03-Dec-17: Understanding Jordan's king and his "holistic" approach to terror

Yesterday in Jordan [Screen grab]

Regular readers know we pay more than the usual amount of attention to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. It's where our daughter Malki's murderer lives free as a bird.

And even though

• she has boasted over and again for the cameras and the media of her central role in the 2001 bombing attack on the people inside Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria; and 
• she confessed in an Israeli court in 2003 to the calculated murder of 15 innocent victims, most of them children, and to having done this on behalf of the Islamist terror regime, Hamas, whose first-ever female terror agent she is reputed to be; and 
• the US government, the US Department of Justice and the FBI want her arrested and extradited to face Federal charges in a Washington court

Jordan's ruler King Abdullah II, aware of her celebrity status among his people, has stubbornly presided over a series of measures whose effect is to spit in the eye of the Americans, to deny the validity of the 1995 Jordan/US Extradition Treaty and to ensure one of his kingdom's - and the Arab world's - most admired females remains free to pursue her career of incitement to terrorism, Islamist values and the murder of Jewish children.

Nigeria's president and entourage hear from Jordan's
king on how Jordan has defeated terror [Image Source]

Jordan is currently hosting an event variously termed (depending on which media channels you consult) the Aqaba Retreat, the Aqaba Process or the Aqaba Meetings. (Aqaba is a resort town located at Jordan's southern-most tip, adjacent to the much smaller Israeli resort of Eilat.)

Jordan's semi-official English-language mouthpiece focused on who was there in an official-sounding report yesterday ["King meets with leaders, officials as Aqaba Meetings kick off: Gathering aimed as venue to bolster security, military cooperation in the fight against terrorism", Jordan Times, December 2, 2017]:

• "His Majesty King Abdullah on Saturday met with the presidents of a number of African countries and representatives of nations participating in the two-day Aqaba Meetings to discuss the global efforts to fight terrorism and extremist ideologies, especially in West Africa..." 
• "The participants [include] senior officials from the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Romania, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Cyprus, Canada, Brazil, Japan, Australia, India, Indonesia, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Nigeria, Mauritania, Antigua and Barbuda, Mali, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Chad, and Burkina Faso, in addition to representatives of regional and international organisations..." 
• "His Majesty also held meetings with US Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis, Brazilian Minister of Defence Raul Jungmann, French Minister of State attached to the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, UK Minister of State for the Armed Forces Mark Lancaster, and High Representative of the African Union Pierre Buyoya... On the sidelines of the Aqaba Meetings, King Abdullah met with President of Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari, President of Guinea Alpha Condé, President of Niger Mahamadou Issoufou, and President of Mali Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, a Royal Court statement said."
• "The Aqaba Meetings were launched by the King to maintain international and regional coordination and cooperation in the fight against terrorism within a holistic approach, and to discuss security challenges in regions around the world that are dealing with terrorism hotspots, with the aim of identifying shortcomings and coordinating efforts to fight terrorism."
• "The meetings are part of His Majesty’s initiative to reach out to countries around the world and coordinate with them on this issue, since the anti-terrorism fight “must be a joint, international effort, based on close coordination and consultations, to counter the global threats of terrorism and extremism”, the statement said... 

A brief Associated Press report makes plain what we find so perplexing about this:

Jordan's state news agency says King Abdullah II is hosting a high-level conference on fighting terrorism and extremist ideologies, particularly in West Africa... The agency says the conference is the latest in a series launched by Jordan's monarch to reach out to other nations and help coordinate the fight against terrorism... Jordan's king is seen as a key Western partner in the battle against Islamic extremism. ["West Africa is focus of Jordan counter-terrorism conference", AP, December 1, 2017]

For us, the elephant in the room is Ahlam Tamimi. 

Source: Al Jazeera

Abdullah has treaty obligations to the US. His father signed a 1995 Extradition Treaty with the Clinton Administration in 1995 and in its wake several Jordanian terrorists and felons were shipped off to face the US justice system. Though his media, aided by compliant reporters and editors outside Jordan, put up a facade that makes it seem extraditing Tamimi to the US is somehow problematic, it's clear that it's Tamimi and the specific crimes to which she has confessed that are the problem. And the real story. 

Though no one in the mainstream media seems to have picked this up yet, there's a clear analysis of the legal mess into which Jordan has inserted itself while giving its native jihadist killer safe harbor. See "Pressure on Jordan: Refusal to extradite mastermind of deadly 2001 Sbarro suicide bombing in Jerusalem contravenes international law and agreements" [Michelle Munneke JD of American University Washington College of Law, in National Security Law Brief, October 28, 2017]:

This analysis means the United States should not give up on attempting to extradite Al-Tamimi. If other countries place enough pressure on Jordan due to concerns of Al-Tamimi’s danger and susceptibility to planning another attack, Jordan may change its position. Al-Tamimi is above all else, a significant danger that Jordan should take seriously—if not for the world, for Jordan’s own citizens that live amongst Al-Tamimi.
Jordan should reconsider its position and permit extradition in the case of Al-Tamimi for the safety of Jordanians, and citizens of other nations that may be subject to another attack by Al-Tamimi. Thwarting extradition not only violates the principle of comity, but it also perpetuates the international danger presented by Al-Tamimi.

But for most people, this isn't about law but simply crime and punishment. Tamimi was sent by her Hamas masters in the summer of 2001 to kill Jews. Especially Jewish children. She succeeded by all of their perverted measures. And she's now free, extremely well-compensated, raising a family and a media celebrity.

She has never denied the facts. And she has been applauded - literally - time and again in her public appearances throughout Jordan as well as in her well-publicized VIP speaking visits/travels to such countries (listed alphabetically) as Algeria (December 2011), Kuwait (July 2012 and March 2014), Lebanon (April 2012 and January 2015), Qatar (April 2012, again December 2013), Tunisia (April 2012 and November 2015) and Yemen (April 2014). 

She hosted a popular weekly TV program called “نسيم الأحرار” [Transliteration: “Nassem al-Ahrar”] meaning “Breezes of the Free” between February 2012 until September 2016.  Devoted to Palestinian Arab prisoners and their families, it appears to have been designed to bolster their morale, act as a two-way conduit of information and to encourage more of the kind of the kind of acts that turned these terrorists into prisoners in the first place. Tamimi stopped being its presenter in September 2016 at about the time she was very briefly (for a single night) taken into custody by Jordanian authorities pursuant to an Interpol arrest order at the behest of the US Department of Justice.

Tamimi and her connections publicly thank Jordan's judiciary and
leaders for getting her off the hook with the FBI and the US
Department of Justice - though the pursuit continues [Source] 

Jordan is a family-run business that like so many other Arab polities presents itself as a nation-state and even as a constitutional democracy, which is a real stretch given the total domination exercised by the British-installed Hashemites that have run it since the 1920s. 

