20-Apr-19: At Tapuah Junction, a stabbing attacker is thwarted

Here in Israel, we have just completed the first day of the week-long Pesach festival. It was also the Sabbath. But Arab-on-Israeli terrorism doesn't take holidays.

Haaretz reported this morning on a thwarted attack:

Israeli security forces shot and wounded a Palestinian man on Saturday attempting to carry out a stabbing attack in the West Bank, Border Police said, reporting no further wounded in the incident.
A 20-year-old resident of Saniriya, a village in the northern West Bank, approached a Border Police outpost at the Tapuah Junction and "behaved suspiciously," according to the Israel Police spokesperson.
According to the statement, policemen began pursuing the suspect on foot. Another policeman driving nearby spotted the chase and blocked the suspect with his car.
The suspect then pulled out a knife and tried opening the car door in an attempt to stab the policeman inside, who then shot and wounded him, said the statement.
It was initially reported the suspect had died at the scene. However, he was evacuated in critical condition by the Israeli army for medical attention.

Saniriya is an Arab village of roughly 3,000 people located in Samaria. Times of Israel says the attacker was taken to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva for emergency treatment. Beilinson is a major Israeli medical facility, part of the world-renowned Rabin Medical Center.

The European-funded Maan News Agency reporting from Bethlehem doesn't actually dispute any of what Haaretz reports. Instead it adopts its traditional disingenuous tone (in the English-language version - there's no Arabic report at this hour) according to which Israeli forces injured "a Palestinian who was passing by the checkpoint... claiming that he attempted to carry out a stabbing attack against Israeli soldiers deployed at the Zaatara checkpoint south of the northern occupied West Bank district of Nablus".

So: just another innocent Palestinian Arab passer-by mugged by Israeli reality. Here's a photo of the knife he was clutching.

The checkpoint that Ma'an's editors call Zaatara is better known as Tapuah Junction, site of many previous Arab-on-Israeli attacks (click to view some of our previous Tapuah posts).

And Nablus, which Ma'an calls "Israeli-occupied", is in reality controlled by the Abbas/Fatah Palestinian Authority, having been "handed over to the Palestinian National Authority on December 12, 1995, as a result of the Oslo Accords Interim Agreement" [Wikipedia].

A poster on social media [Twitter] calls the "passer-by" Omar Awni Younes (the Younes clan are a large part of the Saniriya population) and quotes a post uploaded by him this morning: "this is a jihad, victory or martyrdom".

26-Dec-18: Vehicle rammer is stopped by IDF Wednesday afternoon

Image Source: Xinhua

Times of Israel reported yesterday["Attempted West Bank car-ramming attack reported outside Nablus"] on an attempted car-ramming attack on Israeli soldiers and civilians in the northern West Bank. IDF troops opened fire and stopped the attacker, who is now injured, before he could do more damage.

The suspect attempted to run over a group of people waiting at a bus stop at a junction outside Nablus, near a military base, according to the military and the Samaria Regional Council. Soldiers at the scene shot at the assailant, who was taken to hospital in moderate condition. No Israelis were physically hurt in the attempted attack, although the Samaria Regional Council spokesperson said three people — two women and a man — suffered panic attacks and underwent treatment. “He was driving slowly and suddenly sped up toward us,” said eyewitness Emunah Mevorach, 23, who said the car had tried to maneuver between concrete columns placed next to the bus stop to prevent such attacks. “The soldier shot many bullets and we ran behind a concrete block. The soldier’s reaction saved us.”

The Chinese newsagency Xinhua ["Israeli forces foil Palestinian car-ramming attack in West Bank, driver injured"] adopts a straightforward approach to their headline, while Turkey's Anadolu does what most of the Arabic-language press customarily does: irrespective of what their sources tell them, and pretending there is not a years-long obsessive Palestinian Arab campaign to encourage vehicle rammings of Israelis underway - and many dead Israelis as a result - it suggests the attack may or may not have happened, depends whom you ask (but their reporters rarely ask). See "Israeli forces shoot Palestinian in alleged car attack" from the Turks.

From Ma'an's version of the news

The notorious Ma'an News Agency (not surprisingly) headlines its version of the news with this: "Israeli forces shoot, injure Palestinian at Huwwara checkpoint":

The Palestinian Ministry of Civil Affairs confirmed that they were officially informed of the driver's injury, whom they identified as Raed Thiab, 35, from Kafr Qalil village. The ministry added that he was injured with two bullets in the leg. Witnesses told Ma’an that the vehicle was parked dozens of meters away from the Huwwara checkpoint, near a transport stop for Israeli settlers.

The headline of their Arabic-language version is (not surprisingly) less shy and owns up to how the guy wasn't just shot but "was injured allegedly carrying out an attack".

26-Nov-18: An Arab-on-Israeli vehicle ramming attack this afternoon - the driver is dead, the injured are recovering

Image Source

A little after noon today, three IDF servicemen doing construction work along the side of the road were struck by a car driven by a Palestinian Arab male.

This happened on Route 60 as that highway passes Karmei Tzur, an Israeli community of about 1,100, located 22 km south of Jerusalem, just south of Gush Etzion Junction.

The IDF says one has moderate injuries to all four limbs while the others are injured lightly - scrapes and bruises. All were treated at the scene by ambulance crews and then taken to hospitals in Jerusalem for treatment.

This is believed by the military to have been a deliberate vehicle-ramming attack. A fourth soldier, an Army reservist, fired at the driver and killed him. In the Arab media, the suspected attacker is named as Ramzi Abu Yabes, 32, a resident of Dheisheh refugee camp.

UPDATE November 27, 2018: In its customary way, the European-funded-and-backed Palestinian Arab news channel, Ma'an News Agency, casts doubt ["Palestinian shot, killed for alleged attack near Gush Etzion"] on the version of events reported from Israel. That's in its English-language edition. But in its Arabic version, the driver of the attack vehicle is called 'martyr'. And overnight, according to a reliable source [here], Hamas, which is less interested in vagueness and more in  open incitement, released a statement

"calling Ramzi Abu Yabes a hero for using his vehicle to strike three #IDF soldiers along a central West Bank highway today. His home is currently adorned with Hamas flags and visitors."

Another Arabic source [here], quoting a spokesperson for the ambulance that attended the scene, says Abu Yabes

"was on a mission to treat a burn patient in Beit Ummar [and] had undergone a cardiac catheterization for almost two months which made him unable to control the driving of the car, which deviated towards Israeli soldiers... and it is not true that he carried out the operation in favor of any Palestinian faction."

11-Oct-18: In Israel's Samaria district, an Arab-on-Israeli stabbing this afternoon

There's been another Arab-on-Israeli stabbing attack today.

Two Israelis are injured, one in serious condition, after an attacker, evidently a Palestinian Arab, standing at an Israeli bus stop near the IDF's Shomron Regional Brigade headquarters close to the community of Itamar, pulled a "huge knife" (according to an Israel National News report) at about 1:30 pm. He stabbed an Israeli reservist of about 30 and then fled from the scene. He has not yet been apprehended.

(We wrote about another stabbing attack at what sounds like the same spot in January 2016 - see this post.)

