29-Mar-18: Unwanted visitors on Israel's Gaza border

Tuesday's Gazan intruders minus their grenades and knives [Image Source]

As Israel approaches one of the traditionally relaxed annual periods in a locale that's not so notably relaxed, security events in the south are causing rising concern.

Times of Israel reports this morning that two Gazan Palestinian Arabs were intercepted yesterday (Wednesday) immediately after getting through the border fence and despite the heightened security alert that is currently in effect there. They were equipped with a knife and box cutters, and are now "being questioned" as the standard media release formula states it.

The thing is, this was the fourth breach of the security fence around Gaza in a week. What's going on?

Tomorrow, Friday, the eve of Passover and the day practically every Israeli has some Passover-related task to take care of at home or in the workplace ahead of Friday night's family-oriented seder gatherings, the Hamas regime plans - it has been saying for some weeks - to conduct "protests" along the boundary with Israel.

They say this is going to include "masses" of Gazans taking part. Their media advisers have coined the name of this dangerous exercise “March of Return” and it is planned to go on for six weeks until May 15, the day the Palestinian Arabs have come to call Nakba, catastrophe. This "march" will include the constructing of a tent city on the Gazan side of the border and the participation of "tens of thousands of Gaza residents", which there's little doubt Hamas - which rules the Gazans with an iron fist, can arrange.

But have no fear. They're giving assurances that this is going to be a “peaceful protest”:

A member of the Hamas Political Bureau stressed on Tuesday that the proposed “Great March of Return” is intended to be a peaceful activity. Dr Khalil Al-Hayya also warned the Israeli occupation authorities against taking any aggressive steps against the march or those who take part. According to Al-Hayya, this will include Palestinian men, women and children. The return to occupied Palestinian lands is the legitimate and inalienable right of every individual Palestinian refugee, the spokesman pointed out... “Our right to Palestinian land is inalienable and we will not concede it. We are insistent upon our right to return and our right to establish our independent state.” [Middle East Monitor, March 27, 2018]

The background is dire: Gaza's unemployment rate is extremely high with economic activity in a dramatically low state. Long-standing problems with their water, sewerage and electricity are not improving despite multinational efforts and offers of huge sums of capital from Hamas' oil-rich friends; they are in fact worsening. In short, life under Hamas, is a nightmare. Which is evidently just what Hamas intends.

Meanwhile here's what the past few days saw:

• Wednesday, a sole unarmed man crossed from the northern Gaza Strip into Israel near the community of Zikim and was promptly taken into custody. A few hours before that, two Palestinian Arabs were spotted near the discontinued Karni crossing trying to set fire to army engineering equipment close to the security fence [Jerusalem Post].
• Tuesday, three Gazans, all armed with grenades and knives, not only got into Israel but managed to walk more than 20 kilometers (12 miles) unhindered during several hours before being arrested just outside the IDF's Tze'elim army base. Making this so much worse, as Times of Israel reports it, signs of the infiltration were detected only hours after it had happened. And though no injuries or damage resulted, the defense minister Avigdor Liberman called for the incident to get the full investigation treatment. The infiltrators were located and arrested about 90 minutes after those first signs of intrusion were detected [Ynet].
• Saturday, four Palestinian Arab men wearing masks and carrying bottles filled with flammable material [Haaretz] managed to cut their way through the security fence from southern Gaza and ran into Israel near Kibbutz Kissufim (population about 245) where, as a well-publicized Hamas video shows, they tried (like Wednesday's attempted assault) to set fire to heavy engineering equipment that was there because of the barrier construction work now underway (no Israelis were on the scene at that hour. The construction is to prevent tunneling by the Gazan terrorists into Israel but it appears they can get in anyway using standard equipment i.e. cutters and their legs.

As Times of Israel reports, the military are taking pains to assure Israelis that all is essentially under control:

Israel has prepared for the protests by bolstering troop deployments in the border area, including the deployment of more than a hundred snipers to deal anticipated mass attempts to go through the fence, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot said. “If the Palestinians think they will organize a march and it will pass the [border] fence and they will march into our territory, they’re wrong,” Eisenkot told the Israel Hayom daily... “A big portion of the army will be invested there,” Eisenkot told the Yedioth Ahronoth daily... “If there will be a danger to lives, we will authorize live fire,” he declared. “The orders are to use a lot of force.”

But not every use of force involves fire-power. As Khaled Abu Toameh, writing for Times of Israel last night reports:

Israel has warned owners of bus companies in the Gaza Strip not to ferry Palestinians to mass demonstrations that Hamas and other Palestinian groups are planning near the border with Israel on Friday. Hamas said on Wednesday that several owners of bus companies had received the phone calls in the past few days warning them not to assist in the organization of the protests. The terror group added that Israeli security officers had threatened to take punitive measures against the owners and their companies, including banning them from operating at border crossings with Israel...