Thus it was no secret to Jordan's Royal Palace that Tamimi was recording a weekly tribute to terrorism-and-Islamism in an Amman studio (Amman, Jordan's capital, is where she lives). And that it was uploaded and broadcast around the world every week for years by the Hamas-owned Alquds satellite television network. Her appalling show was and still is rebroadcast by a multitude of Arabic and non-Arabic websites that stream all or some of the programming put out by Alquds. The king and his Hashemite Kingdom never had any problem with any of this. Their "principled opposition" to terror only stretches so far. 

In April 2017, an Australian TV journalist told us privately that Tamimi had been advised by the Jordanian authorities to lower her profile in the wake of a Jordanian Court of Cassation decision that Jordan's 1995 extradition treaty with the US was unconstitutional. In particular, he told us, the "Jordanian authorities have now banned her doing any media interviews". Our impression is she is taking the advice seriously for the time being. 

Before that, and for several years from her home base of Jordan, she appeared numerous times as the presenter on several Alquds TV specials - including a number of propaganda programs that went to air in the summer of 2014 as fighting raged between Hamas Gaza and the IDF. She may be the most influential and important female public figure in Hamas.

So what does the Royal Hashemite Palace and its central personage say to all this?

Nothing, at least not publicly. Nor can we expect them to respond for so long as he and they continue to be absurdly feted as central players in their "holistic" struggle to defeat the terrorists by the likes of the most senior politicians of the United States, the UK and Europe. 

Just so long as they're not Jordanian terrorists.

07-Sep-15: Putting numbers to the fears: terrorism is absolutely growing

From the September 2015 Terror Threat Snapshot

In June 2015, a freshly launched USA government publication called “Terror Threat Snapshot” caught our eye. It was going to be put out monthly by the US Congress' House Committee on Homeland Security. Now, we're not great believers in the readability of government reports, but this one made some interesting comments right off the bat. So we have stayed tuned, and read it when new issues emerge.

That first issue referred back to newspaper reports (like this one from International Business Times) that appeared in 2014 and indicated that terrorists in the service of ISIS were using sea-going smugglers to create refugee flows into Europe as a kind of "Trojan Horse", generating concerns about how terrorists might potentially exploit these flows.

So here we are in September 2015, thinking disturbing thoughts, particularly after viewing the video clips circulating in the social media the last few days - lots of men, many rough looking but hardly desperate; not so many women and children. (This one from Hungary, devoid of dialogue, captures the mood. And this one. And this.)

The House Homeland Security committee chairman Michael McCaul, a Republican representative from Texas, launched the latest Snapshot on Friday [press release], emphasizing that the threat from jihad in the U.S. was already high and has escalated dramatically during 2015. Here, in our words, are some of the larger talking points:

• More jihadist terror cases have been uncovered in 2015 than in any year since 9/11. 
• ISIS is fueling what the report calls "Islamist terror wildfire across the globe" at a speed that has no precedent. As of the end of August, ISIS had inspired or initiated 57 terror attack plots against Western targets, of which 15 were targeted at the United States. 
• ISIS has affiliates, groups pledging support or a direct presence in 18 countries including Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Lebanon, Nigeria, the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Pakistan, Philippines, the North Caucasus region of Russia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. It controls 12 cities and towns in Iraq and 13 more in Syria as of early September 2015.
• Activists working in the name of ISIS have released "hit lists" of American government personnel, including service members. Most Islamist terror plots on U.S. soil have, since the start of 2014, been based on killing police or U.S. service members.
• Cases involving homegrown jihadists/terrorists rose from 38 in July 2010 to 124 today, a rise of 300% in five years.
• On August 13, 2015, the ISIS "hacking division" released information on 1,400 American government personnel  and urged its followers to track them down and do harmful things. The released information included names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers. 
• How many Westerners have gone to fight in the Syria and Iraq Arab-on-Arab bloodbath? About 4,500 including 550 women, and including more than 250 Americans, including those who attempted to travel and failed. Some 40 American fighters who went to Syria had returned to the United States as of March 2015, and some have since been arrested on terror charges.

We don't have much time for people who say terrorism is a side-show, we're winning, it's drying up. The reality is it's getting worse on a global basis, with clear and identifiable focuses of activity and inspiration, and it's going to get much worse before our side prevails.

16-Jan-15: More scenes from the warzones

Europe's Jews and today's reality [Image Source]

Following on from this morning's post...

Paris, today: Twelve activist militants (three of them females) suspected of having provided "possible logistical support" to the acts of murder that took the lives of 17 people in last week's attacks in the French capital are being held by police in the Paris region, reports say. "Logistical support" is interpreted by the BBC (quoting a judicial source who told AFP) as giving weapons or vehicles to the killers.

France overnight: Gendarmes carried out raids in Montrouge, Chatenay-Malabry, Epinay-sur-Seine, Grigny (home town of the now-deceased Islamist Amedy Coulibaly) and Fleury-Merogis overnight (source). Their searches are guided, in part, by samples of DNA and the results of wire-taps.

The Gare de L'Est this morning - evacuated [Image Source]

Paris, today: The hugely busy Gare de l'Est railway station in Paris was evacuated for an hour this morning. Services resumed at 09:00 Paris time, Friday morning. The authorities are giving no further details at this stage (BBC), though we see references in the French media to the presence of the bomb squad. One observer notes (here) that in the French capital, its residents starting to become to terms with their city's fate, "The police, more than 80,000 in Paris alone, have been astonished to be cheered."

Madrid, today: A Spanish newspaper (quoted here) says Amedy Coulibaly spent three days in Madrid in early January, spending three days there. The assumption, given the scale of the arms cache in his apartment (here), is that it was not for tourism, and that there are people in Spain who may have something valuable to contribute to the investigation if the need is explained nicely enough to them. Coulibaly's companion Hayat Boumeddiene, sometimes referred to in the media as his wife, is known to have passed through Madrid on her way to Turkey about the same time, and then through Turkey to Syria on January 8.

Amsterdam, today: As was done in Belgium today, the only Orthodox Jewish school in the Dutch city of Amsterdam, the Jewish Children Community Cheder (says Jewish Chronicle, London) is shut down today "for security reasons".

UK: Not so surprisingly, "Community Security Trust patrols and additional police measures are in place in areas with high Jewish populations ahead of Shabbat." The Community Security Trust exists to provide "physical security, training and advice for the protection of British Jews. CST assists victims of antisemitism and monitors antisemitic activities and incidents. CST represents British Jewry to Police, Government and media on antisemitism and security. CST believes that the fight against antisemitism and terrorism is an integral part of safeguarding our wider democratic British society against extremism and hatred."

Nigeria, today: It's not happening in Europe but the Boko Haram practitioners of Islamist jihad in west Africa have been slaughtering people in incredible numbers, orders of magnitude greater than Europe's killings. It's reported today (Times of London) that their ambassador to the US has corrected the toll of Nigerians killed this past week in their ongoing war. Nigeria's military had said it was 150 people dead; turns out to have been about 2,000.