Times of Israel says IDF soldiers at the scene opened fire in the attacker's direction:

Shrapnel from the shots struck the woman in the leg. The stabber may have fled in a waiting car nearby, Hadashot TV news said.

The woman caught in the cross-fire is reportedly 26 and her leg injuries are not life-threatening. Both victims were taken to Rabin Medical Center/Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva for emergency care. (It's the largest ER facility in Israel.)

Many Arab-on-Israeli stabbings over the past two years have involved the knifers aiming for the upper parts of their victims' bodies, and so it was this afternoon. The male victim suffered stab wounds to the face and the upper torso. He was conscious when brought to hospital.

Consistent with the shabby, unprofessional way it reports on Arab-on-Israeli terror, the European-funded Ma'an News Agency 'knows' ["Israeli soldier, settler injured in stabbing attack, suspect flees", today] that the woman victim is a "settler". In fact, her identity and certainly her home address, remain unpublicized. Calling her a settler is a knowing act of incitement to terror; for the practitioners of Maan-style lethal journalism, all Israelis are "settlers".

One report ["Israeli Army Reservist Wounded in West Bank Stabbing Attack", Haaretz, today] says the knifer fled toward Huwara, a Palestinian village near Nablus. It says the IDF has set up dozens of roadblocks around the town and soldiers were carrying out checks, causing "large traffic jams" in the area.

The alleged stabber is taken into custody on Thursday
night [Image Source]

UPDATE 12:05 am Friday October 12, 2018: Times of Israel says the attacker has been apprehended. He is un-named at this stage but reported to be a 19-year-old male from the Muslim village of Jamma’in (population about 7,000), about 16 km south of Nablus in Samaria. He is currently helping the Israeli security authorities with their enquiries. Hamas, according to Wikipedia, is the dominant political force in the town. A Hamas announcement [here in Arabic] says Thursday's stabbing attack at a bus stop is "a slap to the occupation and failure of its security system... the operation comes in the context of our people's response to the arrogance of the occupation and its continuous violations against our people and our holy sites".

UPDATE 12:30 pm Friday October 12, 2018: A Palestinian Arab source names the arrested suspect as Muaz Qassem Hussein, age 19. They publish his photo here.

UPDATE 11:15 pm Monday October 15, 2018: From Ynet:

The IDF released footage from the security cameras showing the stabbing terror attack at the bus stop outside the Samaria Territorial Brigade base in the West Bank, which last Thursday left an IDF reservist moderately wounded and a civilian woman slightly hurt. In a video released Monday, the reservist, who is reported to be in his thirties, is seen standing on the side of the road next to a civilian, when the terrorist suddenly emerges from behind and proceeds to chase after the soldier with a knife. After a struggle between the two, which lasts several seconds, the civilian at the bust stop is seen escaping the area and two other soldiers arrive at the scene and aim their weapons at the fleeing terrorist.

The video is here.

14-Aug-18: Chasing (some) terrorists in Jordan

Image Source: Twitter account of Jordan's royal court

A significant clash between the forces of the king and what are being called a terrorist force happened on Saturday across the valley from us over in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

It all started, as far as we know, with an explosion at a Jordanian music festival on Friday. First reports - like this one from an English-language Arab source, were careful to tiptoe around the possibility of terror:

A vehicle belonging to the Jordanian gendarmerie was hit by an explosion on Friday evening, leaving one sergeant dead and wounding six other security personnel, an official at the General Directorate of the Gendarmerie has said. The blast happened just outside the capital Amman, where the unit was tasked with guarding a cultural festival held in the western outskirt of the city. Local news media quoted government sources denying the blast was linked to terrorism, however, investigations are continuing... Local media quoted security sources as saying that "a gas bomb exploded near the fuel tank, causing the explosion of the vehicle". The Fuheis festival is an annually held event in Jordan and is considered the second largest festival in the country after the Jerash Festival... Fuheis is a Christian-majority town, around 20km northwest of the capital Amman. [The New Arab (UK), August 11, 2018]

Pretty soon, the story got darker: turns out it was a bomb that 

was planted under a police vehicle providing security at [the festival]... No group immediately took responsibility... Prime Minister Omar Razzaz portrayed Friday's bombing as a "terrorist attack"... Jordan is a close Western ally in a turbulent region, and has largely been spared from the conflicts in neighboring Syria and Iraq. However, the kingdom has also been targeted by Islamic militants, both domestic and foreign who have carried out a series of attacks... [Associated Press]

Fuheis (or Fuhais or Al Fuheis) is about 20 kilometers north-west of the capital Amman. The Fuheis Festival has been held annually for the past 25 years and is considered Jordan's second-largest cultural festival. Wikipedia says the town has 20,000 residents, 60% of them Greek Orthodox Christians. It's in the Wadi Shueib (Valley of Jethro) area, between Salt and Amman.

A place with a historical heritage ["Is Al-Salt Set to be Jordan’s Next UNESCO World Heritage Site?"] Salt, also called Al-Salt, happens to be where the security forces made up of "special forces", police and the army carried out a raid on Saturday. And where things seem to have gotten badly out of control. Salt had 97,000 inhabitants in 2006: 65% of them are Muslim and the remainder Christians.

Image Source: Where the ISIS people had their base - till Sunday

Newly appointed government spokeswoman Jumana Ghneimat said the security forces we just mentioned were pursuing a "terrorist cell". Here's a summary of what Agence France-Presse reported ["4 security force members, 3 'terrorists' killed in Jordan raid"] on Sunday:

• Quoting not its own reporters but the Jordanian government, it says: "Four members of the Jordanian security forces and three "terrorists" have been killed during a raid on a militant hideout after an officer died in a bomb blast near the capital..."
• Making clear Jordan now tied the raid to what had happened in Fuheis on Friday, it said "Five suspects were also arrested during Saturday's raid in connection with the home-made bomb that exploded under a patrol car at a music festival."
• According to Ms Ghneimat, "The suspects refused to surrender and opened heavy fire toward a joint security force". They "blew up the building in which they were hiding, and which they had booby-trapped earlier".
• The three security forces who were killed died in the shootout with the gunmen. A fourth died later of his injuries.
• The bodies of three terrorists (AFP puts that word in quotation marks) were found in the rubble of the exploded building as were some automatic weapons. Five militants (AFP's word) were arrested in the operation.
• AFP quotes "medical sources" saying 11 people "were wounded during the raid, including members of the security forces and civilians who were residents of the building where the militants were hiding". They included women and children. The AFP report has no details of who thhey were, their ages, or the extent of their injuries.
• Now this interesting direct quote based on something said by a "security official who asked not to be named": "All the terrorists who were killed or arrested were Jordanians and residents of Salt."
• The king, Abdullah II, is quoted saying Jordan would "strike mercilessly and forcefully" against whoever they are blaming which is not yet specified. "This cowardly terrorist act, and any act that targets the security of Jordan, will only add to our unity, strength and determination to wipe out terrorism and its criminal gangs". 
• And this intriguing comment from the recently appointed (see "New Jordanian cabinet has fresh faces but same old problems", The National, June 14, 2018) prime minister Omar al-Razzaz: Jordan will "not be complacent in the hunt for terrorists".

