23-May-17: Condemning terror is so easy to do, even Jordan can do it - and no news reports will criticize them

Jordan's Minister for Media Affairs and Government Spokesperson
Mohammad Momani [Image Source]

We were pretty sure this was going to happen, and it has.

The Jordanian government of King Abdullah II has just issued a condemnation of last night's Manchester Arena massacre, a terror attack that has strong similarities to the one engineered at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria in 2001 by a Jordanian woman, Ahlam Tamimi.

Tamimi, who has proudly confessed her role as mastermind of the massacre that took the life of our daughter and 14 other people (mostly children), currently lives in total freedom in Jordan's capital, Amman, despite an Interpol arrest warrant and a United States extradition request that calls on Jordan to send her to the US to face charges.

The Jordanians have treated her as a national treasure since she arrived back there (the country where she was born and lived until shortly before she masterminded the Jerusalem atrocity) in October 2011. Did you ever see that statement in a mainstream news report? It's certainly true.

If the Jordanians, from the king on down, have any sense of irony or of the deep hypocrisy that stains their denunciation of the Manchester savagery, there's no sign of it in the announcement. And if any news analysts have torn into them, we haven't seen it:

Jordan condemns terror blast in Manchester | MENAFN - Emirates News Agency (WAM) |  AMMAN, 23rd May, 2017 (WAM) -- The Jordanian government today denounced the terror attack that took place at the Manchester Arena last night, killing 22 people and injuring more than 50. According to the Petra News Agency, the Jordanian Minister of State for #Media Affairs and Communications, Mohammad Momani, said that this "heinous and inhumane act represents the real face of terrorism and extremism, which is implemented by coward terrorists aim to destabilise nations and intimidate innocent civilians". Mr. Momani, who is also the government's spokesperson, reaffirmed Jordan's firm and constant stance in fighting terrorism, extremism and violence in all shapes and forms, stressing the need for concerted efforts to counter terrorism in a holistic approach wherever it rears its head. He also extended his condolences to the British government and to the families of the victims, wishing the injured a speedy recovery.

The real face of terrorism and extremism? We think Tamimi fits that bill exceedingly well.

23-May-17: Abbas on Manchester and Sbarro

Bethlehem this morning: Trump and Abbas [Image Source]

In 2008, President-for-life of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas announced he was awarding the PA’s highest medal, the Al Quds Mark of Honor, to Ahlam Tamimi, who masterminded the massacre at the Sbarro Jerusalem pizzeria. (Abbas' decision to make the award was widely criticized by outsiders and was eventually overturned.) The blood-drenched act of terror which Abbas was so anxious to honor was, like last night’s Manchester atrocity, an attack directed specifically at children by means of nail-enhanced explosives delivered by a human bomb.

Our daughter Malki, just 15, was one of those murdered in the pizzeria. We're acutely aware of how Abbas thought to honor Tamimi because of Malki's death and the deaths and horrible injuries of the other innocents caught up in the bombing.

This morning, that same President-for-life, Mahmoud Abbas, said in Bethlehem to the US President:

"Allow me… to condemn the horrible terrorist attack that occurred in the British city of Manchester… I do offer my warm condolences to the Prime Minister of Britain, families of victims, and the British people."

It's time for people who understand brazen hypocrisy when they encounter it, and especially members of the news reporting industry, to say openly what should have been said years ago: that in the community of civilized nations and people, condemnations mouthed by those deeply engaged in terror - like Mahmoud Abbas and those who report to him - are illegitimate and should be neither heard nor tolerated.

There are situations where the condemnation of terror is as morally indefensible as the terror itself.

05-Feb-15: Hundreds of innocents would have been murdered if this terrorist had not been stopped

Naseer and co-conspirators in a surveillance photo submitted
as evidence during the trial [Image Source]

A court in the United States has just convicted yet another in a long line of men the contours of whose lives are defined by the Islamist rhetoric they spout. The verdict is making waves in the UK where his murderous plans were hatched, and where the police say were onto him and could have stopped him but did not.

