04-Dec-17: After Thursday night's murder-by-stabbing, two arrests - and a transplant

The murder victim, aged 19

A young Israeli man, barely out of high school and serving in his country's military so so many of his peers, was murdered on Thursday night around 9:30 pm outside the shopping mall in Arad, a desert city of about 25,000 inhabitants. (As out of the way as it is, Arad is where Israel's most celebrated novelist, Amos Oz, lives.) He was evidently heading home for the weekend.

His name is Sgt. Ron Yitzhak Kokia and he was 19. He served in the Nahal Brigade, an infantry unit whose base is located near Arad. The funeral took place on Sunday.

It was announced today (Monday) that two men are being held in connection with the killing. Haaretz says

Two Israeli Bedouins were arrested Monday for their role in the lethal stabbing of an Israeli soldier in what Israeli officials say was terror attack in southern Israel last week... The soldier was waiting at a bus station adjacent to a local mall at the time of the incident. The Shin Bet security service said Monday that the assessment is that it was a terror attack and the two had planned the stabbing in advance. They are not affiliated with any group and were not known to have ties to terrorist groups or ideologies.

Ron Kokia is brought to burial in the Kiryat Shaul military cemetery
in the suburbs of Tel Aviv [Image Source]

Times of Israel adds:

The assailants stole the soldier’s gun and fled the scene, prompting a widespread manhunt across southern Israel. Two suspects from southern Israel were arrested a day later, but the information was not immediately cleared for publication. On Monday, that gag order was partially removed. According to the Shin Bet, one of the suspects admitted during an interrogation to murdering Kokia. “He even led Shin Bet investigators to retrieve the soldier’s gun,” the service said in a statement. Beyond saying that the stabbing had a “nationalistic motive,” the Shin Bet would not comment on a specific trigger for the attack. Suspects often cite a recent event or incident involving a family member or friend when confessing to a terror charge. “The interrogation of the suspects is ongoing,” the Shin Bet said... The soldier was waiting for a ride near a mall in the southern city at approximately 9:30 p.m. when he was attacked. When medics arrived at the scene, they found him in critical condition, unconscious and without a pulse, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service... His family donated his organs, Army Radio reported.

It's worth pausing for a moment to absorb that last point. In another place, Ron's father Boaz Kukia is quoted saying: "Our whole family has an ADI donation card [indicating willingness to have organs removed for transplanting into others after the donor's death] and saving lives is a supreme value". The nobleness of spirit that allows people to speak that way as they bury a child is a wondrous thing.
 

External view of Arad's shopping mall [Image Source]

And Associated Press (via the New York Times) gives this context:

The Shin Bet would not identify them [the men who were arrested] Monday, but Israeli media reported they were likely Arab Bedouins from the southern Negev desert... Since September 2015, Palestinians have killed more than 50 Israelis, two visiting Americans and a British tourist in stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks. 

There's more about how Israel's ADI card system works here. It's operated by Israel's National Transplant Center, established by the Ministry of Health in 1994 to be the authorized and independent body for managing and coordinating organ donation and transplantation in Israel. The ADI website says more than a thousand adults and children and adults in Israel currently need a transplant; some 700 are waiting for a kidney transplant, about 150 for a liver transplant, about 70 for a lung transplant, about 120 for a heart transplant:

Only 250 people on the waiting list will have the chance of a transplant in the course of the next year and about 100 will die waiting. And each year, hundreds of new patients join the waiting list.

We saw a report that the murdered young man's corneas have already been given to a transplant recipient.

24-Dec-15: Another terror outrage narrowly averted - and Shalit Deal releasees are again at the heart of the darkness

Al-Quds University students [Image Source]

This could have turned out very, very badly - and might still.

Right here in Jerusalem, side by side with ordinary, constructive lives being lived by most of the people who call this special city home, a cluster of death-cultists - yet another in a lengthening string of them, working in dark places and preparing unspeakably dark plans involving injuries, mayhem and deaths - has been stopped.

No one imagines they are the only such cluster of plotters or that there will not be others on the way. But these, at least, have been stopped for now.