25-Nov-14: How different from the Nigerian Islamists are the Pal Arab terrorists?

Two girls did, in fact, come back today - with bombs

inside their clothes. The others are still where they were

[Image Source]

The largest city in the Nigerian state of Borno, is Maiduguri, with a population of about 1.2 million, most of them Muslim.

In 2006, at the height of the drama over a newspaper in far-off Denmark publishing cartoon images of the central figure in Islam, riots broke out, fifteen people were killed there and twelve Christian houses of worship were destroyed. And then things got devastatingly worse.

Nigeria's highest profile terrorist organization, Boko Haram, visited phenomenal violence on the area in July 2009, leaving 700 people dead in its wake. They have continued to carry out mind-numbingly bloody attacks right up to this month. Despite this, according to its Wikipedia entry, Maiduguri is popularly known as the City of Peace. But possibly not after today.

This morning, two female human bombs walked into Maiduguri's crowded main market a little after 11 o'clock. One exploded, and it appears three women were killed. Then when (as Nigeria's most influential newspaper puts it)

unsuspecting sympathisers gathered to watch the scene, the second girl who was also heavily wired with explosives screamed and then the device hidden under her garment blew up killing about 30 persons.... The Civilian-JTF chieftain explained that "from what one of the survivors told me while being helped to get to the hospital, the bombers were two girls dressed in full hijab..." [Leadership, Nigeria, today]

(UPDATE: Another Nigerian source says the death toll has risen to 45 and that the second human bomb was male; the explosion ensures it will be hard to tell from visual inspection.)

Boko Haram is said to mean "Western education is forbidden" in the Hausa language, according to the BBC, and it is

waging an insurgency in Nigeria. It was based in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, after its formation in 2002, but it has since been driven out of the city by the military and vigilante groups. It now controls a large number of towns and villages in Borno, amid fears that it is preparing to launch an assault to capture Maiduguri. [BBC, today]

From the time it was formed, it claimed to be "opposing Western education". But an education campaign like this is unique in historical terms. Today, the Boko Haram people are open about seeking to create an Islamic state by military means; education has evidently slipped down their list of goals. And military in their case means kidnapping hundreds of school-girls in April 2014 (and still holding most of them despite Mrs Obama's Instagram campaign), and by mutilating shoppers and traders in open-air market places; a July 2014 truck bomb in the same city killed at least 56 people.

In the wake of previous Boko Haram massacres, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the describes itself as "the largest bloc of Islamic states with 57 members and the only official voice of the Muslim world", condemned the group's "barbaric acts of violence in the strongest terms" on the basis of their

having nothing to do with Islam and against its basic tenets. The OIC continues to issue statements condemning every heinous killing and destruction of property committed by this group and urging the authorities to intensify their efforts to end these acts of terrorism and violence and bring the perpetrators to justice while offering its solidarity and assistance. [Alarabiya, July 2014]

Click here to see dozens more examples

But how different are Boko Haram from the other Islamist barbarians Hamas and Hezbollah, or from so-called secular Arab terrorists groups like Fatah and PFLP that are the "freedom fighting" darlings of the OIC? 

And do their values and their actions really have nothing to do with Islam?

• Boko Haram send female human bombs to cause devastating explosions. And what was the Palestinian Arab woman Wafa Idris? 
• Boko Haram send immature boys ("A gunman who looked like a 12-year old boy") to do their terrorist bidding. Husam Abdo, a 'mentally challenged' 14 year old Palestinian Arab boy was sent by his Fatah handlers to a certain death, with 8 kilo of explosives strapped to his torso, convinced that this was his best chance of having sex with 72 virgins. This is no figure of speech, but to be taken literally; see this BBC report and this CBS News report, "Bomb Boy's Family Mad At Militants".
• Boko Haram send little girls to be human bombs (see "10-Yr-Old Girl Strapped To Explosive Belt"). On the Palestinian Arab side, aged either 16 or 18 at the time, a female human bomb called Ayat Al-Akhras, recruited by the Fatah/Tanzim organization that was headed by Marwan Barghouti at the time walked into a Jerusalem supermarket and exploded, there with the expected lethal results. Incidentally one of the most prominent 'activists' in the current "Free Marwan Barghouti" campaign is a high profile South African religious figure, Desmond Tutu. 
• Add to this that Palestinian Authority TV routinely screens children's programs in which teenagers and pre-teens, like the little girl in the screenshot above right, probably 10 or 11 years old, sing of their desire to die as martyrs for the Palestinian Arab cause. Dozens of additional instances appear on this Palestinian Media Watch page and throughout the web.
• The mass murderers of Boko Haram don't regard themselves as having "nothing to do with Islam". Their leader, Abubakar Shekau , said just three months ago [BBC, August 25, 2014] that his forces have "set up an Islamic state in the towns and villages it has seized in north-eastern Nigeria." He makes it clear that his men, women and children are saving the world for Islam.

Flag of Boko Haram which, as the

Organization of Islamic

Cooperation says, has nothing

to do with Islam [Image Source]

We feel the embarrassment of the writer from the Organization of Islamic Co-operation ["Denying Boko Haram its assumed Islamic identity", July 15, 2014] . Who wants to be classified as being "like" the blood-lusting savages of Boko Haram, most of whose victims are said to be Muslims? But then how different is that from the blood-lusting ISIS killers of (mainly) Muslims in Iraq and Syria?

The Pew Research people said in July ["Concerns about Islamic Extremism on the Rise in Middle East"] that

publics hold very negative opinions of well-known extremist groups, such as al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah. In Nigeria, the vast majority of respondents, both Muslims and Christians alike, have an unfavorable view of Boko Haram, the terrorist group that recently kidnapped hundreds of girls in the restive north of the country. And a majority of Pakistanis have an unfavorable view of the Taliban... as well-publicized bouts of violence, from civil war to suicide bombings, plague the Middle East, Africa and South Asia... [Pew Research]

But if people's lives depended on what public opinion feels about terrorists, then public opinion pollsters like Pew would be running states. As we know, they don't. In reality, acts of terror consistently get huge support from certain specific demographics, Pew's research notwithstanding. And major international roof-bodies - like OIC which speaks for 56 nations [listed here] making it the largest international grouping of countries after the UN - line right up behind the terror organizations that do them,

And leaving aside what "publics" think, can we look at how the OIC - the "only official voice of the Muslim world" - looks at Hamas and the other jihad organizations? How, for instance, does it feel about Hamas training Palestinian Arab children to want to die as young martyrs? What does it consider to be the very worst kind of terrorism? As it happens, this we can answer:

At the 34th Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers (ICFM), an OIC section, in May 2007, the foreign ministers termed Islamophobia the worst form of terrorism... [source]

On April 3, 2002, a few months after the Hamas-engineered massacre that took the life of our daughter Malki, the OIC adopted and published a cornerstone policy document entitled "The Kuala Lumpur Declaration on International Terrorism" [full text here]. Some of its highlights:

• "We reject any attempt to link terrorism to the struggle of the Palestinian people in the exercise of their inalienable right to establish their independent state with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital... We reject any attempt to associate Islamic states or Palestinian and Lebanese resistance with terrorism which constitutes an impediment to the global struggle against terrorism..." A clearer vote of confidence in Hezbollah, Hamas and Fatah would be hard to find.
• And it articulated this clear warning: "We reject any unilateral action taken against any Islamic country under the pretext of combating international terrorism, as this will undermine global cooperation against terrorism".
• It established a thirteen member ministerial-level OIC Committee on International Terrorism. If that committee has done anything, or even put out a press release since 2002, we can;t find any sign on-line. Seems to be nothing more than a fig leaf.