What's certain in the wake of all this Hamas grandstanding and provocation is that at tens of thousands of Israeli homes on Friday night, the traditional retelling of the exodus narrative and the pleasures of the once-a-year seder meal will be conducted with empty chairs at the table as ordinary Israelis pay the price of constant vigilance.

01-May-16: What Yehudit knows

The scene of Thursday night's attack near Beit Horon [Image Source]

Far from the headlines and the public speech-making, the mind-numbing daily violence visited by the Palestinian Arabs on Israelis impacts a broad range of lives: the security personnel, the emergency first-responders, the people living in the communities targeted by the agents of jihad. And the families of everyone we just mentioned.

An email we received this morning from our friend Yehudit brings home some of the back-story - the aspects most people don't get to hear or know about even if they are otherwise well-informed on what the news-reporting industry reveals about daily events in our part of the world.

Yehudit, a veteran resident of one of the flourishing post-1967 communities around Jerusalem's northern edge, as well as being a mother and wife and home-maker, volunteers as an emergency medic. She and her fellow medics are called out at all hours to meet the urgent needs of unforeseen events, and especially in these difficult times of injuries arising from Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks.

Here's what she wrote to us this morning:

This past Thursday night after nightfall, the evening of the seventh day of Passover, we found ourselves called away from the festive meal for yet another security/medical emergency. This time, the location was one where, at least six times before, a terror attack had been launched. This time, B"H, our brave defenders were unharmed. One of the terrorists was shot when she came at them with two really large knives and a syringe with the goal of carrying out a murder. 

Sadly, another attack in which the assailant is a "she". Actually, two of them.

Our team provided the monstrous young female terrorist with emergency medical treatment and she was rushed to hospital. The second terrorist, also a female, was placed under arrest and removed from the scene to be interrogated. Seeing these two girls and realizing what brought them there, what plans they had, what their motivations might have been, is something I can never ever get used to. It's striking to me how we are all - the soldiers on security duty along with their officers and the members of the emergency team - only too well acquainted with the emergency routines. Sometimes, we look one another in the eye for a brief moment even as we are busy with giving the best possible medical care, often life-saving treatment, to someone who is getting that treatment only because he or she wanted to murder one of us. Or more than one. Words don't do justice to the difficulty of that reality. That look in the eye, it's like saying to one another "Can you believe we're here, doing this, now?"

We asked Yehudit how old the two Thursday night would-be murderers were.

Of course I know their ages. 15 and 16, I believe. It's unreal. And don't forget this is happening again and again at a location on one of the busiest highways connecting the capital with Tel Aviv, right next to the busy city of Modi'in and a spot which sees thousands of motorists pass by every day. 

We looked for news coverage of the Thursday night attack. We could find only this:

Israeli authorities arrested on Thursday two Palestinians who tried to stab IDF soldiers in Samaria, the army said, adding that one of them was shot and wounded. The suspects carrying knives approached Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint near Ramallah, in an apparent bid to attack them. The soldiers opened fire in self defense and one of the Palestinians was wounded, an army spokeswoman added... [Israel National News, April 30, 2016]

And this

The incident took place on Thursday evening at the Bell checkpoint, near the community of Beit Horon, in the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council, when the two Palestinian women, armed with knives, arrived at the checkpoint. The two asked the soldiers for water and then tried to stab those seeking to help them. The soldiers, who were unharmed, opened fire, wounding one of the terrorists. The other terrorist fled and was found moments later, hiding in nearby bushes. The injured terrorist was treated on site and then taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. According to the military, one of the women was also found to be carrying a syringe full of liquid whose nature has yet to be determined, as well as a suicide note. [Israel Hayom, May 1, 2016]

Yehudit's account throws light on one small, barely-reported aspect of life in the shadow of a neighbour gripped by a death cult; a neighbour who daily fills the heads of his people's children (though never his own children) with thoughts of the glories of killing and being killed in the name of a centuries-old hatred, all the while brazenly pretending this is some version of "resistance" to something termed "occupation". Pretending to the civilized outside world, of course, but not to their own society.

More sickening still is the way this Palestinian Arab worship at the altar of jihad and "blood purity" has entranced Western onlookers living safely remote from the violence and from the challenges of living side-by-side with blood-lusting neighbours. We doubt their delicate, human-rights-obsessed minds can quite grasp what it must mean to not only share trains, roads, hospital wards with people for whom institutionalized government-promoted martyrdom is a life-defining reality but also to choose to leave your family in the middle of the night and go out to tend to the wounds of the Palestinian Arab children who are the principal (but not only) victims of that death-cult worship.

