04-Dec-15: Two more knifers are shot dead by their intended victims. One is fifteen. Does anyone care?

Hebron rock-throwing youths in November: Who's next? [Image Source]

It's a sunny, chilly Friday morning here, the shortest Friday of the year with the Sabbath starting here in Jerusalem at 3:59 in the afternoon.

Very early this morning, a little after midnight, two young Palestinian Arab men - actually one was a boy - launched a knifing attack on IDF service personnel manning the Jilber post in Hebron's historic Tel Rumeida Jewish quarter. They managed to sink their blades into a 20-year-old soldier's face, injuring him lightly according to the Ynet account.

His IDF colleagues at the post responded with shots and killing the two attackers. The soldier was rushed to Sharei Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem for emergency treatment.

Ma'an, the Palestinian Arab news source we often quote because it owes its existence to European government money (thereby reflecting on the low threshold European governments apply to acceptable return-on-investment when it comes to advancing the Palestinian Arab cause), puts its customary spin on events. Its report starts with

Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinian teenagers in Hebron overnight Friday... 

making clear where the emphasis needs to be: on yet another case of death-by-Israeli. It continues

after an alleged stabbing attack on an Israeli soldier, Israel's army and locals said.

That's almost certainly untrue. If Ma'an is quoting the Israeli account, then the IDF certainly did not use the word "alleged". But "alleged" is a fixture in Ma'an's reporting on the terrorism directed against Israelis. Its editors seem to be addicted to the useful term; it allows them to pay lip-service to the facts while casting doubt on how factual they are. Perfect.

It's an especially effective strategy when - as has been the case on almost every day of attacks for the past two months - the attackers are children, below voting age (imagining for a moment that voting is a regular activity in Palestinian Arab society - and it certainly is not). This morning's attackers have never voted, and now certainly never will. Dead as of this morning, they are both being elevated to the ranks of PA martyrs (the posters may already be hanging in the alleys and markets).

They are cousins, says Ma'an. quoting Palestinian Arab sources who say their identities are:

Taher Faysal Fannoun, 19, a student at Hebron University, and Faysal Abd al-Minem Fannoun, 15.

(For the record, at least one other Arab news source says the 19 year old was 17. And it gives the 15 year old's name as Mustafa Fadel Fannoun, The Iranian government mouthpiece, PressTV, identifies them as Teher Faisal Funun, 22, and Abdul-Monem Funun, 15.)

It's more than likely they belong to the same clan as Mahmoud Fannoun, described [here] as the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which operates from a stronghold in nearby D'heisheh. The PFLP claimed credit a year ago for the savage murder (again, by knives and axes) of five unsuspecting Jewish worshipers at prayer in a Har Nof, Jerusalem, synagogue. They also claimed to have carried out a shooting attack on a car-full of Israelis, injuring four, near the community of Shvut Rachel in June 2015. There's room to think they are trying to put themselves back on the bloodshed-by-terror map after being somewhat quiet for two decades.

Palestinian Arab culture, and the Mahmoud Abbas regime in particular, trumpet the involvement of children among the stabbing/shooting/ramming Pal Arab dead as a matter worthy of celebration (literally). They are what they are, no outside influence is going to bring them to recognize the horror of the systematic child abuse raging in their ranks, and their masses are totally at peace with it. It's an ongoing tragedy about which we have written several times. The fact that it keeps costing lives, almost daily at this point, should not be lulling people on the outside into accepting this horrifying reality. And the numbers are not small: one Arab source says that of the 112 Palestinian Arabs killed by Israeli fire since October 1 (understandably without explaining what those dead people were doing in their last moments of life), 26 are children. From our informal record keeping, every one of those Arab children was killed with a knife or other killing implement in his or in her hand.

But how to explain that not a single one of the many, very well-funded children's-rights industry organizations active in the Palestinian Arab territories or Jordan (where a vast number of Pal Arabs live) has ever, as far as we can tell, drawn attention to the blood lust that Pal Arab society focuses on its own children? (We're of course ignoring for the moment the barbarism they reserve for us and ours.)

To name (once again) just some of the silent co-conspirators: UNICEF, Defence for Children International, UNESCO, Child Rights International Network, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Washington-based Jerusalem Fund, the Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, Save the Children Sweden, Arab Council for Childhood Development, UNRWA,

How long before the next Palestinian Arab child is shot dead trying to murder an Israeli? 