Faced with acts of beastial savagery like the axe/hatchet/butcher knife attack on Jews at prayer in a Jerusalem synagogue, the otherwise voluble OIC - which expresses views on a wide range of issues all the time - is silent. Its search engine [here] seems to let a person search on any word and see what the OIC stand is. But if you enter "Jerusalem"... well, try it and see what happens.

16-May-14: More jihadist killings in East Africa today

Kenya is experiencing a rising wave of terror attacks. Today, Friday, two explosions in Narobi, the capital, killed 10 people and injured 70. Both were caused by improvised explosive devices placed in the Gikomba market area close to the city's downtown precinct. A mini-van used for public transportation was hit by one of the explosions. Earlier in the week, both the United States and the UK issued renewed warnings about terror attacks in Kenya. (Buses were bombed in Nairobi earlier this month; innocent people were killed then too.)

The US embassy in Nairobi which was devastated in a huge attack in 1998, issued a fresh travel alert early this morning to American citizens warning of a continued terrorist threat in Kenya. The embassy itself had said a day or two earlier that it is taking steps to increase security “due to recent threat information regarding the international community in Kenya.” The UK government has warned its citizens to avoid the coastal city of Mombasa and beach towns nearby. Hundreds of British citizens have cut short their holidays and have flown home.

Prior to today's murderous attacks, Kenya's president Uhuru Kenyatta had rather bizarrely criticized the warnings on the grounds, according to Reuters, that "such warnings strengthen the will of terrorists".

According to the BBC's report, Kenya's government

recently round up all refugees of Somali origin in an attempt to rid the city of terror suspects they believe to be hiding among refugees. The al-Qaeda-linked group al-Shabab has launched a series of attacks against Kenyan targets in recent years, claiming to be retaliating for Kenya's military involvement in Somalia since 2011.

Terrorists rarely attack without attributing their rage to some pre-existing cause. In the case of the al-Shabaab of Somalia, its composition is thought to be multi-ethnic, led by Afghanistan- and Iraq-trained ethnic Somalis and foreigners. It is loosely connected to the Boko Haram of Nigeria and, like them, describes itself as waging jihad against "enemies of Islam".

11-May-14: Michelle Obama's "Nigerian girls" speech and what it unconscionably misses

CNN: Michelle Obama: Nigeria kidnappings 'unconscionable'
[Source]

United States First Lady Michelle Obama

offered her thoughts, prayers and support in the wake of the unconscionable terrorist kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian girls. The audio of the address and video of the address will be available online at www.whitehouse.gov at 6:00 a.m. ET, Saturday, May 10, 2014. [White House Press Office, today]

Her argument against what the Islamist terrorists of Boko Haram did, and have been doing for years to their fellow Nigerians with sickening brutality, is summarized this way:

This unconscionable act was committed by a terrorist group determined to keep these girls from getting an education – grown men attempting to snuff out the aspirations of young girls... In these girls, Barack and I see our own daughters. We see their hopes, their dreams and we can only imagine the anguish their parents are feeling right now."

From the official text of her speech, it's hard not to notice that she uses the word "terrorist" three times in describing the Islamists of Boko Haram who have openly taken credit for the kidnappings.

But not once does she use the words Boko Haram or Islam or Islamist. 

There's a flip-side to this.

Although Michelle Obama herself (or her speech-writers, if one were to be coldly pedantic about this) calls them terrorists, the ever-delicate - and hugely influential - BBC does not use the word even once in its coverage of her speech. (Here and here are some background notes on the BBC's obnoxious "use of terrorism" guidelines. And here is the policy itself.)

Oddly, they have no problem inserting Boko Haram and Islamist into their report, though Mrs Obama's speech does not mention either term. She does call them terrorists, but to the oh-so-doctrinaire BBC, they're militants.

As for Mrs Obama's perfectly justifiable outrage at grown men "determined to keep these girls from getting an education", we wonder if she is aware of the other unconscionable atrocities for which this group has taken responsibility. Tragically, it's not only about education or girls. A very partial list:

• Boko Haram terrorists bombed a Catholic church, filled with worshipers, in  January 2014, and killed 45 of them [source].
• Boko Haram terrorists carried out two roadside attacks on unsuspecting travelers in September 2013 and murdered no fewer than 159 of them, all fellow Nigerians ["22-Sep-13: A quiet weekend"] A week later they attacked the College of Agriculture in Yobe state and shot students as they slept, killing some forty of the young men. ["29-Sep-13: Sunday, bloody, bloody Sunday"]
• Boko Haram executed three human bomb attacks on Christian churches in the northern Nigerian state of Kaduna in June 2012. At least 50 people were killed, according to the Red Cross. 131 were injured. This was "the third weekend in a row in which Boko Haram has carried out bombings on churches" [BBC] The report points out that "Kaduna lies on the dividing line between Nigeria's largely Christian south and mainly Muslim north... Since 2009, it has targeted police stations and other government buildings, churches and schools. Hundreds of people have died in the attacks, and analysts suggest the group is trying to trigger clashes between Christians and Muslims."
• Boko Haram gunmen launched a terror attack on a Christian church in Gombe in January 2012, and managed to kill 6 and wound 10 of the Christian worshipers [source]

(A UN agency has a detailed and much fuller timeline of Boko Haram atrocities and body counts here. It's a truly ghastly tally.)

Clearly - though Mrs Obama's appeal today gives zero hint of it - there are some powerful religious forces at work in the unfolding Nigerian tragedy which no amount of reportorial spin or speech-writing acrobatics can fully hide. That however doesn't stop them trying.

We're certain Mrs Obama would agree that the killing of our daughter in August 2001 at the hands of another overtly-Islamist terror group - Hamas - was unconscionable. And yes, it cheated Malki of her education. And certainly it destroyed her hopes and dreams. 