No innocent civilians were hurt - at least, not for now. So news coverage of this important development has been sparse outside our beleaguered country, particularly as seasonal celebrations have the attention of most of Europe, Australia and the Americas. From Times of Israel:

The Shin Bet, alongside the IDF and Israel Police, have thus far arrested 25 Hamas operatives, the majority of them Al-Quds University in Abu Dis students, who they suspect were preparing to attack Israeli targets, the agency said in a statement. The arrests were carried out over the past few weeks. The service also uncovered a makeshift laboratory in Abu Dis, in east Jerusalem, which was being used to create the explosives necessary for bombing attacks. It said the cell was controlled by Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip... In addition to the Abu Dis terror cell, the Shin Bet also busted a [related] Bethlehem-based group... ["Hamas cell planned suicide and car bombings, Shin Bet reveals", Times of Israel, December 23, 2015]

Some of the plotters

The article makes clear that some of the intelligence that led to the unraveling of this group's plans came from interrogations carried out by PA security officers of Hamas people arrested by them. As we keep noting in this blog, Hamas operates throughout the areas occupied by the PA, in some places more publicly, in others less. Their hand, not to mention their flags and the signs of their terror-focused activities, are everywhere.

Among those arrested in this latest intercept:

• Ahmad Jamal Mousa Azzam, 24, from Qalqilya, at some point a student at Al-Quds University in Abu Dis: Considered the terrorist ringleader, and controlled from Gaza. He was given training by his handlers in "how to create explosive belts and vests, as well as improvised explosive devices". Once in, Azzam recruited the others, mostly from among the Al-Quds student body. Some of those were intended to become human bombs.
• Hazem Ziad Amran Sandouqa, 22, a resident of the Old City of Jerusalem and an Israeli citizen - therefore able to move around with relative ease, an obvious strategic advantage to the planning and execution of terror. 
• Fahdi Daoud Muhammad Abu Qaian, 19, also an Israeli citizen, a Bedouin from the Negev, and a designated attacker in the terror plot. Under interrogation, he confessed that he was being prepared for a bombing mission by means of an explosive vest or by driving an explosives-packed vehicle into an Israeli target (we're guessing the target would have consisted of human beings).
• Issa Nasser Issa Shoka, 19, an Al-Quds University student, a designated money courier and intending human bomb, as well as one of the leaders of the Bethlehem cell.
• Muhammad Waleed Ahmad Sarhkhan, 20, of the Bethlehem cell.
• Muhammad Na’im Issa Ali, 19, also from the Bethlehem cell, another intending human bomb.

Avi Issacharoff, in a follow-on article published last night ["What if the Hamas terror cell in Abu Dis had succeeded?", Times of Israel, December 23, 2015], looks at the dire consequences had this Hamas terrorist cell not been stopped:

The Palestinian Authority is surviving. And overall, Israeli citizens have become used to a sick reality in which almost every day Palestinians try to attack them. [But although] this weapons factory and infrastructure were discovered, the fact is that every passing day moves us closer to Second Intifada-style terrorism... [Issacharoff]

Viewing yesterday's IDF real-time video (above) of soldiers breaking into the Jerusalem lab and doing an inventory of the chemicals they found there turns this into something more real and immediate. For purposes of bomb making, the jihadist/murderers had stocked up (something we have not seen reported so far in the news) on nitro-glycerine and cyanide - they're shown clearly. That's in addition to an evil scientist's trove of lethal substances and explosives intended for killing and seriously harming people. Experience tells us those people would have been innocent Israelis, almost certainly civilians. That's how terror works.

Had, Heaven forbid, the Abu Dis/Bethlehem terror collective pulled off a "showcase" outrage

The Israeli government would have come under immense pressure to take steps against the PA, and the call for a closure of the major West Bank cities would have come from every direction. The pressure would likely have led to a ban on all Palestinian workers entering Israel, and possibly even to a widespread IDF operation in one or more West Bank cities... Tens of thousands more unemployed Palestinians would be on the streets, with hundreds of thousands affected by their loss of income. More violent confrontations with young Palestinians would likely ensue. The fraying of cooperation between the PA security forces and the IDF would be inevitable, maybe even a complete severance of such cooperation. And at the end of that slippery slope, the collapse of the PA itself... [T]hat’s precisely why Hamas has been trying so hard to set up an infrastructure capable of carrying out suicide attacks against Israeli civilians, including inside sovereign Israel... Hamas is avoiding a direct confrontation with Israel in Gaza but is doing a lot to heat things up in the West Bank. Senior Hamas operatives in Gaza know they have a certain amount of immunity from Israel, because Israel does not want another major conflict there. The people who are today orchestrating the effort to carry out attacks are mostly Hamas members who were freed in the 2011 Shalit exchange — West Bankers who were exiled to Gaza under the deal. Somebody in Israel evidently believed, or wanted to believe, that confining them to Gaza would reduce the danger they presented. Except that even from Gaza, these people have now become a central headache for Israel in the West Bank... [Issacharoff]

We blogged last month ["27-Nov-14: Hamas terrorist ring is busted; Israel says the handlers operate from Turkey; Qatar is involved"] about the meaningfully-malevolent role of Shalit Deal releasees. And we offered more background here: "11-Dec-15: The price of the Shalit Deal and the countries that help it keep rising".