How firmly does King Abdullah actually run things in the kingdom? You get a sense of this from a recent comment by the sober and generally respected Deutschewelle news service:

Since the king calls the shots on all policy issues, it is unclear what mandate Razzaz will have to take measures to pacify the protesters ["Jordan's king appoints Omar Razzaz as new prime minister to defuse protests", DW, June 5, 2018]

On the other hand, how well that's going can be surmised by how many prime ministers the king has appointed and then replaced. Since he was crowned on June 9, 1999, Abdullah II has hired and fired 12 prime ministers, not including the new man, Mr Razzaz. They have served, on average, for less than a year and a half each. (We did the calculations from public records.) The economy is perhaps the most visible sign of how much of a challenge Jordan's managerial class have on their hands: see "'We simply can't take this': Jordanians vow to continue protests after PM resigns" [Middle East Eye, June 5, 2018]

Monday night brought this update:

Jordan said Monday that a terror cell targeted in a deadly weekend raid by security forces was composed of supporters of the Islamic State terror group and shared its extremist views. Saturday’s raid, during which three jihadists were killed and five arrested, revealed that they were preparing a series of attacks in Jordan, Interior Minister Samir Mubaideen said... The suspects “were not part of an organization but followed its takfiri (Sunni Muslim extremist) ideology and supported Daesh... All of them were Jordanians... The raid also foiled other plots to carry out a series of terrorist operations against security installations and public gatherings,” he said. ["Jordan says jihadists killed in raid were Islamic State supporters", AFP, August 14, 2018]

Reuters added:

• Also quoting al-Mobaideen, it says the "militants... did not belong to a specific group but subscribed to Islamic State ideology... There were plots to wage a series of terror attacks that sought security points and popular gatherings. We know the targets but we won’t tell them so people won’t get terrified”... 
• [T]here were no signs so far they had foreign links, Mobaideen said, refusing to give names of suspects. “The investigations are secret and ongoing,” he told a news conference
• Alongside automatic weapons in the suspect’s possession, the authorities found a location where chemical ingredients for manufacturing explosives were buried, Mobaideen added.
• The militant cell was recently set up and there were indications its members had embraced radical ideology. “What is dangerous is that these new recruits are more impulsive than those with experience in executing operations that harm Jordan’s security,” [head of the Gendarmerie] Hawatmeh told reporters.
• "Intelligence officials and some experts believe widening social disparities and a perception of official corruption are fuelling a rise in radicalization among disaffected youths in a country with high unemployment and growing poverty."

A report from a Palestinian Arab source ["Jordanian King Abdullah II vows to eliminate terrorism", Ma'an News Agency, August 12, 2018] datelined Amman says:

The Jordanian King Abdullah II released a statement on Sunday, vowed to end the existence of terrorism, following a deadly terror attack in the town of al-Salt, Jordan. [He] stressed that this cowardly act of terrorism and any action aimed at the security of Jordan "will only increase unity, strength, and determination to eradicate terrorism and its criminal gangs."

What's actually going on behind the official statements and media releases? It's genuinely hard to know. Jordan doesn't have a free and enquiring media and much of what emanates from official sources is spin. A Jordan Times article yesterday shows (probably inadvertently) how that works:

Spokesperson of the Ministry of Political and Parliamentary Affairs Sami Mahasneh told The Jordan Times over the phone that a meeting with the minister and heads of political parties had been concluded with "unanimous agreement upon the government’s media strategy". He announced that a new platform dubbed “It’s Your Right to Know” is being developed by the government to issue around-the-clock news, which he said "will hopefully put an end to all false news and deal with sensitive ones in a delicate manner"...
Bayan Tal, senior advisor at the Jordan Media Institute, told The Jordan Times that this approach is "indeed noticeable" in the new Razzaz government. "There is a gap of trust between the government and the citizens when it comes to news. This is a result of the past governments’ way of dealing with the media and it is what leads citizens to often turn to rumours or unofficial news outlets for information, rather than the government's press release, as proven by studies,” Tal said... The competition between news agencies should not push them to commit immoral and disgraceful acts just to get views, likes, and comments, as those are “not the values of a true journalist”... ["Officials warn against false news ‘igniting national fear’", Jordan Times, August 13, 2018]

We actually do have things to say about how the "values of a true journalist" operate in Jordan. See

• 27-Apr-18: If it really means to tackle radicalism, the Kingdom of Jordan should extradite Ahlam Tamimi to the US
• 23-Jan-15: What's said in London stays in London: Jordan's now-you-see-it-now-you-don't war on terror
• 10-Dec-14: In the Arab world's most promising new journalism school, a passion for murder and hatred

and especially

• 11-Dec-14: Is it newsworthy when journalists make a terror-addicted murdering colleague their role-model?

Now seems like a perfect time for the Jordanians to show how firmly they oppose Islamist terror by handing high-profile Islamist terrorist and Jordanian media celebrity Ahlam Tamimi over to US law enforcement authorities as they are obliged to do under the 1995 Extradition Treaty between the two countries.

27-Jul-18: A murderous Thursday night knifing attack in suburban Jerusalem; the killer, again, is a child

Image Source: CUFI

The Israeli community of Adam (also known as Geva Binyamin, recalling the name of the site on which it stands which is mentioned in the biblical Book of Joshua), located just a few minutes drive north of Jerusalem and 45 minutes by frequent Egged bus ride from the capital's Central Bus Station, is in stunned shock this morning.

As Times of Israel reports:

The Israeli man stabbed to death in a terror attack in a West Bank settlement on Thursday night was named Friday morning as 31-year-old Yotam Ovadia. His funeral will take place at 1 p.m. on Friday at the Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem. According to Israeli authorities, suspect Mohammad Tareq Yousef climbed over the security fence of the West Bank settlement of Adam sometime before 9 p.m. Thursday. He walked deeper into the settlement, crossing a playground area, where he encountered [31-year-old Yotam] Ovadia, and stabbed him repeatedly in the upper torso...  father to a 2-year-old child and a 7-month-old baby. The Brinks security company announced on their Facebook page that he worked for them as a technician...
A second resident, 58, was also stabbed after arriving on the scene. He was rushed to a hospital in serious condition but it was upgraded to moderate after doctors managed to stabilize him.
A third resident, Assaf Raviv, 41, went outside to investigate the disturbance and, realizing that an attack was occurring, shot the Palestinian terrorist three times, killing him. He was stabbed and lightly injured during the incident, and on Friday morning it was announced he had been released from hospital. The settlement committee on Friday released a statement praising Raviv’s bravery... 

Haaretz captures some of the Arab world's blood-lusting reaction:

In response, the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza said it welcomes the attack, describing it as "the appropriate response to the crimes of the occupation." [PRC is aligned with Hezbollah and with the government of Iran.]

And

Hamas said in an official statement: "This is an act of heroism and a message to all the heads of the occupation that attempts to uproot the spirit of resistance from the heart of the Palestinian people have failed and today's heroic action proves the unity of the Palestinian people and its common destiny. Yesterday three fighters were killed in Gaza and today the response has come from the West Bank."

