07-Jun-21: Kill some Jews, earn your family a new home

Image Sourc: Times of Israel

We're thinking back to the string of Arab-on-Israeli knifing attacks that embittered so many lives in this part of the world five/six years ago.

One of those, known as the Lions Gate stabbings was a murderous attack on Aaron and Odell Benita (also reported as Bennett) and their two small children in strollers. They were on their way to the Kotel - the Western Wall - to pray. 

We wrote about the awful events more or less in real time for our blog: "03-Oct-15: Arab violence escalates in Jerusalem: Multiple stabbings in Old City tonight". 

In its coverage, the New York Times ["Survivor of Jerusalem Stabbing Recounts Attack on Her Family"] quoted the young mother and wife describing how she was:

running down an alley in the Old City of Jerusalem with a knife stuck in the base of her neck, desperately seeking help. And most vividly, she described the cruel and mocking reactions she said she met from shopkeepers and passers-by. “I screamed, I begged for aid,” Mrs. Bennett, 22, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish mother of two, said in an interview on Tuesday from her hospital bed, where she was recovering from multiple stab wounds. “They stood chatting and laughing — they spat at me,” she said of the Palestinians in the alley. One man continued drinking cola out of a can, she said; others shook her off when she tried to hold onto them to lift herself off the ground. “I was looking for one glimmer of mercy in their eyes,” she said in a weak voice.

Horrifying. Almost beyond belief. There was no mercy to be found there that day.

The assailant was a kid of nineteen who was shot dead in the act by fast-moving - though not fast enough - Israeli security personnel. That knifer ands his family have gotten an obscene amount of sympathy, attention and money in the years that have passed. 

The two Israeli men who were killed Saturday evening in a terror attack in Jerusalem’s Old City were named by police as Nehemia Lavi, 41, and Aharon Banita, 22. The two died of their wounds shortly after being stabbed in Jerusalem’s Old City by a Palestinian terrorist. Banita’s wife was in serious condition and their two-year-old baby was lightly wounded. She was taken to Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem and was undergoing surgery. The toddler was taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center for treatment where he remained in stable condition. Lavi, a Jerusalem resident, leaves behind a wife and seven children. A rabbi at the Old City’s Ateret Cohanim yeshiva who lived nearby, he had rushed to the scene when he heard screaming in the street. [Times of Israel, October 3, 2015]

* * *

There's news today of what happened after those tragic, savage events: 

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday ordered that the family of a Palestinian terrorist who murdered two Israelis be paid more than $40,000 and be given new housing, the Kan public broadcaster reported.

Ramallah Governor Laila Ghannam, an Abbas appointee, met with the family of Muhannad Halabi and gave them some 30,000 Jordanian Dinars  ($42,000), reportedly to help them cover housing costs since their home was destroyed by the IDF following the killings, Kan said.

Ghannam also told the family that Abbas had instructed his security services to help them find permanent housing. Home demolitions are a controversial policy that the IDF says helps deter future terror attacks.

The payments are the first high-profile payments to terrorist families since the Biden administration took office, despite claims that the Palestinians were willing to rethink the controversial policy as part of an effort to improve relations with Washington.

Halabi killed two Israelis, Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi and Aharon Banita, and injured Banita’s wife, Adele, and their 2-year-old son in a stabbing attack in the Old City of Jerusalem on October 3, 2015.

[Source: "Palestinian Authority pays $42,000 to family of terrorist who killed 2 Israelis", Times of Israel, June 7, 2021]

Knifing victims Lavi and Banita of blessed memory [Image Source]

Palestinian Media Watch, in a bulletin issued today, adds this dimension. 

The murderer’s sister claims that a sum of 130,000 Jordanian dinars (about US$183,359) was donated at some point to the murderer’s family. This munificent gift put them in a position to acquire a replacement home. 

But this being the Palestinian Authority, after various 'deductions' (evidently to benefit other worthy "martyrs") had been applied to the cash, what they received was a mere 100,000 dinars - not enough to complete the purchase. 

The vendors - the Arab owners selling the home but not yet paid - to the Muhannad Halabi's bereaved family sued to enforce the contract of sale, putting the Halabi people into a squeeze. 

At that point, renowned philanthropist and generous-hearted arch-terrorist Mahmoud Abbas, president-for-life of the Palestinian Authority, stepped up and provided the bridge funding in the form of a gift of 30,000 dinars. That allowed the murderer's family to complete the purchase and for the incentive to fresh acts of murder to be publicized to a willing audience of Palestinian Arabs who gobble up just this sort of sociopathic gesture. 

(The source for the narrative quoted by PMW is material broadcast on the ”Gaza” YouTube channel on May 29, 2021.)

* * *

This isn't the first time the despotic Palestinian Authority has honored the memory of that same cherished murdering knifer. Nearly six years ago, we wrote here ["28-Oct-15: The Pal Arab passion for knife attacks isn't just for social media: they sincerely mean to kill"] that

As the Jerusalem Post reports, the Palestinian Authority controlled by Mahmoud Abbas has just decided to honor Muhannad Halabi [the thug whose family has just been awarded the astronomical sum we reported above] by naming a street after him. Halabi is the 19-year-old murderer of two Jews killed close to the Old City's Lion's Gate on October 3, 2015 in a stabbing and shooting "operation" that took the lives of Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi and Aharon Benita and seriously injured Benita’s wife, Adele, and their two-year-old son.

The assailant was shot dead by police at the scene. Palestinian Media Watch reported several days ago that the Palestinian Bar Association has already grotesquely bestowed an honorary law degree on the deceased stabber/shooter/attacker. Now the municipality of Surda/Abu Qash, in the suburbs of Ramallah, will name a street for him "to emphasize the national role played by Palestinian municipalities."

