [them] from Iraq". And that "anti-immigrant sentiment among Finns has been on the rise".

While declining to raise the overall security alert level in his country, Finland's prime minister Juha Sipilä made the perfectly correct but somewhat disingenuous observation earlier today that

"We have feared this. The day before in Barcelona and now in Turku. We are no longer an island..." The prime minister noted that Finland is still one of the world's safest countries, adding: "We're doing all we can to ensure that Finland remains that way." [YLE].

We surely all wish them the best of luck in that.

21-Jul-16: Lone wolf truck-ramming murderer transforms - yet again - into a far more lethal figure

The weapon in the Bastille Day massacre in Nice, France
[Image Source]

What we know, or were told we know, or thought or suspected we knew turns out - almost as we watch - to be very different. And what's different makes it much, much more threatening. (For background: "15-Jul-16: The terrorist vehicle-ramming murders in France: what the media see and won't see"] Above all, this was not, in any sense, an attack by a truck.

From Associated Press tonight:

The truck driver who killed 84 people on a Nice beachfront had accomplices and appears to have been plotting his attack for months, the Paris prosecutor said on Thursday. Prosecutor Francois Molins said five suspects currently in custody are facing preliminary terrorism charges for their alleged roles in helping 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel in the July 14 attack in the southern French city. Molins' office, which oversees terrorism investigations, opened a judicial inquiry Thursday into a battery of charges... The suspects are four men — two Franco-Tunisians, a Tunisian and an Albanian — and one woman of dual French-Albanian nationality, Molins said. The driver was a Tunisian man who had been living in Nice for several years. People close to Bouhlel said he had shown no signs of radicalization until very recently. But Molins said information from Bouhlel's phone showed searches and photos that suggested he could have been preparing an attack as far back as 2015.

Almost no aspect of what was suggested about the attacker in the hours and first days after the incredibly lethal assault by truck-ramming has remained in its original shape. This will not prevent the very same thing from happening next time there is a terrorist attack in which, as far as the naked eye can see, is done by an individual. He or she will be a lone wolf for media and government policy purposes until the facts make that theory impossible to sustain.

We, the civilized side, are not winning this ongoing war yet.

21-Jul-16: As the Olympics approach, Brazilian jihad comes into focus

In Rio, Brazilian security forces do their work a week ago [Image Source]

Ready, set...

Yesterday, a news report from the country hosting the upcoming Olympic Games that get started on August 5 ["Brazil Not Underestimating Olympic Terror Threat, Says Minister", Voice of America, July 20, 2016] quoted its sports minister saying that Brazil

was not underestimating the threat of terrorism and was taking all necessary measures ahead of next month's games in Rio de Janeiro... "The government has adopted all the measures recommended by inter-national security protocols... The government is absolutely convinced that the Games will be safe." ...Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper he is more concerned about violence and street crime, problems that affect Rio on a daily basis. "Crime is more of a worry than terrorism and that is why we are reinforcing patrols," he said. Brazil plans to deploy about 85,000 soldiers, police and other security personnel during the Olympics — over twice the size of the security force in London for the 2012 Games.

Twenty-fours later, and things already look a little different compared with the plan. Reuters reported this evening (Thursday) that its security officials had

arrested 10 people on Thursday on suspicion of belonging to a group supporting Islamic State (IS) and preparing acts of terrorism during next month's Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, [the same] Justice Minister Alexandre Moraes said. The loosely organized group were all Brazilian citizens and in contact via internet messaging groups such as WhatsApp and Telegram, but did not know each other personally, the minister said. The group did not have direct contact with IS though some of its members had made "pro forma" declarations of allegiance to the militant Islamist group, the minister said. He did not elaborate. "Those involved participated in an online group denominated 'the defenders of Sharia' and were planning to acquire weapons to commit crimes in Brazil and even overseas," Moraes told a news conference... The minister said the leader of the group was based in the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba, with others spread in nine Brazilian states. [Reuters, July 21, 2016]