In her gentle, wise and humane way, Yehudit can probably explain it to them.

15-Apr-14: Seder night shooting attack: dead and wounded Israeli victims

Route 35 near Kiryat Arba last night: IDF soldiers search

for the shooter's trail [Image Source: Ynet]

In the final minutes before the onset of Passover on Monday evening, an Israeli family from Modi'in, traveling on Highway 35 by car to a family seder in the Jewish community of Kiryat Arba came under fire near the Arab village of Idhna (population 19,000). 

The driver, a man in his forties and a police officer (according to a report from Israel National News: "Terrorist Murders Man and Wounds Family in Hevron") was shot to death. 

His pregnant wife was struck by bullets as well and evacuated to Jerusalem's Shaarei Zedek Medical Center in moderate to critical condition. 

One of their children sitting in the back seat was also hit by bullets; we don't yet know of his condition.

[UPDATE: 11:00 pm Tuesday: The man murdered in yesterday's shooting is Police Chief Superintendent Baruch Mizrahi, described as a senior police intelligence and crime officer, and a father of five whose wife, also wounded, is pregnant. In this Hebrew news report, he is described as head of SigInt, or signals intelligence, in the Investigations and Intelligence arm of Israel Police. The indiscriminate shooters and their terrorist accomplices may come to rue their inadvertent choice of target. The funeral has been announced for 1:00 pm Wednesday in Jerusalem's Mt Herzl military cemetery.]

Times of Israel ["Israeli man killed, two injured in terror attack near Hebron"] reported shortly after the attack that the IDF’s initial investigation indicated the shooter had approached the road on foot, and opened fire with dozens of rounds from an automatic weapon, evidently an AK47 rifle, seeking to hit passing Israeli vehicles. Quoting an eye-witness, the report says two cars were struck in the hail of fire but managed to escape the scene, after which the family from Modi’in became the principal victims of the terrorism.

To this hour. relatively little media attention (for example, at the BBC) has been given outside Israel to the killing - coming as it has on the twelfth anniversary of the Park Hotel Seder Night massacre in Netanya - or its impact on terrorism-addicted Palestinian Arab society. Two American newspapers are notable exceptions.

The Los Angeles Times wrote that two of the three major terrorist forces in the Palestinian Arab sphere, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both "praised the attack but did not take responsibility for it".

And the NY Daily News ["Hamas praises shooting that killed Israeli man, wounded his wife and son"] quotes Ismail Haniyeh, the "prime minister" of the Gaza Strip saying the murder “brought back life to the path of resistance” against Israel. He warned Israelis to expect more of the same from Palestinian Arabs, and particularly in "the West Bank [which] will be the future point of our struggle with the enemy.] We believe him.

Route 35 this morning (Tuesday) [Image Source]

As for the third of the major terrorist groups, Fatah, and its nominal head, Mahmoud Abbas (marking the tenth year of his four-year term as 'democratically' elected president of the PA), there are reports of anger among Israeli sources at their failure to condemn the assault.

We strongly prefer to ignore that genre of strictly-for-the-Western-media play-acting. Mealy-mouthed, plainly insincere expressions of Arab protest have a long and nasty history. 

One of Yasser Arafat's bodyguards, Muhammad Al-Daya, shed a little light on the rules of that pathetic condemnation-of-terror charade just a fortnight ago in this interview with the BBC.

As with the thugs from Hamas and Islamic Jihad when they speak in Arabic on matters pertaining to terror, the terrorists ought to be believed.

14-Apr-14: In each generation...

The suspect being removed from the murder
scene [Image Source] 

Jewish communities throughout the world start their commemoration of Passover this evening with a family-focused gathering rich in narrative and festive eating. For those who care to delve into the underlying themes, they're certainly there to be found.

From the Chicago Tribune this morning:

A 14-year-old boy and his grandfather were among three people shot to death on Sunday at two different Jewish community facilities in a Kansas City-area suburb. Police said it was too early to determine a motive, but a leading anti-hate group said the suspect arrested in the shooting was a longtime anti-Semite. The attack came a day before the Jewish holiday of Passover. "We know it's a vicious act of violence. Obviously two Jewish facilities, one might make that assumption," Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass said in a news conference. The FBI has been called in to help with the investigation, he said.
The suspect was identified as Frazier Glenn Cross Jr., 73, by authorities in Kansas, and by the Southern Poverty Law Center as Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., a longtime anti-Semite who is the former grand dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan... The shootings started around 1 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City in Overland Park, Kansas. Two males were shot in a parking lot outside the center, one dying at the scene and the other later at a hospital, police said. The shooter then drove just a mile away to the Village Shalom retirement community that provides skilled nursing services for residents and fatally shot a female there... The two male victims were identified as Reat Griffin Underwood, 14, a high school freshman, and his grandfather, Dr. William Corporon... Both were members of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection.... Dr. Corporon had moved to the Kansas City area in 2003 to be closer to his grandchildren... It appears the shooter used a shotgun and possibly other types of guns.

