14-Feb-19: A prince, a princess, four Tamimis - and murderous violence

Image Source | February 6, 2019: Jordan Media Institute in Amman
Ahed Tamimi is the speaker. Princess Rym Ali,
the JMI's founder, is seated in the front row

Ahed Tamimi, a young Palestinian Arab woman from Nabi Saleh, a hamlet a few kilometers from our Jerusalem home ["17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns"] has been busy traveling and speaking to attentive crowds these past few months.

Ahed Tamimi

Just before she started an eight month sentence in an Israeli prison a year ago, the result of a plea bargain her handlers made with the authorities, we noted here ["24-Dec-17: Nabi Saleh, the media and a Tamimi child's journey"] that she is

the young woman many call Shirley Temper, a photogenic performer who for at least eight years now has been the central figure in a long-running propaganda performance orchestrated by her father Bassem Tamimi and his publicity business, Tamimi Press.

Bassem Tamimi, Ahed's manager/father and long-time producer/director, asserted some months back ["Palestinian Ahed Tamimi 'banned from travelling abroad'"] that Israel was in some unspecified manner standing in the way of the post-prison globetrotting/meet-and-greets he had in mind for her.

Somehow overcoming the Israeli opposition (if indeed it existed), the young woman, frequently referred to via overblown noms-de-guerre ("Palestine's Joan of Arc", "Ahed Tamimi, Palestinian protest icon", "I know I am a symbol of Palestinian resistance"), managed to pull-off a run of well-publicized visits to Spain, France, Tunisia, Greece and Jordan in September and October 2018. She also became the subject of a photo spread in the October 2018 Arabic version of Vogue magazine along the way.

She's been busy. And the drum-beating and orchestrating have paid dividends.

After years of wildly zig-zagging media estimates of her age [outlined here: "28-Dec-17: So how old is the Tamimi girl?"], there's little doubt she's now come of age and is an adult for all legal purposes (her 18th birthday was two weeks ago). This may become relevant if she repeats or enlarges on calls for more Arab-on-Israeli thuggery like those she made in front of her mother's Tamimi Press video camera ["04-Feb-18: The embarrassing violence of Ahed Tamimi and its fig-leafers"] a year ago. Mother took care to have the video very widely distributed. But surprisingly (alright, not so surprisingly as this excellent Forward piece by Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll points out), the fact that not-quite-adult Ahed Tamimi quite plainly called for real, physical violence has somehow become a point of controversy and doubt.

It shouldn't have. She did it and it's on the record.

Notwithstanding, she's turned up again in Jordan where she gave a speech a few days ago, asserting in some little publicized comments

that the Palestinian people’s struggle is to obtain their freedom, and not to gain the world’s sympathy or compassion. During a meeting with the Jordan Media Institute’s (JMI) students, in the presence of JMI founder HRH Princess Rym, Tamimi added that she works to convey a message for the need to support Palestinian prisoners in their struggle for freedom and national unity. She also explained that she was subjected to various psychological and physical pressures both during the 16 days of investigations, and after being transferred to prison. She said she underwent deprivation of sleep and food, as well as threats to arrest or kill her relatives... ["Ahed Tamimi addresses students at Jordan Media Institute", Jordan Times, February 6, 2019]

There's similar coverage in Jordan's Arabic media here and here as well as on the website of her hosts, the Jordan Media Institute. About that last entity, we have some experience (keep reading).

The Nabi Saleh Tamimis

The JMI's English language report mentions only in passing Nariman Tamimi, Bassem's wife and Ahed's mother, who was in attendance. The Arabic language version (but not the English) adds this somewhat repulsive piece of Tamimi self-promotion:

As for the anti-public campaign against Ahed, her mother Nariman al-Tamimi pointed out that the great support for Ahed came because of the spread of the video [Nariman's video] slapping the Israeli soldier and Ahed Tamimi's ability to resist in spite of all circumstances... adding that her constant contact with media professionals over the past ten years to contribute to the promotion of justice in the Palestinian cause has helped increase support for Ahed... [Jordan Media Institute - Arabic language report of the Tamimi event on their premises, February 6, 2019]

Think about that. The mother seems to be boasting about the fact (and it is a fact) that she and husband Bassem Tamimi began grooming their daughter to be a fist-thrusting, slogan-spouting, angry-on-demand shrieking street activist and provocateur from when the child, already blonde and still somewhat Western looking, was a very vulnerable 8 years old.

In most places, this would be justifiably viewed as child abuse and the parents as derelict and likely culpable criminally. Noot, of course, in those netherworlds ruled by the appalling Palestinian Authority and the no-less-horrific Hamas.

But Nariman Tamimi's ethics descend to greater depths. She has no qualms, for instance, supporting the murderous violence of her cousin, the bomber Ahlam Tamimi. Quote the opposite. In her own words

...What she [Ahlam Tamimi, the smiling mass-murderer of Jewish children] did was an integral part of the struggle. Everyone fights in the manner in which he believes. There is armed uprising, and there is popular uprising. I support every form of uprising... ["11-Sep-15: How devoted to non-violence are the villagers of Nabi Saleh really?"]

The Sbarro massacre mastermind

Ahlam Tamimi returned the favour a year ago ["05-Jan-18: In Jordan, the FBI fugitive Ahlam Tamimi pays tribute to her slapping/taunting/kicking Tamimi cousin"].

Standing before a Jordanian audience, flanked by Jordanian dignitaries including a former Jordanian prime minister, she praised Nariman's daughter Ahed Tamimi who had been detained by Israeli authorities (as was Nariman) some days before. Both were facing charges and an Israeli prison sentence. Somewhat vaguely (based on the reports we saw), Ahlam Tamimi congratulated Ahed Tamimi for "breathing new life" into the cause of female prisoners and children prisoners.

We remarked on how disturbing it was to see

...very prominent Jordanians, members of the country's political elite, [who] have no problem sharing a public platform with a confessed killer of Israeli children who is also an FBI fugitive and the subject of American efforts to have her extradited to the US to face serious federal charges. Can you imagine this happening anywhere else? She's a wanted criminal but not in Jordan where she's a hero. [Source]

Most readers of this blog know Ahlam Tamimi ["17-Nov-11: A monster walks the streets and she has many accomplices"] confesses repeatedly, publicly and with evident pride to being the mastermind of the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria massacre where 16 innocent Jews, among them our daughter Malki, were killed. Ahlam Tamimi was serving a prison sentence of 16 consecutive life terms right up until the catastrophic Shalit Deal that Israel transacted with Hamas in 2011.