But it was principally about murder and especially about hatred. Did it bring anguish into our lives? Oh yes, and it's an anguish that grows as we see well-informed people who fail to comprehend the nature of attacks like the one that targeted Jewish children in a Jerusalem pizza store, and like the one that targeted Nigerian girls in their school.

Excising the Islamist dimension from their understanding of what is happening dooms some of the most influential people in our societies to continue seriously misapprehending the goals of Hamas, of Boko Haram and of the rising tide of terrorism-addicted savages with Islamist passion in their hearts. Ultimately, we all pay a price for this, and it's unconscionably heavy.

1-May-14: Demanding action for the hundreds of abducted young Nigerian women, victims of Islamist terrorists

From a Nigerian news site today [Image Source]

As an expression of our respect for the work of two Paris-based organizations, Mouvement Pour la Paix et Contre le Terrorisme (Movement for Peace and Against Terrorism) and l’Alliance Internationale Contre le Terrorisme (International Association Against Terrorism), we think it's important to generate the widest public awareness of the English-language version of a public statement they issued a few days ago.

(There's updated background here [Washington Post, April 30, 2014] on the plight of the 234 abducted victims.)

Mass Kidnapping of Female Nigerian Students by Boko Haram Islamists | Demand their immediate and unconditional release!

[STATEMENT] The Islamist terror group Boko Haram has been harming the people of Nigeria for a decade. Its activities have grown even more murderous. Since the start of 2014, Boko Haram's terrorists have carried out 40 attacks, causing more than 1,500 casualties. In just two weeks, hundreds of innocent Nigerians were slaughtered in multiple Boko Haram terror attacks. During the the evening of Monday April 14, 2014, armed men perpetrated the mass kidnapping of female students about to take their exams. The unfortunate girls were abducted and taken away on trucks. A handful managed to escape, but most of them are still kept hostages and in great danger.

They must all be able to study and take their exams! They must all be freed! They must all be saved! The plight of these innocent students and their families demand our vigorously expressed support.

The targeting of schools and the attempted prohibition of education for girls form a major part of the Boko Haram strategy to forcibly create an Islamic state in Nigeria. Like the Taliban, the Boko Haram seek to prevent and forbid education in all its modern forms.

The government of France officially condemned the kidnapping of the young Nigerian women as it condemned the murderous terror attack perpetrated on the same day at the Nyana bus station near Abuja.

• The European Union, the United Nations, UNICEF and UNESCO must live up to their responsibility to protect these innocents, and to stand up for their right to be educated without fear.
• We call on the relevant authorities to immediately add Boko Haram to the list of outlawed terrorist organizations.
• The Boko Haram leadership is guilty of crimes against humanity and must be promptly arrested and tried.
• In Nigeria, as in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the United Nations, UNICEF and UNESCO must protect all students who risk their lives by attending schools as well as their teachers.

We, civil society organizations and citizens, commit ourselves to solidarity with those anonymous Malalas, to whom education is forbidden, and to all those who want to resist terrorism.

A long list of signatories to the original statement appears here. You can sign an online-petition here.

More information: Huguette Chomski Magnis, Paris: Phone +33-6-66-26-42-23 mpctasso@aol.com [Original French version is here.]

For background, here are some of our previous blog posts about the Boko Haram Islamists:

5-Nov-11: Tentacles again in west Africa, and the toll is shooting upwards

22-Sep-13: A quiet weekend

9-Oct-13: A very bad month, says New Yorker mag, with worse probably ahead.

29-Oct-13: Terrorism is skyrocketing globally and there are hard numbers to prove it

Click for the Global Terrorism Database

The number of terror attacks globally rose sharply to a record high in 2012 after rising steadily (apart from small dips in 2004 and 2009) throughout the past decade. And 2013 is already set to surpass last year's toll. The strong expansion of terrorism "is not just a matter of having better data" but reflects "a fairly steep upward trajectory in the total of terrorist attacks and fatalities worldwide” according to the people behind the report.

CNN reported this afternoon ["Terrorist attacks and deaths hit record high, report shows"] that it will be revealing exclusive details based on an ongoing study by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland. START maintains the Global Terrorism Database, "the most comprehensive source of unclassified information about terrorist attacks, with statistics dating to 1970".

START's definition of terrorism closely mirrors that of the State Department and other experts. To be counted as an act of terror, an incident has to be an intentional act or threat by a "non-state actor" that meets two of these three criteria: (a) Aimed at attaining a political, economic, religious or social goal; (b) Intended to coerce, intimidate or convey a message to a larger group; (c) Violated international humanitarian law by targeting non-combatants.

The apparent increase in civilian casualties is alarming. Gone are the days when terrorist groups like the Irish Republican Army or Italy’s Red Brigade would try to keep casualties low by issuing warnings. Quoting Gary LaFree, START’s director, CNN says:

“If you’re a terrorist group now and you want to get your message out,” he said, “the more people you kill, the more ‘successful’ you’ll be.”

Six of the seven most deadly groups are affiliated with the al Qaeda Islamist forces, according to START, and most of the violence involved Moslem countries. CNN being CNN, puts this into context by means of a classic framework:

LaFree and other experts cautioned against viewing Islam itself as inherently violent. “Not so long ago, terrorism was centered in Western Europe and Latin America,” LaFree said. “It moves. And, unfortunately, it has moved into the Muslim world right now.”

A random sort of thing, in other words. A little like a roulette wheel. A pity that CNN's editors evidently cannot offer another way of understanding Islamism's role in this expanding crisis.

29-Sep-13: Sunday, bloody, bloody Sunday

Last Sunday, under a deliberately ironic headline ["22-Sep-13: A quiet weekend"], we reported on the ghastly weekend actions of Islamist terrorists in several places:

• Nigeria, where Islamists killed at least 159 humans in two attacks
• Pakistan where 75 were killed [the toll subsequently rose past 80] and 120 injured in a church attack in Peshawar
• Kenya, where Islamists were then still in the process of murdering more than 60 people after separating out some of the Moslems among them
• Iraq where 16 were killed in the name of Islam at a Sunni funeral, a day after 104 people were killed in an attack by Islamists on a Shiite funeral in Baghdad.

That was then. Now this weekend:

The death toll in an attack by gunmen on a college in northeastern Nigeria on Sunday has risen to 40, a Reuters witness said, in a region where Islamist militants have targeted schools and universities. Gunmen stormed the College of Agriculture in Yobe state and shot students as they slept in the early hours of Sunday, state police commissioner Sanusi Rufai said. A Reuters witness counted 40 bodies at the main hospital in Yobe's state capital Damaturu, mostly young men believed to be college students. [Reuters, reporting in the past half hour] Note: AP reports today, as well, that Nigerian Islamists killed at least 30 other civilians during the past week in separate attacks.

and

Twin blasts in the northwestern Pakistan city of Peshawar killed 33 people and wounded 70 on Sunday, a week after two bombings at a church in the frontier city killed scores, police and hospital authorities said... The blasts hit outside a police station in an area crowded with shops and families. Police said it appeared at least one of the explosions had been a car bomb. There was no immediate claim of responsibility... Women sobbed as ambulances pulled up with more bodies... The Taliban [Islamists] have repeatedly rejected Pakistan's constitution and have called for the full implementation of Islamic law and for war with India... [Reuters, reporting in the past hour]

And it's still only Sunday morning in some parts of the world.