And from a different Hamas source quoted on a Jordanian news site, a supercilious, general-purpose, one-size-fits-all self-justification for the barbarism:

"The operation today is a natural response to the crimes of the occupation against our people, and an extension of the ongoing uprising of our people," said Hamas spokesman Abdel Latif al-Qanoua

The terrorism-friendly editors of the Bethlehem-based Ma'an News Agency have not yet managed to report any of this in their English-language edition but it's already headline news in their Arabic version (they understand their market's needs). Via machine-translation, we see they name the killer as Ahmed Tarek Dar Yusuf Abu Ayouch, 17, and frame the news as "the death of a boy". Other reports say he was younger than that. We won't post his photo on our site, but it's over here.

Unsurprisingly Israel-hating social media posts (like this one and this) refer to the cold-blooded knifer as "martyr".

Times of Israel notes that he comes from

Khobar, a West Bank town near Ramallah. The village is the same village the killer of the Salomon family came from, exactly a year ago.

They are referring to the savagery we reported a little over a year ago in "22-Jul-17: Friday night carnage in Neve Tzuf". (Do the British citizens of the English Midlands town of Walsall understand what they got into when they entered a twinning relationship with Khobar?)

What they ought to have mentioned as well, but didn't, is that Khobar (or Kobar or Kaubar or Cobar), a dusty village of about 4,000 people located about 10 km north of the PA administrative capital Ramallah, happens also to be the pre-imprisonment home-town of another notorious murderer, Marwan Barghouti, convicted on terrorism charges and involvement in five counts of murder in a criminal trial which we attended ["21-Mar-14: Allegedly objective journalism"]. It prides itself on having 25 of its residents in Israeli prisons.

Unlike the #WeaponizedChild teen who was lethally stopped last night trying to murder Jews, the older villager ["Who is Marwan Barghouti?"] gets his op eds published in the New York Times where they disingenuously call him "a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian".

There's much more in our post "18-Apr-17: So what, in reality, is Marwan Barghouti?", almost all of it ugly in the most serious of ways. Admirers of a certain loathsome South African churchman ["Archbishop Desmond Tutu nominates Marwan Barghouti for Nobel Peace Prize"] may be interested in the supporting role he plays.

As often happens in the wake of lethal terror attacks inside Israeli communities, it's likely the IDF will enlarge (for a time) its visible presence in the communities and on the roads of Judea and Samaria and carry out very active investigations in places like Khobar.

This morning's reports suggest the possibility that the terror in Adam involved an accomplice and that a "suspicious vehicle" was seen leaving the community shortly after the killing. Ma'an reports (again - only in Arabic for now) that three villagers have already been taken into Israeli custody this morning in Khobar and names them as Nasrallah Yousef Mishal, 17, his brother Mohammed Mishal, 21 and a 42-year-old Barghouti male named Khaldoun.

A Friday morning Arabic news report says the knifer's home is being prepared for demolition by the IDF. On that issue, bear in mind that the perpetually-insolvent Palestinian Authority's Rewards for Terror scheme will be providing lifetime incentive payments to the family of the dead killer.

UPDATE 3:00 pm Friday July 27, 2018: If you're familiar with the nauseating, agenda-driven editorial skills of the Ma'an people, you won't be surprised with how they approach the terrorist attack in their slow-to-arrive English-language report on last night's unspeakable savagery in Adam:

"Israeli settler shoots, kills Palestinian teen after stabbing attack" is the nauseating headline they came up with. In the body of the report, they quote Arab sources who say the boy came with an axe and that was what he used to attack his victims, and to carry out the murder of Yotam Ovadia.

And with Arab culture being flexible in the way names change form according to circumstances, they now call the killer Muhammad Tareq Youssef Abu Ayyush. Being cautious in their customary way, Ma'an's editors don't call the high-school-age killer a "martyr", at least not in this shabby Western-funded outfit's English-language version. But for the less delicate consumers of Ma'an's Arabic version, martyr is of course what they call him. Ma'an's editors know their readership and its predilections.

UPDATE August 28, 2018: Haaretz reports today ["Israeli Military Demolishes West Bank Home of Terrorist Who Stabbed Settler"] that, last night (Monday), the Israeli military demolished the home of the stabber who killed Yotam Ovadia:

The Israel Defense Forces went into the village of Kubar in the West Bank and tore down the house of Muhammed Tarek Ibrahim Dar Youssef. During the demolition violent protests took place and dozens of Palestinians threw rocks and firebombs and set tires on fire, according to the military. The military responded with riot dispersal means, the IDF said. No injuries were reported. Israeli law allows the military to demolish the homes of terrorists who have killed Israelis. The policy has been a matter of some controversy, but is carried out on the argument that it serves as a deterrent against future terrorist attacks as it affects other family members living in the household...

The terrorism-friendly Palestinian Arab news outlet Ma'an covers the demolition extensively with photographs and video, editorializing that house demolitions "against Palestinians and not against Israelis, who have committed attacks or hate crimes against Palestinians, has only fueled more anger against the decades-long Israeli occupation. Israel has come under harsh condemnation over the past several years for its response to attacks committed by Palestinians on Israelis, which rights groups have said amounted to "collective punishment" on family members and entire communities in a clear violation of international law." Ma'an needless to say makes no mention of the lifetime stipends to which the parents of the stabber have recently become entitled under the PA's grotesque policy of incentive payments for the perpetrators of terrorism and their heirs.

23-Apr-18: Bret Stephens on Israel's robust willingness to defend itself

Familiar scenes - from seven years ago [Image Source]

In a punchy New York Times column published this past Friday ["Jewish Power at 70 Years"], Bret Stephens starts out talking about a hate crime - with an intriguing twist - in today's Germany. But then he heads off in the direction of the Middle East and the challenges posed to Israelis by the people on the far side of our borders.

Here's a first extract:

On Friday, Palestinians in Gaza returned for the fourth time to the border fence with Israel, in protests promoted by Hamas. The explicit purpose of Hamas leaders is to breach the fence and march on Jerusalem. Israel cannot possibly allow this — doing so would create a precedent that would encourage similar protests, and more death, along all of Israel’s borders — and has repeatedly used deadly force to counter it. The armchair corporals of Western punditry think this is excessive. It would be helpful if they could suggest alternative military tactics to an Israeli government dealing with an urgent crisis against an adversary sworn to its destruction. They don’t. It would also be helpful if they could explain how they can insist on Israel’s retreat to the 1967 borders and then scold Israel when it defends those borders. They can’t.

He's right. We're old enough to remember the coordinated Arab assaults on multiple Israeli bordersseven years ago in conjunction with Naqba Day - May 14 and 15, 2011 and around the same time as the ill-fated and unfortunately-named Arab Spring.

A BBC report at the time ["Palestinian protests: Arab spring or foreign manipulation?", BBC, May 15, 2011] said the not-so-peaceful "protestors"

undoubtedly embodied the same kind of risk-taking, confrontational people-power ethos that has fired the revolts in many parts of the Arab world.

How did that risk-taking confrontation play out?

Lebanon

In Lebanon, some 30,000 people were pulled together by the organizers near Lebanon's Israel border and walked towards it just opposite the northern Israeli town of Avivim. Soldiers of the Lebanese army first fired into the air to deter them. But then, as they headed recklessly into and across a border minefield throwing stones towards the Israeli and shouting into the hills for a "right of return", the Lebanese forces shot at them with assault rifles and tear gas. Before the retreat was completed, 11 participants were dead and about 100 injured.