It's also not the first time "Ramallah Governor Laila Ghannam", who handed the Pay to Slay prize to the killer's family, has played a key role in the nurturing of fresh, young killers in Palestinian Arab society. 

We wrote about her eight years ago ["14-Jun-13: When the murderers go free, what does it really do to you?"]

The despicable Abdullah Barghouti, convicted on 67 separate counts of murder, was honoured first by means of an official “solidarity” visit to his family’s home. The PA Minister of Prisoners' Affairs, Issa Karake, led the honour parade, accompanied the District Governor of Ramallah, Laila Ghannam. Then the PA’s tightly controlled official television channel arrived and recorded a video homage to Barghouti, including interviews with proud family members.

Here's how this disgraceful terror-embracing public official is profiled on a European Union website:

Dr. Laila Ghannam (ليلى غنام) has been the governor of Ramallah and al-Bireh since 2014. From 2008 until 2014 she was member of Fatah’s leadership committee for the governorate. Ghannam was previously a lecturer at al-Quds University (Abu Dis) and chairwoman of the Wattan Center for Women between 2005 and 2007.

About the despicable Kuwaiti mass-murderer Barghouti who remains imprisoned for now and who made the exploding guitar case that destroyed the Sbarro pizzeria where our child was murdered in August 2001, see "21-Jun-13: In dark corners, remorseless killer of 66 innocents is called 'administrative detainee' and 'captive'" and "01-Jul-13: 66 acts of murder make him a hero in parts of the Arab world. What does this tell us about parts of the Arab world?"

* * *

Don't let anyone tell you differently: money is a key enabler in the Palestinian Arab descent into the horrors exemplified by what Abbas. Ghannam and the now-deceased knifer Halabi did. 

The Mahmoud Abbas regime can't function without massive doses of aid. Abbas can't function, his Pay to Slay scheme can't function, Ghannam's municipality can't function, the parents of Halabi can't function. That flow of foreign gifts - cash in the billions of dollars each year - is what allows the scandalous failed PA regime to keep the lights on.

Who pays? We're preparing a blog post that reviews the cast of givers (there's some data here) but of one thing we can be certain and so should you: If you pay taxes in a European Union country, in the United States, in the United Kingdom, you are certainly part of the problem even if you don't realize it yet. 

17-Oct-19: At dawn today, a thwarted Arab-on-Israeli vehicle-ramming-and-knifing attack

The attack vehicle driven by a 20 year old
Palestinian Arab [Image Source]

In another Arab-on-Israel vehicle ramming attack around dawn this morning (Thursday) on the outskirts of Ramallah, a vehicle driven by a Palestinian Arab drove directly at police officers in an attempt to run them over. Haaretz says the officers were in plain clothes and their car was unmarked.

The resulting impact significantly damaged the police vehicle. The attack car was too (see right).

The officers realized almost immediately that their attacker was clutching what a news report ["Palestinian attempts ramming attack against Border Police", Jerusalem Post, October 17, 2019] calls "a suspicious object". This turned out to be knife.

Israelis have visceral reactions these days to rampaging Arabs with knives in their hands. They promptly directed live fire at their attacker who, we now know, is a resident of eastern Jerusalem said to be twenty years old.

His injuries are currently being tended to in Jerusalem's Shaarei Zedek Medical Center hospital. He is reportedly alive and in serious condition.

Al-Amari, called a refugee camp for the past seventy years [Image Source]

Rioting ensued soon after the attack, with rocks and Molotov cocktails (firebombs) being hurled at Israeli security officials, who "responded with riot control measures" in the words of the Jerusalem Post report.

The violence took place in the al-Amari "refugee camp" which is today under full Palestinian Authority control. It houses about 5,000 Palestinian Arabs and has existed since 1949.

The Arab version of what happened according to the alquds.com Arabic-language news site includes a car and a shooting. But no ramming and no knife:

An eyewitness said the driver of the vehicle was surprised by the presence of army patrols which led to a collision with one of the military jeeps. The soldiers fired three shots at the driver who was seriously injured and was taken by ambulance while the soldiers arrested a second young man beside him after forcing him to undress and undergo a search.

Ronen Lubarsky, 20, a soldier in the elite IDF Duvdevan Unit, was struck on the head during an operation to arrest suspected terrorists in the same al-Amari neighborhood on May 24, 2018 [Times of Israel, May 28, 2018]. A heavy slab of granite hurled from a third-story rooftop struck the young soldier who was hospitalized in critical condition at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem’s intensive care unit. He died some days later. A Palestinian Arab, Islam Yusef Abu Hamid, was subsequently charged with his death and convicted in April 2019.

04-Mar-19: Pre-dawn vehicle ramming attack on Israelis north of Ramallah

There has been yet another vehicle-ramming attack on Israelis this morning (Monday). According to a breaking Times of Israel report [here], a vehicle in which three persons were traveling was the weapon by which an attack was launched on Israeli security personnel before dawn today near an Arab village it names as N'ima.

Two injured Israelis were evacuated from the scene by helicopter and ambulance for emergency medical care at, we believe, Tel Hashomer Medical Center. One is said to be an IDF soldier whom it describes as being seriously inured. A member of the Border Guard (Mishmar Hagvul in Hebrew) is said to be lightly hurt.

Two of the attack-vehicle's three occupants are said to have been killing and a third wounded. The report quotes an IDF statement “from an initial investigation it appears to be a (terror) attack.”

A Hebrew-language social media report says the overnight attack at about 3:30 this morning in the Binyamin region was at Talmon/Dolev Junction which is about half way between the Israeli community of Dolev and an Arab village (of some 3,500 people) called Kafr Ni'ma (ניעמה) located about 13 km north-west of Ramallah. The less-injured service member is reported by first responders to be about 19. The more seriously-injured soldier is said, in an IDF statement [here], to be an officer. Haaretz says he's in his early twenties and in critical condition after being run-over. No names yet.