The named victims are evidently not Jewish, but the published facts of their murders will resonate with Jews everywhere: a man so focused on the pleasures and privileges of family that he moved to town to be close to his grandchildren; a shooter who sought to know nothing more than that his innocent victims were in the car park of a Jewish cultural center and of a Jewish aged-care residence; a life-long hater and so-called white 'supremacist' who invoked the name of Adolf Hitler as he was taken into custody.

The text of the Passover seder is the Haggada. For us, its most evocative moments include these parallel quotations:

• In each generation, down through all the generations, we are obliged to see ourselves, personally, as having been freed from slavery... 
• In each generation, they rise against us to destroy us...

Yesterday's events in Kansas City remind us that, with all the blessed freedom which we enjoy and take for granted, the haters are close by, seeking their moment.

2-Apr-13: Gaza's rocket-rich terrorists managed to hit an Israeli kindergarten. Thankfully, no children were there but that was not the jihadists' plan.

We published this image some years ago during a previous round
of Gazan rockets being fired on Sderot [Image Source]

Passover ended in Israel about 24 hours ago (it's in its final hours now in some parts of the Jewish diaspora) and in its honour, all Israeli schools and kindergartens were closed.

This turns out to have been a very good thing, because in the southern half of this tiny sliver of a country, the remains of a terrorist missile were found today in the grounds of a kindergarten. Because it fell during the Passover break, thankfully no little children were injured. Nor was anyone else but as we keep trying to explain, that was never the intention of those who fired it.

First some context: we posted here some two weeks ago ["21-Mar-13: Rockets fired at Israelis as media focuses attention elsewhere"] that

Ninety minutes drive from where tens of thousands of Israeli police are deployed on the streets of Jerusalem and from the security measures that are in place to protect the visiting head of the United States, a lethal attack on Israelis was mounted this morning by the terrorist forces deployed against this country from the south. At least one home took a direct hit. Fortunately there are no injuries. 

This afternoon we know more, thanks to Times of Israel's report, about what happened to one of those 'Obama visit' rockets:

The remains of a rocket fired from Gaza into Israel during US President Barack Obama’s visit 12 days ago were found Tuesday afternoon in a Sderot kindergarten. The rocket caused damage to the building, but no injuries, because the kindergarten was closed for the Passover holiday. Parents and teachers only discovered that the rocket had struck the kindergarten when they arrived Tuesday to prepare the facility for the return of children after a three-week Passover vacation. They found the remains of the rocket in the courtyard, and discovered the damage to the building. Police sappers cleared away the remains of the projectile. Police said the rocket was most likely one of four fired from Gaza into the south of Israel on March 21, the second day of Obama’s tour. Another of the four landed in the yard of a Sderot home, also causing damage but no injuries. Hamas has fired thousands of rockets from Gaza into the south of Israel over the past decade [more]

But we still know nothing about those rockets that 'fell short' and landed on Palestinian Arab Gaza, with who knows what consequences for the people who live there as hostages of the jihadist Hamas regime. To quote what we wrote here two weeks ago

We have written several times [for instance "18-Nov-12: Fell short? Not just the Hamas rockets but the ethics of the journalists covering them"; "24-Dec-12: Fell short? Not HRW"; "9-Mar-13: The viral power of a lying image and the editors who make it all happen"] about those "fell short" rockets. The unwillingness of reporters and their editors to acknowledge how often this happens is extraordinary. It's a subject that deserves some analysis.

We write this kind of piece (to state the obvious) because facts and events like these go almost entirely unreported. Most people, even those concerned about the welfare of the people making their homes here, simply have no idea.

27-Mar-13: Instead of a minor footnote, this could have been today's main headline

IDF security checkpoint [Image Source]

It's a tiny story; insignificant really, except for those of us with some imagination... and personal experience. It very likely was not reported at all in the news channels which reach most of our readers. But it happened, and it has implications.

A Palestinian Arab male (at this stage, no further details) was stopped at the IDF security checkpoint at Bekaot, south-east of Sh'chem (Nablus) in the northern Jordan Valley yesterday (Tuesday), the first day of Passover.

The personnel manning the checkpoint found four improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on him [Times of Israel]. Army sappers safely detonated the IEDs in a controlled explosion. The man is in the custody of the security forces who have some questions for him.