That's when she was freed and returned to the land of her birth, the place where most of her family lives and where she was raised.

We have written hundreds of blog posts and op eds about Ahlam Tamimi, born in Jordan and living there today, not in hiding but out in the open.

She has become a genuine celebrity ["24-Nov-18: How Jordan's mainstream media showcase a couple of role-model jihadist murderers"] who speaks often in public forums and on Jordan's media. But (or perhaps and) she is a fugitive from the FBI, charged by the US Department of Justice with Federal crimes and with a State Department $5 million reward for her capture and conviction.

She is the subject of an extradition request which the Jordanian government, for narrow and technical reasons, has rejected ["20-Mar-17: The Hashemite Kingdom's courts have spoken: The murdering FBI fugitive will not be handed over"]. The US and Jordan have a valid extradition treaty that has been in effect between the two countries since 1995. Several Jordanian felons were extradited to the US before the Tamimi case.

It's interesting to us that of all the possible Jordanian venue options, Ahed Tamimi was a guest last week at the Jordan Media Institute.

It's also striking that Princess Rym Ali, the JMI's founder and a former CNN on-camera reporter before she married into the Hashemite royal family, was present to hear her speak, seated in the front row (see the photo above).

This brought to mind how the princess' husband, Prince Ali bin Hussein who is the half brother of Jordan's current ruler, posted a Tweet emotionally urging support for... Ahed Tamimi in December 2017 just before she went to prison. (Posted here; archived here.)

To us, this seems odd. Ahed is no Jordanian. And most other Jordanian royals seem to have wisely taken care not to get entangled with the outstandingly problematic Tamimi clan. Perhaps some enterprising journalist will take the trouble to look into what about the Nabi Saleh Tamimis' violent bigotry that so attracts this royal attention.

Jordan Media Institute

At this point, allow us to mention that we have had seriously disturbing experiences with the JMI and the unique interplay of professional aspiration and tolerance for extreme violence that we believe the school represents.

We're referring to how we discovered four years ago, and then did our best to publicize, that the very privileged students of this prestigious and hugely-needed institution had publicly declared Ahlam Tamimi - the boastful Hamas agent who set out to kill as many Jewish children as possible and succeeded - as their "success model". 

We ended up persuading several of the school's international funders, including a number of governments, to terminate their support. But we never succeeded in (a) getting the school's management to respond to us other than rude and pointless response from a manager there, or (b) to be open about what we had reported. Their preference was to engage in a rather shabby and pathetic cover-up.

We wrote about this in the posts below:

• 10-Dec-14: In the Arab world's most promising new journalism school, a passion for murder and hatred
• 11-Dec-14: Is it newsworthy when journalists make a terror-addicted murdering colleague their role-model?
• 16-Jan-15: Incubating terror-minded journalists in Jordan but they have an answer to the criticisms
• 19-Jan-15: The dilemmas of funding and enabling terror

What happened at the Jordan Media Institute and the scandalous way it was hushed up by management ought to be factored into people's thinking when they wonder about the state of democracy, human rights and terrorism in the Arab world.

The terrors of Arab journalism

Given the strange role played by an ambitious school like JMI, this seems a good time to be thinking about how very badly journalism serves the Palestinian Arabs (the vast majority of Jordanians self-identify as Palestinian Arabs). And the difficulties their reporters and their editors encounter under the thumb of the powers that be.

Screen capture from the Gatehouse site

A typically incisive article today by Khaled Abu Toameh for the Gatestone Institute gives some exposure to the plight of a young woman working as a reporter in the Hamas-afflicted Gaza Strip:

Hajer Harb... is currently standing trial before a court in the Gaza Strip for exposing corruption in Hamas-run ministries and institutions. Harb, a cancer survivor, has been repeatedly summoned for interrogation by Hamas security forces for her role in reporting on corruption in medical and housing institutions... She is accused of "failing to display objectivity, fairness and accuracy" in her reporting... Instead of interrogating and prosecuting the corrupt officials whose identities were mentioned in her reporting, Harb is the one who is now standing trial for telling the truth. Her lawyer, Baker al-Turkumani, described the charges against her as "flimsy." The charges, he said, are an "assault on the freedom of the media and expression, which are protected by the law. The law and justice are the journalist's weapon against corruption. The law cannot be used to limit the work of a journalist or freedom of expression." ["Palestinians: "Journalism" Hamas Style", Gatestone Institute website, February 14, 2019]

Abu Toameh unpacks the Hamas charges against the reporter and calls them disingenuous and laughable:

It is disingenuous because it is coming from Hamas -- a group for whom the terms objectivity and accuracy are wholly inimical. It is laughable because it allows Hamas to set the standards for objectivity and accuracy... For Hamas, objectivity in the media means that journalists shut their mouths about their leaders and government officials. For Hamas, "accuracy" means that a journalist working in the Gaza Strip will show Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the worst possible light -- regardless of the facts.

He's no less blunt about Hamas' rivals, the Abbas-controlled Fatah/PA:

Since the beginning of this year, the Palestinian Authority security forces have arrested 10 Palestinian journalists in the West Bank for their "negative" reporting and alleged criticism of Abbas and other senior Palestinian figures... The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate regularly chooses totally to ignore the plight of the journalists arrested by the Palestinian Authority security forces. The only evils the Syndicate sees are those that can be linked to Hamas or Israel. That is because its heads and senior staff are affiliated with Abbas's Fatah faction... Like Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, with the help of its associates in the syndicate, is apparently seeking to control the news and narrative to make sure that journalists direct their criticism only against Israel. Like Hamas, the Palestinian Authority has been relatively successful in its effort to limit the flow of information from areas under its control. A Palestinian journalist living in Ramallah will think at least a dozen times before he or she writes or says a word that could rile Abbas or one of his senior officials.