Egypt

On the Egyptian border, thousands were reported to about to make their way from Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and other points of origin toward the Rafah crossing with Gaza. But the military regime then in power intervened, warning bus companies not to answer the convoy organizers' requests. The few buses that did set off were stopped by the military and in the end, according to Ma'an, only some 80 individuals equipped with flags and an arsenal of angry demands and slogans got to the border. 

Fatahland

According to Wikipedia, around 300 West Bank "protesters" assembled at the Qalandiya Crossing - a busy crossing point - to demonstrate, forming human chains, staging sit-downs, hurling rocks. About 120 were said to be affected by tear gas, stink-spray and other crowd-dispersal means. BBC: "Clashes at the Qalandiya checkpoint in Ramallah continued for hours, with dozens of Palestinians injured. Palestinian protesters threw stones at Israeli security forces, who fired tear gas and rubber bullets."

Jordan

In Jordan, about 500 Palestinian Arab Jordanians were prevented by Jordanian army and police forces from doing harm at the Allenby Bridge, the major crossing point into the West Bank and Israel. They used tear gas and other similar tools and some 25 people were reported injured, including 11 Jordanian police. A Ma'an report said the Hamas-aligned Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and what Ma'an called "the powerful Islamic Action Front" termed this "shocking" and turning reality on its end demanded "an end to such policies that have harmed Jordan's image". 

Syria

On Israel's Syria border, 20 buses of "protestors" arrived from Damascus on Naqba Day, May 15, 2011. According to the BBC, the IDF said it "had only fired warning shots as a large number of protesters tried to breach a border fence near the village of Majdal Shams. But reports said at least two people had been killed and dozens injured. Israel's army says this is a "serious" incursion. Brig Gen Yoav Mordechai said soldiers were still trying to control the crowds and that dozens of protesters had crossed. The army has reportedly sealed off Majdal Shams and is carrying out house-to-house searches for "infiltrators"... "We are seeing here an Iranian provocation, on both the Syrian and the Lebanese frontiers, to try to exploit the Nakba day commemorations," Gen Mordechai said... Syria denounced Israeli actions in the Golan Heights and Lebanon as "criminal", Agence France-Presse news agency reported. "Israel will have to bear full responsibility for its actions," the foreign ministry said." The NY Times said "some 13 Israeli soldiers were lightly wounded from thrown rocks." And Ynet, quoting an IDF enquiry, said "nearly 1,000 Syrians approached the fence, with Syrian border forces unable – or unwilling – to stop them. About 300 protesters, including children, rushed the fences and crossed over onto Israeli soil..."

Some weeks later, those May 2011 events in Syria were revealed to have actually been planned ahead of time by the Assad regime. This is all documented in an expose ["Report: Document Reveals Nakba Day Clashes Planned by Syria Government", Haaretz, June 14, 2011]. The bused-in attackers had attempted to breach Israel's border which was the plan. The Haaretz report quotes a Syrian government memo: "Permission is hereby granted allowing approaching crowds to cross the cease fire line (with Israel) towards the occupied Majdal-Shamms, and to further allow them to engage physically with each other in front of United Nations agents and offices. Furthermore, there is no objection if a few shots are fired in the air." There are clear parallels with what's happening now on Israel's Gaza frontier.

Then in June 2011, again on the Syria side of its border with Israel, large numbers of assailants purporting to "protest" were again bused in from Damascus. A Jerusalem Postreport quoted Syrian officials saying 23 were killed and 350 injured "as they attempted over the course of several hours to breach the barbed-wire border".

...

The Bret Stephens essay dwells as well on the intriguing case of Adam Armoush. Thought, when the story initially emerged, to be a young German Jew, he is in reality a 21-year-old Israeli Arab living in Germany 

who, on a recent outing in Berlin, donned a yarmulke to test a friend’s contention that it was unsafe to do so in Germany. On Tuesday he was assaulted in broad daylight by a Syrian asylum-seeker who whipped him with a belt for being “yahudi” — Arabic for Jew. The episode was caught on video and has caused a national uproar... There were nearly 1,000 reported anti-Semitic incidents in Berlin alone last year...

Stephens then connects Israel and Europe:

To be Jewish — at least visibly Jewish — in Europe is to live on borrowed time... There’s a limit to how many armed guards can be deployed indefinitely to protect synagogues or stop Holocaust memorials from being vandalized... There are many reasons to celebrate the date [of Israel's 70th anniversary a few days ago], many of them lofty: a renaissance for Jewish civilization; the creation of a feisty liberal democracy in a despotic neighborhood; the ecological rescue of a once-barren land; the end of 1,878 years of exile. But there’s a more basic reason. Jews cannot rely for their safety on the kindness of strangers... Hence Israel: its army, bomb, and robust willingness to use force to defend itself. Israel did not come into existence to serve as another showcase of the victimization of Jews. It exists to end the victimization of Jews... Though not Jewish, Adam Armoush was once one of the nonchalant when it came to what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century. Presumably no longer. For Jews, it’s a painful, useful reminder that Israel is not their vanity. It’s their safeguard. 

Well said.

15-Apr-18: On Israel's violent Gaza border, a battle of narratives

Friday's action on the Gaza side [Image Source]

We're into Week 3 of the Hamas-driven violence on Israel's Gaza border. And despite some serious efforts by Al Jazeera and others to "keep it in the forefront of the Arab public agenda" [Washington Post, April 13, 2018], the signs are that those Gazan riots do

not dominate the Arab media to the extent one might have expected. The events erupted in the middle of a crowded regional political agenda. In previous Arab-Israeli crises, popular Arab media outlets would have typically broadcast wall-to-wall coverage accompanied by furious talk shows and mobilizational programming, drowning out all other issues. This time, while most Arab media did cover the Gaza protests and subsequent violence, many key outlets covered it as one issue among many. These changes are rooted in fundamental alterations in the structure of the Arab media and the underlying political conflicts that have evolved since the 2011 Arab uprisings... [Washington Post, April 13, 2018]

Official Israeli sources are said [here for instance] to believe there is a gradual decrease in the number of Gazans participating in the "protests". And there are signs of news media weariness - even in the Arab world - with how Palestinian Arab "victimhood" is being milked in these staged Gaza border events. Here's an illustration.

It's not usually recognized by news consumers far from the scene but those reports of Arab casualties - the dead, the wounded on the Gazan side - always emanate from the Gazan Ministry of Health. Sounds reasonable, right? And would they lie?