A Ynet report adds:

"The troops had stopped their vehicle at the roadside at night—Israeli media reported it had broken down—and were deliberately struck, the military said."

From the Palestinian Arab side, an Arabic language tweet at about 9:00 am Monday from the SAFA Palestinian Press Agency [here] quotes the PA's Ministry of Health about what it calls

"the martyrdom of two citizens and the wounding of a third after the occupation shot them near the village of Kafr Nehmeh west of the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, and no information until the moment about the identity of the martyrs and the injured."

("Occupied" Ramallah is where the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority has its capital. Fatah and Hamas are deadly rivals. SAFA, based in the Gaza Strip, used to operate a Facebook page but this was shut down by Facebook about a year ago.)

01-Jan-18: Another reason we call it the catastrophic Shalit Deal

Sasson Nuriel, tortured and murdered in 2005 by Hamas
terrorists. One of them is now in Israeli custody,
suspected of having launched a
post-Shalit-Deal terror gang that was intercepted by Israel
in November. [Image Source: AP]

Another set of revelations from Israel's security establishment points today to yet another of the 1,027 beneficiaries of the 2011 Shalit Deal having been at the center of Arab-on-Israeli terror. This time, the terrorism was thwarted in time.

Israel National News reports ["Terrorist freed in 'Shalit deal' planned terror attack", January 1, 2018] that the leader of a recently captured gang of 17 Hamas terrorists had been in an Israeli prison up until October 2011 after having been convicted of involvement in the kidnapping and murder of an Israeli, Sasson Nuriel, in 2005. (We started this blog about a year after that.)

A moment about the victim: Sasson Nuriel manufactured candies in the Mishor Adumim industrial zone on Jerusalem's eastern edge until his business got into financial difficulties. Needing to support a wife and three children, he closed the company and went to work for Maya, a spice manufacturer with premises in the same industrial park. On September 21, 2005, he left the factory to go out and buy chocolate. When he failed to return, his family called the police. Through an intelligence lead, they learned he had been kidnapped by a Hamas terror cell.

Shalit Deal: Armed Hamas terrorists watch as a bus carrying freshly-released
Palestinian Arab prisoners arrives at Rafah Crossing, southern
Gaza Strip, October 18, 2011 [Image Source: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash 90]

It eventually emerged that its members included two Palestinian Arabs who had worked for Nuriel in his candy business. On behalf of Hamas, they had lured him to a-Ram, an Arab village on Jerusalem's north side, by making up a story. A BBC report at the time said

Palestinian militant group Hamas has released a video of a bound and blindfolded Israeli businessman it says it kidnapped and later killed. The body of 51-year-old Sasson Nuriel, who vanished last week, was found near Ramallah in the West Bank on Monday. Hamas said it had planned to trade him for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, but decided to kill him after Israel began raids in the West Bank.

Israeli sources said his abductors brought Nuriel at gunpoint to Beitunia, a village under PA control and west of Ramallah. There they stabbed him to death, throwing his body into a garbage dump before claiming responsibility in Hamas' name. The dead man was 51.

Abdallah Arar, the man behind the Hamas 

cell busted six weeks ago by the Shin Bet,
and another Shalit Deal graduate 

[Image Source]

This week's revelation via a Shabak (Israel Security Agency, or Shin Bet) media release [reported here] is that the key person behind the Hamas terror cell discovered during November 2017 is Abdallah Arar. He had been part of that Hamas gang that murdered Sasson Nuriel in 2005. For the record, the Jerusalem Post says today that the gang consisted of five members.

Arar was deported to the Gaza Strip in the 2011 Shalit Deal. (Our daughter's murderer, Ahlam Tamimi, walked free in the same transaction.) Like so many other terrorists who were released at that time, he promptly went back to doing more terror.

The investigation into the cell and Arar's involvement is "currently being handled by the military prosecution, which is examining the investigation's findings prior to filing an indictment", according to the INN report.

06-Apr-17: An Arab-on-Israeli vehicle ramming attack north of Jerusalem this morning

At the scene, near Ofra, this morning
[Image Source]

There has been another Arab-on-Israeli vehicle-ramming attack this morning (Thursday). Two young Israelis, standing on a sidewalk on Route 60, a major north-south highway, at Ofra Junction near Ramallah were struck when a driver steered his car deliberately into them with considerable force in what the IDF, quoted by Times of Israel, is identifying as a terror attack.

From the Magen David Adom ambulance service, it's reported that both Israelis are injured, one critically. The BBC says

Witnesses told Israeli media that the car approached a bus stop at the Ofra junction, on the Route 60 highway north-east of Ramallah, and then accelerated towards the two Israelis waiting there. In late 2015 and 2016, such attacks by Palestinians or Israeli Arabs happened with near-daily frequency but the rate has dropped in recent months. [BBC News, today]

The driver of the vehicle was “neutralized” on the spot according to the ambulance officials. Social media sources (in Hebrew) suggest the attacker was injured, not killed, inside his car.

The injuries to at least one of the victims sound very serious. The site of the attack looks (in the photo on the right) to be a bus stop.

Ofra, an Israeli community located some 8 kilometers south of biblical-and-modern Shiloh, was re-established in 1975 on the ruins of a Jordanian army base which had occupied the area since the war of 1948. Today it is home to about 4,000 Israelis.

