09-Aug-22: Sbarro and Malki Roth remembered via JM in the AM

Nachum Segal doing his show [Image Source]

Coinciding with the twenty-first anniversary of the Hamas bombing attack on a Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria, Nachum Segal hosted Arnold Roth, father of Malki Roth who was one of the fifteen innocents murdered in the atrocity. Arnold took part by phone from Jerusalem.

They discussed Keren Malki (the Malki Foundation) and the ongoing efforts to get terrorist Ahlam Tamimi extradited from Jordan to the US to face federal charges and more. 

Nachum Segal, as recounted in Wikipedia, is an American radio disc jockey. He has hosted the program Jewish Moments in the Morning (commonly abbreviated as JM in the AM) since September 1983. 

Every morning from 6 to 9, Segal runs his show incorporating music, interviews, news reports and much more. The Nachum Segal Network has a number of different programs during the non-morning hours (schedule here). 

According to Wikipedia, Segal's advocacy for social causes and his longevity has propelled JM in the AM to be regarded as the radio program of record in the Jewish world. He is known for analyzing and probing issues from the perspective of the Jewish world. Influential members of the political world – from ambassadors to senators to Members of Knesset – have sought time on the air and joined Segal in the studio. JM in the AM has been called the "Voice of Klal Yisrael (The Whole of Israel)".

In early 2013 Segal expanded the show's reach with the launch of the Nachum Segal Network. In addition to carrying JM in the AM live, his network contains an archive of the shows available on demand, as well as airing other Jewish and Israel themed shows.

Click the button above to hear an audio record of the program.

21-Sep-20: Ten minutes and 40 seconds of drive-time attention on Israeli radio

Logo of KAN Israel Public Broadcasting Group

It's no secret that Israel's media - newspapers, mainstream radio and television - have given close to zero attention to the hunt for the Sbarro massacre architect Ahlam Tamimi and to our efforts to bring her to justice in the US.

Some weeks ago, through the friendly intervention of a respected figure who believes in our cause, the morning radio program of Kalman Liebskind and Asaf Liberman, one of the most-listened-to talk streams in Israel's culture today, invited Arnold Roth to join them for an on-air conversation.

We haven't translated this to English yet, for which we apologize. The program is mainstream Israeli, meaning it's of course in Hebrew. It went to air on June 24, 2020 on KAN Reshet Bet כאן רשת ב, the country's main talk-radio station.

ThisOngoingWar · 2020 06 24 Interview Kalman Liebeskind + Asaf Liberman כאן רשת ב

21-Jul-20: Hope via realpolitik and how did the line between good and evil get so blurred? [AUDIO]

Over at the The Land of Israel Network where they focus on "broadcasting the truth and beauty of the land of Israel and the Jewish people", Eve Harow has her own program, Rejuvenation.

Eve is an Israeli radio personality of some distinction as well as a public speaker and - when tourists are more plentiful than in today's challenged times - a much-in-demand licensed tour guide.

On July 20, 2020, Eve's "Rejuvenation" program hosted Arnold Roth under the title "Morality and Money". The money part relates to recent steps taken by the US legislature to 'encourage' a racalcitrant Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to finally, long after the US started requesting this, extradite the world's most wanted female fugitive, Ahlam Tamimi, to Washington.

Given the values exhibited by the Jordanians who, from the peak of their regimented and monarchical society to the most common of its people, embrace Tamimi as a hero, it's hard to know how the word "morality" got a mention.

These notes come from Eve's hosting page:

Arnold and Frimet Roth are at a critical juncture in their 19 year battle for justice. The terrorist who planned the murders of their daughter Malki and 14 others while wounding 130 at Jerusalem’s Sbarro’s pizza shop in August 2001, might now be extradited to the US from Jordan where she’s hailed as a hero. Arnold joins Eve to speak of hope via realpolitik, the disappointments and betrayals, pay for slay, the ongoing grief and the journey detailed here – thisongoingwar.blogspot.com How has the line between good and evil become so blurred? Can we help to redraw it?

Click below for the audio of the interview.