Ahlam Tamimi boasting about her life as a Hamas terrorist
[Image Source: Video capture from Kuwaiti TV]

A great shame that all those 'activists' agitating for 'Free Palestine', for BDS and for "Palestinian rights" don't direct their energies, criticisms and fury at the two ham-fisted Palestinian Arab regimes that bear almost all the responsibility for what's wrong with the lives of the people living under their boots.

And also for the extreme violence that many people think about when the word "Palestinian" enters the discussion. (Ahlam Tamimi, our child's murderer, boasts that she was a journalist at the time of the massacre, and is still called one today.)

Also a great shame that the Ahed Tamimi phenomenon continues to get so much unjustified backing in parts of the Arab world where a little more inward-focused retrospection would do so much more for the problems that beset their lives.

And ours too.

UPDATE February 15, 2019

We just came across the Jordan Media Institute's two tweets of last week's Ahed Tamimi event currently here and here and here with a half-hour video of Joan-of-Arc's customary flat/monotone speech (and archived here and here and here in case... you know).

(There don't seem to be any English-language tweets of the momentous occasion, indicating - who knows - that they don't want their foreign supporters seeing this, but perhaps we just missed them.)

The JMI photos make apparent that Nariman Tamimi, mother of Ahed, cousin and outspoken fan of Ahlam Tamimi and her hideous deeds, is seated at the head table.

Also apparent: (a) that Jordanian journalism's best and brightest don't at all mind being associated with the terror-loving Tamimi clan's messaging - which if you pause to think about it is staggering; (b) the scandal of 2015 which cost the school some substantial foreign funding is dead and forgotten; (c) the illustrious Jordan Media Institute is mighty proud that the Tamimis allowed them to give a platform to Ahed.

05-Feb-18: [UPDATED] The victim of today's Arab-on-Israeli stabbing barbarism, a teacher and a father of four young children, has died of his injuries

Tragedy in Ariel: The Ben Gal family, destroyed by today's
murderous terrorist attack [Image Source: Ynet]

Israeli society is having to confront another extreme-bigotry-driven murder today and the tragic burden which has landed on a young family ill-equipped to deal with its weight.

Today, Monday afternoon, just outside the entrance to the Israeli city of Ariel, at about 2:30 pm, an Israeli man, standing on the sidewalk at a bus stop that also serves as a hitch-hike point, became the victim of an unprovoked stabbing attack. 

The knifer, a Palestinian Arab whom the security camera captures crossing the road and approaching his unsuspecting target from behind, fled the scene after plunging the knife into the victim's chest several times. He the object of an ongoing manhunt as we write this.

We know now that the man who came under attack is Rabbi Itamar Ben-Gal, 29, a father of four young children who settled with his wife and family in the Israeli community of Har Bracha, a short distance from where the attack took place. He was given emergency care at the scene by a Magen David Adom ambulance team and army medics. Times of Israel reported that he was taken to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikvah but died of his wounds. He will be buried in Har Bracha tomorrow (Tuesday) morning.

Israel National News says Rav Ben Gal was an educator who worked with 8th graders at the Bnei Akiva Yeshiva in Givat Shmuel, a Tel Aviv suburban community, and taught as well in the Har Bracha Yeshiva.

Ynet says this about the suspected murderer now being tracked down:

The terrorist, investigators found, is 19-year old Israeli-Arab resident of Jaffa Abed al-Karim Adel Assi, a son of an Israeli mother and Palestinian father from Nablus... Despite being hit [by an Israeli motorist] al-Karim was able to escape with the help of an unidentified driver who picked him up near the scene of the incident. IDF forces are currently spreading out in the region in an effort to locate him. The terrorist's backpack was found on the scene containing a change of clothes and his Israeli ID card. The bag also contained a comb, hair gel, a lighter and a charger... Large concentrations of IDF forces entered the village of Kifl Haris, according to Palestinian reports, in their search of the terrorist.

Kifl Haris is a Palestinian Arab village which, according to some Jewish traditions, is the site of the graves of the Biblical figures Joshua, Caleb and Joshua's father Nun.

According to Ynet, the Islamist terrorists of Hamas issued a message from Gaza welcoming today's murder and asserting that it "is proof that the Al-Quds intifada continues".

UPDATE Tuesday February 6, 2018 at 2:00 pm:
According to a Times of Israel report today, the terrorist attacker who stabbed to death Rabbi Itamar Ben Gal yesterday has been advised to

Today's funeral for Rabbi Itamar Ben Gal [Image Source]

turn himself in to security forces, his mother tells Israel’s Channel 10 television news. Abed al-Karim Assi, 19, is suspected of stabbing to death Rabbi Itamar Ben-Gal, 29, at the Ariel Junction in the northern West Bank. Assi holds Israeli citizenship and lives in Jaffa, defense officials said late Monday. He managed to evade capture following the attack, even after an IDF officer hit him with his car while in pursuit. Assi’s father lives in Nablus and his mother in Haifa. She tells Channel 10 she “hasn’t seen my son in a long time.” She says his actions “are unacceptable.” “What he did just ruined his life. He has no right to take a life,” she says.

Listening to his mother is good advice though probably hard for the stabber. Listening to Miriam, the mother of Itamar Ben-Gal's orphaned children, might be good advice too but in the current circumstances a lot harder for both sides.

UPDATE Wednesday February 7, 2018 at 9:30 am: There's a disturbing update report from Times of Israel -

The suspected terrorist behind the killing of a rabbi Monday was detained by soldiers in a confrontation at the scene a day before the attack and then released, the Ynet news site reported Tuesday night. According to the report 19-year-old Arab Israeli Abed al-Karim Assi arrived at the junction outside the settlement of Ariel on Sunday — a day before he is believed to have fatally stabbed 29-year-old Rabbi Itamar Ben-Gal at the same spot — and swore at soldiers stationed there. The soldiers are said to have detained him and examined his identification, then allowed him to go on his way... The military said a preliminary investigation showed soldiers had acted appropriately in accordance with the suspect’s behavior. Israeli security forces were still searching for Assi on Tuesday night. In the evening clashes broke out in Nablus as troops searched the West Bank city... ["Ariel killer was briefly detained by soldiers a day before attack", today]

The pursuit of Abed al-Karim Assi who video cameras "allege" stabbed to death Rabbi Itamar Ben Gal Z"L at the entrance to Ariel on Monday goes on. A report from i24news this morning says a Palestinian Arab was shot dead and five others, perhaps more, are critically injured as the IDF continues to search for the stabber in Nablus/Shechem. Reporter Khaled Abu Toameh says (via Twitter) says the injuries tally stands at 47.