But that ministry is an operating arm of the terrorist organization called Hamas. The name is an acronym based on Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah whose English translation is Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas is a Palestinian Arab Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist organization which was formed by and remains affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Mid-afternoon today (Saturday), this report was published by one of the Palestinian Arab news agencies:

Four people were killed and others injured on Saturday in an Israeli artillery attack targeting a group of citizens who were riding a three-wheeled tuk tuk motorcycle east of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Eyewitnesses and a medical source in Rafah said that Israeli artillery shelled the eastern border of Rafah targeting a group of young men who  were moving rubber tires near the eastern border of the city. Dr. Ashraf al-Qadra the spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza said that 4 Palestinians were  killed & several others wounded  in different Israeli shelling, pointing out that the martyrs and injuries arrived to  Abu Yousef al-Najjar hospitals. ["Four Palestinians were killed in Israeli artillery shelling east of Rafah", Palestine News Network, April 14, 2018]

Ma'an News Agency's version

And this version from the notorious Ma'an News Agency:

Four Palestinians were killed and others injured after Israeli artillery shelling targeted an auto rickshaw in the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza Strip, on Saturday afternoon. Locals told Ma’an that Israeli artillery stationed along the border with Gaza fired missiles at the auto rickshaw, killing four and injuring other passers-by. The four slain Palestinians were identified as Amjad Qartous, 18, Ayed Hamaydeh, 23, Hesham Kallab, 18, and Hesham Abdul-Al, 22. All four victims are from the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah...  Despite widespread outcry from international rights groups who have condemned Israel’s excessive use of forces against the civilian protesters, Israeli has maintained its open-fire rules for the Gaza border. ["4 Palestinians, 2 teenagers, killed after Israeli artillery fire targets auto rickshaw", Ma'an, April 14, 2018]

Turns out this is not, in reality, another case of Israeli artillery liquidating innocent and unarmed Palestinian Arabs - two teenagers! - going about their ordinary weekend activities.

From Arab media April 14, 2018, the Al Quds Brigade
(Islamic Jihad) "accidental martyrs" [Image Source]

The IDF (according to this source today) usually declares military strikes on the Strip but said today that "contrary to reports" it had not carried out any military activity in Gaza at the time. Now a Times of Israel report this evening explains:

Palestinian terror organization Islamic Jihad said Saturday that four of its members were killed in an accidental explosion near the Gaza Strip border with Israel. The group said in a statement that the four died during “preparations,” without giving further details. Army Radio reported that the terrorists were killed while carrying explosives in an all-terrain vehicle, suggesting the blast may have been a “work accident.” AFP said they were riding a tuk tuk vehicle which exploded a few hundred meters from the border with Israel. The four fatalities were named as Hisham Abdel Al, Elias Al Katrous, Ae’d Al Hamaydeh, and Mohammad Al Krinawi, according to Palestinian sources. Islamic Jihad is an ally of terrorist group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip. The group, which is supported by Iran, has fought alongside Hamas against Israel in multiple wars, most recently in 2014. ["Four Islamic Jihad members killed in Gaza explosion", Times of Israel, April 14, 2018]

(There's nothing unusual in the names of the dead Palestinian Arabs being different from one account to another.)

Some aspects of what was reported about yesterday's (Friday's) chapter in the planned six-week-long agitation on the Gaza side of the Israel border

• "One Palestinian, Ahmed Hirzallah, 28, was shot dead and 416 others were injured" [Palestine Chronicle, April 13, 2018]
• "One Palestinian was declared dead after being shot by Israeli gunfire Friday evening. Another 968 were wounded as another day of clashes erupted between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli forces along the Israel-Gaza border. The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza identified the 28-year-old as Islam Rushdi Hirzallah..." [i24News.tv, April 13, 2018]
• Israel once again "used extreme violence to brutally crush these peaceful protests... More than 900 Palestinian protesters were wounded in the violent Israeli crackdown, according to Gaza health officials... During the April 13 protest, the violence was once again clearly premediated. Media reports noted that, in advance of the peaceful demonstration, the Israeli military had deployed tanks, drones, and snipers to the border.Israel has claimed that the peaceful protests, which are known as the Great March of Return, are being used to cover up so-called terrorism. However there is no independent evidence that Palestinian demonstrators have used the demonstrations to launch any attacks." ["Israel Mows Down Unarmed Gaza Protesters for 3rd Week as US Blocks UN Investigation", IMEMC, April 14, 2018]
• "At least four Palestinians were killed in Gaza Saturday, Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed saying the deaths were the result of a tank shell attack by Israel’s Army just east of the city of Rafah. However, Reuters reported an Israeli military spokesman saying “we have no knowledge of any Israeli strike in the area,” denying involvement. Local residents told Reuters the four men were members of the Islamic Jihad group, but this hasn’t been confirmed yet." [Telesur, posted this afternoon]
• "The “Great March of Return” protests that Hamas and Gaza activists launched on March 30 saw their lowest turnout in three weeks and the smallest number of casualties in clashes with Israeli forces, with one Palestinian killed and 528 reported injured on Friday. Israeli authorities have been steadfast and on message about the protesters being a cover for violent action, while Hamas and the local activists have attempted to keep up the momentum. The proportion of those injured by live fire has declined by half, indicating a major reduction not only in the size of the protests but the level of violence along the border... [On Friday] the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza published a list of casualties from the past two weeks, stating that 3,078 Palestinians had been injured, including 1,236 from live ammunition. It claimed four people had lost legs. Of those injured 445 were under 18 and 152 were women. Thirty had been killed. It also said 30 paramedics had been injured and 14 journalists... ["Three weeks: How Gaza's mass protests are failing to make an impact", Seth Franzman in Jerusalem Post, April 14, 2018]

It's unlikely the Hamas organizers of this campaign are going to allow it to dwindle into insignificance. Unfortunately since the tools at their disposal tend to be limited to focusing on violence and generating human losses on their side (on our side too but that's less in their control), there's no basis for breathing more easily at this point.

18-Oct-17: The luckiest Arab in the entire Gush

This photo of the scene accompanies the Ma'an Arabic report quoted here

Ynet reports this afternoon (Wednesday)

IDF force stops attempted terrorist attack | Palestinian armed with knife runs towards IDF force near Gush Etzion; force incapacitates him by shooting at his legs, arrests him.
Elisha Ben Kimon Published:  18.10.17 , 13:46
An IDF force carried out a suspect arrest protocol at a knife-wielding would-be Palestinian terrorist near the Gush Etzion junction Wednesday. A soldier from the Nahal's 50 Battalion was stationed in a pillbox at the junction's security checkpoint. The terrorist was running north, going against traffic. The soldier noticed he was carrying a suspicious object, which later turned out to be a knife, and called out to him, ordering him to stop. When the terrorist kept running, the soldier initiated a suspect arrest protocol, during which he shot the would-be terrorist in the stomach, incapacitating him. The suspect was taken to the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem in moderate condition. There were no Israeli casualties.

Times of Israel says the attacker

ran at them with a knife at the Gush Etzion Junction... The soldiers called for the man to stop. When he didn’t, they opened fire, the army said... According to the hospital, the man is in moderate to serious condition, with a gunshot wound to the stomach. He is approximately 20 years old.

Then there's the version provided by Ma'an, a European-funded Palestinian Arab news source, with its customary spin on the facts:

A Palestinian youth was shot and injured by Israeli forces on Wednesday at the Gush Etzion junction south of Bethlehem in the southern occupied West Bank, for allegedly attempting to carry out a stabbing attack. Israeli media reported that the youth disembarked from a bus at the Etzion bus station carrying a knife and was immediately shot by Israeli soldiers in the area... Witnesses told Ma’an that the youth, who remained unidentified, was crossing the street running to catch another bus that was departing when Israeli soldiers opened fire at him... Though Israeli forces have claimed that Palestinians were allegedly attempting to carry out attacks in a majority of instances when Palestinians were killed, rights groups have disputed Israel's version of events in a number of cases, and argued that many alleged attackers could have been subdued in a non-lethal manner.