Abid Naseer, 28, was found guilty by a New York jury of providing material support to al-Qaeda and conspiracy to use a destructive device. He faces up to life imprisonment at sentencing. Evidence at Naseer's trial included a document found in the raid of the bin Laden compound and MI5 officers testifying in wigs.
A jury returned the verdict after a day of deliberation following closing arguments on Monday. Prosecutors argued Naseer was part of a broader al-Qaeda conspiracy to attack various Western locations, including a Manchester shopping centre and the New York subway system.
Abid Naseer... was previously arrested in the UK over a bomb plot in Manchester
In closing arguments on Monday, prosecutors said Naseer lied about his history during his defence, including becoming radicalised in Pakistan.
"If the defendant hadn't been stopped, hundreds of innocent men, women and children wouldn't be alive today," prosecutor Zainab Ahmed said during closing arguments... Naseer, who represented himself in court, said in closing arguments the prosecution had not directly connected him to al-Qaeda. He insisted his emails were simply harmless banter about finding a wife... They also relied on the testimony of two co-conspirators who pleaded guilty to the subway plot - Najibullah Zazi and Zarein Ahmedzay - who said certain words in Naseer's emails about marriage were code. [BBC, "UK bomb plot suspect Abid Naseer found guilty", February 4, 2015]

The nonsense about the terrorist looking for a woman to love him is taken apart in a New York Post article: "Online code word for al Qaeda mall attack was ‘marriage’: prosecutors".

Why was Naseer not prosecuted in the UK where he was arrested, but instead allowed to walk the streets freely after being picked up by police? And to file an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights against being extradicted? The New York Times says

Prosecutors argued during the trial that Mr. Naseer had helped organize a plot to bomb the shopping center in April 2009. He was arrested in Britain that month, and the plot was not carried out... In the final email that Mr. Naseer sent to his purported Qaeda handler before being arrested, he said that his marriage was set for a range of dates in April and that he expected many guests. By then, prosecutors showed, Mr. Naseer had broken up with his girlfriend and was no longer speaking to her, making it unlikely that he was planning a wedding... British intelligence officers who tracked Mr. Naseer for several weeks in March and April 2009 were expected to provide key evidence against him. Instead, they testified about watching him go grocery shopping and taking the bus around Manchester... British authorities released Mr. Naseer and his alleged co-conspirators after his 2009 arrest because of a lack of evidence.

Fortunately that evidentiary "lack" was cured on the other side of the Atlantic. Now angry Brits are left wondering "Why was terrorist free to walk British streets? Questions raised over UK bomb plotter" [Mirror UK, February 5, 2015], and "Police chiefs ask why Al-Qaeda plotter WASN'T prosecuted in Britain" [Express UK, today]. If true and frank answers ever emerge, we suspect they might cause some widespread British discomfort.

18-Oct-14: If UK travel is in your plans... Part 2

Shortly after the August 2001 massacre that took the life of our daughter Malki, a student union at a university located just a few kilometers north of Jerusalem where we live created a chilling replica of the scene of the savagery. Its purpose was to celebrate the killings of the innocent victims, most of whom were children. And to honour the life and death of the human bomb who exploded inside the Jerusalem Sbarro pizza shop, killing 15 people immediately, leaving a 16th (a young mother, whose two year old daughter survived) unconscious from that day until today, and grievously maiming some 130 other visitors to the shop and passers-by.

Here's how Mohammed Daraghmeh of Associated Press described what he saw in a syndicated report ("Palestinians recreate Sbarro bombing") of a visit to the university campus in September 2001:

...Palestinian university students opened an exhibition Sunday that included a grisly re-enactment of a suicide bombing in Jerusalem. Wearing a military uniform and a black mask, a Palestinian set off a fake explosion in a replica of the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem, where a suicide bomber killed himself and 15 other people last month. It was one of the deadliest attacks in a year of Mideast violence and drew widespread international condemnation. The exhibit at Al-Najah University in Nablus was put on by students who support the militant Islamic movement Hamas, which carried out the Jerusalem attack. Support for Hamas traditionally runs high at the university, which is a hotbed for Palestinian militants and has produced a number of suicide bombers. Thousands of people, most of them university students, visited the exhibit, which is to run for a week in the university cafeteria. [News archive source]

On the campus of Al-Najah National University. Nablus:
a student-initiated replica of the scene of a massacre.
Unmistakable message: support for the killers
and joy over the (mainly children) dead victims
[Image Source: Getty]

The student/terrorist cell at Al-Najah abandoned any pretensions to subtlety or political correctness in mounting their cultural/political shrine. It included

not only gnawed pizza crusts but bloody plastic body parts suspended from the ceiling as if they were blasting through the air... Inside are toppled stools, pizza crusts, police tape, broken glass, as well as photographs of the actual scene of carnage and of the young Palestinian, Izzeden Masri, who carried into the restaurant some 20 pounds of explosive reportedly hidden in a guitar." ["An Exhibit On Campus Celebrates Grisly Deed", New York Times, September 26, 2001]

Photographs of the innocent children blown to pieces that day were not part of the show because this was an event that existed in order to celebrate murder and murderers.