Other reports say the Brazilian jihadists call themselves "Ansar al-Khilafah Brazil" and propagate ISIS materials in the Arabic, English and Portuguese languages. And according to a report today on the Foreign Desk News website, Israelis are among the jihadists' targets:

In a list published on social media, jihadis are advised to target American, British, French and Israeli athletes with the notion that “One small knife attack against Americans/Israelis in these places will have bigger media effect than any other attacks anywhere else in sha Allah.” “Your chance to take part in the global Jihad is here! Your chance to be a martyr is here!” the jihadis said, citing the easy process of obtaining visas for travel to Brazil as well as the wide availability of guns in “crime-ridden slums.” Israeli athletes are further singled out. “From amongst the worst enemies, the most famous enemies for general Muslims is to attack Israelis. As general Muslims all agree to it and it causes more popularity for the Mujahideen amongst the Muslims,” they state. [Foreign Desk News, today]

Just two days before Thursday's arrests, a noted counter-terrorism authority in the US, SITE Intelligence Group, issued a report referring to calls by the Brazilian jihadists for "lone wolf" attackers to launch assaults on specific Olympic sites and via specific weapons.

In other parts of the terrorism-focused social media, an article from two years ago asserts that Brazil had become “an operational hub for Iran and Islamic terrorism” already then, offering safe haven for Islamic extremist groups.

A Wall Street Journal report today says

the arrests are certain to elevate concerns about the possibility of a terrorist attack in Rio, which is expected to attract 500,000 tourists and athletes, and raise additional questions over Brazil’s security preparations.

Telegraph UK says the Brazilians have formed an Integrated Anti-Terrorism Centre (called CIANT) for the Games. It works with the security agencies of the US, UK, France, Spain, Belgium, Paraguay and Argentina. Officers at CIANT, headquartered in the capital, Brasília, "are monitoring Rio 24 hours a day. Among the areas covered are hotels where Olympic officials and VIPs will stay, Games venues and training sites". Four days ago, the general coordinator for public security at the Games, said

there was no identified threat of a terror attack against Brazil but said the level of alert had been raised since the Bastille Day attack in Nice. “Today, in the absence of a concrete threat to Brazil, we are on yellow alert, which is characterised by increased attention and the level of response in relation to everyday life,” he said. “This can develop into an orange or red alert according to any specific threat that is identified in relation to Brazil.” [Source]

It appears now that the light changed this morning.

30-May-16: Barbarism, bigotry and blood-lust: What a UN-provided education delivers

Palestinian Arab girls being educated UN-style in an UNRWA school
in Jerusalem [Image Source]

If you have not already viewed the video clip we showcased in another post of ours ["30-May-16: Listen to the children to understand who is weaponizing them and how [Video]"] earlier today, doing that now may help you make sense of the report that now follows.

It was released for publication this morning (Monday) that Israel Police have cracked the stabbing attack that took place in Jerusalem's Armon Hanatziv neighbourhood on the evening of Remembrance Day, May 10, 2016. Here's part of what we wrote about that notably savage (even by the standards that apply in our part of the world) and cowardly attack three weeks ago:

The victims, according to Haaretz, are a pair of "elderly women", reported to be "aged in their 70s"who "had gone for a walk in the neighborhood, also known as East Talpiot, on Tuesday morning when they were attacked by two masked individuals." Their injuries would be serious enough for younger, more robust people but they sound quite worrying, knowing what we know of their ages: "One of the women sustained stab wounds to her limbs and upper body, while the other sustained wounds to her upper body." Ynet reports that they described their attackers as two masked Palestinians wearing jeans and black shirts. The two women, described by hospital staff in the Ynet report as aged 86 and 80, were walking with three other friends when they were attacked from behind. This is frequently how "resistance" operations are done, reflecting on the inherent courage required by such acts. [From our blog post "10-May-16: Practitioners of "resistance" inflict serious stabbing injuries on two elderly Jerusalem women"]

Those earlier suspicions were well-founded: the attackers now under arrest all live in Jabel Mukaber, a Palestinian Arab community with a well-deserved reputation for savagery, nestled in the southern suburbs of Jerusalem. All three of the arrestees are minors, aged 16-17. Children.