The price paid by Israeli society - and in a meaningful sense also by the Palestinian Arabs - for this catastrophic transaction keeps growing. Yet there remains, it has to be said and with some pain, a striking unwillingness among the insiders of our government to properly analyze what was done, reach operative conclusions and express sincere regret. It's surely called for.

04-Jul-15: Friday's attack on southern Israel: three rockets and a volley of unchallenged disinformation

Screen shot from i24news.tv's coverage

Shavua tov! Following-up Friday's rocket attack on southern Israel:

A third rocket that was part of a volley of projectiles fired into southern Israel on Friday by Islamic State-linked terrorists in Sinai was found in the Eshkol Regional Council region on Saturday. Authorities initially found only two of the rockets on Friday. The two exploded in open ground inside Israeli territory near the Gaza Strip, causing little damage and no casualties. Israeli residents in the area said they heard a third rocket land. The IS-affiliated Wilayat Sinai in the Sinai Peninsula claimed responsibility for the attack. “Three Grad rockets were fired at Jewish positions in occupied Palestine,” the group said Friday evening in a statement on Twitter. [Times of Israel, today]

The reference to "Occupied Palestine" is to the Eshkol and Negev regions of the State of Israel.

No one with even superficial familiarity with international law calls them occupied or Palestine. The only voices that do are those calling for the destruction of Israel as a state, along with the people living within its borders.

Nonetheless, numerous news services - like Aljazeera, Deutsche Welle, Al-Ahram, AFP, France24, and naturally Iran's state-controlled news service - faithfully republished the Islamist tweet in today's global news torrent, making no effort to point out to their news consumers the anti-Israel Islamist propaganda nature of the entirely bogus claim.

It's a fair bet that close to 100% of their audience will swallow the "Occupied Palestine" claim without hesitating for a moment to check the facts - just like those news editors.

20-Jul-14: Hamas rocket devastates Israeli family, kills father

Zero red lines: Rocket men in Gaza fire at anything Israeli

The constant indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza continues, and exacted a human life during Saturday afternoon.

Jerusalem Post says an Israeli died after sustaining critical injuries from a rocket attack near Dimona. Four other people, including two young children, were injured in the same attack and are undergoing hospital treatment for their injuries. One, a three-month-old baby, is in critical condition; another appears (to us) to be her mother and the widow of the dead man. Times of Israel names the dead victim as a 32-year-old man from a Bedouin community near Dimona, Ouda Lafi al-Waj, and explains

Since many Bedouin communities are unrecognized by the government, many basic services are not provided to them. They are also not protected by Iron Dome, which registers their homes as “open areas” and allows rockets to fall there without attempting interception.

Maan, the Palestinian news agency, says the dead man was killed by a rocket that fell short of its real target (if that's an expression that can fairly be used in a war in which rockets by the hundred are simply flung into the air by the jihadists in the general direction of something Israeli.) The Negev desert city of Dimona is home to an Israeli nuclear reactor and there is constant speculation that Hamas is making efforts to hit the reactor, among various other "quality" targets.

The Maan report says Al-Waj lived in

Qasr al-Sir, an unrecognized Bedouin village in southern Israel with a population of around 1,000. Israeli medical sources said that the injured included a 4-month-old baby girl in serious condition as well as a 5-year-old boy and a woman in her 30s with light injuries. The injured appeared to all be members of the same family.

On Tuesday, Dror Khenin, 37, was killed near the Erez border crossing with the Gaza Strip. He was hit by a mortar launched by Gaza terrorists and rushed to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon but died there of his wounds. Khenin was a volunteer who had come to distribute food to soldiers posted to the area.