UPDATE Thursday April 6, 2017 at 10:40 am: It's reported, tragically, that one of the two young Israeli victims has died of his injuries. The other is currently getting emergency treatment at Hadassah Mt Scopus hospital. The Arab driver, not dead though probably shot, is in the hands of the IDF. The Palestinian Arab mouthpiece, Ma'an News Agency, in its English-language news report calls the attack "alleged" as it usually does. Ma'an's Arabic language edition is less coy (as it usually is), quoting Hamas sources who have congratulated the attacker for his "achievement".

UPDATE Thursday April 6, 2017 at 1:45 pm: Times of Israel, quoting the IDF, says the young man murdered by the attack-driver this morning is Elhai Tahar-Lev, 20, from Talmon, may his memory be for a blessing. His father is a prominent and highly regarded rabbi in the Tzohar and Midreshet Lindenbaum communities. May the A-mighty help them deal with the difficult grieving ahead.

26-Jan-17: A Wednesday night Arab-on-Israeli shooting attack

The caption from this March 9, 2016 news photo
says these are "Guns used by two
Palestinians who carried out a shooting attack...
(Israel Police)"

Shortly after Wednesday night's vehicle-borne assault on Israelis standing at a bus-stop just outside northern Jerusalem [our post], a second murderous attack occurred in the same general area. Fortunately the outcome involved no serious injuries to those who were attacked.

From the Times of Israel report:

A Palestinian man opened fire at Israeli troops from a moving car in the central West Bank on Wednesday night, the army said. The soldiers fired back, and injured him. No soldiers were injured in the attack, which took place outside the village of Aboud, northwest of Ramallah. The Palestinian gunman received medical treatment on the scene, the army said. Inside the vehicle, the soldiers found a Carlo-style submachine gun, a makeshift weapon that is prevalent in the West Bank and in the Israeli underworld.

Here's some background about that submachine gun:

...One of the most notable symbols to emerge from six months of Palestinian attacks in Israel and the West Bank has been the “Carlo,” otherwise known as the Carl Gustav submachine gun. The homemade or craft-produced rudimentary automatic weapon has been used in the majority of shooting attacks on Israeli civilians and security personnel. It’s not accurate and it has a limited range, but it’s cheap and more than powerful enough to cause mayhem and death — and it’s nearly impossible to prevent its production... “There has been an expanded effort to seize illegal weapons that pose a concrete and lethal threat to Israeli civilians and security forces,” an army spokesperson said. But nothing has been done so far to seriously curb the creation and proliferation of these homemade guns. While some more advanced rifles and firearms require specialized tools, the Carlo has remained so popular because of how little machinery and technical know-how is required to produce it, according to N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services (ARES), a specialized technical intelligence consultancy. A drill press, some welding equipment and blueprints from the internet are all that’s needed to create one of these potentially devastating weapons, a fact that presents a real challenge for Israel and countries around the world that are trying to prevent such guns from winding up in the hands of terrorists and criminals...  The Carlo, as it is known, derives its name from the Carl Gustav m/45 submachine gun, a design that was adopted by the Swedish army in 1945 and later licensed to Egypt, where units were sold under the names Port Said and Akaba, according to a forthcoming report... ["Say hello to ‘Carlo,’ the cheap, lethal go-to gun for terrorists", Times of Israel, March 16, 2016]

For a change, the Ma'an News Agency report eschews the use of "alleged" in its report of last night's terrorist attack, but calls what happened "an exchange of fire" between "Israeli forces" and a "Palestinian".

There's also a timely reminder of the ongoing nature of attacks like last night's in this brief report from Israel National News:

The Israel Defense Forces, Shabak Israel Security Agency and police carried out a widespread operation, Wednesday evening in Hevron, to seize a weapons factory in Hevron. The factory contained eight lathes for making weapons, which were dismantled. The operation was part of an ongoing campaign of nightly operations against weapons factories in Judea.

No one's suggesting this is the last or only Palestinian Arab gun-making workshop. More power to the IDF, the Shin Bet and the men and women of the Israel Police in their ever-vigilant efforts.

13-Dec-16: Qalandiya and another vehicle-ramming attack on Israelis

Moments after the attack at Qalandiya, the assailant's vehicle is in the center
of this photo [Via social media]

Times of Israel, quoting the Israel Police, reports that a Palestinian Arab woman attempted a vehicle-ramming attack on Israeli security personnel manning the Qalandiya crossing on Jerusalem's northern edge, near Ramallah, early this afternoon.

Police say she approached the crossing at high speed in her vehicle and troops forced her to stop. She then got out of her vehicle with a knife. Guards at the checkpoint subdued and arrested her, police say. There are no injuries... [Times of Israel, today]

The attack evidently happened around 1:45 pm this afternoon (Tuesday). Israel National News adds that

Witnesses report the terrorist shouted “Allah Akbar” while charging soldiers.

An initial Ynet bulletin says "She was shot and neutralized before being able to harm anyone." But a slightly later Ynet report makes no mention of any shooting:

The woman sped towards the security forces stationed at the checkpoint, prompting them to begin the arrest procedure by firing into the air. This caused the woman to stop the car, exit it wielding a knife, and call out "Allahu Akbar." Security forces overpowered her and arrested her. She was unharmed... [Ynet, today]

In characteristic fashion, the Palestinian Arab news channel Ma'an describes what happened as being an Israeli response to a woman "allegedly attempting to run over Israeli forces stationed there". Arab-on-Israeli attacks by Palestinian Arabs are invariably "alleged" in the Ma'an lexicon.

27-Oct-16: Who put those knives into the hands of these two little Palestinian Arab boys?