Ynet gives this background:

Jabel Mukaber as it appears in a Times of Israel article here

The three decided to meet at a small supermarket in Jabel Mukaber. Armed with knives and an ax which they took from their homes, the three proceeded in the direction of the promenade where they waited for their Jewish victims. A third suspect left the scene after becoming afraid that the attack would lead to the demolition of his parents’ home. As the women passed the two boys, they began stabbing them and striking them with the wooden handle of the ax. The two then fled the scene in the direction of their village while throwing and hiding their weapons on the way. One made it home and the other took refuge in his school...

Times of Israel adds:

After the attack,the suspects are believed to have stashed the weapons nearby before one went home and the second went to school. Later on, one of them returned to the scene, retrieved the knives and cudgel, and hid them in Jabel Mukaber... Throughout the day, the two suspects “spoke with one another through WhatsApp and Facebook messages and planned to carry out another stabbing attack in light of the ‘success’ of the Peace Forest attack,” the police said. However, the pair were arrested before they could carry out such an attack, a police spokesperson said.

And this small postscript:

During the investigation, it also emerged that the mother of one of the suspects was arrested one week ago [meaning after her son had been arrested for the Peace Forest attacks] for attempting to carry out a stabbing attack at the Zeitim Checkpoint at the entrance to Jerusalem... [Ynet]

What does it take to turn teenage Jerusalem Arabs into stabbers, plotters and would-be murderers? Of Jabel Mukaber and its predominantly-Jewish neighbours in Armon Hanatziv, an article a year and a half ago ("Arabs and Jews at odds in East Talpiot", Times of Israel, August 3, 2014) said this:

The main entrance to the neighborhood is adjacent to the Armon Hanatziv Promenade, the terraced park popular with locals and tourists for its views of the Old City, including Mount Zion, the Temple Mount, the Kidron Valley, the City of David and the Mount of Olives. Relations are generally good between the neighborhood residents and the villagers, say locals. The Arab residents are often visible in East Talpiot, shopping in the local Co-op supermarket, stopping in at the local bank branch and using the local medical clinics.

Since that time, a long list of terror attacks, including several mind-numbingly savage instances of extreme Arab-on-Israeli violence, have been executed by residents of Jabel Mukaber. They include the November 2014 attack on men at prayer in a Har Nof synagogue ["20-Nov-14: In the face of savagery, what do you do?"] in which four worshipers and a security guard were hacked to death. And, less than a year later ["13-Oct-15: A bloody day and the malevolence behind it"], the murders on a city bus of Haviv Haim, 78; Alon Govberg, 51; and Richard Lakin, 76. (Click here to view some other of our previous Jabel Mukaber terrorism posts.)

As the postscript above shows, another thing that can turn a teenager into a murderer is a mother who seeks to do the same herself.

But the major factor - the one that, year after year, delivers barbarism, bigotry and blood-lust directly into the veins of Arab children, the one that instills life-changing attitudes - is education.

Which is why we want to point out, in the wake of the Jabel Mukaber murder bust revealed this morning, that every single one of the sweet-faced Arab schoolchildren being educated in UNRWA schools and interviewed in the simply-shocking video we mentioned above, lives in Jerusalem where we do, and is educated here.

Mr Gunness, UNRWA spokesperson, on the right, from a YouTube posting
entitled "UNRWA's Chris Gunness Embarrasses
Himself on 'The Kelly File'", August 5, 2014

Not in Gaza. Not in Hebron or Jenin, but in the precincts of Israel's capital city, and by means of an annual budget provided by the United Nations and its UNRWA arm, of which a third is funded by taxpayers of the United States and most of the rest by Western, non-Arab countries.

Can nothing be done? Never say never.

We offered a practical suggestion not long ago, and urge our readers to look at it (again) now: "06-Aug-15: Educating their children: a modest, peace-focused proposal".