The Land of Israel · Rejuvenation: Morality and Money

Thanks for the opportunity, Eve. 

30-Nov-15: Radio that kills: silencing it

IDF forces raid the Al-Hurriyya radio station in Hebron
on November 21, 2015 [Image Source]

Unless you have been taking at face value those scurrilous news reports that focus exclusively on Palestinian victimhood in this violent times of stabbings and rammings and shootings, you will know that a disproportionate number of the terrorists/attackers in the current wave of lethal violence come from Hebron. An article by William Booth ["Hebron becomes the center of Palestinian violence", Washington Post, November 7, 2015] says

Israel and the Palestinian Authority see Hebron as a center of influence for the militant movement Hamas in the West Bank. Hamas has been egging on violent resistance on its Web sites and via the media but has been careful not to have its leaders at the forefront. There have been more than 20 Palestinian attacks in Hebron center over the past three weeks.

He might have added (though he didn't) that a steady stream of young men and women from Hebron have fanned out throughout Israel to carry out vicious terrorist attacks on, mainly, Israeli civilians. Many of these attackers were killed by alert Israeli security.

Israel's security authorities have noticed. And one of the ways they are responding is to seek out and silence Hebron's incitement to kill. There's no shortage of it in Hebron. And it's not that hard to locate.

One of the most potent outlets for the hateful, murderous anti-Jewish messaging is local radio. Hebron has several radio stations. Three of them have been forcibly shut down by IDF action in the past month. A Palestinian Arab source says there are"90 local radio stations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as 18 TV stations". Those numbers are substantially larger than the numbers of Israeli radio and TV outlets.

Nominally under the control of Fatah/PLO and the Palestinian
Authority, the dominant presence of Hamas in Hebron is an
open secret. This image shows a Hamas rally in the city during
2013 [Image Source] 

Advocates for the Palestinian Arab right to kill and maim in the name of "resistance" - and there's no shortage of those either - are currently engaged in a full court press to paint Israel's suppression of the incitement to kill innocent civilians as an attack on democracy, a curtailing of free speech, the heavy hand of occupation and similar such familiar refrains.

Here's a sample of how some of the darker corners of the news reporting industry and the social media have depicted the recent silencing of Hebron-based incitement to kill:

• Headline: "Israel wants to muzzle the Palestinian media" [Ennahar Online, Algeria | November 29, 2015]
• Ayman Qawasma, chairman of [a] local council, sees the closure as a part of Israel's escalating violations against Palestinian media and journalists. Qawasama told local press that “we didn’t incite, we just reported Israeli daily crimes against our people in Hebron.” He added: “they want to silence our voice.” [Alternative News, November 4, 2015]
• “The Israeli occupation forces have been providing a mountain of lies regarding the execution of Palestinians in claimed foiled attempted stabbings and Al Hurriyah radio station has been digging down for the truth. There has been nothing more devastating to the Israeli structure of lies than the revelation of the truth,” said the radio’s statement. “Our radio station has actively participated in showing yet again the ugly face of the Israeli occupation, especially in the flashpoint of the city of Hebron... We will not adhere to the Israeli military order and our broadcast will go just normally as if nothing had happened,” read the statement. ["Israeli shuts down a radio station in Hebron", Gulf News, November 3, 2015]
• ...The director of of Dream Radio station, Talab Al-Jaabri, stated that the Israeli occupation forces stormed the station, destroying equipment and damaging offices... Earlier this month, the Israeli occupation army shut down Radio Hebron and Al-Hurriya, two other Palestinian radio stations which have been accused of broadcasting anti-Israel content. ["Third Palestinian radio station closed by the IOF", Palestine News Network, November 9, 2015]

The reality is that Israel and Israelis are more than used to the "anti-Israel content" that emanates daily from a multitude of Palestinian Arab sources. The shutting of the Hebron radio stations is an attempt to address something much more harmful and life-threatening... to both sides.

Palestinian Media Watch, which monitors the media messaging from Palestinian Arab sources, published a translation into English today of several overt calls to murder and to the renewal of what it calls suicide bombings (we think human bomb attacks is a more accurate term) broadcast in recent weeks by Radio Hebron:

First a song:

"Blow up the executor's [Israel's] innards
Bring back the period of martyrdom-seeking (i.e., suicide bombing)
Rise and strap yourself with bombs."

