18-Aug-20: An Arab-on-Israeli knifing in Jerusalem's Old City and a dead assailant

Screen cap from the Israel Police video report [here]

The general sense of fury being projected by a wounded and failed Palestinian Authority leadership in the wake of Israel's suddenly open 'normalized' relationship with the United Arab Emirates received its depressingly predictable expression last night.

Here in Jerusalem, near Lion's Gate (שער האריות) in the Old City at around 8:40 pm Monday night, shortly before Muslim evening prayers and close to the Bab Huta entrance (one of several) to the Temple Mount, an attacker wearing a protective face mask launched an explosive knifing attack. His victim was a 19 year old armed Israeli security officer who came out of it with moderate injuries but alive and recovering.

The attacker was almost immediately shot by security personnel and died of his injuries. Palestinian Arab news reports like this one predictably say the young Arrab was 'executed'.

The security camera video [here] makes plain the usual procedure: young Arab male, walking along one of the Old City paths, lunges without warning towards a security forces member standing guard to protect the peace, whips a knife out of his clothing. Thrusts a hand holding the weapon towards the upper body of the Israel, causing what undoubtedly would be the first of several lethal wounds if no one stops him. But he is stopped by the shots of another alert Israel Border Guard officer and falls to the ground.

Arabic-language news reports (like this one from the official Palestinian Press Agency, archived here) say (translated from the Arabic original) "the Israeli occupation forces executed a Palestinian youth", that "the martyr... is from the Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem" and "he is 30 years old".

The murderous assault comes against the background of what a Times of Israel report calls "a general lull in terror activity in the capital, which had not seen a stabbing attack in nearly three months".

The teenage border guard, presumably in the midst of his compulsory national service, was taken to hospital (Yediot Aharonot says Shaarei Zedek; Times of Israel reports Hadassah Mount Scopus Medical Center) for emergency treatment. Initial first aid was given at the site by Magen David Adom medics. The hospital reports that he sustained stab wounds to the chest and is "stable and fully conscious”.

Haaretz quotes Israel Police announcing that the Temple Mount gates were closed immediately after the knifing. Social media reports (like this) say that in the Shuafat neighborhood of north Jerusalem there were clashes in the hours that followed between Israel Police and locals.

11-Mar-20: A thwarted stabbing in Jerusalem's Old City

The thwarted stabber is removed from the scene of the attack
[Image Source: Yonatan Sindel, Flash 90] 

Barely mentioned elsewhere, an Israel National News report [here] says a Palestinian Arab resident of Jerusalem was thwarted yesterday (Tuesday around 1:40 in the afternoon) from carrying out a stabbing attack.

His target was the Border Guard officers stationed outside the Shalem police station near the bustling Damascus Gate entrance to Jerusalem's Old City and its Muslim Quarter.

The would-be knifer is said to have walked up to the police station's entrance and pulled out a concealed knife. The Israelis perceived this to be an unfriendly act and promptly - and efficiently to judge from the results - overpowered the attacker, promptly separating him from his weapon.

He's alive and well, neutralized (as the commonly-used security terminology describes it) but definitely not dead. And undergoing interrogation.

Damascus Gate, which has been the site of many violent Arab-on-Israel attacks in the past several years [click here to see our posts about some of them], was briefly closed. No injuries are reported.

22-Feb-20: In Jerusalem, two thwarted Arab-on-Israeli stabbings

Screen capture [Source]

Earlier today (Sabbath morning) around 11, a knife-wielding Arab male ran towards Israel Border Police officers on duty near the Lions Gate of Jerusalem's Old City.

Israel National News says the officers

called to the terrorist, asking him to stop, but he turned towards them instead. The officers fired at the terrorist, neutralizing him. He later died of his wounds.

A passer-by, a woman of 42, suffered a leg injury which, according to i24News, resulted from the shooting, and was taken to Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Medical Center for treatment. Haaretz says she was inadvertently hurt when the attacker was shot "probably by a ricochet of the bullet fired at the him".

Times of Israel quotes Israel's Channel 13 TV news naming the attacker as Maher Ibrahim Za’atara, 33. of East Jerusalem’s Jabel Mukaber neighborhood.

Security camera video footage [here and in Yisrael Medad's tweet below incorporating material for Israel Police] shows him clearly waving his knife as he rushes towards the scene of the attack. Not so surprisingly, his family, according to the Haaretz report, "say they don't accept the Israeli police's account of the events".

ttps://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-attacker-shot-dead-in-suspected-stabbing-attack-in-jerusalem-s-old-city-1.8564432

"Palestinian Shot Dead in Suspected Stabbing Attack in Jerusalem's Old City"

Suspected?

The video clip pic.twitter.com/RzVojJj39d

— ymedad (@ymedad) February 23, 2020

Aljazeera's report on the thwarted stabbing ["Israeli forces kill Palestinian in Jerusalem after alleged attack"] quotes the official Palestinian Authority news agency Wafa saying "the man was shot several times and left on the ground bleeding near the Lions' Gate (also known as Bab al-Asbat) before Israeli paramedics arrived at the scene". Presumably the Israelis were supposed to do something else.

Image Source

A Palestinian Arab news source [here] has the thwarted attacker's picture and describes him as the father of three children. It also reports that "Israeli forces raided [the attacker's] home and detained his father and two of his brothers, Palestinian news agency WAFA reports."

Based on past experience, the orphans and widow of the attacker's family can now expect to have a well-funded life at the expense of the PA's program of financial incentives for terrorists and their heirs. The foreign taxpayers (mostly European) who keep providing misguided foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority are financing this, whether they want to or not.

Another terror attack was thwarted in Jerusalem yesterday (Friday).

By way of background, the promenade in Armon Hanatziv, a southern suburb of Jerusalem, offers one of the most impressive views of the city as a whole and in particular the Old City and the Temple Mount. That it attracts large numbers of visitors, both locals and tourists, every day is part of what also makes it a favored site for terror attacks by knife-wielding or vehicle-ramming assailants, intent on their moment of fame - and victims. In January 2017, an Arab resident of East Jerusalem aimed his truck at a group of IDF soldiers in the car park area of the promenade ["08-Jan-17: Where the World Council of Churches stands as Israelis are rammed to death"] and killed four of them.