Questions:

• If he had not been intercepted, would this story still be tiny and insignificant?
• If there were no IDF security checkpoints, would he have been stopped in some other way before those IEDs were emplaced and triggered, with who-knows-what devastating effect?
• Security checkpoints only work when people pass through them, and the security barrier remains - partly because of legal complexity and court cases - incomplete and under construction, meaning this guy could have avoided passing through. Is it better or worse for us if the security checkpoints exist? Assuming (as we believe) that it's better, what can the people who call for their removal, be thinking?

There is an upward trend in Palestinian Arab violence against Israelis (see today's Jerusalem Post backgrounder) as well as several similar life-saving intercepts at the same security checkpoint: for instance in August 2011 and twice in April 2012. 

None of this will mean very much to those, sitting far from what goes on here daily, who see such events in ideological, non-humanitarian terms. This is a great shame as well as a disgrace to the people who think that way.

But for those of us whose lives are directly impacted by whether or not terror-minded Palestinian Arab jihadists get through the protective cordon in order to wreak the devastation they seek, yesterday's seizure of concealed lethal weapons is reason to celebrate. 

As we mentioned: it's Passover. May the peacefulness continue, along with the watchfulness of those who protect us.

20-Mar-13: If a firebomb hits a bus far from anyone important, did it happen?

We are thinking about Zen-like aphorisms as we look over the news this morning in beautiful, sun-drenched pre-Passover Jerusalem.

The arrival of US president Barack Obama in Israel is triggering an increased level of terror-centred activity by the local Palestinian Arabs, as we have noted here, here, here and here (for instance) in the past three weeks.

Yesterday (Tuesday), in the late evening, a firebomb (Molotov cocktail) was hurled at an Israeli bus passing by the community of Givat Asaf on Route 60 north of Jerusalem and south of Bet El. The IDF said soldiers were searching the area. But these things happen a lot, even if most people don't know about it.

As Times of Israel writes, the road is part of the route that Obama is due to take when he is driven to the Palestinian Arab center of government in Ramallah tomorrow. Naturally, had the Obama entourage already been on the ground and closer to the scene, this would have been front page news around the globe. But today it's a small story with very little resonance. And since no actual injuries were reported, it has gotten virtually zero airplay outside this country.

For the travelers on the bus, it may well have been the most frightening experience of their lives. But that's how it is with terrorism: turns your own life upside down if it happens to you but for the community and those further away, it's at worst a near miss. In other words, an experience of the most intimate kind for those affected, but if - as is normally the case - you are unable to effectively communicate it in ways that touch other people's awareness, then from their standpoint it never have happened.

22-Dec-11: Know them by their actions. Oh, and by their smiles.

The head of the PA speaks [picture source] to a celebration rally
in Ramallah on October 18, 2011 when the first 477 murderers
were released by Israel. "Every prisoner
from every faction is holy to us and we must exalt them", he said.

For almost as long as there has been organized human society, awards - often in the form of medals - have been given to those whom the society considers to represent its core values.

The Palestine Liberation Organization has such an award. It's called the Jerusalem (or Al-Quds) Medal, and the decision to give it to someone is made only after the head of the PLO signs off. The head of the PLO, for years the appalling Yasser Arafat, is today Mahmoud Abbas, who in his day job is head of one of the two Palestinian Arab governments, the one called the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas made the decision two years ago to award his organization's Al-Quds Medal to five Arabs who were all, at the time, incarcerated in Israeli prisons, having been tried and convicted for murder. One was a woman called Tamimi, convicted on 15 counts of murder, including the murder of our daughter. Another was Amna Muna, sometimes called Mona Najar; sometimes called Mona Jaud Awana; always called terrorist and convicted murderer. She earned those labels not through her political views but by reason of the cold-blooded murder of an unarmed Jewish boy of sixteen which she engineered and which took place in front of her eyes. (The background is here.) Why engineer a murder? Turns out that Mona had been present at the Ramallah lynching in October 2000 when two Israelis were ripped apart, literally, by a mob of frenzied Arabs. And she was "excited" by what she saw.

Abbas and the murderers on
Wednesday in Ankara, Turkey

It was reported back in April 2008 that Abbas was going to present those medals in a ceremony timed to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the deadliest suicide-bombing of this Arafat War, the massacre in Netanya's Park Hotel on the first night of Passover 2002. Thirty-three Israelis were murdered on that festival night. Thus April 17, 2008 was a propitious date on which to honour persons who embody the highest expression of current Palestinian Arab values.

A day before the 2008 ceremony, Abbas "decided" to give in to pressure from the US government and canceled the award. But plainly that was not a reflection of how he felt. Damn, he was proud of that woman. And today (Wednesday) in Turkey, in the middle of a packed and politically important visit to the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan regime, the Palestinian president found time to show it ("Abbas Meets Woman Who Aided 2001 Murder Of Israeli"). And for good measure, the convicted mastermind of the Netanya massacre,  Nasser Yateima, who had been serving 29 life terms when released from Israeli prison in October's terrorists-for-Gilad-Shalit deal, was in the deal too. What sparkling conversation this tight little group must have had!