UPDATE Sunday March 18, 2018 at 9:30 am Times of Israel reports

Israeli forces on Sunday arrested a suspected terrorist who is believed to have stabbed to death Rabbi Itamar Ben-Gal near Ariel in February, following an extensive manhunt, the Shin Bet security service said. On February 5, 19-year-old Abed al-Karim Assi, an Israeli citizen, is believed to have attacked Ben-Gal, 29, at a bus stop outside Ariel, a West Bank settlement. Assi fled the scene, leading security forces on a month-long manhunt that ended with his arrest in the predawn hours of Sunday in the West Bank city of Nablus, the Shin Bet said. The security service said he was found inside a house in the city. According to the Israel Defense Forces, Assi was injured during the early morning arrest raid and received treatment from army medics. The military would not elaborate on how he sustained his wounds... In addition to Assi, a number of people who were with him at the time of his arrest were also taken into custody, the service said...  Assi had been thought to have been hiding out in Nablus, where his father lives, since the attack. Before the attack he had used his Israeli citizenship to spend time on both sides of the Green Line, including with his mother, who lives in Haifa. He had received social service assistance from Israeli authorities, including at the Shanti Home in Tel Aviv for at-risk youth...

There's a video clip here of his being taken into Israeli custody:

He's alive and evidently in good shape. His victim's family - the young widow and her children - could be forgiven for wondering where the justice is in that.

15-Sep-17: What's rarely discussed about silencing Palestinian Arab voices

dealing with dissenting voices in the Palestinian Arab capital,
Ramallah [Image Source]

Over on the often-outstanding website of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), there's a fresh (posted yesterday) and well-written survey of some of the more Kafka-esque dimensions of Palestinian Arab life. It's entitled "The crackdown on Palestinian freedom of speech – and why you probably haven’t heard about it".

Some highlights (all bullet points are verbatim quotes):

• [T]he Palestinian Authority has introduced a new "ban on websites". Like all laws passed since 2007, the new Electronic Crimes Law was passed in July 2017 by presidential decree without consultations with Palestinian civil society or the public.
• According to a comprehensive report from Amnesty International, (an organisation that has been accused of anti-Israel bias in the past), the law imposes prison sentences and fines which "could seemingly be applied to anyone who shares, likes or retweets news deemed illegal, and could be used against journalists further infringing on their ability to work freely".
• [A]t least six individuals have been arrested and charged under the new laws. In addition, "at least ten journalists working in print, radio, TV and online media were summoned by Preventative Security Forces for interrogation in Ramallah...
• [Quoting a shameless senior editor at the Hamas-controlled Al-Quds, Mahmoud Abbas' PA is] "increasingly authoritarian. They want to control all media outlets to block any voices exposing their crimes and violations". 
• [A lawyer] "Muhannad Karajah, who represents many of the journalists, said the situation in the past months has been the worst in years. ‘There is no space for freedoms anymore, the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank are becoming a police state, and they are silencing the people,' he told Amnesty International."
• Amnesty International [says] the new West Bank law curtailing freedom of speech is being used as a tool to silence dissenting voices in the ongoing conflict between Fatah and Hamas. 
• [Last week, the Palestinian Authority] arrested Mohammed Saber Jabbar, after he hosted right-wing Israeli lawmaker Yehudah Glick for Eid al-Adha celebrations. According to Glick, he "went to wish [Jabbar] a happy holiday on eid al-Adha..."

The AIJAC article goes on to give several examples of how critical voices are being silenced by the Abbas regime:

• Jihad Barakat, a reporter for the Palestine Today satellite channel, was arrested for "taking a picture of the Palestinian Prime Minister's motorcade being stopped at an Israeli checkpoint". Absurdly, Barakat was charged "with a crime that is usually used to harass beggars" for the unlawful use of public spaces.
• Ayman Qawasmeh, the director of a private radio station in Hebron, was arrested "shortly after he criticized Abbas and called on him and his prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, to resign". 
• Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist in Hebron, published a Facebook post criticising Qawasmeh's arrest... was taken into custody for speaking out...[and] also charged with "‘causing strife' and 'insulting the higher authorities' under the 1960 Jordanian Penal code which is still enforced in the West Bank".

Of course, Fatah/PA/PLO/Abbas are far from alone in their penchant for petty and not-so-minor thuggish tyranny:

• [The] Hamas leadership in Gaza has also been busy during the last few months. In June, Hamas "arrested at least two journalists,... blocked journalists from reporting in some areas, and restricted the work of a foreign journalist". 
• [In July] "twelve Palestinians were questioned and detained... for comments they made on Facebook", and at least three of the journalists reported ill-treatment and one alleged torture by the Hamas authorities.
• [Amnesty says two Palestinian Arab critics of Hamas claimed] "they were kidnapped, beaten and threatened by Hamas security forces with the use of violence against them and their families". Their crime? Criticising Hamas' handling of the ongoing electricity crisis...
• [Last month] Hamas released Palestine TV's correspondent Fouad Jaradeh after more than two months in detention - but only after the Palestinian Authority arrested five journalists working with Hamas-affiliated news outlets. The five Hamas journalist were then released in what was widely viewed as a tit-for-tat situation.

AIJAC's analysis ends with some on-the-money comments from Khaled Abu Toameh, a Palestinian Arab commentator whom we quote here fairly often. On these matters, he says with considerable justice 

that the mainstream press prefers to cover "the Palestinians whose stories are often linked, directly and indirectly, to Israel". But in cases like these, where the Palestinians are victims at the hands of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, "their tale remains buried - along with their freedom".

Now think of all the working reporters, photographers, commentators, analysts, editors and media representatives based in this specific corner of the world - perhaps the most intensively covered of any of the world's news hotspots - and ask yourself when any of these instances of gross muzzling of dissenting voices were last (or ever!) reported in any of the sources of news that provide you with what you know.

Is it possible to make sense of the failing search for peace in this part of the world without paying attention to the police billy-clubs and draconian laws over on the other side of the fence?