Times of Israel says a woman attempted to stab passers-by at the popular promenade on Friday morning. Said to be a Palestinian Arab from East Jerusalem, she made several stabbing attempts with her knife while screaming Allahu Akbar (according to Ynet) before being wrestled to the ground by civilians. Police then took her into custody. One man was mildly injured by the assailant.

06-Feb-20: A day of rising apprehension

The scene of the vehicle-ramming at First Station, Jerusalem,
Credit: United Hatzalah [Image Source]

Wednesday February 5, 2019

• The terrorists of Hamas issued a call to Palestinian Arabs "for escalating confrontations with the occupation and its settlers and fighting their assaults against the land and holy sites, especially the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque" [Times of Israel].
• Palestinian Media Watch publicized a brief video on TikTok – a social network popular among children - that encourages murdering Israelis by means of graphic animated recreations of actual terror attacks: four specific Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks that involved drive-by shootings, rammings and knifings. The appalling animation clip is here.

Thursday February 6, 2019

• In a pre-dawn, Thursday morning vehicle ramming attack on Jerusalem's David Remez Street, adjacent to the popular First Station restaurant and entertainment compound, a terrorist slammed his car into a group of IDF Golani soldiers brought to Jerusalem for their swearing-in ceremony. (They were walking around just prior to their early-morning ceremony at the Kotel, the Western Wall in the nearby Old City.) Twelve are injured, one of them now in serious condition. Times of Israel says he is in serious but stable condition, unconscious and connected to a respirator in the intensive care unit. A search is underway for the attacker. The vehicle used in the 2 o'clock attack had Israeli license plates and was later found abandoned in the Palestinian Arab village of Beit Jala, adjacent to Bethlehem, a few minutes drive from the site of the ramming. "Clashes broke out in the village and the surrounding area as Israeli troops searched for the driver, who had fled the scene after hitting the soldiers. Palestinian media reported that Israeli troops seized security cameras around Bethlehem, apparently as part of the search effort" [Times of Israel].
• Thursday noon: An Arab-on-Israeli shooting attack at the Lions' Gate in Jerusalem's Old City resulted in an Israeli being wounded. According to Ynet, he is a 38-year-old Border Guard policeman. The shooter was shot dead by other police in the vicinity. 
• Thursday mid-afternoon, an Israeli man was wounded by gunfire in an evident drive-by shooting on a road near Dolev, an Israeli community in the Binyamin region. The shooter is still on the loose. Hamodia says the victim, an IDF soldier in his 20s, is lightly wounded and getting treatment at Sheba Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv. Hamodia says the shooting happened at the Post Intersection, named for the post office located nearby during the time of the British Mandate. It's today a busy intersection, near the Palestinian Arab villages of Ras Karkar and Kharbatha Bani Harith, and the Israeli communities of Neria and Na’aleh. Ras Karkar is now under IDF closure as forces search for the terrorists.
• Thursday 5:00 pm: The IDF is positioning an extra battalion in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) to respond to the upsurge in Arab-on-Israel violence. Times of Israel says IDF battalions normally include several hundred soldiers.

The post-attack scene this afternoon in the Old City [Image Source]

Few doubt the Trump conflict-resolution proposals announced on January 28 are what has brought the Fatah and Hamas leadership of the Palestinian Arabs to encourage fresh and escalating violence. Times of Israel says

"In the week and a half since the plan’s release, the military has noted a significant increase in violence in the West Bank, with regular riots, rock-throwing and violent opposition to Israeli arrest raids...

We've been down this route enough times already to know that the Arab side act as if the threat to them of peace is more dangerous than war and fighting. The Palestinian Authority (PA) regime rejected the US proposals before they were even announced. Speaking a day before the plan was released, and before he had any way to know what it contained, PA prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said: "We reject it and we demand the international community not be a partner to it".

Writing in Fathom Journal this month, Alex Ryvchin of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry writes that

be sure, it is the Palestinians who have the most to gain from securing a deal. The Jewish people have their national home – a stable, successful, innovative, liberal-democratic state that despite facing incomparable threats and challenges, and despite having virtually no natural resources compared to its neighbours, has matured into an economic and military power in just 71 years. But the Palestinians remain stateless and stricken by all the consequences of such a condition... calling the plan a ‘hoax’ and a ‘fraud’ and summoning their people to a new ‘day of rage’...PA Prime Minister Shtayyeh delivered a strikingly candid explanation, perhaps unwittingly, for why the Palestinians, who claim to seek independence above all else, are rejecting a proposal to give them just that. ‘It is nothing but a plan to finish off the Palestinian cause,’ he said. Herein lies the answer to the vexing question of why a people that claims they want nothing more than a home of their own and an end to the conflict, have rejected five comprehensive offers of statehood and have now taken to rejecting new offers before they are even presented. The conflict is not a territorial dispute to be settled by delineating borders and agreeing land swaps. It is a clash between the Jewish national movement which desperately craved a scrap of land to call their own so that they and their contributions to humanity should not vanish from this Earth, and the ‘Palestinian cause,’ which seeks no precise outcome beyond thwarting its rival, and holding out, digging in, struggling on, resisting. 

Few of the Israelis we know think these irreconcilable outlooks are going to be somehow resolved in the foreseeable future.

UPDATE 6:30 pm Thursday February 6, 2019: The alleged vehicle rammer was arrested this afternoon at Gush Etzion Junction, south of Jerusalem. He's said [Times of Israel] to be a male, 28, a resident of East Jerusalem's A-Tur neighbourhood and with no previous terror convictions.

UPDATE 9:00 pm Thursday February 6, 2019: The First Station ramming suspect is now identified as Sanad al-Tourman, who according to Israel's Channel 13 TV news operates a flower shop in a Jerusalem shopping mall. No further details for now.

18-Jan-20: Red lines, defilement and more Arab-on-Israeli knifings

The Kiryat Arab victim in today's Israel National News report

If you rely on news reports alone, the ebb and flow of Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks can seem to happen without any obvious pattern or underlying motivation.

But sometimes, you wait a little and you learn that there are forces at work that wanted these to happen.