(There's little doubt in our minds that Ma'an's disingenuous spinning of terror-attack reports encourages more of them. Their Arabic language edition is even more pernicious. We wonder how much their European government funders are aware of the nature of Ma'an's work-product. Or care.)

Readers might be interested to know that the Arabic version of the same Ma'an news organization has the same surreal accounting - innocent fellow, minding his own business, rushing to catch a bus and shot down in cold-blood by "occupation forces" - adding the not-so-inconsequential detail that the Arab was killed. No other report says he was, and it's fairly clear he wasn't.

This would-be killer is someone's son. If we were his parents, we would be busy this moment composing a heart-felt thank you note to the commanding officer of the young, cool-headed Nahal soldier doing guard duty at the Gush Etzion Junction where innumerable Arab-on-Israeli knifing attacks have resulted in deaths on both sides during the past two years. We would be saying thank you for sparing the life of our misguided, brain-washed, irresponsible and undeserving son who will now have the opportunity to either regret or to relive today's events.

That soldier, in the space of the handful of seconds available to him, had the power and the equipment to stop the knife attacker permanently. Instead he stuck to instructions and incapacitated him, leaving the medical professionals to bring the Pal Arab terrorist back to health - and a future.

A future which will now - as of this afternoon - include a guaranteed monthly salary from the terror-fixated Abbas regime and its appalling Rewards for Terror scheme. He's unlikely to ever be able to otherwise earn anything close to what the PA - thanks to unwitting or merely apathetic European and North American taxpayers - is about to start paying him for what he did in the Gush this afternoon.

26-Sep-17: What do the Palestinian Arabs think now?

[Image Source: PCR]

It's been about nine months since we last addressed the core question of what Palestinian Arab opinion polls tell us about their hopes, fears, ambitions and values. That last review is here: "15-Dec-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think now?"

As it happens, this morning has gotten off to a really rotten start with another Arab-on-Israeli terror attack at the entrance to the bucolic northern Jerusalem suburb of Har Adar. As we write this, reports say three Israelis were shot to death and a fourth is fighting for his life in a Jerusalem hospital. The gunman is dead. We will report on what we know about this later.

With the fresh extreme violence in mind, what do the data tell us? What do Palestinian Arab polls of Palestinian Arab opinion, reveal about support for murder of this kind and about the other issues that are on the minds of the people who play such an influential/complicated role on the lives lived by us Israelis?

As we have said here before, what the Palestinian Arabs think is something we're very interested in knowing. Relying on newspapers or electronic media coverage of their views, a person is likely to get someone's wishful projections or politically-skewed understandings rather than data-based analysis. The difference between the two is vast and unbridgeable.

There are some serious polling organizations that are themselves Palestinian Arab. We tend to focus on the findings of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research or PSR [website] headed by the respected Prof. Khalil Shikaki. We're doing that again now.

In PSR's Poll Number 65 (there have been three on which we did not manage to report since our last related post), which was published on September 19, 2017, we think these are the key findings (italicized texts are taken verbatim from the source)

A syndicated AFP photo shows the supporters of Fatah and of Abbas in the
Gaza Strip last week. There may be more out of camera range. [Image Source]

• Violence: 35% of those polled "think that the most effective means of creating a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel is armed action". Negotiation gets 33% and "popular non-violent resistance" 26%. In the December  2016 poll, armed action got slightly more: 37%. A year ago, it got 34%. Those slight rises and falls are less significant than the reality that a third of the Arabs living closest to us see the best solution to the differences between as being achieved by murder and terror. A third. But it gets worse...
• Non-violence? Now bear in mind that "popular non-violent resistance" is an expression that means something quite different for the Palestinian Arabs and their advocates - including their president - than for most other people. Abbas and people around him use it to refer to lethal measures like hurling rocks at Israelis and their vehicles: non-violent resistance in  their lexicon includes rock hurling, knifings and vehicle-rammings. That's plainly terrorist violence, whatever advocates for the Palestinian Arabs claim, and it means that nearly two-thirds of the Palestinian Arabs are for it. 
• An "overwhelming majority" are "worried about the future of liberties in Palestine". Contributing factors, over and above the decades of heavy-handed, thuggish rule by a self-preserving clique of aging Abbas/Arafat regime kleptocrats (our observation, not PSR's) include a marked rise in PA arrests of reporters and "activists"; a new presidential decree enacting an oppressive piece of regulation that they call a "cybercrime law"; and upcoming changes to the PA's Law of the Judiciary. 
• Related to the first point: A large majority of Palestinian Arabs (85% of West Bank Arabs) now say they are afraid to criticize their PA masters. Fully half of them believe Abbas' PA has become "a burden on the Palestinian people". 
• This is evidently affecting their political outlooks. If presidential elections were held today, the Hamas candidate "Haniyeh would win against Abbas. Findings also indicate a decline in support for Fatah, particularly in the Gaza Strip where Hamas is more popular. In the West Bank however, Fatah remains more popular than Hamas." Just 3 months ago, PSR found that each candidate had the same level of support if this were a two-horse race. No longer. 
• But even before they get to elections, there's no doubting the appetite for immediate political change: "67% of the public want president Abbas to resign... Three months ago, 62% said [this]... Demand for Abbas’ resignation stands at 60% in the West Bank and 80% in the Gaza Strip."
• Gaza is one big set of problems for Fatah and its leader: "It is certain that [Mahmoud Abbas, president-for-life of the PA] would lose any presidential elections in the Gaza Strip to Hamas’ Ismael Haniyeh". 
• Worth recalling that the last time Palestinian Arabs were given the chance to vote for a president was in January 2005 when Abbas won; he has held tenaciously on to power ever since. The only previous presidential election, dominated by Yasser Arafat, was in 1996.
• For the rather touchy Abbas and his hangers-on, there's more bad news and it involves Abbas' fiercest rival: "Fatah is fast losing its popularity in the Gaza Strip, standing at 28% today compared to 40% only nine months ago. Those who still support Fatah in the Gaza Strip are shifting loyalty to Mohammad Dahlan whose popularity among Gazans has more than doubled during the past nine months, from 9% to 23% today, while his popularity among West Bankers did not change, remaining hardly at 1%."
• In a three-way race, the convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti who lives in an Israeli prison cell, would easily beat both Abbas and Haniyah.
• Support for violence against Israelis has risen over the previous poll, "despite the fact that a majority remains opposed to it", partly because of "the lack of trust in diplomacy. Findings show that about three quarters believe that the Trump Administration is not serious about Palestinian-Israeli peace making and an even higher percentage believes that the Administration is not an honest broker and that it is biased in favor of Israel".
• When they watch television, here's where they tune in: Al Jazeera (Qatar-owned, Qatar-based) 20%; Ma'an TV 14%; Hamas' Al Aqsa TV 13%; Palestine TV (controlled by the PA) 12%; Filasteen al Youm/Palestine Today 11%; Al Arabiya (Saudi-owned, Dubai-based) 6; Hamas' Al Quds TV 4%; al Mayadeen (satellite-news station based in Beirut) 3%.
• The popular perception of corruption in the PA and its institutions is now at 77%. This is actually something of an improvement; in a 2014 PCR poll, it stood at 81%.
• On the list of "Most vital Palestinian goals and problems", the top item with 40% support is the need "to end Israeli occupation". A mere 12% think the "first and most vital goal should be to establish a democratic political system that respects freedoms and rights". The most serious problem confronting their society today is poverty and unemployment (26%) with "the spread of corruption in public institutions" second at 25%.
• The violent confrontations that took place on Jerusalem's Temple Mount in July 2017 in the wake of the brazen and cold-blooded killing of two Israeli Druze security men [see our post] occupied much of the thinking of the Palestinian Arab public. In PSR's words and despite those other concerns we just listed, the "the installment of metal detectors at the entrance to al Haram al Sharif gates were the most important event during the period in question". 
• As for Israel's decision to quickly remove them, a minuscule 7% of Palestinian Arabs attribute this to King Abdullah II of Jordan despite Jordan's not-so-subtle PR efforts to grab the limelight, as in this Arab media quote: “Without the Hashemite custodi­anship and the steadfastness of the Jerusalemites, the holy sites would have been lost many years ago.” (Those of us old enough to remember life in Jerusalem pre-1967 recall how the Old City of Jerusalem was under illegal Jordanian military occupation from 1949 until freed in the Six Day War.)