14-Jan-17: Shock, horror: Press freedom under Hamas isn't what it ought to be

Reporting from the Israeli side of the border with Hamas-controlled Gaza
[Image Source]

It's the coldest part of winter in our part of the world, and there have been serious interruptions to the electricity supply in the Gaza Strip. The Islamist thugs who rule the enclave have responded in traditional fashion. And yes, personal violence is of course central to the story.

“Hamas forces blocked journalists from filming the gathering, and an Associated Press journalist was briefly detained at gunpoint until he handed over his mobile phones to plainclothes security men...” [Associated Press item reported last Friday]

Our attention was drawn to this via a piece that appeared Thursday on the website of TheTower.org [here] which says operatives of Hamas

blocked journalists from filming a major protest against power cuts in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, detaining an Associated Press journalist at gunpoint and badly beating an Agence France-Presse photographer who refused to relinquish his camera. The journalists sought to cover a demonstration against chronic electricity shortages in Gaza, which the AP described as “one of the largest unauthorized protests in the territory since the Islamic militant group took power a decade ago.” According to the Foreign Press Association, the Hamas men “stuck a pistol in his chest and verbally threatened the reporter until he agreed to give them the phones.” ["Hamas Holds AP Journalist at Gunpoint, Beats AFP Photographer for Covering Major Protest", The Tower, January 12, 2017]

It quotes a statement of the Tel-Aviv-based Foreign Press Association, a not-for-profit that represents the interests and views of correspondents working in our part of the world, saying that

In addition an AFP photographer was badly beaten to the head by uniformed policemen required medical care after he had refused to give up his camera. The memory card of his camera was confiscated and he was placed under arrest. He was subsequently released and the memory card was returned. The Foreign Press Association condemns this violent behavior in the strongest terms, and finds it especially shocking in light of verbal promises we have received from Hamas officials to respect the freedom of the press. We hope that Hamas will properly investigate this incident and provide an explanation and apology for this unacceptable behavior by their forces.
The Board of the Foreign Press Association. January 12, 2017

Especially shocking? We're shocked that the hard-boiled and experienced reporters of the FPA are shocked that verbal promises of the thuggish murderers who make up the leadership and rank and file of the Islamist Hamas terror group turn out to have not been respected. Almost as if Hamas tells lies.

The people at The Tower provide a valuable service in their article - evidently ignored by the FPA - by quoting a 2009 report for the Gatestone Institute authored by veteran Palestinian affairs journalist Khaled Abu Toameh:

Foreign journalists who manage to cross into the Gaza Strip face many restrictions imposed by the Hamas government. Local facilitators hired by foreign journalists are also under scrutiny by the Hamas government. That is why they are careful not to bring the dirty laundry out by telling the foreign media about things that could reflect negatively on Hamas.

Arabic-language news coverage of massive anti-Hamas protests in the
Gaza Strip this past week: Israel can't be blameed, so don't expect much Western
news coverage [Video Source]

They go on to quote egregious examples of the bare-knuckles Hamas management of media coverage of the Gaza Strip. including this from former AP correspondent Mark Lavie who wrote in August 2014:

Journalists, of course, won’t tell you what you’re missing in the coverage. Their anchors or editors won’t tell you why large parts of the story are colored a certain way or taken from a certain angle. They don’t want to put their reporters’ lives at risk. This is the main reason that video and pictures seem to flow freely out of Gaza. But critical elements of the story itself can’t, and neither can all the pictures and video. It gives the impression that the story is being covered, when only part of it—sometimes a small part—is being covered.

To see the report that Associated Press eventually put out after the events of January 12, 2017, see "In Rare Demonstration, Thousands Protest Power Cuts in Gaza". And for startling video clips - some of them emanating from fed-up (and courageous) Gazans - posted to YouTube in the last couple of days showing massive Gazan street rioting against Hamas, go here, here, here and here.

Heavily spun reporting of Gazan suffering under the boot of the Hamas Islamist regime - invariably with Israel being blamed - has been a news-reporting industry constant since Hamas violently seized control in 2007. Here's a sampling of posts we wrote after previous Gazan electricity crises:

• 29-Dec-15: Gaza and what manipulative, highly-politicized foreign aid can buy
• 30-Apr-15: What Gaza's oppressed know that reporters don't, and why it matters
• 27-Oct-14: In Gaza, the electricity is flowing again no it's not yes it is
• 13-Jul-14: Even more darkness in Gaza
• 18-Nov-13: Behind the celebration of terror, a pervasive darkness
• 28-Oct-12: What lies behind ongoing efforts to paint Gaza as a region under Israeli siege?
• 11-Feb-08: Electricity and appropriate assurances
• 21-Jan-08: Electric wars - a sad tale of two realities
• 1-Oct-07: About carrots and sticks

27-Jan-16: Reality, invention, memory and media

Image Source

We're fans of the columns penned by the journalist and commentator Evelyn Gordon. This paragraph comes from one of her latest:

...[F]or anyone who’s still confused about the difference between a real siege and a fictitious one, here are two simple tests: First, in real sieges, people die of starvation, because the besieger stops food from entering; in fake ones, the “besieger” sends in 2,500 tons of food and medicine per day even during the worst of the fighting. Second, real sieges get swept under the carpet by the UN; only the fake ones merit massive UN publicity. And if you think I’m joking, just compare the actual cases of Madaya and Gaza... So next time you hear people talking about the “siege of Gaza,” remember Madaya. And then tell them to stop wasting their breath on fake sieges when people are dying in real ones. ["How to Spot a Fake Siege", January 25, 2016]

Being reminded of the difference between reality and ideologically-driven spin is especially relevant today, January 27. That's the date on which, annually, Holocaust Memorial Day is observed - at least in those places where it's remembered at all.

What's remembered, what's forgotten and what's willfully twisted and distorted is, of course, part of the reason the commemoration exists. How effectively is a matter worth thinking about.

Why was January 27 set aside? On that date Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the Nazi network of industrialized death camps, was freed in 1945 [source]. In our own family, that's more than a historical footnote since two of our children's grandparents were among the relative handful of Jews who were sent there and, despite the unspeakable horrors, survived to build families and productive lives.