We're mostly in the dark about what's driving events here in the Jerusalem area today. But as always, there are clues. And yes, a Palestinian Arab child is involved. Again.

From Times of Israel, we know a man of 22 suffered moderate injuries this afternoon (Saturday - Shabbat) when he was stabbed in the shoulder by "a Palestinian youth" (a term that can have multiple meanings) in Kiryat Arba. The knifer was arrested while trying to escape the scene of the attack according to the IDF is in their hands for questioning. Haaretz says the stabber is an as-yet-unnamed seventeen year old. Keep that in mind the next time you see, and you surely will see, hostile news coverage complaining of how Israel takes so many children into custody.

The knifing victim is in Jerusalem's Shaarei Zedek Medical Center where they say he is in stable condition. Israel National News this evening says the Israeli is Moshe Greenblatt, who says from his hospital bed that "Thank G-d, I feel good... The knife broke and he didn't manage to stab any of the people around me."

Earlier today (Saturday - the Jewish Sabbath), a Palestinian Arab female said to be "in her fifties" was taken into custody by Border Police officers after threatening them with a knife at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City. The Times of Israel report says she was subdued by officers and a civilian who happened to be at the scene and is also undergoing questioning.

Friday morning, right after the completion of their morning prayer service which were attended by an estimated 8,000 people, hundreds of Muslim Arab worshipers chanted about killing Jews outside the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem's Temple Mount. Police dispersed the crowd. Times of Israel says no one was injured in the clashes with police.

TV footage from the march shows members of the unruly crowd shouting in Arabic “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning.”

Video clip from 124news.tv

It's a recurring theme - the chant recalls how in the seventh century Muslims massacred and expelled Jews from the town of Khaybar, located in today's Saudi Arabia. Their chants also included “With spirit and blood, we will salvage Al-Aqsa” and “Jews, the army of Al-Aqsa is returning.”

Hamas, on Friday, declared itself happy with the unrest. Times of Israel quotes one of its spokespeople saying the morning prayers “support our people in their campaign against the Zionist occupation and thwart its racist plans.”

This past Wednesday, Hamas publicly called for Palestinian Arabs to “mobilize” during Friday’s prayers against the “defilement” of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs by “the Zionist occupation.” The terrorists sought to persuade Israeli authorities that “our sanctities are a red line that cannot be tolerated.”

16-Aug-19: Children with knives and another Arab-on-Israeli stabbing frenzy

Photo montage from an online source [here] shows the stabbers

as depicted today in the social media and via security cam footage

In the latest such attack, two Palestinian Arab children armed with knives ["Cop injured in Jerusalem stabbing attack; 2 assailants shot", Times of Israel, August 15, 2019] were stopped from killing their Israeli targets on Thursday.

Both are minors. At least one is 14 years old. Some reports, but not all, say the other is too.

Two teenage assailants stabbed a police officer, moderately injuring him, in an apparent terror attack in Jerusalem’s Old City on Thursday, officials said. The assailants were shot by security forces at the scene. One of them was pronounced dead at the scene, the second was critically wounded and taken to the hospital, a police spokesperson said.
Graphic video footage from the scene showed the two teenagers walk up from behind a group of police officers stationed in the Old City. As they approached, they suddenly pulled out knives and began repeatedly stabbing one of the cops. Other officers at the scene opened fire at the pair as they were stabbing the victim.
The injured police officer was approximately 40 years old. He sustained multiple stab wounds to the upper body, medics said.
“We gave him medical care, including stopping the bleeding and bandaging him, and we took him to the hospital,” one of the medics on the scene said. The officer was taken to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center.

Via social media [click to view], there's high quality graphic security cam video of the actual attack and of the quick and focused response by the Israeli security personnel.

The location is said to be the Old City's Chain Gate. It's one of the dozen open gates (though sometimes closed) that lead to the Temple Mount and is limited, in accordance with current Israeli security measures, to Muslim worshipers and visitors only. In Arabic, they call it Kubat A Silsila.

Shortly after the attack [Image Source]

Haaretz names the 14 year old knifer as Hamuda Khader a-Sheikh who is being treated for his wounds, and a 17 year old (in their version) they name as Nassim Abu Rumi who is said to have died at the scene. (In its report, Ynet says the dead attacker was also fourteen.)

Both evidently, though not confirmed, are from Al-Azaria, a village on the slopes of Jerusalem's Mount of Olives. It's better known to some as the Biblical town of Bethany, the home of Lazarus (hence its Arabic name).

Arab reports include wide-ranging claims that deny and distort:

• Eyewitnesses refuted the IDF's allegations and confirmed that there was no stabbing. They explained that a settler tried to storm the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and when the guards tried to stop him, he opened fire on the guard's foot... [Sabaharabi, Egypt]
• The police opened fire on two citizens at the Gate of Chains [in the Old City] from the outside, then announced the martyrdom of one of them. The injury of the other is described as medium. An Al Aqsa guard was shot in the foot. [Arabic edition of Ma'an News, Bethlehem]
• The Zionist media reported that a cop was injured by two Palestinian stabbers who attacked him in occupied Al-Quds (Jerusalem). The Israeli occupation troops shot directly at the two youths, injuring both of them, and closes the gates of Al-Aqsa Mosque, according to Palestinian sources. [Al-Manar, Lebanon]
• Video shows the pair approaching a group of Border Police officers and then lunging at them. The officers immediately open fire on the boys, and do not appear to attempt to subdue them with nonlethal means [from the especially loathsome propaganda mill of Electronic Intifada].
• From a Gaza-based Arab reporter: "2 palestinian kids got murdered by israeli occupation fire in occupied Jerusalem after allegedly stabbing operation #BDS" [Twitter account with more than 6,000 followers]

Source

How Palestinian Arab society weaponizes its children and encourages stabbing attacks in particular has troubled us for years. 

It's a chronic form of incitement that starts at the highest levels of the Palestinian Arab power structure: click for indexed articles.

Three years ago we wrote about how there is no way of avoiding the reality of large swathes of Palestinian Arab society being in the obvious thrall of a passionate embrace of vicious bigotry, murderous savagery and explicit incitement of their own children and grandchildren to murder and to be killed.

