23-Aug-18: New data: How the terrorists who bombed the Sbarro pizzeria fared financially

The numbers in the chart below are a dramatically-upward revision of data that were released two weeks ago. They take account of more members of the Hamas gang that carried out the August  9, 2001 atrocity at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria. The bottom line in this new chart - US$843,841 - is almost three times the first calculation.

Our thanks to the good people of Palestinian Media Watch who focus energy, determination and sustained effort on bringing to light the heavily-camouflaged, massively-destructive Rewards for Terror scheming that is at the core of the Palestinian Authority's ethos and actions.

[Since posting this, we compiled some background on which terrorists received generous payments from the PA for their involvement in the Sbarro atrocity. It's here: "24-Aug-18: Nearly $1 million: What aid funds handed to the Abbas regime have done for the savages who kill Jews"]
The Mahmoud Abbas regime's slavish devotion to financially incentivizing ever more terror among its people is highlighted in this news report from ten days ago.

Headlined "Hamdallah: We are continuing to provide all types of support to the prisoners", the report carried by the notoriously pro-terror Ma'an News Agency on August 13, 2018, and reprinted by Palwatch here, says

"[PA] Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah met today (Monday) [Aug. 13, 2018] with a delegation from the [PLO] Commission of Prisoners' Affairs led by Director of the Commission Qadri Abu Bakr in his office in Ramallah... The prime minister again emphasized the firm position of the leadership – led by [Palestinian Authority] President Mahmoud Abbas and the government – and its commitment to pay the allowances (mukhassasat) of the families of the martyrs (shahids) and prisoners, despite the Israeli occupation’s decision and its threats to deduct these allowances from the Palestinian tax money [referring to Israeli law to deduct terror salaries from PA tax money]. Hamdallah emphasized that despite the challenges, the provision of all types of support to the Commission of Prisoners' Affairs in its lofty and patriotic activities for our brave prisoners in the occupation's prisons is continuing. He also emphasized that the prisoners are the spearhead of the Palestinian struggle, and that they are the ones who have sacrificed the years of their lives for our just cause."

Lofty and patriotic: words to keep in mind when thinking about the calculated Arab-on-Israeli murder of children.

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.

21-Dec-08: "Confront the depths of evil"

One of this blog's two authors has an op-ed piece on Yediot Aharonot/YNet's website today.

Confront the depths of evil
Despite critics’ advice, media coverage must not downplay horrors of terror
Frimet Roth
Published: 12.21.08, 11:07 / Israel Opinion

"Ignore them dear, and they will stop bothering you."

Haven't we all trotted out that line when our children have come sobbing about school-yard bullies?

But is it sage advice for us – the targets of terror?

Some Israeli pundits seem to think so. Columnist Guy Bechor wrote recently on Ynetnews: "The more the media covers terror attacks, the more we encourage them…we must restrain the coverage, its sensationalism and its horrors."

He was responding to Hamas' 21st anniversary rally. With characteristic sadism, the event included a skit performed by a terrorist pretending to be Gilad Shalit in an IDF uniform. Kneeling on stage before some 300,000 celebrating Gazans he moaned twice in Hebrew: "I miss my Mom and my Dad."

The call for self-censorship was echoed that evening by former Mossad chief, Ephraim Halevi, who accused Israeli television news producers of impropriety by broadcasting the Hamas anniversary performance. He insisted that Israel plays into the hands of its enemies by disseminating such attempts at emotional blackmail. They know how bound every Israeli is not only to his own, but to all Jewish children, especially those in uniform who risk their lives to defend the nation.

Not long ago, the Israeli reporters Ben Caspit and Yigal Ravid expressed related, though far more superficial sentiments. They lamented all the precious media time that was spent on terrorism reportage during the second Intifada. Yet they didn't voice any concern about its impact on terrorists. Presumably, it was just the tiresome repetition of it all - terror attack after terror attack - that irked them.

Bechor maintains that self-censorship was exercised in the 1990s in the wake of suicide bombings. "This neutralized some of the horror and achievements of terror," he asserts.

He provides no sources for this brash claim and it doesn't ring terribly true. For one thing, in the ‘90s, the threat from terrorism was only a distant cousin of the tentacled monster that we now call Islamist Terror. There were simply fewer such attacks then. Media attention or not.

Second, it is a fact of life that terrorism, by its very nature, instills horror, regardless of whether or not that is the terrorists' aim.

Nevertheless, nobody can accuse Israelis of letting that horror paralyze them. On the contrary, we are consistently praised for our determined adherence to normality even under extreme conditions. Bechor's absurd call to "establish an international media convention… to minimize the achievements of Islamic terror…" sounds pointless.

Not only haven't Israelis succumbed to fear, on the contrary, many have grown worryingly apathetic. A sizable portion of the public and its leaders are eager to engage with our most threatening neighbors in unconditional dialogue, to grant them concessions and to refrain from logical military responses to their actions.

Finally, the depraved Hamas performance last week is nothing new. It is reminiscent of earlier theatrics designed at once to "entertain," to emotionally torment and to incite Palestinians to fresh murders. Here is just one example:

In August 2001, a Hamas terrorist massacred 15 Jewish men, women and children in Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant. My fifteen-year old daughter, Malki was among the victims.

In September 2001, Hamas set out to commemorate one year since the start of the Second Intifada. Toward that end, students at al-Najah University in Nablus erected a tent-replica of a Sbarro restaurant. Inside they displayed a grisly re-enactment of the August bombing, including fake body parts and pizza slices strewn on the floor. An Associated Press photograph of Palestinian students walking under the mock Sbarro shop-sign appeared in most international media services. Nobody argued then that the students' hateful handiwork ought to be concealed.

Confronting the depths of Hamas' evil can be painful. And burying your head in the sand can be awfully tempting.

But we are all grown up now. If the terrorism of our neighbors is downplayed, widespread complaisance will set in. How can any government garner support for crucial deterrent and responsive strategies from a tranquilized public?

Journalists and editors, do your job. Report all current events, however heart-wrenching they may be.

...

Frimet Roth is a freelance writer in Jerusalem. She and her husband founded the Malki Foundation in their daughter's memory, which provides support for Israeli families of all faiths who care at home for a special-needs child.