There's not much here to feel good about. As their own societies - both Fatah and Hamas - explore new kinds of tyranny, between one-third and two-thirds of them hold tight to a vision of more violence as a solution to their problems. The future of their children, meanwhile, along with their health, their schools, their environment and their economy remain mired in self-inflicted gloom, failure and inertia.

PSR 65 was based on a sample size of 1,270 adults interviewed face-to-face (not by phone) in 127 locations selected randomly. The statistical margin of error is 3%. 

12-Sep-17: Knives and boys

Outside the ancient Tomb of the Patriarchs, Hebron [Image Source]

Israel National News reports this afternoon (Tuesday) that

"an Arab resident of Hevron in Judea was arrested Tuesday morning after he attempted to sneak a knife into the Tomb of the Patriarchs (Maarat Hamachpela). Border Police officers arrested the teen, roughly 15 years of age, after they discovered the weapon at a checkpoint outside of the tomb, a Border Police spokesperson said. The suspect approached the checkpoint at one of the entrances to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, but before he could enter the site the suspect was asked to lift his shirt after he aroused the suspicions of the officers operating the checkpoint. Officers spotted the handle of a knife the suspect had concealed, and ordered him to surrender. The suspect drew the knife, but was arrested after officers drew their weapons and repeated their demand that he surrender. No shots were fired and no injuries reported."

Maa'an says this is the knife
used by the child in today's
thwarted attack
[Image Source]

Another child, another knife, another bloodless intercept by fast-thinking security personnel of the IDF even as the child prepared to slash and stab.

The version pushed today by the notorious Ma'an News Agency has a very different feel to it. It starts with a quotation from an Israel Police source:

A 15-year-old Palestinian boy was detained Tuesday morning at a military checkpoint near the Ibrahimi mosque in the southern occupied West Bank city of Hebron, alleging that the child had a knife hidden under his clothes. Luba al-Samri wrote in a statement that the boy was taken for interrogation and added that "no human casualties were reported." She claimed the incident marked the third time in six days that Israeli forces arrested Palestinian minors attempting to pass through Israeli checkpoints with knives in their possession.

(We are surprised by the mention of two other such thwarted attacks. If we can find more information about them, we will add it to this post.)

For all the genocidal intentions routinely attributed to Israel's military, the indisputable fact is the child armed with a knife concealed under his shirt today is alive. This could have easily ended up with an entirely different outcome for him and his family.

Naturally the manipulative, European-funded editors at Ma'an don't allow that to get in the way of another blood libel:

Rights groups have disputed Israel's version of events in a number of cases, also denouncing what they have termed as a "shoot-to-kill" policy against alleged attackers who did not constitute a threat at the time of their death, or who could have been subdued in a non-lethal manner -- amid a backdrop of impunity for Israeli forces who have committed the killings... [Ma'an, today]

Naturally, being in the all-propaganda-all-the-time business, the Ma'an people fail to mention the open incitement to stabbings that have become a prominent feature of the Palestinian Arab establishment's messaging to its public throughout the past two years.

Widely circulated posters like these, putting stabbers on a pedestal and encouraging lethal knifings of ordinary Israelis, set the tone that enables the ongoing weaponization of their badly educated, intensively indoctrinated children:

These are merely sample images from a vast, growing catalogue of malevolence intended to incite and inspire young Arabs to murder Israelis. It's a campaign that owes much of its lethality and destructive power to a deeply-felt sense of victimhood, self-pity and grievance that plays a central role in the Palestinian Arab narrative and consciousness.

Deeply-felt it may be. But it's also false and contrived - and cynically leveraged by an unpopular PA leadership vainly clinging to power and relevance. 

Writing in The Atlantic two years ago, at about the point when the current and ongoing knifing/stabbing/vehicle-ramming/shooting campaign against Israelis was gathering steam, Jeffrey Goldberg observed ["The Paranoid, Supremacist Roots of the Stabbing Intifada", The Atlantic, October 16, 2015]:

When violence against Jews occurs inside Israel, or on the West Bank, a consensus tends to be reached quickly by outside analysts and political leaders, one that holds that such violence represents the inevitable consequence of Israel’s occupation and settlement of Palestinian territory. John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, said in an appearance earlier this week at Harvard that, “What’s happening is that unless we get going, a two-state solution could conceivably be stolen from everybody. And there’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years.” He went on to say, “Now you have this violence because there’s a frustration that is growing, and a frustration among Israelis who don’t see any movement.”
The violence... encouraged by purveyors of rumors who now have both Israeli and Palestinian blood on their hands, is rooted not in Israeli settlement policy, but in a worldview that dismisses the national and religious rights of Jews. There will not be peace between Israelis and Palestinians so long as parties on both sides of the conflict continue to deny the national and religious rights of the other. [Goldberg in The Atlantic]

He might have added that violence of the kind we saw today - children equipped with knives and blood lust - is part of a wide, ugly and almost entirely unreported (outside of Israeli channels) program of child weaponization that is encouraged and guided from the highest levels of the Palestinian Arab power pyramid. 

And megaphoned by the likes of Ma'an, enabled - it has to be said - by their European and American funders (Denmark, Sweden, the United States, Netherlands, the United Kingdom and others as well as major NGOs including UNESCO, UNDP, Arab Human Rights Fund, Catholic Relief Services and Save the Children) without whose cash infusions they simply could not engage in their vile practices.

UPDATE Thursday September 14, 2017: Here's something we have learned about the claim made in the Ma'an report above that this was "the third time in six days that Israeli forces arrested Palestinian minors attempting to pass through Israeli checkpoints with knives in their possession." The following appears in "Attempted stabbing thwarted near Hebron, attacker shot", published by Times of Israel yesterday (13-Sep-17): 

"On Friday, a Palestinian man in his twenties was arrested in Hebron when he was discovered to be hiding a knife on his person, while last Wednesday Border Police officers arrested a Palestinian teenager in the West Bank city after finding a knife in his possession. Both of those incidents also took place at checkpoints near the Tomb of the Patriarchs."

So one attacker in his twenties, a second who is a teen.