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.

13-Nov-14: 34 years later, the Rue Copernic terrorist-bomber may get his day in court

[Image Source]

Back in May 2014, we received an email from Association française des Victimes du Terrorisme, the French Association of Victims of Terror (website here), an active group with whom we have been in contact over the past decade. This letter concerned their campaign in support of the victims of a terror attack carried out in Paris no less than 34 years ago.

Here's our translation into English:

On October 3, 1980, a bomb concealed in the saddlebags of a motor-cycle exploded outside the synagogue on Rue Copernic in Paris at 6.37 pm, French time. It was a Friday evening, just before the onset of the Jewish Sabbath. The synagogue was packed with some 320 people inside. The explosion killed four people. Forty-six others were injured.
The criminal investigation showed that, fortunately, the bomb had exploded earlier than planned. Had it gone off when it was supposed to, the number of victims would have been much higher.
Although the perpetrators have never been brought to trial to this day, the French criminal investigation never ceased and several well-known French judges have led the case at various times.
Soon after the investigation began, it became evident that the perpetrator had left several clues including his passport number and a hand-written note. The suspect's name, Hassan Diab, appears 2,128 times in 281 documents from the investigation.
On November 5, 2008, a French magistrate Marc Trevidic, authorized the issue of an arrest warrant against a Canadian citizen, Hassan Diab, a professor of sociology at the University of Ottawa. France issued an official request to the Canadian authorities on December 12, 2008, seeking the extradition of Hassan Diab. They received a positive response from the Canadians. However, Hassan Diab has taken advantage of all the available legal means to delay the carrying out of the procedure. On October 2, 2013, the French Association of Victims of Terrorism (AfVT.org) held a press conference inside the synagogue of Rue Copernic synagogue, in order to demonstrate to the authorities and the public that the victims of the act of terror were still pursuing their rights.

The terror attack on the Rue Copernic synagogue took place not only on Sabbath eve, but also at the onset of one of Jewish tradition's most festive days, Simchat Torah. The bomb included 10 kilograms of Semtex explosives. The fact that all the dead victims were passers-by prompted the prime minister of the day, Raymond Barre, to call the bombing “a heinous act against Jews in a synagogue that struck four innocent Frenchmen crossing the street”. Wikipedia says it was

a comment which seemed to imply that the synagogue's members were neither innocent nor truly French. 

His statement fits with what we hear often in connection with terror: that the victims were somehow caught in the crossfire, the wrong place at the wrong time and innocent of any blame.

But the reality is that innocent people are always the target of terror. Anonymous, chance victimhood is a constant at the heart of the terrorists' strategy.

While suspicion initially fell on "neo-Nazis", the French police eventually shifted their suspicions onto a still-functioning, Marxist-Leninist terror group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP, founded in 1953 by George Habash. It's still functioning today, though its ideological platform (apart from the nationalistic zeal and the race-based hatred) has become passé and mostly irrelevant; it remains the second-largest (behind Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah) faction in the PLO and a proscribed terrorist organization under the laws of the United States, Canada and the European Union.

French police and the immediate aftermath of the
1980 Rue Copernic assault [Image Source]

Which brings us back to Hassan Diab.

Earlier today, Canada's Supreme Court ruled against a request by Diab to hear his appeal against an order for him to be extradicted to France and to be questioned by the authorities there about his role in the 1980 terrorist attack. According to a Canadian Press report today,

The Canadian government said Diab's request for a Supreme Court hearing raised no issue of public importance and should be dismissed... Diab is now subject to "immediate removal," said Clarissa Lamb, a spokeswoman for Justice Minister Peter MacKay. Under the Extradition Act, Canada has 45 days to send Diab to France... The Justice Department's international assistance group is in discussions with the French to ensure Diab's removal takes place within the deadline, Lamb added. At this point, Diab is presumed to be innocent, the French Embassy in Ottawa said in a statement. In France, he will be heard by an investigating judge in an open judicial inquiry regarding the attack, an embassy spokesman said... Diab has garnered the backing of prominent people including former federal solicitor general Warren Allmand, linguistics professor and activist Noam Chomsky, and Sharry Aiken, associate dean of law at Queen's University... The RCMP arrested Diab, a Canadian of Lebanese descent, in November 2008 in response to a request by France."