Next, an announcer's intro to another kill-a-Jew song [audible here]: 

"[Hebron] sacrificed a martyr several days ago in the popular uprising, and now it sacrifices another martyr, according to initial reports."
Song: "Blow up the executor's innards, bring back the period of martyrdom-seeking (Istish'had, i.e., suicide bombings), rise and strap yourself with bombs"
Announcer: "Two more martyrs (shahids) today are watering the soil of the Hebron district with their blood"
Song: "Write in dripping blood: death to Israel! Write in dripping blood: Death to Israel!"
[Radio Hebron Station, Oct. 29, 2015]

Another blood-curdling song:

"Load your machine gun and advance, son of proud Jerusalem
Gird yourself with flames and capture the soldiers
Load your machine gun and advance, son of proud Jerusalem
Gird yourself with flames and capture the soldiers
Open fire, have no mercy, shoot the Zionists!
Advance with your men, O keffiyeh-masked one!"
[Radio Hebron station, Nov. 19, 2015]

Referring to incitement-to-kill of this kind as "anti-Israel content" is disingenuous at minimum, and white-washes a process that has cost the lives of Hebron residents, as well as their Israeli victims. Reporting the claims of Palestinian Arab propagandists in a straight-faced manner as if the facts were documented and beyond controversy makes the media channels that engage in this kind of thing complicit.

04-Aug-15: Remembering, Acting, Caring [AUDIO]

Over at Voice of Israel, a popular on-line radio channel broadcasting from our nation's capital, Judy Lash Balint hosts a daily program called Jerusalem Diaries.

Her guest in today's program was Arnold Roth, speaking on the 14th anniversary - according to the Hebrew calendar - of his daughter's murder in a Hamas terror attack in the center of Jerusalem:

VOI's Judy Lash Balint is joined by Arnold Roth, father of Malki,15, killed in the Sbarro pizzeria terror attack in Jerusalem exactly 14 years ago. Roth decries the fact that the female terrorist who planned the attack was released in 2011, in exchange for the freedom of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. He has spent the past 14 years speaking out against appeasing terrorism, while commemorating his daughter’s memory through the activities of Keren Malki, a non-profit organization that helps families to care for their special-needs kids at home. He says Malki was dedicated to bringing happiness and support to disabled kids, particularly her own younger sister... [Voice of Israel's Jerusalem Diaries page]

Click here to go to Voice of Israel's audio-on-demand page. The interview runs about 25 minutes.

For some of our reflections on the process leading up to the Shalit Deal and its ghastly consequences, see "20-Jul-15: Pausing for a moment to reflect on when we lost our collective senses".

27-Jul-06: Israel aialogue on Australian radio

We took part earlier today in a round-table discussion on the current situation on Australia's ABC National Radio. The program is called Late Night Live with Phillip Adams, and it's now available for audio-streaming. Here are the details, copied from the program's website

Israel Dialogue 

[ Listen Now ] A conversation about Israel with three Israelis who are indicative of the immigrant nation, and whose range of views is broadly representative of the breadth of public opinion in Israel.

At the moment there's very strong public support within Israel for the military assault against Hezbollah in Lebanon - various polls in Israel have put it at up to 95%, although the latest newspaper poll has it at 82%. There is a widely held conviction amongst Israelis that if they don't defend themselves, they're dead. 

So did Israel have a choice? And what are the choices facing the nation in the foreseeable future? Is a lasting peace with its neighbours out of the question?

Guests

• Isabel Kershner: Associate Editor at the Jerusalem Report; author of "Barrier: The seam of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict".
• Arnold Roth: Lawyer; father of Malki, who was killed in a suicide attack in Jerusalem; he is a passionate advocate for the victims of terrorism in Israel.
• Naomi Chazan: Professor of political science at Hebrew University; former senior member of the Israeli parliament - the Knesset - from 1992-2003; actively involved in Middle East peace negotiations for 30 years.