Children and their pure blood: It's a deeply offensive theme that runs strongly
through the messages PA president Abbas delivers to his people.
Why is no one other than advocates for Israel outraged by this? [Image Source]

The Times of Israel reported late last night (Wednesday) on fresh evidence, if any were needed, of how Palestinian Arab society appears to have hit bottom and continues to dig down:

Two Palestinian children carrying knives were detained outside a West Bank settlement, south of Jerusalem, on Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces said. “A short while ago forces identified and apprehended two Palestinian children under the age of ten near the community of Migdal Oz,” the army said. “During the initial questioning the children admitted to have been sent, armed with knives, in order to carry out a terror attack.” The two were spotted near the security fence. IDF spokesperson Peter Lerner said the pair were just eight years old... ["Palestinian kids, 8, detained with knives outside settlement", Times of Israel, October 26, 2016]

That's no typo. The two attackers armed with knives, intending to execute a terror attack, are eight years old. 

Photos of the two knives seized from the children are published in this morning's news. We did a Google image search of that image a few minutes ago; it appears, not so surprisingly, that interest in those weapons of murder and the children from whom they were taken, is limited at this point to the Israeli media. 

Not surprisingly, the Palestinian Arab news channel Ma'an has nothing about it in English at this hour (it's 9:30 am). But their Arabic site does have a brief report here; while it offers no reflections, analysis or commentary on what armed 8 year olds stand for in the larger view of things, it does include IDF security cam footage of the two children making their way in the dark to the outskirts of Migdal Oz.

(Migdal Oz is a kibbutz of some 500 residents, one of the 22 communities that comprise Gush Etzion, the Etzion Bloc, located some 15 minutes drive south of the capital, Jerusalem.)

[UPDATE October 29, 2016: Ynet reports the two little children are from Beit Fajjar. That's a town of some 12,000 people located a few kilometers south of Bethlehem in the area controlled by the PA, and a place with a well-deserved reputation for Arab-on-Israeli violence. It's featured in several of our past posts. Ynet: "During questioning, the children said an adult man gave them the knives and told them to carry out an attack. They were transferred to Palestinian police." We're not certain but we think Ynet is saying the PA now have control of the children. Will we hear any more about this?]

The stunning phenomenon of sub-teen children engaging in actual lethal attacks on Israelis, generally stabbing/slashing attacks, is not new. Nor is the sight of babies, toddlers and little children posing for photographs while equipped - presumably by their parents or guardians or teachers or commanding officers - with killing tools.

There is no way of avoiding the reality that large swathes of Palestinian Arab society are in the thrall of a passionate embrace of vicious bigotry, murderous savagery and explicit incitement of their own children and grandchildren to murder and to be killed.

Two outside actors deserve a special mention in this grotesquerie:

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

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

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

Here's an example that has gotten plenty of airing in Israel-friendly channels but much less by the mainstream news reporting industry. It depicts "moderate" Abbas last year speaking in a video [translated from Arabic by Palestinian Media Watch and featured in this post of ours: "13-Oct-15: A bloody day and the malevolence behind it"]:

"We bless you [referring to those carrying out Ribat, the pursuit of religious conflict and/or war to protect land claimed to be Islamic], we bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing. Every martyr (shahid) will reach paradise, and everyone wounded will be rewarded by Allah. The Al-Aqsa [mosque] is ours, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is ours, and they [the Israelis, the Jews] have no right to defile them with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem." [PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, September 16, 2015]

Yes: Every drop of blood. Simple language. So simple, a child could understand it.

Now (as we wrote a year ago) if you were a callow teenage boy or girl of 13, 14, 15, and getting bombarded in the mosque and at school and on the street where you hang with your friends, always, always about Jerusalem and its sacred state - and then the president comes along and promises you paradise and a reward from Heaven, and a free pass to do whatever harm to the Jews that you can imagine, wouldn't your mother's largest kitchen knife be the very next thing you go looking for?

If any of Abbas adviser's are reading this, and want to deny the claim, they're invited to please send us written evidence of the PA president's calls to his people to stop their blood-lusting violence, their overt and cold-blooded weaponization of their society's children, and their hunting for defenceless, civilian Israelis at bus stops, tram stops and shopping precincts.

For Europeans reading this - congratulations! None of this could have happened without the tax money you pay to your governments who in turn send millions of Euros to Ramallah to enable Abbas and his henchmen to get away with murder. Click on "Rewards for Terror" to learn more.

Finally, with fresh thoughts in our minds of a pair of eight-year boys in the hands of police, and thinking back to an earlier blog post ["15-Jul-16: Abbas, who praises vehicle rammers to the sky, has just (yes) condemned the French savagery"], here's a reflection on the leader of the depraved clique that stands at the heart of these awful events, and on those who ought to be exposing this sickness but aren't:

Abbas is no moderate. He's not a moderate liar. He is not even a moderate kleptocrat. He formulates his views carefully and in odious ways that are frequently fig-leafed by a compliant media concerned that the man's true views and actions might accidentally get better known outside the fellowship of Pal Arab advocates. In fact, as we see it, the only thing more loathsome than this man's actions - and especially his incitement to murderous stabbings, to vehicle rammings, to shootings and their impact on the lives lived by ordinary people in this part of the world - is the stunning ignorance of reporters and their editors. With the journalistic equivalent of a straight face, they manage to publish transparent nonsense like this afternoon's Abbas "condemnation" without falling off their stools laughing or becoming paralytic with embarrassment.

And one additional request. Please share this item we wrote at the start of the year: "09-Feb-16: The unthinkable things Palestinian Arab society wants for and from its children"

01-Sep-16: Yet another young Palestinian Arab woman's dreams of glory-by-stabbing are thwarted this evening in north Jerusalem

Tonight's attempted stabbing at Qalandiya as reported
by a Palestinian Arab news site

Food for thought for those who claim Israel's security checkpoints are superfluous and exist merely to harass.

Alert Israeli security personnel apprehended a young Palestinian Arab woman of about 21 around 9 o'clock this evening (Thursday) as she sought to walk through the busy Qalandiya Checkpoint on the main road between Jerusalem and the PA administrative capital, Ramallah.