The plaque inside the synagogue
recalls the victims' names [Image Source]

The French terror victims group wrote us again. Today they say (our translation) that they

welcome the court's decision and the new impetus that it will give to the still-ongoing French investigation. The AfVT is mobilizing alongside the victim families to help them obtain justice 34 years after the event. On October 3, 1980, the Rue Copernic bombing killed four people: Jean-Michel Barbe, Philippe Bouissou, Hilario Lopez Fernandez and Aliza Shagrir. 46 other people were injured and at least 250 more suffered damage to their property.

It's gratifying to see that those murdered by the person or persons who planted the bomb are remembered, not only in the aggregate but one by one, by name. And whether or not Hassan Diab is eventually convicted, it's encouraging that, though they do so slowly, the wheels of justice do still grind, at least in France and Canada.

There's a powerful lesson in this to those who expect - as Arafat did in his 1974 speech to the UN that we quoted yesterday - that today's terrorist is the following decade's hero. Sometimes, the remembrance of acts of terror continues for decades - and not only by the victims.

11-Dec-10: Incoming rockets attack Israeli communities - again

Homes in Ashkelon, unfortunately within firing range of the jihadists

It's been an unpleasant week for Israelis who live within firing range of the Gazan thugs.

This past Monday (as we reported earlier), a rocket from jihadist Gaza crashed into one of the southern Israel communities located just south of the coastal city of Ashkelon. The Abu Ali Mustapha Brigades wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist splinter faction that claims alliegance to Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah/PLO, claimed responsibility according to this Palestinian Arab newsagency report. They said it was to mark the anniversary of the PFLP's establishment. For the practitioners of terror, any excuse will do when there are journalists nearby.

On Wednesday night, five more rockets were fired from Hamas-controlled Gaza into southern Israel. An Israeli civilian was injured in the barrage and airlifted to hospital in Beersheba. A kibbutz home was damaged. Residents throughout southern Israel were told to enter bomb shelters on Wednesday night - which along with the hope of scoring civilian injuries or deaths is exactly what Palestinian-Arab terrorism aims to achieve.

"The threat in the area is constant and growing," read a statement issued Thursday by several southern Israeli regional councils.

200 Gazan-Palestinian-Arab rockets have crashed into Israel so far this year.

21-Sep-07: Your lives, our lives, their lives

People who use the expression “war against terror” normally believe they are being clear about what they mean. Our experience is that different people often mean very different things. And when a real shooting war against terror is underway, you might be surprised at how confused and confusing the reporting can be. So allow us to analyze a specific chain of incidents that is unfolding as we write.

Mid-week, Israeli papers carried alarming headline reports that the intelligence establishment had identified a specific gang of terrorists with so-called 'suicide-bombing' (in unambiguous terms: murder) in their plans. The gang was being pursued by the army in the Nablus area following a concrete, focused tip-off. We know from living through this sort of thing in the past that intelligence tips, while never 100% certain, are reliable indicators of events taking place far from the media spotlight.

Persuaded by the accuracy of the intelligence, the IDF and the Border Police mounted a serious operation in Nablus, focused on the city’s Ein Beit Ilma neighborhood and placing residents under curfew. (The Palestinian Arabs and most of the media call it a refugee camp, though it's plainly not a camp - see photo. And if the residents are refugees then the word needs an overhaul.) Israeli forces stayed in place for three violent days, carrying out many arrests (at last count, 49 Palestinian Arabs believed to be involved in terror activities) and engaging in fire-fights with heavily armed locals while coming under frequent sniper attack.

The outcome was important for us. Israeli soldiers located and apprehended a complete four-person cell of Palestinian Arab terrorists planning a suicide bombing – the cell identified in the intelligence reports. In the alphabet soup of Palestinian Arab terror, these barbarians were affiliated with Hamas (i.e. the government of the Pal. Arabs) and with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Their names are Haled Nuri, Mustafa Nuri, Yusuf Nadi and Nihad Rashid Hasan Shakirat. In a report headlined "IDF captures head of Nablus cell planning suicide bombing", Haaretz says today, referring to Shakirat, that he was the head of a joint Hamas and PFLP terror cell in the city and terror fugitive number one on Israel's list in Nablus.