We sent it off last summer to UNRWA's official spokesperson and were pleased that he responded right away with what seemed like some politely mild, though appropriate, enthusiasm. Then, for reasons that are beyond us even now, he inexplicably went silent on us. If you're reading this, Chris Gunness, we hope you still plan to give us a call.

Holding our breaths, we're not.

30-May-16: Listen to the children to understand who is weaponizing them and how [Video]

From the video

Someone ought to send a Whatsapp to the diplomats who deliver high-sounding pronouncements in those endless United Nations debates searching for peace and enhanced human dignity and refer them to the video clip below. It's produced by The Center for Near East Policy Research (there's more background on the YouTube page that hosts the clip).

It's new and focuses on a UN agency that is actually doing far more in relation to peace than all those speeches put together.

Trouble is, what the UN agency in question is doing in relation to peace is the exact opposite of seeking peace or making peace happen. It may, in fact, be the single most effective organization in the world for ensuring that deaths and extreme misery on both sides of the Arab conflict with Israel keep happening.

That agency, funded almost exclusively by Western countries to the tune of $1,200 million annually, is called UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Its continued existence, nearly seventy years after it was set up as a temporary fix for a relatively small problem, is part of a bizarre narrative in which a legion of UN insiders keep marketing it as part of the solution when in reality it is a core and essential component of the problem.



Anyone sincerely concerned to save the lives of the children who appear in this video will immediately appreciate that something is seriously, lethally wrong with the entire UNRWA operation. The fact that its official spokesperson has a penchant for ad hominem attacks on its critics (including nasty and largely misleading dismissals of the individuals behind the making of the video itself) is part of the problem. A non-trivial part, but just a part. This plot has many villains.

Diplomats and public officials of every one of the countries that pay lip service to what UNRWA does without facing up to the ongoing catastrophe that it perpetuates are as culpable as UNRWA's spokesperson and its 30,000 (yes) school principals, teachers and staff people.

That's just one of the factors that brought us to write this:

"19-Jun-13: We actually do understand why Arab states put almost no money in the Palestinian Arab "refugee" fund pot. We just don't get why the US does." 

And this:

"03-Jul-15: Misery, terrorism and money-making: a cynics' guide".

There is no hope for peace - absolutely none - until what UNRWA does daily is understood and stopped.

06-Nov-15: What Amnesty hath wrought: The elevation of the terror-minded Tamimis

Allow us to please recommend strongly that you go over to the website of The Tower to read an important investigative article authored by Petra Marquardt-Bigman (bio here). 

Under the title "How a Family Became a Propaganda Machine", she reveals how the Palestinian Arab Tamimi clan (about whose members we have written often) has become internationally renowned for their supposed advocacy of non-violence - in large measure due to to the indispensable support of Amnesty International. 

As the writer shows via a detailed drilling down into matters that rarely get reported, the undeserved elevation of the Tamimis to influence and prominence is done only by carefully overlooking how they really, truly and sincerely want an armed uprising against their Israeli neighbours. On an ongoing basis, from their base in a town called Nabi Saleh, these bigoted, violent and hateful people (and supporters of similar bent) contribute mightily towards ensuring that happens.

Here's a brief extract:

While almost everyone in Nabi Saleh is a member of the Tamimi clan, Bassem’s photogenic family—particularly his teenage daughter Ahed—has always been at the center of the media attention that the Nabi Saleh protests have assiduously cultivated. In 2013, Ahed made global headlines when she was bestowed with Turkey’s Handala Award for Courage by then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in recognition of her very public confrontation with Israeli security forces who had arrested her brother.
Bassem has long-served as the spokesman for Nabi Saleh’s supposedly non-violent protest movement. In an interview published in early May 2011 on the website The Electronic Intifada and promptly cross-posted at the website of the Hamas-affiliated al-Qassam Brigades, Bassem Tamimi outlined views he has since repeated many times. A quote from the interview—“our destiny is to resist”—has become something of a signature slogan for the Tamimis.
Bassem Tamimi had already expressed his hope in his Electronic Intifada interview that the regular protests in Nabi Saleh would provide “the basis for the third intifada.” Some two years later, a glowing tribute to the Tamimis featured as a New York Times Magazine cover story. In that piece, Tamimi declared: “If there is a third intifada … we want to be the ones who started it.” The hope that the almost weekly demonstrations at Nabi Saleh “could become something big”—“Like a third intifada”—has also been expressed by other members of the Tamimi family.
The image of the Tamimis presented in countless sympathetic media reports and vigorously promoted by their supporters is that they are courageous activists fighting for a just cause without resorting to violence. The organizers of Bassem Tamimi’s recent U.S. speaking tour describe him as “an internationally recognized Palestinian human rights activist from the West Bank farming village of Nabi Selah [sic], where weekly nonviolent demonstrations are held in opposition to illegal Israeli settlement construction and military occupation.”
Many of the organizations that sponsored Bassem’s cross-country tour during September and October are outspoken advocates of a boycott of Israel, among them Jewish Voice for Peace; Sabeel, a Palestinian-Christian organization that attacks Judaism with Islamist zeal; Students for Justice in Palestine; and the Middle East Children’s Alliance. The most prominent of all, and certainly the most recognizable, was that of Amnesty International.

Read on. The whole piece is deserving of the widest attention.

UPDATE November 7, 2015: At the request of several readers, some items here (from a longer list) about the Tamimi clan, Bassem Tamimi, and the essential role played by Amnesty International in irresponsibly turning him into the undeserved recipient of sympathy and support:

• 02-Oct-15: Truth, honesty, love, murder... and useful idiots
• 30-Sep-15: With Amnesty at his side, why would so-called smear campaigns faze this child-abuser?
• 28-Sep-15: Vegans and a passion for blood
• 13-Sep-15: A roadshow and its groupies
• 11-Sep-15: How devoted to non-violence are the villagers of Nabi Saleh really?
• 10-Sep-15: It takes a village: The passion for violence of the peace-loving Tamimis
• 07-Sep-15: Peace, human rights, the sheer joy of killing people
• 06-Sep-15: The making of a pigtailed provocateur
• 04-Sep-15: Mr. Human Rights Defender, a question if we may
• 02-Sep-15: Lights, action, camera, bite: Scenes from a cognitive war
• 01-Sep-15: A tale of two villages: one devoted to non-violence, another that actually exists
• 29-Aug-15: Revisiting a Palestinian Arab village and its monsters
• 17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns 

04-Oct-15 Jerusalem Watch | The "moderates" of the Abbas-run Palestinian Authority condemn... the victims

Palestinian Authority spokesman Ihab Bseiso

Mahmoud Abbas told the United Nations General Assembly on September 30, 2015 [full text here] that his regime sees itself as now no longer bound by the mutual undertakings of the mid-1990s Oslo Accords [text here]:

“We cannot continue to be bound by these signed agreements with Israel and Israel must assume fully all its responsibility as an occupying power.” [New York Times, September 30, 2015]

Nonetheless

We do not respond to the Israeli occupation’s hatred and brutality with the same. Instead, we are working on spreading the culture of peace and coexistence between our people and in our region... My hands remain outstretched for the just peace that will guarantee my people’s fights, freedom and human dignity. I say to our neighbors, the Israeli people that peace is in your interest, in our interest, and in the interest of our future generations. Narrow vision is destructive. I hope that you will consider the dangerous reality on the ground and look to the future... [Text of Abbas speech via Times of Israel]

What did he actually mean?, asked numerous commentators (like this one). Evidently the great man himself believes he made himself perfectly clear:

"I stand behind everything that I said on the UN stage, and will work to implement the decisions." [Abbas quoted in Ynet, October 2, 2015]

Today we have a slightly better sense of his intentions. Times of Israel reports that

After days of silence amid a string of terror attacks and skyrocketing tensions in Jerusalem and the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority on Sunday condemned Israel for its “policy of escalation,” after two Palestinian assailants were killed as they carried out terror attacks. In a written communique published on the official news agency Wafa, PA government spokesman Ihab Bseiso called on the international community to intervene following “the killing of two young men in occupied Jerusalem and the series of incursions into cities and villages in the West Bank.” The statement made no mention of the fact that the two dead Palestinians had been killed while carrying out stabbing attacks against Israeli civilians... [and] did not condemn or mention the killings of Naama and Eitam Henkin, who were shot to death in a Palestinian terror attack on Thursday in the West Bank.