11-Nov-12: Dramatic Sunday in southern Israel

Running for cover in Beer Sheva today as long-range rockets were fired
into the city by Gaza's terrorists [Image Source]   

For hundreds of thousands of Israelis living in the south, today has been tumultuous in the worst way. 

Unstemmed rocket attacks have been conducted by one or another of the terrorist groups based in Hamas-controlled Gaza at all hours of the day and night. While it's tempting to look at the absence of deaths on the Israeli side, the reality is any one of these rockets and mortars can easily have exacted the heaviest of prices. It's our great fortune that this did not happen today. 

Based on eye-witness reports we collected during the day (Sunday), here is a summary of the regions in which the Tzeva Adom missile warning system detected an incoming attack or (where Tzeva Adom did not operate for whatever reason) actual rocket-born explosions occurred:

08:50: Sha'ar Hanegev

09:50: Sha'ar Hanegev - no fewer than 4 rockets

10:10: Sderot and Sha'ar Hanegev

10:35: S'dot Negev and Sha'ar Hanegev

10:45: Sderot and Sha'ar Hanegev

11:55: Eshkol, S'dot Negev, Sha'ar Hanegev

12:00: Shaa'ar Hanegev

12:30: A hail of rockets right across Israel's Gaza border area, plus a rocket in Hof Ashkelon
12:55: S'dot Negev
13:00: Hof Ashkelon
14:00: Be'er Sheva. Israel National News reported that two explosions, possibly three, were heard in the city about 90 seconds after the siren sounded the alert for residents to head for the shelters. At least one, and possibly two, of the incoming missiles - believed to be long-range GRAD Katyushas - were intercepted and destroyed by the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system.  

15:55: Hof Ashkelon, Lachish, Sha'ar Hanegev

16:55: Sha'ar Hanegev

17:00: Sha'ar Hanegev

17:20: Eshkol - believed to be four rockets in a single volley

Times of Israel reports that more than 70 rockets in total have been fired into Israel since (and presumably including) Saturday night. 

"On Sunday morning, four Israelis were wounded by shrapnel when Palestinian terrorists fired a barrage of rockets at the Sha’ar Hanegev region. Two people in their fifties were wounded when a rocket scored a direct hit on a car, while a third woman was hurt as a rocket fell near a school in a nearby town. Two residents of Sderot were treated for shock. All of the casualties were evacuated to hospitals in Beersheba and Ashkelon. Hamas’s armed wing announced that it was actively participating in the fighting by firing mortar shells at IDF positions around the Gaza Strip... Television reports noted that recent cross-border fire from Gaza had included highly accurate Katyusha rockets, capable of doing far more damage than previous rocket fire."

TOI summarizes the day's events with this fatalistic commentary under the title "The approach of an unwanted war in Gaza | Neither Israel nor Hamas nor Egypt seems to wish it, but as rocket fire intensifies again, a deeper conflict looms":

Israel doesn’t want war. Hamas doesn’t want war. Egypt doesn’t want war. And yet this weekend’s bloodshed on the Israel-Gaza border, along with the increase in rocket fire, has brought all sides to the brink...

1-Feb-09: Fifteen rockets into Israel today. What's a proportionate response?

Several Israelis were injured by shrapnel during the day today (Sunday) from mortar shells fired by Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip. Their mortars were directed into Israel's Sha'ar Hanegev region in the western Negev.

The Jerusalem Post says some 15 Qassam rockets and mortar shells struck Israel during today. One landed about half way between two kindergartens in the Eshkol region; one struck the beleagured southern city of Sderot; two more hit open areas nearby; a fourth landed in the Sedot Negev region.

All of these are inhabited areas. None of them is a military zone. The weaponry of the Palestinian terrorists, as always, is pointed in the direction of civilians, and preferably at children. No Israeli victims are "caught in the crossfire". They are the target. It has always been this way.

Interesting to note that Fatah - which answers to the 'moderate' Mahmoud Abbas - took credit for at least one of today's attacks.

According to television's Channel 10, the IDF sent messages by phone to Palestinian Arab Gazans living in Khan Yunis and Rafah late this afternoon and evening warning them to evacuate their houses "immediately."

7-Nov-08: On having really bad neighbors

It's a beautiful November Friday here - sunny, warm, blue skies, balmy breezes. And the fourth consecutive day of terrorist rocket fire at Israeli civilian targets from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Five rockets crashed into Israel since dawn this morning. Two landed in Sderot; three in the Negev desert. Al-Quds Brigades, part of the Islamic Jihad terrorist entity, issued the usual muscle-flexing, hormone-oozing press release claiming responsibility. Meanwhile parents of Israeli school children have been asked by the authorities to remain alert - whatever that means.