Israel's Channel 2 news this evening, quoted by Times of Israel, said she was from Al-Azariya and that she admitted to the security people that she was intending to carry out a terrorist attack. A knife was found concealed in her clothes or bag.

Another knifing attack was thwarted at the same location just this past Saturday afternoon [report] when a different young Palestinian Arab woman, also in her twenties, was stopped by security personnel and found to be carrying a knife in her bag.

And a month before that, again at Qalandiya, yet another young Palestinian Arab woman, this time just 18, was shot in the leg by Israeli security people as she rushed towards them, armed with a knife, and tried to stab them. In that July 26, 2016 intercept [report], the assailant was left with light injuries and treated at the scene by an ambulance crew from Magen David Adom before being removed from the scene to assist the authorities in their enquiries.

The Qalandiya crossover is on the edge of the once-busy industrial zone of Atarot, on the northern edge of Jerusalem. Apart from previous terror attacks of which there have been many [links], it's been in the news recently because of plans announced by an Israeli supermarket entrepreneur, Rami Levy, to erect the first "Israeli-Palestinian mall" [see this backgrounder from June 28, 2016]:

Levy’s company has been working hard to make sure the stores will reflect the local population, including finding Palestinian retailers and private shops to rent storefronts. Currently, most of the Palestinian stores that have reserved space are food suppliers, including the well-known Palestinian bakery Sinokrot. Another possible store will be the famous Zalatimo candy store. At one point, Levy had reeled one of the biggest Palestinian wholesalers of electronics, but after the deal was made, the potential client got cold feet. “There are many who are not afraid. I have rented to many Palestinians. I don’t know exactly happened, but he became scared for political reasons.” [Times of Israel, June 28, 2016]

Al-Azariya, a hard-scrabble Jerusalem village which figures in Biblical accounts under another name - Bethany - has produced a string of Palestinian Arab terror attackers in the past couple of years. One such attack, by a 16 year old boy from that village on December 3, 2014, was directed at... customers at another branch of the Rami Levy supermarket chain [see "03-Dec-14: Stabbing attack inside an Israeli supermarket", and "4-Dec-14: Knifing attack on shoppers in an Israeli supermarket: the aftermath".

25-May-16: Wall-to-wall agreement at last: The Pal Arab kleptocrats and the devastation they wreak

Luxury and privilege in Ramallah's so-called "diplomatic
compound", reserved for PA insiders. The AP caption reads: "The
gated community of villas with well-tended flower gardens... may help
explain why Palestinians almost universally believe there is
corruption in the government of President Mahmoud
Abbas. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)"

One of the open-secrets about the seemingly-never-ending nature of violent Palestinian Arab hatred of Israel, Israelis and Jews is the sustaining role played by money and power.

That's one of the reasons we mention often how the Palestinian Arabs live in a society ruled by kleptocrats - those aggressive and powerful Abbas/Arafat regime insiders whose well-being and wealth depend on keeping the flames of hatred going and their fellow-citizens under their heels.

Yesterday (Tuesday), Associated Press syndicated a somewhat rare look at what the ordinary folk think of their Palestinian Authority overlords, and how that translates into action.

The original AP version of the article (under the headline "In tough times, most Palestinians view government as corrupt", Karin Laub and Mohammed Daraghmeh, May 24, 2016) is archived here.

But about the headline: is it fair and accurate to say "most" when the proportion of Palestinian Arabs convinced of their governing regime's corruption is almost 96% according to the data quoted by AP. Given a 3% margin of error, that's about as close to unanimous as public opinion ever gets. What other consensus issues do we hear about anywhere where a trivial 4% of the total population disagree? Never happens.

Let's also note that massive Palestinian Arab corruption is neither new nor a secret. As the AP piece notes:

[T]he government hasn't submitted annual budget reports for mandatory audits for four years, effectively preventing scrutiny of how millions of dollars are spent, said corruption monitor Aman, the Palestinian branch of Transparency International.

How those millions are spent is precisely at the heart of the ongoing scandal via which willfully-gullible European governments, along with the co-operative United States, continue to fund the Arafat/Abbas Rewards for Terror scheme while pretending not to notice the array of fig leaves and overt lies. Those serve as cover for the jihadist murders - mainly of Israelis - that everyone involved knows is the actual purpose of the cash flowing into Ramallah.

If we have to choose one particular shortcoming in yesterday's news report, it's that AP could have depicted, but did not, Palestinian Arab corruption in ways that might have significantly changed people's perceptions. How? By photographs of those concrete expressions of corruption that we know about but that are rarely seen.

Pictures of villas for the powerful and well-tended, paved and - of course - guarded streets do that well. A shame that AP offered only one such image in its syndicated story (the photo at the top of this post), and that one shows no human beings. The text describing the exclusive neighbourhood ("built for senior Palestinian Authority officials on subsidized land") helps, but it's almost always true that pictures trump words for impact.

Modesty is not exactly at the top of their priorities. This lavish edifice
is currently under construction in Ramallah. The caption in
the Daily Mail article reads: "Grand: Ian Birrell at the £8 million
presidential palace on the West Bank - built by a country that
got £72 million in foreign aid 

There are probably many other concrete expressions of PA corruption that could easily have been caught on camera but were not, and perhaps never will. AP along with every other news company is subject to the reality that the production of photographic images from the areas under PA control has for years been subtly (and almost silently) controlled by the Abbas circle. By far the majority of photographers working in that field are themselves Arabs, who are the source of the photos syndicated out by Reuters, Xinhua, AFP and Associated Press.