Two outside actors deserve a special mention in this grotesquerie:

• The central role of UNRWA, ostensibly an agency that exists to ameliorate the suffering of Arab refugees (Palestinian Arab refugees to be more precise) but in reality a cornerstone of the seven-decades-long Arab strategy to keep the Palestinian Arabs displaced, as miserable as possible and in the news - ought to be acknowledged at this point. By their own reckoning, they play a huge role in the education of Palestinian Arab children. They are certainly part of the problem and not of the solution.
• Amnesty International's increasingly explicit identification with the practitioners of the Palestinian Arab brand of terror makes plain their abandonment of principle and betrayal of their supporters' values. As we have noted several times [most recently here: "20-Sep-16: Another Pal Arab boy with a knife died today - exactly as the PA intended him to"], there's no longer anything to expect from them.

More than 80 of our blog posts have the tag "Weaponizing Children". This would be an excellent time to re-acquaint ourselves with the betrayal of, and the outrages perpetrated on, the children of Palestinian Arab society by those responsible for their well-being.

It's a reality that's difficult to deny or ignore though plenty of reporters and their editors nonetheless do just that.

21-Jul-19: Jordan, peace and how little has actually changed

Today happens to mark the seventieth anniversary of a Middle East milestone:

The quote is from a scholarly tome dealing with the work of the United Nations Security Council. Turns out the military phase they mentioned had several more violent and deadly rounds to go over the following decades. So much has changed, especially here in Jerusalem where we live.

And in some ways so little too.

British-led soldiers of the Arab Legion, Jordan's state army, at the
renowned Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue in Jerusalem's Old City
shortly after conquering, and just before utterly destroying, the synagogue.
[Wikipedia]

Starting in 1948 when the Kingdom of Jordan's British-led military overran Jerusalem's eastern part and occupied the Old City and its unique holy places, unrestrained state-inspired vandalism became the fate of one of the world's most revered places.

Here's how the Jewish Telegraphic Agency described it in a 1967 report compiled shortly after Israel finally took over:

A shocking record of destruction and desecration of Jewish holy places in and around Old Jerusalem during 19 years of Jordanian rule was documented today in the report of an inter-ministerial committee that was appointed after the Six-Day War to determine the state of Jewish shrines in Jordan held territory. The findings of the committee were summarized by Zerach Warhaftig, Minister of Religious Affairs, at a press conference here. 

As examples of the wanton disregard of the religious rights of others, Mr. Warhaftig noted the destruction of all but two of the 58 synagogues in the Jewish quarter of the Old City and the almost total destruction of the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives which has been in continuous use for more than 2,000 years. 

The cemetery was one of the Jewish holy places to which access was promised by the Jordanians in the 1949 armistice agreements although the promise was never observed. Tombstones were carried away for purposes ranging from fortifying mortar positions to building lavatories and the report says, documentary evidence and eye witnesses “make it clear beyond doubt that the desecration of the cemetery was carried out by Jordanian authorities for official purposes.”

The Jordanian Government, according to the report, had placed a special guard at the cemetery, but only to prevent tombstones from being pilfered by private persons. Their use was authorized for building military camps, fortifications, pathways and other installations and the walls of the building that housed the army commanders. Part of the road to the Intercontinental Hotel was paved with tombstones, the report said. And the Jordanians never bothered to remove the remains of the dead. In the Old City of Jerusalem, the report went on, only the synagogue of the Chabad Hassidim and the Torat Chayim yeshiva were left standing.

Dr. Warhaftig said that there was only one known instance of a clergyman protesting against the desecration and he was told by the Jordanian authorities to mind his own business. Moslem dignitaries whom Dr. Warhaftig questioned about the outrages disclaimed all knowledge. ["Cabinet Report Says Jordan Destroyed 56 Old City Synagogues, Desecrated Cemetery", JTA, November 2, 1967]

An armistice agreement signed almost exactly seventy years ago (April 3, 1949) in Greece governed relations between the new-born state of Israel and the Jordanians. The burden of the safeguards it included never really troubled the Arabs who ignored them totally. No one else seems to have cared:

• Jordan had undertaken to give free access to the Holy Places and to cultural institutions, and use of the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives [Section III, Document 6, Article VIII, and Section V, subsection E, Documents 15 and 16]. It breached all of these obligations and it kept on breaching down through the years before its armed men were forcibly removed by the IDF in 1967. 
• Jews were entirely barred from the Old City and denied access to the Western Wall and the other Holy Places of incomparable importance.
• The Jewish Quarter in the Old City was systematically destroyed. (It took years, starting in 1967, for what was lost to start to be painstakingly reconstructed. The  job is still underway.)
• Moslem residents of Israel were not permitted to visit their Holy Places in East Jerusalem. 
• Christians didn't fare much better. In 1958, Jordanian legislation required all members of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre to adopt Jordanian citizenship. In 1965, Christian institutions were forbidden to acquire any land or rights in or near Jerusalem. 
• In 1966, Christian schools were compelled to close on Fridays instead of Sundays, customs privileges of Christian religious institutions were abolished. 
• In May 1967, the Temple Mount became a military base for the Jordanian National Guard.

On 24 April 1950, a year after the largely-ignored armistice, a joint session of Jordan's House of Deputies and its House of Notables adopted a resolution [source] seizing formal control of all of the West Bank and the eastern (and older) part of Jerusalem.

Viewed through the lens of today, the opening words of the annexation document are startling:

In the expression of the people's faith in the efforts spent by His Majesty, Abdullah [great-grandfather of the present-day king of Jordan who has the same name], toward attainment of natural aspirations, and basing itself on the right of self-determination and on the existing de facto position between Jordan and Palestine and their national, natural and geographic unity and their common interests and living space, Parliament, which represents both sides of the Jordan, resolves this day and declares:
First, its support for complete unity between the two sides of the Jordan and their union into one State, which is the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, at whose head reigns King Abdullah Ibn al Husain, on a basis of constitutional representative government and equality of the rights and duties of all citizens...

It's easy to forget now that when the Hashemite military was riding high, the Jordanians and the Palestinian Arabs had no problem seeing themselves as a single Arab entity with shared interests, shared living space, national unity.