When, like us, you follow closely the media reports of convicted murderers who got free as a result of a massive act of extortion ("A monster walks the streets and she has many accomplices", you tend to pick up things that less-interested people might miss. For instance: we noticed that the two women mentioned here are almost always smiling broad teeth-baring smiles when they appear in the newspapers. This might be considered odd given that they are, and always will remain, convicted murderers even if they currently walk the streets free as birds.

In this picture, above, Tamimi is snapped inside her Israeli prison cell a moment after the interviewer told her, evidently for the first time, how many children died as a result of the actions she carried out and for which she was sentenced to sixteen life terms. The picture appears in many places on the web, and it's often noted that her face bears a beatific smile. Hard for us to argue. This is one very happy woman. Dead Israeli children evidently have that effect on her.

This is Mona aka Amna on March 18, 2001. Another killer who displays genuine, straight-from-the-heart happiness as she smiles for the media at a court appearance during the trial ten years ago for which she was convicted of murder. You see her deep regret over the loss of an innocent young life, right? 

And here's Mahmoud Abbas in Cairo recently. He's smiling broadly. This is unusual for the man. 95% of the published news pictures in which he appears show him scowling. Here, he's happy. Why so? Perhaps because his fingers are intertwined with those of Khaled Meshaal. The latter may be the head of Hamas, his arch-foe and competitor in the business of executing and encouraging terrorism. But he's someone who understands the central importance of killing the children of your enemy when you're engaged in jihad to the death. Someone you can work with. Someone you can like.

As to why Mahmoud Abbas is routinely called "moderate" and a seeker of peace, that's a tough one. Perhaps the question could be directed at the two women above.

24-Apr-11: Palestinian Arabs, possibly PA police, fire on Israelis en route to prayers; one killed, others wounded

We're in the midst of the Passover religious festival which for most Israelis is a week-long vacation. Early this morning (Sunday), 15 Israeli men, driving to the frequently-desecrated Tomb of Joseph on the outskirts of Nablus [see this nineteenth century picture and this account of its travails] came under fire. 

A 24 year-old father of four from Jerusalem is dead. He is Ben-Yosef Livnat, the son of Noam Livnat, nephew of Israel's Minister of Culture & Sport Limor Livnat. 

At least five other members of the group suffered serious to moderate injuries and have been air-lifted to the Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva. The group, comprising of Breslov Hassisim, was reportedly traveling in a three-car convoy. 

Ynet says that while driving back from prayers, around 6 am, they came under fire from a Palestinian jeep. The fire continued even after the vehicles began to escape. Ynet quotes the PA Governor of Nablus, Jibril al-Bakri, saying the shooting was unintentional, calling it a "security incident" and not a "shooting attack", the implication evidently being the Israelis were shot by the PA police.

The Tomb of Joseph the Patriarch is one of the holiest of Judaism's
religious sites. The picture above is from before the destruction carried
out by Palestinian Arab thugs in October 2000. 

Arab mob pillages the ancient site at the start of
the Arafat War proclaimed by the Palestinian Authority in September 2000

Palestinian flag and thugs 'honor' the destroyed religious site.

In what is left of Joseph's Tomb, religious visitors pray recently under IDF protection

UPDATE Sunday 11:30am: Over at the JoshuaPundit blog, they reported earlier this morning about renewed desecration of the Joseph's Tomb site: "the headstone smashed and swastikas sprayed on the walls, graffiti of a blood-dripping sword over a Star of David, and visible boot prints all over the tomb itself."


UPDATE Sunday 12:30pm: Yes, it was the Palestinian Authority police. And they used live lethal fire (Haaretz quoting the Defence Minister) in opening up on three Israeli vehicles filled with unarmed religious pilgrims visiting the sacred site of Joseph the Patriarch. Haaretz adds: "Following years of closure, Jewish worshippers are now able to enter Nablus often with a military escort to pray at the small building traditionally identified as the tomb of the biblical Joseph, located inside a Palestinian-ruled area. Those visits are coordinated with Palestinian security forces."

Ben-Yosef Livnat, murdered this morning

UPDATE Sunday 5:00pm: The man who was shot to death by the Palestinian police while en route to the Tomb of Joseph was laid to rest this afternoon in the ancient Jewish cemetery on the slopes of Jerusalem's Mount of Olives. Thousands of people were present, expressing their horror at the barbarity of the Palestinian Arab shooting of worshippers on their way to one of Judaism's most ancient and meaningful sites, and solidarity with the victims. Ben-Yosef Livnat (his picture is above) was 25 and the father of four very young children. The Wall Street Journal quotes Defence Minister Ehud Barak calling this an act of murder and that "no coordination mishap can justify such an incident." 