What kind of images almost never emerge? How about photos or clips of PA insiders - the fat-cat ministers, the fancily-dressed bureaucrats, their privileged children - getting in or out of their fancy SUVs and limousines. We're thinking of that in particular because it's a reality we encounter when we make a weekly trip to the community south of Jerusalem to visit grandchildren. This involves our driving past Bethlehem, and sharing the road with drivers leaving or entering Bethlehem or Hebron or the surrounding villages.

If you have not made that journey recently, or visited other parts of the PA's domain, you might find the reality quite stunning. We do, seated in our seventeen-year-old Toyota Corolla and watching the procession of high-performance Audis, BMWs, Hyundais and Mercs glide by.

This video clip, made last year by a creative (and justifiably angry) Israeli individual with an activist bent, Ezri Tubi, delivers in simple in-your-face form an illustration of how badly people's ignorance and/or misconceptions serve them about non-trivial aspects of the lives lived by our Pal Arab neighbours.



Very rarely, images do emerge of the armed security men - many thousands of them, in at least eight different official organizations [source] - who keep the PA elite safe from their disenfranchised citizens. Sure, AP reporters can and do write (mildly) about this sort of thing, as we have just seen. And from time to time they can also remind the world that the Palestinian Arabs are not only exploited but their own power circles, but can do next to nothing about it since those same power circles have no interest in allowing them to exercise their democratic right to vote in elections. It's good to see those things written and said occasionally because they are true and meaningful.

But there's no substitute for producing images and the honest contexts that need to accompany them. (And yes, we know life and freedom are about many issues, not just villas and Volvos.) Photos really get into people's heads in ways that words rarely do. However that threatens those PA insiders and so their appearance is much rarer.

(In case it's not obvious, corruption in Gaza and among its Hamas ruling clique is as bad, if not worse.)

[This post, like a number of others before it, has been translated to Polish ("Palestyńska kleptokracja i jej zachodni sojusznicy") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her again, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.]

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.

27-Dec-15: Sunday, the Arab-on-Israeli violence continues

Police security checkpoint in Jerusalem's Old City [Image Source]

It's Sunday mid-afternoon here: a bright, sunny, mild and violent day. Some of the day's events since our morning post:

• During the morning, a Palestinian Arab woman tried to stab an Israeli near Ma’ale Shomron, an Israeli community west of Nablus. She was stopped with no injuries to anyone. She is said to be from the nearby Palestinian Arab village of Azzun. [Times of Israel, December 27, 2015] 
• A separate incident: a Palestinian Arab woman was stopped at the entrance to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and found to be in possession of a knife. She is under arrest, and alive.
• A Palestinian Arab man was arrested by Israel Police officers patrolling the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City this afternoon. Asked to show identification,  Times of Israel says he instead drew a blade that had been secreted in his clothing. The officers relieved him of the weapon and took him into custody, alive. Palestinian Arab sources say he is from the Ramallah area. No one was injured, and there are no names or other identifying details at this stage. 
• In Hawara, a village south of Nablus, the day's fifth (so far) Arab-on-Israeli terror attack saw two Arabs approach a gas station near the IDF checkpoint. Israel National News says they suddenly stabbed one of the soldiers stationed there, inflicting moderate knife wounds to his limbs. Other security personnel opened fire and killed the attackers at the scene. The second soldier was lightly wounded in the fire. Both Israelis received emergency treatment at the scene and were then evacuated to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva. The Palestinian authorities say the attackers were aged 17 and 23.

03-Oct-15: Arab violence escalates in Jerusalem: Multiple stabbings in Old City tonight

The Old City of Jerusalem's Lions Gate in less violent times [Image Source]

The Sabbath is barely out and the reports of serious violence are coming in. Times of Israel says

Three Israelis were injured, one of them seriously, in a stabbing attack in Jerusalem’s Old City Saturday evening. According to police, the victims were part of the same family. Paramedics at the scene were treating the injured. The incident occurred near Lion’s Gate in East Jerusalem. The suspected attacker was shot by police and is said to be in serious condition.

Israel National News says

Three members of the same Israeli family have been wounded in a stabbing attack on Hazayit Street in Jerusalem's Old City on Saturday night, shortly after the end of Shabbat. According to reports the father of the family is in critical condition; his wife was moderately injured, and their young child was was lightly wounded. The terrorist is also seriously injured after being shot by security forces. The latest attack comes as Palestinian leaders continue to call for more violence against Israelis, on the heels of last week's deadly terrorist attack in which Arab terrorists murdered two parents in front of their children.

There have unfortunately - but only too predictably - been additional attacks on Israelis over the past 36 hours. More details when we can manage to sit down and edit the reports.

UPDATE 9:15 pm Saturday 03-Oct-15: A 40-year-old male, the father in the family we described above, was hospitalized at Jerusalem's Shaarei Tzedek Medical Center after this evening's attack in critical condition with multiple stab wounds. Tragically it's now reported that he died there. A second victim also succumbed to his wounds shortly after, according to Israel National News, and died this evening. The attacker, who was shot and critically injured by security forces, died of his wounds a short time later. No names at this stage. Residents of Jerusalem realize there is a deliberate campaign by the Arabs to escalate the lethal violence and are expecting the authorities to implement appropriate security measures as a matter of urgency.

UPDATE 9:30 pm Saturday 03-Oct-15 - The Jerusalem Post report on tonight's terror attack in Jerusalem's Old City:

According to Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld, the attack occurred at approximately 7:30 p.m., when the unidentified suspect began stabbing the family members while they were walking past Lion’s gate, en route to the Western Wall. After stabbing two others, Rosenfeld said the terrorist took a pistol from one of the victims and fired wildly into a crowd of tourists before being shot and killed by Border Police officer on patrol some 50 meters away.“The suspect opened fire in all directions and Border Police responded immediately and shot and killed him,” said Rosenfeld, adding that he did not believe anyone else was shot. “Police have cordoned off the area and are searching for a possible accomplice.” ...As of 8:30 p.m., police helicopters continued to circle the Old City as officers’ search for possible accomplices on the ground, although no arrests have been made.