Occupied territories? National self-determination for a Palestinian people? Two-state solution? In your dreams.

Most readers understand that Jordan - the Hashemite Kingdom and its absolute ruler King Abdullah II - gets a lot of our attention these days. This of course is mostly because they harbor our daughter's killer and so far at least refuse to hand her over for criminal prosecution in the United States despite a treaty that requires them to do just that.

Hussein, Clinton, Rabin at the 1994 peace treaty signing

Jordan has never publicly addressed this issue, but simply persists in refusing to extradite her despite the perfectly valid extradition treaty the two countries signed, and have basically honored, since 1994. 

In Israeli circles, and despite wars in which Israel has had to defend itself from Jordanian invasion, there's long been a sense that in the unstable and frequently violent and bigoted Arab world, Jordan's has been a voice (relatively speaking) of moderation and reason.

It's a complex situation, and is growing more complex as Jordan's troubles mount, particularly the widespread and deep dissatisfaction with how the country's economy is being managed.

But complex or not, when Jordan has the opportunity to join moderate Arab voices but pointedly refuses, then Israelis and those who care for Israel's well-being will notice and draw inferences. For instance:

Oman FM: Palestinians must reassure Israel it’s not in peril  | Associated Press Omar Akour | AP | April 6, 2019 at 2:40 PM

DEAD SEA, Jordan — Oman’s foreign minister urged Palestinians on Saturday to reassure Israel that it is not under threat in the Middle East, drawing a rare public rebuke from his Jordanian counterpart. Oman’s Yusuf bin Alawi and Jordan’s Ayman Safadi shared the stage at a regional gathering of the World Economic Forum, held on Jordan’s shores of the Dead Sea. Bin Alawi spoke at a time of warming ties between Israel and several Gulf Arab states, as part of an unofficial alliance against Iranian influence in the region. The Omani minister said that Palestinians “should help Israel to get away from” what he said was its mistaken sense of being threatened.
Safadi responded sharply, to applause from the audience. “I beg to differ on a number of issues,” said Safadi. He noted that in 2002, as part of the Arab Peace Initiative, scores of Arab and Muslim countries offered Israel recognition in exchange for a withdrawal from occupied lands sought for a Palestinian state. Safadi said the problem is whether Israeli occupation “is going to end.”
Lebanon’s defense minister and Bahrain’s foreign minister were also present on stage during the exchange.
The recent rapprochement between Israel and several Gulf states has been fueled by deepening rivalries between regional camps, led by Saudi Arabia and Iran, respectively. The Trump administration’s hard anti-Iran line has contributed to growing regional tensions.
In October, Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a surprise visit to Oman and Israeli officials visited the United Arab Emirates in recent months.
Meanwhile, the Palestinians feel increasingly sidelined, fearing Israel, Gulf states and the U.S. plan to strike a deal behind their backs about the future of war-won lands they seek for a future state.
Jordan, which has a peace treaty with Israel, considers itself a strong advocate for Palestinian political demands. A majority of the kingdom’s citizens are of Palestinian origin.

Jordan's public bellowing over how Israel deals with Muslim rights in Jerusalem provides a sadly rich source of intemperate and frankly ugly stamping of the foot by Jordan's foreign ministry. This is from just a few weeks ago:

Jordan has called for an immediate halt to Israeli “provocations” at East Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, warning of a new cycle of violence in the Middle East region, Anadolu reports. Hundreds of settlers forced their way into the flashpoint site on Sunday, in a rare tour in the final days of the fasting month of Ramadan, which ends this week. The tour has triggered clashes between Muslim worshippers and Israeli police, which chased assaulted a number of worshippers during the violence. In a statement, Jordan’s Foreign Ministry warned of the “dangerous consequences of Israel’s provocative and repulsive escalatory Israeli practices, which will drag the region into a new cycle of violence that may threaten the security of the region as a whole”. It called on the Israeli authorities to “immediately cease all these provocations”, which it described as “absurd, irresponsible, rejected and condemned”. ["Israeli ‘provocations’ will lead to violence: Jordan", Middle East Monitor, June 2, 2019]

For anyone who knows something of the history of the region and the devastation wrought by Jordan's heavy-booted occupation over nearly two decades, it's odd to note those ridiculous adjectives. Jordan, when it had the opportunity during the 19 years of its illegal and violent military occupation of Jordan and the West Bank, carried out deliberate, massive and systematic destruction and desecration of Jewish holy sites in and around Jerusalem.

The "provocations" are the sight of polite, respectful Israelis and Jews visiting Judaism's single holiest ancient place. For certain kinds of political analysts, politicians and politically-warped media reporters, this sight is just unbearable.

Note how certain especially bizarre elements play a role:

Image Source: Turkey's Anadolu Agency, a source of rabidly anti-Israel news

• Jewish and Israeli visitors to the Temple Mount never walk, stroll or simply visit. They storm. The word is used religiously these days. (A quick Google search produces more than 600,000 hits.)
• The Arab sources quoted in shabby reporting like this always seem to know, without ever speaking with them, that the Jews are "settlers". Even if they're visiting from Brooklyn or Brussels or Bangkok.
• These Jewish and/or Israeli visitors don't actually go anywhere near the mosque constructed on the ruins of the First Temple and Second Temple. But in ideologically-obsessed parts of the Arab media, the entire football-field size plateau is lately termed "the Al Aqsa complex" to confer some spiritual air to the largest possible space. And yes, football is indeed played there by Arab boys.