No indications of a serious internal Palestinian Arab debate over whether to condemn the perversity and barbarism of the event and those who put it together and attended it has ever emerged. The sickening exhibit is as close to an authentic snapshot of the opinions of the people who make up the Al-Najah community as any one could expect to find. And if - which we very strongly doubt - we are wrong on this, here is an official and open request from us to you: if you know that any segment of Palestinian Arab society felt wretched and/or betrayed by the notorious Al-Najah replica of Israeli children being deliberately and consciously murdered in this Hamas attack on Sbarro Jerusalem, write and tell us.

Now this:

The student union at University of Manchester is going to hold a vote for a week starting October 24 on a proposal by its Socialist Workers Society to twin with Al-Najah National University and its Student Union for the next 3 years. This proposal, intended as a practical mark of solidarity with the Palestinian Arab institution, is being voted on at a time when Manchester's students have gotten plenty of information about the passion for terrorism embodied by Al-Najah and its students over many years. This hasn't stopped the initiative; as far as we can tell, it barely registers as a problem for the proposal's promoters.

Britain, 2014.

19-Jul-12: Tentacles in Manchester: British home-grown terrorists planned to murder their Jewish neighbours

Their portraits are all over the UK media today. But do the British
truly comprehend the changes that are impacting their society and lives?

From the Associated Press report of a court trial that culminated today in a terrorism conviction. 

Shasta Khan, 38 who denied wrongdoing, was found guilty today. Her husband Mohammed Sajid Khan, 32, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing. She's a hairdresser. He's described as an unemployed car valet.

Prosecutors have told a U.K. court that a planned attack by a husband-and-team pair of would-be terrorists fell apart after the couple became embroiled in a domestic dispute. Police were called when 33-year-old Mohammed Sajid Khan and his 38-year-old wife Shasta got into an argument at their Manchester-area home in northern England last July. Officers there found beheading videos, al-Qaida propaganda, bomb-making guides, safety goggles, syringes, peroxide, bleach and electrical equipment. An examination of the satellite navigation in Shasta Khan's car showed several trips to Jewish areas of Manchester. Jewish protection group the Community Service Trust says the verdict shows the "reality of anti-Jewish terrorism in Britain today."

The UK's Daily Mail fills in some of the details that the AP's editors left out: The woman is British-born, and met her husband on a Muslim dating website in July 2010. They quickly married but by July 2011 there were serious problems in the relationship. 

"They both became radicalised by material found on the Internet such as an Al Qaeda magazine called Inspire, the aim of which is to encourage Muslims in the West and this country to carry out holy war or jihad by mounting attacks in their own countries independent of any outside direction or association with any other person... Police were called to [their home] in Foster Street but as officers dealt with the domestic dispute and with Shasta still upset and worked up, a 'wholly unexpected turn of events occurred'... 'A member of her family, one of her brothers, told the police, in Shasta Khan’s presence, ‘We have something that I think might be interesting to you, I think he’s a home-grown terrorist’,' she told the jury.The wife then took the opportunity to 'spill the beans' and cause 'serious trouble' for her husband - but left out her own involvement in any terror offences. Seemingly innocuous and innocent items found at the home had a more sinister purpose, the jury was told. Chemicals used in Mrs Khan’s work, such as bleach, acetone and peroxide liquid, were also capable of being transformed into the ingredients of explosives along with other household items such as salt and sugar... An article from an al Qaeda magazine entitled Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom offered a step-by-step guide, from how to get ingredients without raising suspicion, to building a bomb, incorporating the use of Christmas lights. In just one or two days a bomb could be made to kill 'at least 10 people' and with more time 'tens of people', the article said... A satnav from her Peugeot 305 vehicle showed they had been on multiple trips to Jewish populated areas around Manchester, looking for targets to attack... the pair prepared to carry out a terrorist attack on British soil, with the most likely target being an orthodox Jewish area of Prestwich."

The Telegraph ["Muslim couple planned to bomb Jews in al Qaeda inspired plot"] sums it up briefly and accurately, quoting the Crown Prosecutor:

Behind their ''apparent normality of daily life'', Khan, an unemployed car valeter, and his hairdresser wife planned to carry out ''jihad at home''.

They are surely the last, the only remaining, home-grown British jihadists. So things are bound to be quieter and calmer from now on. 

Right?