The Palestinian Arabs evidently do not see any coordination mishap in today's events. Palestinian Authority security services spokesman Adnan Dmeiri told the Palestinian Arab newsagency Ma'an that 

"officers on duty at the site had been summoned to give testimonies as witnesses to the incident, but none had been detained. Dmeiri said a committee had been formed to investigate the shooting but said it would not include Israeli officials. He denied media reports that the investigation would be under US supervision." 

Pretty clear which issues bother them and which do not. Oh, and the Ma'an editors also tell us, as confirmed by other news sources this afternoon, that after the killing "Palestinians set fire to the site." Yet again.

8-Apr-09: An especially apt time to cherish freedom

As the Jewish world makes its last-minute preparations to honour and commemorate our national festival of freedom, we received a timely personal reminder yesterday of how our own child's freedom was stolen by a terrorist group's calculated act of mass-murder.

On Tuesday, here in Jerusalem, the local Magistrates Court considered a compensation claim by the family of our teenage daughter's murderer. Fortunately we were completely unaware of it.

Izz a-Din al-Masri was a religious fanatic from a well-to-do Palestinian Arab family. A guitar case on his back filled with explosives and nails, he was brought into the center of Jerusalem by a well-organized gang arranged by the Hamas jihadists. When he went to his 72 virgins on 9th August 2001 on the premises of the Sbarro restaurant that used to be in the center of Israel's capital city, he took fifteen lives - most of them Jewish children and Jewish women, which was precisely (and remains precisely) the Hamas plan. More than 130 other innocent victims were maimed and wounded by this savage act of "freedom" and "national self-determination".

This being a free and democratic society, the family of the Hamas jihadist sued the state of Israel for damages after their house, which was used by their son to prepare for the massacre at Sbarro, was demolished by judicial order. Media reports said they claim the house was destroyed in a negligent manner.

It's reported (but not widely) that the presiding judge, Yoel Tzur, held the demolition of the al-Masri home was "an appropriate and legal response to the murderous attack. Under wartime laws, including those laws accepted by the international community, a country may demolish property in order to deter attacks... Israel's destruction of terrorists' property can be defined as a method of deterrence".

As to whether the house was destroyed in a negligent manner, the court found that the army took extra precautions and had carried out a "dry run" of the demolition ahead of the real event to ensure the process would run smoothly. The court held that the jihadist's family was given plenty of time to remove their belongings from the building, and rejected their claim for compensation.

We want to point out here that a woman called Ahlam Tamimi, who is serving multiple life-sentences for her role in the Sbarro massacre and in the killing our 15 year-old daughter Malki, is at the top of the Hamas list of "women and children" terrorists that was said to be accepted by the recently-replaced Olmert government in the context of a deal to free Gilad Shalit. There is a very real likelihood that she will soon be free. Hamas has held the young Israeli hostage for the past 1,000 days as a lever to get their jihadists out of Israeli prisons... and back into the cafes, buses and playgrounds of Israeli society where they can again advance the principles of savagery and hatred-driven murder.

Given the amount of widespread confusion and disinformation about terrorists and their agendas, this week's denial of monetary damages to the al-Masris and the continued incarceration of the mass murderer Tamimi are likely to continue to appear on Israel-bashing lists of Israeli "human rights offences".

When we sit down to the festive seder meal tonight, we will be remembering the Jewish people's long struggle for freedom, and the traditional Jewish values that underpin both that struggle and the nation-state that they eventually enabled to be re-established.

25-Apr-08: Gunmen at work

It's been a busy Friday Passover-week morning in this ongoing war.

Israelis driving their vehicle in the Samaria district were attacked early this morning by Palestinians hurling fire-bombs (home-made weapons in the language of the mainstream media). No injuries, thankfully, but that was not the intention of the terrorists.

In the southern city of Ashkelon (home to 110,000 Israelis), three Qassam rockets fired by Gazan-Palestinian-Arabs crashed this morning. One struck a cemetery on the city's southern side, damaging tombstones.

A fourth Friday morning Qassam rocket was fired into Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, not far from Ashkelon. Fortunately no injuries in any of today's Qassam landings.

In the Nitzanei Shalom industrial park (the name means buds of peace), near the West Bank city of Tulkarem, the outcome of this morning's terrorism was less banal. Two Israelis who worked there as security personnel were shot dead. Terrorists sent by Islamic Jihad infiltrated the industrial zone overnight and shot them dead at close range. Their intent, it appears, was to carry out a larger massacre, but the factories were shut down and mainly deserted for the Passover week. The dead men are Shimon Mizrahi, 53, of Beit Hefer, and Eli Wasserman, 50, of Alfei Menashe. In August 2002, another Israeli, a truck driver working in that industrial park - Shani Ladani, 27 - was killed, shot dead at close range by Palestinian-Arab terrorists in the same place.