The PA's condemnation of Israel is especially galling when it's recalled who took responsibility for the murder-by-shooting of the Henkins on Thursday ["02-Oct-15: Google the name of the young Israeli parents murdered in their car last night..."].

A unit within Fatah’s armed wing assumed responsibility for the murder... The Abdel Qader al-Husseini Brigades, a group affiliated with Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, announced on Friday that its men on Thursday night opened fire on the car of Eitam and Naama Henkin, a couple in their 30s, while they were driving home with their four children, aged four months to nine... Fatah, headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is the largest faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is the governing body in West Bank areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. “With Allah’s help and in keeping with our right for resistance and our duty to sacred jihad, our forces on Thursday night carried out a necessary action in which they fired on a car of occupying settlers..." The statement, translated into Hebrew by the Ma’ariv daily, also warned “the enemy against taking revenge on civilians,” as “any war crimes would be severely retaliated against.” ["Fatah armed wing claims responsibility for terror attack", Times of Israel, October 2, 2015]

It's baffling to see how blood-curdling threats to murder in the name of jihad, and evidence that they do it and are proud to have done it, keep getting discounted by observers and politicians.

Odd, too, that no one seems terribly vexed by the way Fatah, which claims to be secular, invokes the doctrine of sacred jihad in explaining why Jews must die.

04-Sep-15: Mr. Human Rights Defender, a question if we may

A syndicated photo from October 2011, one of many depicting Nabi Saleh as the village celebrated the impending arrival of a beloved son, Nizar Tamimi. The caption describes him and the fiancee he had either never met or met just once, Ahlam Tamimi, laconically and inaccurately as "married while incarcerated". Hardly worth mentioning, in the eyes of the editors, that both are convicted, unrepentant murderers in the service of Palestinian Arab terrorist organizations [ Image Source: AFP/Getty]

Bassem Tamimi who heads the business that stages clashes each Friday in Nabi Saleh ["17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns"] is about to spend a month criss-crossing the United States, selling his wares [itinerary here].

Mr Tamimi is going to be hosted by various American groups, including - and we admit to being shocked by this - Amnesty International. (But be aware Amnesty has a long track record of aligning with the Tamimi family's causes and has crowned Bassem Tamimi a "prisoner of conscience" which resonates in the world in which it is active.)

Do Amnesty's supporters know of
its special attachment to the terrorist-loving
village of Nabi Saleh?

"Human rights defender" Tamimi has been in the news this past week ["02-Sep-15: Lights, action, camera, bite: Scenes from a cognitive war"] because of some powerful video and photographic imagery depicting his son in a headlock and his daughter sinking her teeth into the arm of an IDF soldier. As we try to explain, knowing where Bassem Tamimi was physically standing, and what he was doing there as his children were "attacked" is key to unpacking the sham that dozens of reporters who regularly cover the weekly Nabi Saleh performance know but don't dare reveal. It's an open scandal.

From experience, we know to expect an outpouring of American college-student and liberal-minded sympathy and understanding for the Tamimi clan's "struggle" to "resist". The New York Times bought into that enthusiastically [here] two years ago, even donating the front cover of its enormously influential Sunday Magazine to advance the marketing of the "non-violent Nabi Saleh" myth.

We're also expecting sane people with a revulsion for terror to come out of this encounter with more flexible views of terrorism and how to think about it. The process is, sadly, familiar to anyone observing the moral relativism currently infecting broad swathes of some of the Western world's best educated people.

For those who decide to go along to hear Tamimi, we have just one request.