22-Sep-13: A quiet weekend

It's been a quiet weekend... unless the Islamist terrorists happen to be active in your neighbourhood. Some notes from some specific neighbourhoods this quiet weekend:

Nigerian Islamists kill at least 159 in two attacks

Reuters | BENISHEIK, Nigeria | Islamist Boko Haram militants killed 159 people in two roadside attacks in northeast Nigeria this week, officials said, far more than was originally reported and a sign that a four-month-old army offensive has yet to stabilize the region. In the first attack, on Tuesday, Boko Haram guerrillas wearing army uniforms stopped traffic on a highway between the cities of Maiduguri and Damaturu, dragging people out of their vehicles and killing them, with 143 bodies recovered so far... Tuesday's toll was initially given as "more than 20", but information often takes days to trickle out of the remote and sparsely populated region, where roads are bad, curfews are in force and the military has cut the phone network since May... Thousands have been killed since the shadowy sect launched its uprising against the state in 2009, turning itself from a clerical movement opposed to Western culture into an armed militia with growing links to al Qaeda's West African wing... Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sinful" in the northern Hausa language, wants to revive the medieval Islamic kingdoms that used to rule northern Nigeria, before its amalgamation with the largely Christian south by the British colonial authorities.

Pakistan: 75 killed, 120 injured in Peshawar church attack

By Web Desk / AFP Published: September 22, 2013 | PESHAWAR: A twin suicide bombing killed more than 75 people at a church service in northwest Pakistan on Sunday, officials said, in what is believed to be the country’s deadliest attack on Christians. The two attackers struck at the end of a service at All Saints Church in  Peshawar, the main town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province which has borne the brunt of a bloody Islamist insurgency in recent years. Sahibzada Anees, one of Peshawar’s most senior officials, told reporters the bombers struck when the service had just ended. “Most of the wounded are in critical condition,” Anees said... Former minister for inter-faith harmony Paul Bhatti and provincial lawmaker Fredrich Azeem Ghauri both said the attack was the deadliest ever targeting Christians in Pakistan... The small and largely impoverished Christian community suffers discrimination in overwhelmingly Muslim-majority Pakistan but bombings against them are extremely rare... Pakistan’s Ulema Council, an  association of leading Muslim scholars, strongly condemned the church attack and said killing innocent people violates the tenets of Islam. “It is an extremely shameful attack  which has shamed all Pakistanis and Muslims,” Allama Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, chief of the council, told AFP. “There is no room for such terrorist acts in Islam...”
Provincial lawmaker Ghauri said there  were about 200,000 Christians in the province, of whom 70,000 lived in Peshawar. “Now after this attack Christians across Pakistan will fear for their lives,” he warned... Only around two percent of Pakistan’s population of 180 million are Christian. The community complains of growing discrimination... Christians have a precarious existence in Pakistan, often living in slum-like “colonies” cheek-by-jowl with Muslims and fearful of allegations of blasphemy, a sensitive subject that can provoke outbursts of public violence.

Kenya: Standoff at Nairobi mall after gunmen kill at least 59

Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post | Updated: Sunday, September 22 | NAIROBI — More than 24 hours after Islamist militants stormed an upscale Nairobi mall, a tense standoff continued Sunday between the heavily armed assailants and Kenyan security forces, as the government announced that the death toll had risen to 59 with more than 175 injured in the deadliest attack in Kenya since the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings. The attackers, strapped with grenades and wielding machine guns and AK-47 rifles, remained holed up inside the Westgate Premier Shopping Mall, with as many as 30 hostages, Kenyan government officials said Sunday. An unknown number of people remained inside the building, hiding from the gunmen. Sporadic gunfire erupted at the mall Sunday morning as additional Kenyan security forces arrived to help defuse the crisis, which began Saturday afternoon.

Suicide bomber hits Iraq Sunni funeral, killing 16

Associated Press | Sunday September 22, 2013 A suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt among Sunni mourners attending a funeral in Baghdad on Sunday, killing 16 people and wounding 35 others, officials said, in the latest episode of the country's near-daily violence. Police officials said the evening attack took place when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt inside a tent where the funeral was being held in Baghdad's southern neighborhood of Dora. Two other attacks in the country's north left two policemen dead and 37 others wounded, the officials added. Sunday's bloodshed came a day after a wave of attacks killed 104 people, most at a double suicide attack on a Shiite funeral in Baghdad. Violence has spiked in Iraq during the past few months. More than 4,000 people have been killed between April and August, a level of carnage not seen since the country was on the brink of civil war in 2006-08.Earlier on Sunday, a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into a residential area in the city of Kirkuk, wounding 35 people... The bomber targeted both a Kurdish educational office and an adjacent house for a Christian lawmaker, Qadir said. Seven members of the lawmaker's family were wounded in the attack. 

Associated Press has a deeply depressing album of images that illustrate aspects of these weekend stories.

11-Sep-13: No need to speculate: Palestinian Arabs genuinely, overwhelmingly believe in barbarism as a strategy

Yasser Abed Rabo, co-author of 2003 peace
plan, with Israeli partner Yossi Beilin [Image Source]

A Pew Research Global Attitudes report issued today demonstrates statistically that

Overall support for violence in the name of Islam has declined among Muslim publics during the past decade... In many of the countries surveyed, clear majorities of Muslims oppose violence in the name of Islam. Indeed, about three-quarters or more in Pakistan (89%), Indonesia (81%), Nigeria (78%) and Tunisia (77%), say suicide bombings or other acts of violence that target civilians are never justified. 

But there is one demographic where a clear majority of respondents - 62% - told Pew's pollsters that "suicide bombing is often or sometimes justified". That demographic is Palestinian Arab Muslims.

Knowing the murderous intentions of the Palestinian Arab "street" concerning us ordinary Israelis (and keep in mind that Palestinian Arab terror is rarely directed at the Israeli military), it casts a deadly light on the current strategies of the Mahmoud Abbas regime's inner circle. 

A report published just yesterday by WAFA, the official mouthpiece of the PA, quotes Yasser Abed Rabbo summing up the 'peace' process currently underway. Abed Rabbo is said to be one of the authors of the 2003 Geneva Accord. 