Yesterday, Thursday, four additional Qassam rockets were fired into Israel. And since this past Tuesday, the Palestinian Arab terrorists have fired no fewer than 50 rockets into Israel. One of those landed close to the Neot Ashkelon elementary school where 700 children were preparing for an air raid drill that quickly took on a more real character, and not for the first time. Children who were frightened by the siren were collected shortly afterward by their parents.

Did we say frightened?

Ours is not a society that quakes without reason. Have a look at the following graphs that summarize what it is like to live in a neighbourhood where the barbarians operate with absolute no restraint, and largely without any media or government attention from anyone but the Israelis. (Data courtesy of this source.)

Rockets that have been fired into Israel by the Gazan terrorists during the past year.

Mortars fired into Israel since October 2007 (above)

Israeli casualties - victims of the Hamas rockets and mortars (above) in the past twelve months only, and only in the cities and towns lying close to the Hamas-controlled Gaza region.

The charts above were prepared before the wild firing of this week.

So now a question for our visitors: Which self-respecting country - other than Israel - would ever absorb this sort of relentless attack on its civilian population without carpet-bombing the terrorist perpetrators in their vipers' nest strongholds?

18-Feb-08: Ongoing terror, rockets, mortars and miracles

A barrage of four rockets was fired into Israel a little earlier today (Monday) by the jihadist forces in Hamas-controlled Gaza. Two landed near an infirmary in one of the kibbutzim in the Sha'ar Hanegev area, causing property damage and sending four people to hospital. Two more landed in open fields in the Sedot Negev area, causing neither injuries nor damage. This tally comes on top of Sunday's 7 mortar shells and four rockets fired into Israel by the terrorists.

Every day of indiscriminate, wanton rocket fire by the Gazans that goes by without additional deaths is a miracle. But in Judaism we have a principle from the time of the Talmudic sages: "Where the potential for harm is constantly present, one may not rely on a miracle" (Kiddushin 39b).

UPDATE Monday 18-Feb-08 at 11:00pm: A Palestinian-Arab rocket hit a residential area of Sderot tonight (Monday) injuring ten Israelis. Shortly afterwards, seven additional Gazan jihadist rockets landed in open fields in Israel's western Negev area; fortunately no injuries or damage are reported.

Rocket barrages aimed at civilian targets in Israel have continued throughout the day - and the miracles continue.

11-Jan-08: The latest from the south

A Qassam rocket fired by Palestinian Arab terrorists from the northern Gaza Strip landed in Israel's western Negev area this morning (Friday). It landed in open territory, causing no casualties or damage. This, of course, was not the intention of the murderers who have very little interest in where their rockets land or in who gets injured. Their object is to damage Israel and its Jewish population by all and any means. This may not sound like a politically correct statement but it is absolutely and uncontroversially true. And one day, the hopelessly inaccurate but very lethal devices will cause a disaster - it's only a matter of time.

9-Jan-08: Preparing for a major media event

Image Source: New York Times

By no coincidence at all, the increased heat on our northern front is matched this morning with lethal weapon attacks on our southern front. Bush is coming to town, and the media are here. 

Nine Qassams and at least 2 mortars have crashed into Israel's western Negev so far this morning (Wednesday) hours before President Bush's arrival at Ben Gurion airport. Three landed around in the grounds of Kibbutz Zikim. 

Another two hit outside the beleagured Israeli city of Sderot. (Today's NY Times has some of the background to life in that sad place: At Gaza's Edge 

And according to YNet, a short while later another Qassam fired from northern Gaza landed near a kibbutz in the Sha'ar Hanegev regional council, two mortars landed near the security fence separating Israel from the Strip, and three more Qassams hit Sderot about half an hour ago (around 10:00am). 

Fortunately no injuries or property damage are reported so far. 

In our part of the world, where jihadists treat the lives of their families, neighbors and enemies with approximately equal contempt, this is what is sometimes meant by show business. They're showing just how hatred trumps every other consideration. 

The expectations here are that so long as the Bush caravan - with its myriad officials and reporters - is in town, the danger will remain especially elevated. 

And if the terrorists manage to provoke some nice photo-op defensive measures by Israeli forces, then so much the better for them.