After a glance at these images below, and perhaps a quick review of just one of numerous articles that draw attention to the blood-lust, jihadist savagery and open child abuse in which the Tamimis are deeply mired ("Bassem Tamimi and the Use of Children as Political Props", for instance), we are asking that someone in the audience or from among the reporters attending asks him the question below.

Ahlam Tamimi, advocate for jihad, in her own words
Image Source: "03-Aug-15: The triumph and the silence: A killer's fame
and what it reveals about her world"

Ahlam Tamimi, unrepentant Islamist and convicted killer, in her own words: Image Source: What would it take to make you as happy as this woman?

Ahlam Tamimi, confessed mass murderer of Jewish children, in her own words:
Image Source: Video: Released Hamas Terrorist Ahlam Tamimi on Palestinian
Public's Delight at Suicide Bombings

Our questions:

Mr Bassem Tamimi, tell us in simple words: are you as delighted by your cousin Ahlam Tamimi's massacre of Jewish children as she is? Have you criticized it ever, anywhere? Will you condemn it here and now?

Details of the massacre are here. It's where the life of our precious fifteen year-old daughter Malki ended.)

Why do you think no one has asked the ever-interviewable man (or his wife or the daughter they keep pushing in front of the cameras) these questions?

The entire town is on record numerous times celebrating the killing of Jews by various Tamimis, and especially by Ahlam Tamimi. This sort of stuff, first-person-statements, photos from the town as it celebrates the killers, is easy to find for anyone who actually looks for it.

In truth, for reasons most people will get, we don't really care much about any answer he may give now or when he's on the road. What does bother us a very great deal is those people living far from here, Amnesty and its followers among them, who knowingly or unknowingly give their support to a person with Bassem Tamimi's values, and never think to even ask questions like the one we have just suggested.

30-Jun-15: We need to be calling them what they are: human bombs

Aftermath of today's suicide bomb [Image Source]

People died today following a blast on a Japanese bullet train. This is how one major news outlet is reporting it:

Two people were feared dead and two others seriously injured after a man apparently set himself on fire aboard a moving shinkansen bullet train in Japan on Tuesday (Jun 30)... The Yomiuri Shimbun daily said a blast was heard from a toilet stall... Media reported that the driver of the train found the still-burning body of a man after the emergency stop. Kanagawa police have confirmed that the man who set himself on fire has died. The train - a super-fast Nozomi bullet train - was travelling from Tokyo towards Osaka, reportedly with around 1,000 passengers on board, when the fire broke out near Odawara, southwest of Tokyo.

A blast, a suicide, and very bad outcomes for innocent people. This person who decided to end his life on the Japanese train is a suicide bomber in the accurate sense of that mostly-abused and misused term.

Aftermath of a human bomb attack, 2001 [Image Source]
The death of the human bomb is always incidental to the principal goal
of the human bomb attack - which is murder.

As for the many, many acts of jihadist homicide perpetrated by people too-often-described as suicide bombers, those are something entirely different.

Whatever the intentions of those who do them, who engineer them, who plan them and who encourage them, lethal attacks in the nature of 9/11, 7/7, 11-M, the massacre by a Saudi inside a Kuwaiti mosque this past Friday, are never about suicide, and never were. Acts of murder is what they are about, and what they are.

The intention of those acts and of the people who do them is to kill. Often, the person doing the killing is completely indifferent to the personal outcome for himself or herself, for reasons that are worth understanding but come down to this: the killing is the reason; the death of the killer is an incidental outcome about which the perpetrators (and those who facilitated the killing by sending the killer on his or her way) have no particular concern.

This has significance. The term "suicide bomber" is used frequently in the mainstream media - almost always inaccurately and usually misleadingly - when what they are in reality describing is a human bomb, and a human bomb attack.

To the extent suicide is perceived as connoting (to whatever degree) something selfless, and for that reason possibly even something noble to an extent, we ought to forcefully reject its use to describe highly motivated killers. They are bombs.

Civilized societies that are aware a bomb is heading towards them have ways of defending themselves and dealing with the threat.

What we call them matters.