“Israel is trying to benefit from the negotiations to pressure Europe to cancel the boycott (of settlement products),” he said on Voice of Palestine... The negotiations have not made any progress on the ground and that all Israel wants is that no one says anything about its settlements and other activities that violate the rights of the Palestinian people.
“There are no signs of progress... There is progress only in the settlements and in the violations, but not in the negotiations that can cause us to say that US efforts have achieved any real results on the ground or in the peace process..." [Abed Rabbo quoted yesterday by WAFA]

His voice is part of a choir. The Palestinian/Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh writes today on the Gatestone Institute website that -  

PLO, Fatah and Palestinian Authority officials have described the talks as "futile", "unproductive", "a waste of time" and "a cover for Israel to pursue its policy of creating new facts on the ground..." By sounding the alarm bell already, the Palestinians are hoping that when the talks fail they will be able to tell the world, "You see, we told you from the beginning that these Israelis do not want peace." But these statements and threats have also proven to be counter-productive. The more Palestinian officials and leaders talk about the "futility" and "ineffectiveness" of the peace talks, the bigger the opposition grows to the negotiations with Israel. [Khaled Abu Toameh on Gatestone Institute website, September 10, 2013]

Nearly two-thirds of the people ruled by the clique of which Abed Rabbo is a leading member are committed to the most extreme forms of lethal terrorist attacks on Israelis. In that light, do we need to speculate about the intended effect when PA insiders like him dismiss so comprehensively the current round of talks between their side and Israel?

23-Jun-13: Hezbollah's agents have lately been leaving behind more than just fingerprints

From the TV/C News website

For those still in denial about the globe-spanning terrorism of Hezbollah, yet another moment of truth.

The report below from Nigeria was posted this past Friday on the TV/C News website.

Nigeria: Lebanese suspects admit links to Hezbollah| TVC NEWS | ABUJA | June 21, 2013 | Four Lebanese nationals standing trial in Nigeria over a recent arms discovery have admitted being members of Hezbollah. They however told a court that it is not a terrorist organization. The men also said the arms cache found in the Northern Nigeria city of Kano were meant for hunting. The suspects were earlier arraigned in relation to the arms cache found in a building in Kano. But when their case came up for hearing, the prosecutor withdrew the charges on the grounds that the court lacked powers to hear terror charges. The counsel to the accused persons agreed and the judge had to strike out the case. But minutes after their freedom, the accused persons were rearrested outside the courtroom by security agents.
The Defense Counsel had said the suspects will enforce their fundamental human rights in court.
The prosecutor told TVC News that the case requires intensive investigation and that the accused persons will soon be arraigned before a higher court.
Hezbollah is a Shi'a Islamic militant group and political party based in Lebanon. It receives financial and political support from Iran and Syria, and its paramilitary wing is regarded as a resistance movement throughout much of the Arab and Muslim worlds. [Hat-tip to Elihu]

The admission of the Hezbollah agents fits into a larger story. One of Israel's major terrorism research centers published the following background ["A cache of Hezbollah weapons was recently discovered in Nigeria and a Hezbollah network was exposed"] on June 19, 2013:

On May 28, 2013, after a month-long investigation, the Nigerian security services uncovered a cache of weapons in the city of Kano, in northern Nigeria. It included anti-tank weapons, RPGs and RPG launchers, submachine guns, handguns, and a large quantity of ammunition and explosives... According to the Nigerian security services the weapons belonged to a Hezbollah network that operated in the country, and intended to launch terrorist attacks on Israeli and Western targets... Despite the fact that an estimated 20,000 individuals of Lebanese origin live in Nigeria, this was the first time the Nigerian law enforcement authorities had uncovered direct Hezbollah activities in the country... In February 2013, an Iranian-handled terrorist network was exposed in Nigeria, headed by a Nigerian cleric who had trained in Iran. For that reason Iran may now be keeping a low profile in its subversive and terrorist activity in Nigeria, and may be want to use proxy organizations such as Hezbollah.

24-May-13: Allegedly slaughtering people on the streets of London, and what we know about it

The caption on this new photo says "Gemini Donnelly-Martin, 20, and
her mother Amanda (right) talk to one of the alleged attackers
with blood on his hands. Meanwhile, Ingrid
Loyau-Kennett (left) talks to the other suspect,
identified as Michael Adebowale. Lee Rigby lies dead in the road

The two Woolwich slaughtermen who allegedly carried out the alleged mutilation and alleged murder of a British soldier in London on Wednesday in front of a crowd of onlookers and rolling cameras after allegedly driving at him with their car and knocking him violently to the ground (allegedly) are alleged today to be:

• Michael Adebolajo, 28 - Nigerian descent, British citizen, resident of Greenwich, south east London, raised Christian but turned to Islam in mid-teens and eventually converted [Source: Evening Standard]
• Michael Oluwatobi Adebowale, 22 - Nigerian descent, British citizen, resident of Harold Hill, London, also an Islamic convert, son of a probation officer.

For now, they are being depicted as lone wolves. We'll see.

A sense of their allegedly religious inspiration can be gleaned from what they said when they spoke directly into the cameras. Here (direct quotes) is what they declaimed after the "hacking, chopping, cutting" butchering of Lee Rigby, their victim. The source is AFP:

• We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you unless you leave us alone.
• We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
• I apologise that women have had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same. 
• You people will never be safe. 
• Remove your government, they don’t care about you.
• You think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start busting our guns? You think politicians are going to die? No it’s going to be the average guy, like you, and your children. So get rid of them. 
• Tell them to bring our troops back so can all live in peace.” (Additional words are inaudible.)

They are "among the 3,000 Muslim extremists in Britain being watched by MI5", and "believed to have been radicalised..." [Daily Mail UK].

British intelligence, according to the Daily Express, has had the two specific alleged savages under their watchful gaze for eight years

"MI5 had the two Islamist fanatics who butchered soldier Lee Rigby under ­surveillance for up to eight years, it was revealed yesterday. Agents kept [them] “on the radar” as they monitored the activities of would-be terrorists. Intelligence sources said the men had featured in “several investigations” in recent years but there was no indication they were plotting an attack and they were classified as fringe figures." [Daily Express]

Which has led to decisive (!) action by the political leadership:

David Cameron yesterday ordered an urgent review into what MI5 had gleaned about the two men and whether any chances were missed of intercepting them before the murder in Woolwich, south London. The move revives memories of the lost opportunities to capture two of the 7/7 suicide bombers who were secretly watched by MI5 as they met other terrorist suspects months before the 2005 atrocity. In a major development yesterday, two suspected members of the Woolwich “terror cell” were arrested on ­suspicion of conspiracy to murder by ­Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism squad. The suspects, a man and a woman both aged 29, were detained by armed police in dawn raids and were being questioned at a south London police station last night. [Daily Express]

And a little less decisiveness by local leadership: London mayor Boris Johnson, full of reassurance as usual, said:

Everything I am hearing leads me to think that Londoners can go about their business in the normal way and we are going to bring the killers to justice. [Globe and Mail]

From the same source:

In Washington, President Barack Obama said the U.S. “stands resolute with the United Kingdom” in the fight against violent extremism. [Globe and Mail]

So much resoluteness. The picture is already improving, allegedly.