It's unlikely anyone from the mainstream media will pay much attention to this aspect of the killings, but the fact is the industrial park at Nitzanei Shalom was one of nine industrial zones established in 1995 by the government of Israel to provide work and economic advancement for Arabs in Judea and Samaria.

 Seven factories are located today in Nitzanei Shalom. They make cartons, plastic parts, exterminator sprays and other items while coping with an ongoing war against them, brought on by the same sort of logic that leads the Palestinian-Arabs of Gaza to repeatedly attack Israeli fuel-transfer points (for transfer into Gaza) and then wail that there's insufficient fuel.

Some 700 Palestinian-Arabs are today employed in the park where today's killings were carried out. The premises are secured by Israelis like the men murdered this morning.

18-Apr-08: Removing the leaven

Passover is upon us. Saturday night, Jewish families throughout the world will sit down to a formal dinner laden with ceremonial elements that have been part of Jewish life for nearly three thousand years. That meal is preceded by the reading of the Haggadah, the narrative that traces the emergence of a Jewish nation out of Egyptian slavery, and by days - sometimes weeks - of clearing the leaven from our homes.

Leaven. It's a word that few people use if they're not getting ready for this Jewish festival. In Hebrew, Chametz, the word conveys not only a sense of the difference between bread (that rises in the course of being baked) and matza (the perfectly flat bread we eat for the next week). It's also the symbolic expression of arrogance, hubris - like yeast, something that causes a puffing up in dough.

An excellent time therefore to review the visit to this part of the world of James E. Carter, a former president of the United States and the noted author of a book entitled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Michael Kinsley's review in Slate ("Jimmy Carter's moronic new book about Israel") provides a good overview.

Carter's visit was marked by his laying a wreath on the tomb of an arch-terrorist and master Palestinian-Arab embezzler and physically embracing and conferring with several leading active Hamas terrorists (quite possibly breaching several US Federal laws in the process). He also visited beleagured Sderot (looking strikingly bored according to eyewitnesses) and pronounced the endless missile and rocket attacks on southern Israel "criminal". The word must have slipped past Carter's pursed lips because the last thing he meant, it appears, was that Israelis need to respond as one responds to a criminal attack by degenerate thugs on your home, family and future.

Sadly, the man gets considerably more mileage in the circles in which he moves by pronouncing Israelis as practitioners of apartheid than as victims of an ongoing mugging and conspiracy to murder.

Here are a couple of the more cogent published observations stimulated by the former peanut farmer's visit to one of the world's most complex war-zones.

• Jimmy Carter and Hamas - Washington Times Editorial
  Jimmy Carter's decision to meet with the terrorist organization Hamas is turning the former president into something of a political pariah. During a visit to the West Bank town of Ramallah Tuesday, Carter hugged and kissed a leading Hamas official at a reception. He is scheduled to meet later this week with Hamas' Damascus-based leader, Khaled Meshaal. After Iranian President Ahmadinejad called the Holocaust a "myth" and said Israel should be "wiped off the map," Meshaal congratulated Iranian leaders. Hamas has been behind scores of suicide attacks against Israel, and following that nation's August 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas has stepped up its firing of rockets and missiles at Israel.
  
• Carter's Confusion - Clifford D. May National Review
  When Neville Chamberlain met with Hitler in Munich, he no doubt believed he could reason with him because he also no doubt believed that the Fuhrer was a reasonable man like himself. Offer Hitler a good deal - land, power, prestige - and surely he'd take it rather than plunge his nation into a terrible war. What this leaves out is ideology. Hitler's ideas inspired millions to fight and die for the glory of the Third Reich. And Marxist/ Leninist/ Stalinist/ Maoist ideology inspired millions to fight and die for the illusion of a Communist utopia.
  Hamas proudly proclaims that "the Koran is our constitution, Jihad is our way, and death for the sake of God is our highest aspiration." Hamas leaders promise their followers not just rewards here on Earth but in the next world as well - a selling point neither Nazism nor Communism could offer. As a matter of religious conviction, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal cannot accept Israel's existence. Hamas believes every inch of Israel and, indeed, of any land ever ruled by Muslims is "an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day." A Muslim can fight to reclaim this endowment or he can fail to fulfill the obligations his faith imposes. To Hamas, there is no third way.

Removing a little of the hubris and the self-serving political narcissism from our midst at this time of year means not only ceremonially burning the bread with the crumbs but also recognizing puffed-up spent political leaders and placing their well-dressed hypocrisy on the garbage pile for immediate disposal.