During its five years of operation, Auschwitz became

"the site of the largest mass murder in history. An estimated 1.1 million people were killed there between 1940 and 1945, 90% of whom were Jews. The camp survived World War Two largely intact, and today it forms one of the most significant and disturbing locations on earth.at the concentration camp..."

Is Gaza equivalent to what Auschwitz was? (There's no shred of doubt in our mind, and there shouldn't be in yours, that the answer is: absolutely not - not even in the very smallest, most trivial sense.) Many will say it depends whom you ask. The very idea, ironically, stems from propaganda first pushed into the public sphere by the defunct Soviet regime

and from there spread to the Soviets’ Arab clients. It is now fully embedded in the Arab-Muslim world, where it grows and mutates in symbiosis with outright denial that the Holocaust occurred or a radical reduction of its genocidal scale, ferocity, and number of victims. Holocaust inversion has a graphic omnipresence in cartoons all over the Arab and Iranian press, where Israelis are regularly portrayed in Nazi regalia. Elsewhere in the Middle East and beyond, it has surfaced in the rhetoric of populist demagogues and the media... In Europe, Holocaust inversion is busy spreading beyond its original locus of infection and finding a home among intellectuals and activists, especially on the Left... [Martin Kramer writing in Mosaic Magazine, August 2014]

Anyone wanting to see for themselves how closely Gaza matches up to the libelous claims alleging it's a latter-day concentration camp can find no shortage of web-based reports depicting Gaza's luxe hotels, well-stocked supermarkets and glitzy shopping malls. Ditto a host of serious news analysis pieces (Washington Post, The Guardian, Honest Reporting, UK Media Watch and many others). It's there for anyone who wants to see.

The trouble is, reality is usually nuanced, often complex. It's clear that neither facts nor photos are enough to displace some people's prejudices and simplifications. Time has an effect too. The generation of Auschwitz survivors is, in the nature of things, approaching its natural end, making it that much easier for the deniers of the Holocaust's reality to attract audiences. And as the evidence sadly shows, there's a growing slice of humanity - among them a disturbingly large number of college students - who have been persuaded that not only did the Holocaust never happen, but it was the Israelis that did it with its principal victims being Palestinians.

"My visit to the Gaza concentration camp" [Source]

Don't be so quick to scoff. Fundamental mistakes of fact and of history are all around us; they are grist for the echo chamber that some parts of the mass media have become.

Khaled Abu Toameh, a journalist whose work we have quoted admiringly here several times refers to some vignettes (in an article he wrote for Gatestone Institute) that are so shocking that a person could easily think they were invented. They illustrate what he terms a "degree of incomprehension -- and professional laziness -- [that] is difficult to imagine in the Internet age". Some instances (all direct quotes):

• When Israel assassinated Hamas's founder and spiritual leader, Ahmed Yassin, in 2004, a British newspaper dispatched its crime reporter to Jerusalem to cover the event... Well, our hero reported on the assassination of Ahmed Yassin from the bar of the American Colony Hotel. His byline claimed that he was in the Gaza Strip and had interviewed relatives of the slain leader of Hamas...
• [A] Ramallah-based colleague... received a request from a cub correspondent to help arrange an interview with Yasser Arafat. Except at that point, Arafat had been dead for several years. Fresh out of journalism school and unknowledgeable about the Middle East, the journalist was apparently considered by his editors a fine candidate for covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• Two Western journalists recently asked to be accompanied to the Gaza Strip to interview Jewish settlers living there. No, this is not the opening line of a joke. These journalists were in Israel at the end of 2015, and they were deadly serious. Imagine their embarrassment when it was pointed out to them that Israel had completely pulled out of the Gaza Strip ten years ago.

We could add several more from our personal experiences of meeting and being interviewed by literally hundreds of members of the brigade of what Khaled Abu Toameh calls "parachute journalists":

catapulted into the region without being briefed on the basic facts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sadly, correspondents such as these are more the rule than the exception... Of course, the above tales hardly apply to all foreign journalists. Some correspondents from the US, Canada, Australia and Europe are both very knowledgeable and very fair. Unfortunately, however, these represent but a small group among mainstream media in the West... [But not] all foreign journalists. Some correspondents from the US, Canada, Australia and Europe are both very knowledgeable and very fair. Unfortunately, however, these represent but a small group among mainstream media in the West...

Those of us who care about truth, and its close companion, justice, understand that these are realities that must never be ignored. Khaled Abu Toameh expresses it sharply in the context of the journalism that we see practiced in this part of the world, which he correctly says

is not about being pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian. Rather, it is about being "pro" the truth, even when the truth runs straight up against what they would prefer to believe.

All the worthy memorials and monuments and anniversary events are helpless in the face of reportorial incompetence, massive ignorance, malevolence and fabrication. The deliberate rewriting of history absolutely matters.

So does forgetting the victims and their suffering and the lives they built afterwards.

12-Jan-16: Again - the human bombs of Hamas

The Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh posted this Tweet today:

Report: Hamas gives green light to suicide bombings inside Israel. https://t.co/lDuIqY6qkx

— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) January 11, 2016

To put it mildly, this is unwelcome news. It prompted us to post this:

Since Hamas won't say where their human bombs are stored, what defensive measures should a threatened people take? https://t.co/qP5uc4WFvh

— This Ongoing War (@ThisOngoingWar) January 12, 2016

Abu Toameh bases himself on an item on the Arabic-language Almajd.ps website (rendered into English via machine translation):

The resistance cells have reached an advanced stage of preparation for operations... There is no doubt that all attempts by the Zionist enemy in the fight against the armed resistance cells in the occupied West Bank are on their way to failure - the men of the resistance have their own methods to bypass [Israeli] security and intelligence obstacles... The resistance gave the green light for military cells to move and start the second phase of the Jerusalem Uprising and this is what the Zionist enemy will see...

The glorification of so-called "martyrs" whose final actions in life involve stabbing, shooting, vehicle-ramming, bombing; the education of even the youngest of their children to despise Jews and Israelis; the demonization of virtually every aspect of Israeli life and existence... all these aspects of Palestinian Arab society's values as expressed by the actions of its two ever-bickering regimes - the Hamas one in Gaza and the Fatah/PA one in Ramallah - are elements of a spiraling descent likely to produce hideous results in their communities no less than in ours.

Unless they can be stopped.