29-Dec-11: Who decides on the stories that get major headlines and prominence? And why?

Boy searches for shrapnel on Israel's Moshav
Sde Avraham after a rocket fired from Gaza
exploded near a moshav home, March 2011. This photo
was a leading contender for news image of the year, 2011
[Image Source]

Few people, even among those who follow the events in the Middle East closely, will be aware of the state of the frequent and ongoing rocket attacks on southern Israel. No, we don’t mean those of last month or last year, but this week.

Fewer will be surprised to see what the major news media consider to be the really important news from Israel this week. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

On Friday, two mortar shells fired into southern Israel exploded in open areas in the Eshkol region.

This past Saturday evening (Xmas Eve), it was reported that terrorists from Gaza were active again with their deadly missiles. They fired two Qassam rockets into Israel that crashed into the western Negev region, with one exploding in an open area in the Ashkelon Coast region, and the other in an open area in the Sha’ar Hanegev region. No injuries or property damage were reported, but this was certainly not the outcome the terrorists intended.

Then on Monday, this report says there was another Qassam rocket attack on southern Israel’s Gaza Belt region, a few kilometers from the Hamas-run Gaza terrorist enclave. This one crashed into open land in the Sha'ar HaNegev region and again – to our great fortune - no one was injured and no damage was reported.

Today (Wednesday), a Qassam rocket once again crashed into open space in Israel’s Sha'ar Hanegev region during the morning. Initial reports said the rocket was misfired and landed inside Gaza but it now appears it did in fact make it across the border and into the lives of ordinary Israelis. Then late this evening, a second Qassam rocket struck in roughly the same place. Fortunately, there are no reports of injuries or damage which means, in the eyes of those who did the firings, they were a failure, and therefore simply prelude to more and more and more attempts at a better, more bloody outcome.

Meanwhile the BBC via its website and the BBC World global radio service has been focusing to an astonishing degree for the past several days on an Israeli story that, in its own words, is about a tiny handful of malefactors and the response they are encountering from Israelis of every stripe. We’re not saying the reports of a certain extreme kind of orthodox Israeli Jews being rude and offensive to people living in the same town as them is not newsworthy. It is, or would be if the coverage included any journalistic insights. Reports of young Hassidic men in Beth Shemesh acting boorishly (yes, boorishly – no guns were fired, no punches were thrown, no houses burned down and no crowd-control devices were needed by the authorities) are interesting if you place them in a context (we won’t do it here or now). But there is precious little insight or understanding in the reports we have seen. Meaningful analysis of the socio-demographic or even political kind is far more challenging and much, much less interesting to the people who edit the BBC’s news than statements like this one:

“Many Israelis believe the country's character is at stake. They resent the fact that most ultra-Orthodox men don't work or serve in the army. Instead, the government gives them subsidies to carry out religious studies. One man here told me Jewish religious extremism posed a bigger threat to the country than Iran.”

Now do we know why BBC’s widely heard World Service news featured this as its main world news story for most of yesterday? Does its gravity come anywhere near to any of the following other stories of the past week, basically chosen at random?

• Iraq: 57 were killed, at least 179 people wounded, in simultaneous terror attacks on Baghdad this past Thursday. 14 locations were attacked simultaneously.
• Syria: More than 200 people including many women and children were killed by their own defense forces in a single day late last week on the eve of a visit by international observers monitoring Syria’s compliance with an Arab League peace plan. Syrian troops rounded up and shot civilians, and looted and destroyed houses according to The Washington Times. This was the deadliest week so far in a rebellion against Assad that started in March. The UN says it has exacted more than 5,000 lives so far. Nine more Syrians were killed by the Syrian Army today (Wednesday). Yes, the international observer group is there but so what? It’s an unfolding story drenched in blood, evil and intrigue. Yet most people in most places have only the vaguest sense, if at all, about what is going on. Foreign news agencies like the BBC are forbidden by the murderous Assad regime in Damascus from reporting directly from Syria. Most people don’t know this either.
• Gaza: The head of the Hamas terrorist organization, nominally the prime minister of the Gazan part of Palestine (the result of a forced and bloody power grab in 2007), has embarked on a grand tour of the Arab world. It’s the first time a Hamas leader has done this. Such minor news coverage as there is paints this as a kind of triumphal celebration of the new standing of the officially-outlawed Hamas terrorist regime in a post-Arab-spring world… a world in which repressive Arab rulers are replaced by Islamist, Moslem Brotherhood organizations – like Hamas. He will be feted in Sudan (today), then Qatar (which owns Al Jazeera), Turkey (the subject of this dismaying Christian Science Monitor expose of its current slide into authoritarianism), Tunisia and Bahrain at least. We’re wondering if any of the reporters who interview him will ask Ismail Haniyah to explain what he meant in a speech last week when he said that Hamas is working for interim objectives that include the “liberation of Gaza, the West Bank, or Jerusalem" the long-term "strategic" goal of his terrorist movement is, in plain language, eliminating all of Israel:
• Saudi Arabia, a family-run business/state featuring fantastical wealth driven by fossil-fuel riches and a despotic, misogynistic ruling family, announced an unexpected budget surplus of more than $80 billion for 2011. (The finance ministry was expecting to post a deficit of $10.7 billion.)
• Nigeria: Islamists murdered no fewer than 39 people in Xmas Day attacks on two churches. We have blogged (“Tentacles again in west Africa, and the toll is shooting upwards” and other reports) about the admitted perpetrators, the horrifying Boko Haram, after some of their previous massacres. Most people, including most reporters and their editors outside of Nigeria (population: 170 million), have never heard of them. They need to know. There’s a process going on, and it extends far, far beyond Nigeria.
• Somalia: Again and again, the gang-raping and stoning of women by Islamist thugs gets reported, though not often enough and not with adequate prominence. But where is the journalistic analysis that lets readers see the close connection between these bestial practices and the religion professed by the perpetrators? Does this being an African story make thoughtful reporting superfluous and un-needed? 

And if our focus is on how various societies treat their women, do the street protests in Israel's Beth Shemesh community rank higher, lower or at the same level in news reporting terms compared with, say, reports about how the military in Egypt has been routinely carrying out forced virginity tests on women arrested in the Tahrir Square protests? Yes, the BBC mentioned it. And it might stop now that a court has condemned it. But given the widespread journalistic enthusiasm for the events in Cairo this past spring, the virginity test practices got nowhere near the news prominence of the absurd Hassidim-taking-over-Israel confection.

We’ll close with an image (below) that, to our minds, got less exposure than it deserves. Additional words are not really needed. It’s an image captured in Gaza this week: a graduating class of young women, the future of their community, the wombs that will create the next generation of Palestinian Arabs. 

Graduating class of women in Hamas-controlled Gaza this week