Under interrogation, the cell-members admitted to planning a terrorist attack which the security forces below was set to happen today – the eve of Yom Kippur. Confession is a routine part of the terrorist modus operandi and psychology.

In an invaluable contribution to solving the problem, Mahmoud Abbas spoke at a press conference with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday, and called on Israel to withdraw from Nablus. He complained that the counter-terror operations amounted to a “policy of invasion”. For most rational people, this reaction is more or less expected. When you attack the agents of terror and then you interview their elegantly-suited spokespeople, they will tend to complain about counter-terrorist activity. Sadly, most journalists and their editors will report this with a straight face, afraid or incapable of trying to figure the complex situation out and reach appropriate conclusions.

We’ll point out that if you happen not to be Abbas, and you believe (as we do) that there ought to be constant, all-out war by all available means against the barbarians who bring terrorism and hatred into our lives, then the outcome was an excellent one – as good as it gets.

Now we'll add that the army also arrested two senior terrorists from Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah in this operation: Ibrahim Ismail and Jamal Ismail. But it happens that the names of the two Ismails are on the list of individuals granted amnesty last month by Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert. The deal – criticized bitterly by many in this country, including the authors of this blog – involved Al-Aksa Brigades terrorists allegedly laying down their arms and the IDF agreeing to stop pursuing them. (See our blog article "17-Jul-07: The Joke's On Us", in which we quote Palestinian terrorists accurately characterizing the charade of handing their weapons to Abbas's official militias with this blunt assertion: "It's all a joke".)

Sadly, the joke goes on. Yediot Aharanot’s web edition says the Fatah men were released early this morning, mere hours after being arrested in that IDF counter-terror operation. Why? Because their arrest drew criticism from Fatah "higher echelons". These men, it's said, were active in kidnapping Hamas members following Fatah’s defeat in Gaza. Their arrest would jeopardize the entire amnesty deal whereby Al-Aksa Brigades terrorists are supposed to hand in their arms and be given jobs with the Palestinian Authority. Hence the release.

Understand? Neither do we.

Yesterday (Thursday) the Palestinian Authority said – and they ought to be believed on things like this – that Israel has now agreed to add 41 more Fatah terrorist fugitives to the current amnesty list of 300 in what’s dubbed a “goodwill gesture.” It’s of course possible that there are rational politicians and civil servants, fully in possession of the relevant facts, who make decisions like this intelligently and with the best interests of the people of this country in mind. We can hope. Right now, we’re deeply worried.

Back in Nablus, Palestinian sources are quoted in the media downplaying the IDF's operation and saying none of the arrested are terror suspects. In their version, senior figures from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in fact left town before the Israeli army forces entered. They also assert the city is subject to starvation (“Famine hits Al Ein camp”) and their claims are faithfully carried in the media. So is an Iranian story that "Israeli troops kidnap 20 Palestinians". The BBC manages to report "Two killed in West Bank clashes". Clashes - that's just the way the BBC likes this war against Palestinian Arab terror to be depicted.

The one headline we haven't seen yet, the one which might accurately sum up what's happened here this week, would be: "Terror massacre averted by proportionate, pro-active intervention; hundreds of innocent lives saved on eve of Day of Atonement".

Time to go and pray that the new year will be much better than the one just ended.

18-May-07: Sick, in the medical sense of the word

We're indebted to our friend David Frankfurter for this insightful comment on a little-reported disgrace this week (the background is here).

David's Letter from Israel blog is always worth reading. Here's what he posted yesterday:

Clean bill of health? It is rare that one of the so-called "human rights" NGOs that support Palestinian terror are openly exposed. Watchdog NGO Monitor has reported the tendency of Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) "members [to] exploit this NGO for political goals including unsupported attacks on Israel in contradiction to the pledge to maintain independence from political powers." Of particular concern to NGO Monitor is the specialist's diagnosis: Israeli actions degrade Palestinian health care. Of course, Palestinian violence and terror that make the protective actions necessary do not form part of the medical record. It seems that the mental and physical health of Israeli civilians does not even get an appointment.
Today, Albawaba Middle East news service reports: Medecins sans Frontieres has been infected by the terror virus.
Palestinian charged with plan to kill Olmert
17-05-2007 , 09:12 GMT
A Palestinian man was charged Thursday in Jerusalem District Court with gathering intelligence as part of a plan to assassinate Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Masa'b Bashir, a 25-year-old resident of Dir el-Balah in the Gaza Strip, has a valid entry permit into Israel due to his work with the organization "Doctors without Borders," the Tel Aviv-based Haaretz newspaper reported. The planning for the assassination was conducted at the initial level only, and did not become operational, the report added. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) activists in Dir el-Balah allegedly recruited Bashir, and dispatched him to gather intelligence on the security arrangements at the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem. He visited the site several times, and informed his PFLP handlers that the tight security would not permit the successful assassination of Olmert. At a later stage, the PFLP decided to kill an Israeli working in archeological excavations in East Jerusalem. As part of that plan, Bashir allegedly underwent training in martial arts and firing a handgun.
Instead of their ongoing negative prognosis, Medicines sans Frontiers would be better giving a second opinion on the free medical treatment Israeli hospitals and doctors so frequently provide our Palestinian Arab neighbours.

To David's comments we would add these:

1. Anyone with a sick child in this country, and who who regularly visits Israeli pediatric wards -- and that unfortunately includes the writers of this blog -- knows what the foreign reporters and visiting politicians never seem to know: that the number of Arab families seeking and getting the best possible medical care in the entire region are greatly over-represented in those wards, far out of proportion to their numbers in Israeli society. Whom does this bother? No-one, certainly not Israelis. In Jerusalem, where our youngest child has needed prolonged hospital care almost all her life, we can report from personal knowledge that in the children's wards you will routinely see close to half or more than half of the patients, and the same proportion of families and visitors, drawn from the Arab segments of Israeli society. So what? So what does this tell you about the "genocidal" designs of Israeli against Arabs in general and Pal-Arabs in particular?
2. For people wanting to let MSF know how they feel, knowing that a MSF doctor is an active Jew-hating terrorist, here are some contact details.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders)Rue de Lausanne 78 (CP 116)
1211Geneva 21 Switzerland
Tel: +41 (22) 849.84.00
Fax: +41 (22) 849.84.04
office-gva@geneva.msf.org
Media contacts:
Aymeric Péguillan (fr/en/es)
Tél: +41 (0) 22 849 84 87 Mobile: +41 (0) 79 784 57 32
Email: aymeric.peguillan@geneva.msf.org
Aurélie Grémaud (fr/en)
Tél: +41 (0) 22 849 84 49 Mobile: 00 33 6 62 87 27 48
Email: aurelie.gremaud@geneva.msf.org
Raphael Weber (de/en/fr)
Tel. + 41 (0) 44 385 94 41 Mobile: +41 (0) 79 206 46 58
E-mail: raphael.weber@geneva.msf.org

4-Feb-07: Here's what we're up against... every day

Another (yet another) small, almost invisible, news story from among this evening's media reports. To be kept in mind for the next time they tell you Israel's security problems are all a matter of propaganda and some sort of national phobia. 

Living in the cross-hairs of the terrorists here in Jerusalem and reading other peoples' frequently superficial and ill-informed analysis from far-off, the thing you need to keep reminding yourself is that even paranoids have enemies. And we're not especially paranoid.

Security forces nab two terror cells operating in Jerusalem
Last update - 16:56 04/02/2007 | By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent

The Shin Bet security service and the police last week arrested members of two Palestinian terror cells operating in Jerusalem, a gag order lifted Sunday revealed. 

The cells, one linked to the Islamic Hamas militant group and the other to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, both originated from the Al-Ayada refugee camp in the West Bank.

Security forces arrested some 20 suspected members of the cells, which allegedly carried out a number of attacks including opening fire and hurling explosives at Israeli military and civilian cars near Rachel's Tomb, in the Jerusalem envelope and the Tunnel Road.

During questioning of the alleged members, security services learned that the cells produced dozens of pipe bombs, based on information gathered from the Internet. The members of the Hamas cell were recruited by a 40-year-old clergyman from a Bethlehem mosque. In the past, members were paid NIS 50 head for preparing explosives or executing an attack. The members of the cell also helped transport equipment, arms, and money. 

During a search of the suspects' houses, security forces found materials for creating explosives, Israel Defense Forces uniforms, rifles and an ax.