09-Jan-16: Manhunt for last week's Tel Aviv shooter ends

Arara, northern Israel, Friday afternoon: Forces fan out as the manhunt
converges on the shooter [Image Source]

With the Sabbath just ended, here's what happened right after we posted our last pre-Shabbat article ["08-Jan-16: Tel Aviv on high alert"] on Friday afternoon.

What we know now is that hundreds of Israel Police officers were deployed in parts of northern Israel as well as in the Tel Aviv area during Friday as part of the pursuit of Nashat Milhem, the Israeli Arab gunman who killed three people last Friday afternoon outside the Simta Bar in central Tel Aviv ["03-Jan-16: Friday's Tel Aviv shooter is still on the loose"]. A focus of their efforts was a neighborhood in the northern Israeli Arab village of Arara, Milhem's hometown.

He was known to be armed, and considered dangerous and ready to kill again. Flying inspection checkpoints were set up at multiple locations,  Times of Israel says it's now believed Milhem had been hiding in the Arara area for almost the entire past week.

Evidently what betrayed him in the end, so to speak, was his excrement:

The key piece of evidence that led investigators to Nashat Milhem’s hideout... was the gunman’s feces... The police found the human waste in the vicinity of the area where the raid took place. After it was taken to a laboratory for testing, the authorities discovered that it matched the DNA of the suspect - Jerusalem Post 

Forces from an elite police unit and from the Shin Bet, seeking to capture him alive, tracked the shooter to the hiding place, located in his town and close to his family's home. The Times of Israel account says he spotted them encircling the building and attempted to flee. Still in possession of the powerful weapon he used in the Simta Bar attack, he opened fire on the forces and in the ensuing fire-fight was shot dead. This was made official at about 4.20 pm Friday.

According to Times of Israel, five people had been arrested in the course of the past week in connection with the manhunt, among them several members of Milhem's family.

Chief of Police Roni Alsheikh said the case was not finished, and that police would continue to work to expose any and all others who had helped Milhem before and after the shootings. “All of those involved in terrorism,” Alsheikh said, “should know that we have the means, the determination and the patience to find them all.” [Times of Israel]

There seems to be wall-to-wall approval in Israeli government and opposition circles, as well as in public opinion, with how the week-long manhunt was brought to an end. And in a certain way, that feeling is shared over on the other side, though with a very different emphasis. As the journalist Khaled Abu Toameh reports ["Palestinian Authority joins Hamas in declaring Tel Aviv gunman as 'martyr'"] today:

The Palestinian Authority, Hamas and other Palestinian groups declared Nashat Milhem a shaheed (martyr). The PA Ministry of Health initially added Milhem, who is an Israeli citizen, to its list of “martyrs” who were killed by Israelis during the current wave of terrorism, which began in early October. However, the ministry on Friday night removed Milhem’s name from the list. The ministry explained that it documents the names of Palestinian “martyrs” only in areas that fall under its jurisdiction, namely the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. [Jerusalem Post]

And this report from Times of Israel today reminds us of the deepening gulf between the attitude to co-existence, rights and basic morality on the other side of the fence, and ours:

Palestinians in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of al-Ram on Saturday mourned slain Israeli-Arab gunman Nashat Milhem, who murdered three Israelis in Tel Aviv last week, as a “heroic martyr” who “defeated the occupation.” “We join the family in the mourning the heroic martyr Nashat Milhem, who today has become a martyr of Palestine,” read banners hanging in a mourning tent erected in the neighborhood, one day after the fugitive Milhem was killed in a shootout with Israeli security forces.
“Nashat Milhem defeated the occupation,” another banner read, according to a report on Channel 2 news. Meanwhile in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets to honor Milhem on Saturday afternoon, in a rally sponsored by the terror group... On Friday night, an official Hamas TV station praised Milhem as a “brave hero” and “martyr.” 

There's a disturbing sense here that what makes this particular terror attack so worthy of adulation and attention on the Palestinian Arab side is that it was executed by an Arab with unrestricted Israeli status, papers and profile. Knowing this is one thing. Knowing what to do with it, in a democratic society, is another.

26-Jul-15: What lies behind the newest dose of Palestinian Arab "refugee" fury at UNRWA?

Protesting outside UNRWA Gaza headquarters April 2013 [Image Source]

With all the goodwill that normal people concerned about misery in other people's lives can muster up, there is something more than faintly absurd about pretty much everything in this report.

Gazans, Jordanians stage protests against UNRWA decision to cut services to Palestinian population | Jerusalem Post | Khaled Abu Toameh | July 26, 2015

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Jordan on Sunday staged protests against the decision of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) to cut its services to the Palestinian population. The protesters claim that UNRWA has cut its health and educational services to tens of thousands of Palestinians.
In the Gaza Strip, where nearly half of the Palestinians rely on UNRWA services, scores of protesters gathered outside the agency’s offices, chanting slogans against the latest decision. Many Palestinians suspect that UNRWA’s scaling-down of its services is part of a “conspiracy” to eliminate the refugee problem. The protest was organized by representatives of various Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip, who urged UNRWA to reconsider its decision to decrease its services to Palestinians.
Talal Abu Zarifa, a senior member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, warned UNRWA against the “anger” of the Palestinian refugees. “UNRWA needs to be careful not to enrage our refugees,” he said at the protest. “Our people will erupt because they realize that this is a conspiracy against refugees and not a financial matter.”
One of the protesters,Ali Hashem, also sounded a similar warning against UNRWA. “The cuts in services will lead to a revolution against UNRWA,” he cautioned. “This is not a financial crisis, but a conspiracy against Palestinian refugees.”
UNRWA spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna said that his agency was suffering from a severe financial crisis. He said that UNRWA needs about $101 million to overcome the crisis. “Unless we obtain this sum, UNRWA will be forced to take harsh measures and decisions, including postponing the opening of the new academic year,” he added.
A similar protest was held by UNRWA employees in Jordan, where the agency’s Advisory Commission held an emergency meeting to discuss the financial crisis.
The Commission will review the growing risk that UNRWA may have to delay the start of the academic year in some 700 schools for half a million students across the Middle East unless the deficit of $101 million can be fully funded, according to a statement released by UNRWA.
The Commission will also be discussing a special report to be sent by the Commissioner-General to the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, and on to all 193 members of the UN.
UNRWA officials say they currently have enough funds to maintain its services essential to protect public health, which includes immunizations for children, primary health care, relief and sanitation and some emergency programs through to the end of 2015. However, the money is not enough to guarantee the stable provision of its education services from September onwards.
Hamas legislators in the Gaza Strip said in a statement on Sunday that UNRWA’s decision to cut services to the refugees was tantamount to a declaration of war on the Palestinians. The legislators dismissed UNRWA’s talk about a financial crisis as false and warned the agency against attempting to implement an old plan to resettle the refugees.
The Popular Committees for Palestinian Refugees in the Gaza Strip warned UNRWA against taking part in a “conspiracy to liquidate the case of the refugees.” The group warned that Palestinians would revolt against UNRWA’s moves “and burn everything that comes in their way.”