Intemperate news reporting is a problem. But some other problems carry greater weight. For instance these three which bear a disturbing integrity-of-the-homeland similarity to each other:

• This past October, Jordan decided to terminate the lease by Israel of two small areas on the Jordan River, roughly a thousand acres of agricultural ‎land‎, which had been farmed by Israelis for the past 25 years. The leases were part of the 1994 Jordan/Israel peace treaty. As the Jerusalem Post noted: "The 30 families which reside [there] live off these lands and export millions of dollars' worth of crops to the world as well as to the Israeli market." Jordan's king announced that he seeks “full sovereignty on our land”. There's surely a message in the unexpected and unwelcome move. From our conversations with relevant people, there's some doubt what that message is.
• Another important deal between Jordan and Israel, a far larger and more strategic one signed in 2016, is arousing angst and furor as a result of a bizarre speech by a member of Jordan's parliament a couple of weeks ago. The deal concerns the sale of natural gas which is to be piped from Israel's Leviathan offshore gas field to Jordan's electric company. It's a $10 billion deal to be executed over 15 years; the first gas is due to be delivered early next year. But as  critically important as this is to Jordan's need for energy, it's (of course) opposed by a range of Jordanian political factions including the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas' local affiliate, on the customary grounds that if it involves normalization and cooperation with Israel, it has to be bad. Tareq Khouri, a Christian and an opponent of the transaction said at a Muslim Brotherhood gathering on July 3, 2019 that good Jordanians should bomb the gas pipeline. "Every lover of freedom in Jordan [should] give up his life and the lives of his children in order to bomb any gas pipeline [from Israel] that passes through Jordanian territory. We shall all be potential martyrs [and] prevent this pipeline from entering one centimeter of Jordanian soil."
• A decade ago, reports emerged of the uncovering of an ancient Jerusalem pathway with considerable historical significance. Haaretz said: "Israel Antiquities Authority researchers have re-exposed a stretch of road in Jerusalem dating to the Second Temple period that is believed to have been used by pilgrims on their ascent to the Temple. Existence of the 40-meter segment of road, cleared over the past few months to open it to visitors, has been known of for more than a century. The excavation is taking place in the neighborhood of Silwan near the Siloam Spring." Then on June 30, 2019, this Israeli update: "After six years of extensive archaeological excavations led by the Israel Antiquities Authority, a 350-meter-long section of the Pilgrimage Road was unveiled at a festive ceremony in the City of David." Cause for celebration, right? Not necessarily, since Jerusalem is involved. So here's the full text of Jordan's official reaction: ["Amman condemns Israeli opening of "pilgrims road"", PETRA Jordan Gov't News Agency, June 30, 2019]: 

"Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Sunday slammed Israel for opening a tunnel beneath the Silwad town that is called the "pilgrims road" towards al-Aqsa Mosque/ Haram al-Sharif, issuing a warning that such "illegal and irresponsible" actions escalate tension. The official spokesperson of the ministry Sufian Qudah underscored Jordan's utter rejection of Israeli attempts that seek to alter the identity of the occupied city of Jerusalem, especially the al-Aqsa Mosque and its surroundings.  Such Israeli actions are "vile violations" of the international and human law, he said, calling on the international community to assume its moral and political responsibilities in promptly halting these practices and to emphasize the importance of respecting East Jerusalem's status as an integral part of the Palestinian territories, which have been under occupation since 1967, in accordance with the international law and resolutions of the international legitimacy."

She's King Abdullah II's long-serving ambassador to Washington.
A talented lady but not above blocking a pair
of pesky bereaved parents from Jerusalem

When they want to, Jordan's official representatives can be quite talkative. A shame that on the subject of extraditing Ahlam Tamimi, they have not uttered a single official word as a government, leaving it to the media and their highest court to say the relatively little that has been offered to explain their indefensible policy.

As for their official spokesperson in the United States, Ambassador Dina Kawar of Jordan's Washington embassy blocks us on Twitter.

That of course doesn't change very much and certainly doesn't mean we will stop our efforts to be heard. But along with plenty of other evidence of Jordan being today very far from its moderate image, it contributes to the sense that they haven't really come a great distance since the days of blowing up ancient synagogues on a massive scale and maliciously denying Jewish history.

* * *

[This post, like a number of others before it, has been translated to Polish ("Jordania, pokój i jak niewiele się naprawdę zmieniło") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.]

31-May-19: Al Quds Day kicks off with double-stabbing attack in Jerusalem's Old City

The Times of Israel caption to this photo: "Israeli security forces 

and medics remove the body of a Palestinian man who had 

stabbed two Israelis in the Old City of Jerusalem, 

on May 31, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

At least two people were injured, one seriously, in stabbing attacks in Jerusalem’s Old City this morning. Times of Israel reports that the suspected terrorist was shot by police officers at the scene. His condition is not currently known (it's 7:20 am here).

But according to the rather laconic Haaretz version, "Israeli police said officers at the scene apprehended the suspect." (It appears now, some hours later, that Haaretz understated the impact on the terrorist. See below.)

Medics were treating one victim in serious condition, an approximately 50-year-old man, near the Old City’s Damascus Gate, which has seen a number of stabbing attacks in recent years. The Magen David Adom ambulance service said a second man was also lightly wounded near the Hurva Synagogue... [Times of Israel]

From Israel National News:

A man was very seriously wounded in a stabbing attack on Friday morning in an area in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem. The man was stabbed in his upper body and Magen David Adom paramedics are making efforts to save his life. A short time later, reports were received about an 18-year-old who was lightly wounded in a stabbing attack in the vicinity of the Hurva Synagogue. An initial investigation into the attack revealed that a terrorist arrived at the Damascus Gate, stabbed a man, and then stabbed another man in the Old City. The attacker was neutralized by police forces... Magen David Adom reported that at 6:31 a.m., a report was received of two men who were stabbed, one near Damscus Gate and the other near the Hurva Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem Post (7:30 am) also believes the two attacks are the work of one knifer:

Israel Police spokesman Superintendent Micky Rosenfeld told The Jerusalem Post that a "terrorist stabbed one person at Damascus Gate, critically injuring him, and made his way into the Old City and stabbed a second person inside injuring him moderately."

We're not yet seeing reports stating the obvious - that it's Al Quds Day:

an annual event held on the last Friday of Ramadan that was initiated by the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 to express support for the Palestinians and oppose Zionism and Israel... [and] also held in several other countries, mainly in the Arab and Muslim world, with protests against Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem.Rallies are held in various cities by both Muslim and non-Muslim communities around the world.

Urged on by Iran [here], there are large-scale Al Quds Day events scheduled for this weekend in Sydney and Melbourne, in London and other locations.

UPDATE May 31, 2019 at 10:00 am: From Times of Israel:

“Around 6:20 a.m., the assailant entered through the Damascus Gate. He stabbed a man inside and began running from the scene. Along the way, he saw [a 16-year-old boy] and stabbed him as well,” police said. The suspected terrorist, a 19-year-old Palestinian man from the West Bank, was shot dead by police officers at the scene, a police spokesperson said.