Protesting outside UNRWA Gaza headquarters July 2011 [Image Source]

Start with the insane (and little publicized) state of UNRWA's funding.

Some of the wealthiest entities in the world - they call themselves states but they function as family-owned businesses with their own postage stamps and flags - say they are desperate, desperate to help their Palestinian Arab "refugee" brethren.

Yet (a) for most of UNRWA's nearly seventy years of existence, they have either failed to give anything, or (b) have failed to reach the ranks of the top 20 givers, or (c) failed to give sums that come close to reflecting their undying passion for the Palestinian Arab "struggle", in stark contrast to their very public passions for spending on what are euphemistically termed luxuries. And that extends way past ordinary consumer items to such self-indulgent vanities as acquiring sports tournaments for mind-boggling prices and then announcing plans for $160 billion of new sports fields and tennis courts.

So where has UNRWA's funding come from?

It's no secret. But it's certainly something that gets overlooked in the customary news reporting channels for reasons about which we can speculate. The facts and data are out there in the public domain. To save everyone the effort, we suggest taking a glance at some recent posts of ours:

• "03-Jul-15: Misery, terrorism and money-making: a cynics' guide"
• "04-Jun-15: Exploding for decades: UNRWA needs more, more, more"
• "19-May-14: Will momentary focus on UNRWA throw any light on PA and Hamas abuse of their own people?"

And dozens more before those, as well as a recent video [click here]. It's not our handiwork but we think it explains the whole catastrophe reasonably well in a mere 3m40s.

And it isn't all that hard to figure out why this farce keeps going on and on for decades. Quoting ourselves: 

"...when you want to preserve misery at all costs, leverage it to ensure a ready supply of human bombs and other terrorists, there's an ever-willing cast of international figures, NGOs and the many arms of the UN who are evidently only too pleased to be of assistance - or to be exploited by others with more detailed agendas." 

Finally, here (for the second time this month) is a shout-out to to UNRWA's indefatigable "Spokesperson, Director of Advocacy & Strategic Communications", Christopher Gunness, to straighten us out and indicate a more UNRWA-friendly way of looking at this. We know he's busy, so let it be clear that no one is holding their breaths. 

What UNRWA stands for is perfectly clear to anyone who looks.

14-Apr-15: From Gaza, where seldom is heard an encouraging word, a (very) cautiously optimistic note

Smoke rises (in this Getty Images photo published in The Guardian) in October 2013 from
the mouth of a smuggling tunnel dug beneath the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. "Egypt's army has destroyed many of the tunnels on the Egyptian side of Rafah", the caption reads

Here's a slightly surprising follow-on to a post we put up yesterday: "13-Apr-15: The carnage resulting from Gaza's Hamas tunnels may now be sharply reduced". 

Khaled Abu Toameh, one of the most well-informed and worthwhile news sources in the Arab parts of the Middle East, writes on the Gatestone Institute that Egypt's tough new regime of security measures and laws to strangle the massive number of tunnels running underground between the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip and Egypt is having an impact:

"The smuggling (of weapons into the Gaza Strip) has been stopped almost completely," admitted Abu Mohammed, a Palestinian arms dealer from the town Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. "Rarely does anyone manage to smuggle light weapons or ammunition." ...He complained that it has become impossible to smuggle missiles and rockets into the Gaza Strip... ["T]he cost of one bullet, which used to sell for one US dollar, had doubled in recent months. Similarly, the price of an Egyptian-made AK-47 assault rifle has risen from $900 to $1300"... Sisi has shown real guts and determination in his war to drain the swamps of terrorists. The tough measures he has taken along the border with the Gaza Strip have proven to be even more effective than Israel's military operations against the smuggling tunnels. That the Gaza Strip is facing a weapons shortage is good news not only for Israel and Egypt, but also for the Palestinians living there. It is hard to see how Hamas will rush into another military confrontation with Israel -- where Palestinians would once again pay a heavy price -- at a time when Sisi's army is working around the clock to destroy smuggling tunnels, and the prices of rifles and bullets in the Gaza Strip are skyrocketing... ["Gaza: Egypt Responsible For Weapons Shortage", Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, April 13, 2015]

A note of a less sanguine kind is sounded in a bulletin issued yesterday by MEMRI. The MEMRI mission is to render into English some of the published Arabic-language material that would otherwise go ignored in the West, and thank goodness for its work. Quoting a March 14, 2015 report on the Hamas-controlled Alqassam.ps website, the MEMRI report says the Al-Qassam Brigades, an arm of Hamas, are 

preparing for the next conflict with Israel by establishing military camps. Recently, the Al-Qassam Brigades' preparation and training division began constructing two camps, named Al-Yarmouk and Filastin, near the Israel-Gaza border. A department official said: "The brigades will continue to train, with no fear of Israel." He added, "The training is also meant to assure the residents that the resistance is in good shape, that it has not ceased operations as the occupation claims, and that it is on the frontlines to defend the people.

MEMRI quotes other Gazan sources (via Felesteen.ps, and almajd.ps) from March 8, 2015, saying 

joint training was conducted for the first time by the military wings of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (the Al-Quds Brigades) and Hamas (the Al-Qassam Brigades). The Hamas website Al-Majd explained: "The training is a deterring message to the occupation from the resistance, as well as a message of strength for the domestic Palestinian front."

Sadly, it's premature for the swords on our side of the fence to start being beaten into plough-shares.