A quick scan of Arabic social media, mainly Twitter, shows the attacker is now called "martyr" which strongly suggests the financial future of another Palestinian Arab family has gotten a lot stronger thanks to Al Quds Day.

UPDATE May 31, 2019 at 11:00 am:  No names announced yet but it's reported that the first of the two stabbing victims this morning was a 16-year-old boy, attacked as he made his way from Shacharit morning prayers at a synagogue in the Old City back to his yeshiva.
From Israel National News: 

“On his way back from the Hurva synagogue to the yeshiva, someone jumped him from one of the courtyards,” the victim’s father told Reshet Bet... The victim had been learning overnight at his yeshiva [a tradition on Thursday nights], then went to the Hurva synagogue for morning prayers. “At first he didn’t realize that he had been stabbed by a knife,” his father continued, “he thought he had been punched in the back. His brother was with him, and they started to run towards the Hurva synagogue, and there they called for help.”
During the terror attack another victim, estimated to be about 50 years of age, was also stabbed, leaving him in critical condition. He was evacuated to Shaare Zedek Medical Center. He has been admitted to the hospital’s intensive care ward, and is unconscious and on assisted breathing.
Authorities say the terrorist entered the Old City at around 6:20 a.m. via Damascus Gate, stabbed his first victim on a side street, then fled the scene. As he ran, the terrorist spotted his second victim, stabbing him before being shot to death by Israeli police officers... The terrorist has been identified as a 19-year-old Palestinian Authority resident.

There's no coverage at this point on the scurrilous Maan News Service English-language site. But on its Arabic site, under a headline that calls him "martyr", it says

"Israeli occupation forces shot dead a Palestinian in the West Bank town of Jerusalem... The Israeli occupation forces closed all the doors of the Old City and the Al-Aqsa Mosque and prevented thousands of worshipers from reaching the Al-Aqsa Mosque."

No mention of today being Al Quds Day.

UPDATE May 31, 2019 at 2:30 pm: We have the names of the stabbing victims. One is 16-year-old Yisrael Meir Nachumberg, in moderate condition at the Hadassah Hospital on Jerusalem's Mount Scopus.. The other is Gavriel Lavi, 50, who underwent emergency surgery at Shaarei Zedek Medical Center this morning and is now hospitalized in SZMC's intensive care unit. Israel National News quotes one of the doctors there saying "He arrived at the trauma unit with stab wounds all over his body - scalp, neck, back, chest and legs."

Video of the attack and its aftermath is posted on YouTube and embedded below.



UPDATE June 2, 2019 at 4:00 pm: Times of Israel says Gabriel Lavi who was seriously injured in Friday's stabbing attack is now breathing without the help of a respirator though he remains in intensive care at Shaare Zedek Medical Center. May he continue to a complete recovery. 

12-Mar-19: Arab-on-Israeli attacks edge upwards again

Image Source

It's shaping to be a violent and tense day here in Israel.

Experience suggests this isn't because of some unusual weather pattern. Broadly speaking, violence is something that the Palestinian Arab leadership switches off and on at will. It's clearly on right now.

Some of the more persuasive analysts put this down to the coming together of at least four main factors: Israel's April elections; the expectation of a comprehensive Trump Administration peace agreement proposal; rising tension in the endless jockeying for power and supremacy between the Fatah-controlled Abbas regime and Hamas; and the Palestinian Authority's 's move ["PA Reduces Wages to Employees Israel's payment deduction"] to substantially cut salaries across a wide swathe of the population under its control, unilaterally making an already on-the-ropes economy even more fragile.

Among the acts of violence:

Monday 11:30 pm: Still-unidentified shooters attacked an Israeli vehicle in the northern Samaria district last night (Monday) on a road near the Israeli community of Rehelim (population about 800), south of Nablus/Shechem and located between Kfar Tapuach and Eli. No one was injured, thankfully. But the vehicle was damaged, suggesting the fire could have exacted a heavier toll. Israel National News reports an attempted infiltration this past Friday night just as the Sabbath was being ushered in. The community's "security guards... identified two suspicious figures approaching the town. Rehelim's military security coordinator arrived first, fired a light bomb, and noticed the two suspects running away."

Tuesday 12:45 pm: Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian man as he tried to stab them in the West Bank city of Hebron on Tuesday, the IDF said according to Times of Israel. No one else was injured in the thwarted attack:

IDF soldiers spotted the terrorist armed with a knife as he ran toward them. The soldiers pushed the terrorist back as he tried to run into a nearby civilian building. The soldiers shot the terrorist, thwarting the attack, and he was killed,” the military said... The suspect, armed with a knife, entered the contentious Beit HaShalom building in Hebron, near the Kiryat Arba settlement. A resident of the building, one of the few Jewish-owned structures inside the overwhelmingly Palestinian city, saw and called Israeli security forces to the scene, according to reports from the scene. A video filmed at the scene showed the attacker lying on the ground in the entrance hall of the building with what appeared to be a gunshot wound to the chest. The knife was seen on the ground several feet away from him."

Images of the attacker appear in the Hebrew-language social media, here for instance. The would-be knifer is identified by Palestinian Arab officials as Yasser Fuzi Shuweiki. The Ma'an News Agency site (English language edition) calls him Yasser al-Shweiki and rather enigmatically quotes his father saying the son "was distributing notices from the Sharia Court across Hebron City", presumably trying to deflect any suggestion that he was a knifer looking for Israeli stabbing victims. (An Israeli social media commentator says he was the local mailman.) In the Arabic version of Ma'an's account, but not the English, its editors call the would-be knifer, not surprisingly, a martyr:

Palestinian Civil Affairs demanded that the Israeli authorities hand over the body of Yasser Mohammed Fawzi Shweiki, who was killed by Israeli soldiers [and] who worked as a clerk in the Hebron District Court, where he was working before being shot by Israeli soldiers who claimed he had a knife and attempted to stab Against soldiers.

Tuesday Noon: The Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City was sealed off by Israel Police today in the wake of Arab violence that included a firebomb being hurled at officers, followed by arrests and clashes. Times of Israel says:

"Police quickly deployed across the hilltop compound, scuffling with worshipers in the area as they searched for the assailants. In one video, police were seen wrestling a woman to the ground. Ten suspects were arrested and an investigation into the incident was ongoing, police said... Police said they found flammable materials, firecrackers and Molotov cocktails during a search of the Temple Mount after it was closed... The Damascus Gate entrance of the Old City of Jerusalem was also closed and police were dispatched throughout the Old City and East Jerusalem “to prevent and respond to any attempt to disturb public order in response to the serious incident,” police said in a statement."

The president of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas complained of “dangerous Israeli escalation” and warned of “serious repercussions.”

Tuesday 4:45 pm: Security forces of the IDF took a Palestinian Arab woman into custody who aroused their suspicions near Beit Hashalom (House of Peace), the site of another, earlier Arab-on-Israel stabbing in Hebron (above). They found, after a careful search of her clothing and person, that she had a knife concealed somewhere not yet reported. Times of Israel says she was promptly arrested and is in the hands of the security forces for questioning.

13-Dec-18: On Jerusalem's Hagai Street in the Old City, another Arab-on-Israeli knifing attack this morning

Image Source: Haaretz

A little before a chilly dawn in Jerusalem's Old City today, a 26 year-old Palestinian Arab is caught by a security camera pushing a recognizably ultra-Orthodox man to the ground in Hagai Street, one of the pedestrian lanes running down the hill from the Damascus Gate (in Hebrew, Sha'ar Shechem).

That location is the favored entry point for observant Jews on their way to early morning prayers at the Kotel.

It has also become a popular site for recent Arab-on-Israeli knifings and is heavily patrolled. (Clich here for past Hagai Street attack reports.)

Times of Israel describes how the surveillance footage from the scene shows the attacker using a  knife to try to stab the worshiper. This does not work out, and an instant later [as the video shows] the assailant's attention is directed at two nearby Border Guard police. 

The male officer is (in the favored manner of Palestinian Arab knifing attacks) stabbed in the face, near his eye. The female border guard is stabbed in the leg. Ynet says she is 19, the male 21. The attacker was shot dead by the officers. His weapon was recovered at the scene.

Haaretz, quoting Arab sources, says the knifer's name is Majd Matir. He was a resident of the Qalandiya neighborhood on Jerusalem's north side.

The Arabic edition of the European-financed Ma'an News Agency (but not the English) names him as Majed Jamal Mutair, 25, and in traditional terror-incitement fashion calls him a martyr.

18-Aug-18: Friday afternoon Arab-on-Israeli stabbing attack is thwarted by police - who are accused by attacker's family

Screen-cap from the security video

Security camera video has emerged of a stabbing attack on Israeli police keeping order in Jerusalem's Old City on Friday afternoon.

The would-be knifer, identified subsequently as Ahmed Muhammad Mahameed, 30, an Arab resident of the Israeli city of Umm al-Fahm in northern Israel, is seen walking briskly from the direction of the Temple Mount, turning sharply in the direction of a small group of on-duty police, then quickly pulling a knife out and attempting to stab someone. There follows a scuffle which is shown only briefly and then - according to a Times of Israel report - the assailant is shot by one of the police who came under lethal attack and he is killed.

The report goes on to focus on the complaints of the dead attacker's family. They say he was mentally ill and had twice tried to take his own life. They deny that he carried out the attack for nationalistic reasons but fail to offer an explanation - beyond mental illness - for what happened. They also deny that the response of the police was reasonable and say the officer who fired at him was “light with his finger on the trigger.”

“They didn’t have to kill him,” said the assailant’s father, pointing to other instances where police managed to neutralize attackers by shooting at their legs instead of their upper bodies. Mustafa Abu Megged, a friend of Mahameed’s, called his family a “normative” one that would never endorse such conduct. “They could have neutralized him in another way. When it comes to Arabs, they [the police] are easy to pull the trigger,” Megged charged. In addition, the Umm al-Fahm Municipality released a statement Saturday condemning police for what it called the “cold-blooded murder” of its resident.

Members of the family are quoted as well in a Ynet report:

"He suffers from a mental illness and he tried several times to commit suicide. We did not know he was in the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Friday, he never usually goes there,” said Ahmad’s brother Naseem, in an interview with Ynet... "My brother is a mentally ill person who never thought of harming people... We thought at first that he was misidentified. My brother is not a terrorist. Everyone needs to understand his mental state and not jump to conclusion that are so far from the truth," Naseem vented... ["Family of stabbing attack suspect: He has mental illness", Ynet, August 17, 2018]

There's a video embedded in the Times of Israel report that concludes with an officer reassuring the uniformed men on duty that they acted correctly in defending themselves and that doing so was in accordance with police values. It's hard to disagree with him.

Umm al-Fahm is home to more than 50,000 Arabs, overwhelmingly Muslim and almost all of them Israeli citizens.

For the past two decades, its public life has been increasingly viewed as directed by the outlawed (since 2015) Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement whose leading figure, former mayor of the city (between 1989 and 2001) Sheikh Raed Salah, is identified with Hamas. Salah is notorious for inciting under the slogan "Al-Aqsa is in danger":

In 1996, as events surrounding the authorization of a northern exit to the Western Wall tunnels were unfolding (and which led to violent riots), Salah became aware of how to capitalize politically on matters regarding the Temple Mount and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
He started to hold an annual rally titled “Al Aqsa [Mosque] is in danger” in the northern city of Umm al-Fahm. Thousands usually attended. [Avi Issacharoff, "The Islamic Movement’s Northern Branch — long a thorn in Israel’s side", Times of Israel, November 17, 2015]

We may be about to see the flames of that particular kind of incitement being fanned again.

UPDATE August 21, 2018:

The stabber's funeral in Umm Al-Fahm drew hundreds of participants, turning it into yet another sickening mass rally in support of #PalArab terror. The family had committed to the police to limit its scale and may now have to forfeit the bond they posted: https://t.co/PvkHiME34n pic.twitter.com/O7mBY009Yk

— This Ongoing War (@ThisOngoingWar) August 21, 2018