UPDATE 9:45 pm Saturday 03-Oct-15 - The sicker corners of the Palestinian Arab world have already announced the identity of tonight's terrorist attacker. He's said [according to this Twitter account] to be Muhanad Shafeq Halabi, 19, from al-Bireh, near Ramallah on Jerusalem's northern periphery. And because of his frenzied attack on Jews walking peacefully in the alleys and through the gates of the national capital's Old City tourist precinct, Halabi qualifies - in their sociopathic system of values - as a "martyr". The attack itself is being termed a "resistance operation", a neat cover-all designed to bamboozle politically-minded innocents far from this region into not seeing the cold-blooded act of murderous hatred for what it is.

05-Sep-14: How much does it really matter if the news reporting from here is done wrong?

Murdered journalist Steven Sotloff

Over at Israellycool.com, Brian of London comments on the oddly unprofessional - and, in our view, morally bankrupt - journalistic practice of calling people who decapitate human prisoners "militants" and "fighters".

His anger is provoked by this past week's news coverage of the cold-blooded murder of a captive journalist, Steven J. Sotloff. If you pay close to attention to news reporting from the Middle East, you don't need much more persuading to see how the editors at Associated Press routinely engage in this idiotic "we wouldn't want to take sides" silliness, preferring to use pseudo-neutral names for people whose actions fully qualify them to be called terrorist savages.

But AP is far from alone in the practice, and it has some exceptionally shabby history. For instance (h/t Richard Landes - and please check out his most recent essay) some readers might remember an incident a decade ago involving one of the other global news syndication giants ["Reuters Asks a Chain to Remove Its Bylines", New York Times, September 20, 2004]:

...Reuters has asked Canada's largest newspaper chain to remove its writers' names from some articles. The dispute centers on a policy adopted earlier this year by CanWest Global Communications - the publisher of 13 daily newspapers including The National Post in Toronto and The Calgary Herald, which both use Reuters dispatches - to substitute the word "terrorist" in articles for terms like "insurgents" and "rebels."

This became an issue because Associated Press had just put out a report that spoke of several Palestinian Arabs killed by IDF action as "fugitives". At the Canadian papers, they had changed "fugitives" to "terrorists".

The NY Times piece at the time quoted a senior Reuters manager, David A. Schlesinger, saying there was a reason to prefer those soft-and-gushy descriptors so beloved by far-away editors:

"My goal is to protect our reporters and protect our editorial integrity..." [and] he was concerned that changes like those made at CanWest could lead to "confusion" about what Reuters is reporting and possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations... "If a paper wants to change our copy that way, we would be more comfortable if they remove the byline."

At CanWest, they had harsh words for the Reuters policy and its implications:

Reuters' rejection of his company's definition of terrorism undermined journalistic principles. "If you're couching language to protect people, are you telling the truth?" asked Mr. Anderson, who is also editor in chief of The Ottawa Citizen. "I understand their motives. But issues like this are why newspapers have editors." Mr. Anderson said the central definition in the policy was that "terrorism is the deliberate targeting of civilians in pursuit of a political goal."

The same NY Times piece gives the Associated Press view which is no less fatally flawed than that of Reuters:

"We do not endorse changes that make an A.P. story unbalanced, unfair or inaccurate."

Which prompted the Canadian editors to explain that calling terrorists by idiotically mild names and using other

"...euphemisms merely serves to apply a misleading gloss of political correctness. And we believe we owe it to our readers to remove it before they see their newspaper every morning."

The tragedy of Steven Sotloff is another reminder that journalism attracts courageous, risk-taking individuals who are ready to put everything they have on the line to ensure the truth of what is happening out there reaches consumers of the news.

The tragedy of the moral decay on display throughout the news reporting industry is that so few of us get to see or understand the issues for the simple reason that those causing it are the very same people as those responsible for being objective about it. And objective is certainly not what they are. Couple that with how Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (among others) routinely, with no evident compunctions, intimidate news reporters, photographers and their editors and the capacity for causing serious harm is clear. Members of the working media, lacking any string push-back from their editors and owners back home and far from the dangerous streets and villages, quicly learn how to get on, get by and stay safe.

Lynch mob exulting in the murder of two unarmed
Israeli men inside a Palestinian Arab police station
in Ramallah, October 2000

Here's another illustration - quite a famous one, though surprisingly not well known among ordinary consumers of the media's products - from the early weeks of the Arafat War, sometimes misleadingly called the Second Intifadeh.

In October 2000, a television news crew from Italy captured extremely graphic footage of a Palestinian Arab lynch mob dismembering and killing two Israeli reservists who had lost their way and driven into Ramallah, just on the northern edge of Jerusalem. The video goes to air, and its images travel quickly and widely, conveying a horrifying picture of mob barbarism. They also substantiate Israel's bitter complaints that the Palestinian police not only failed to protect the two men - who were murdered while in police custody in the PA's Ramallah police station - but also sought to prevent other journalists from filming the mob.

Comes along Ricardo Cristiano, deputy chief of the local media bureau of RAI, Italy's national media network and owned by the government. Evidently pursuing a corporate mission from his Rome-based masters, Cristiano writes an open letter of obsequious apology to Arafat [English version here] that is published in Al Hayat al Jadida, a PA house organ.

Writing in his network's name, he delivers a "Special Clarification" addressed to "My dear friends in Palestine"

We congratulate you and think that it is our duty to put you in the picture (of the events) of what happened on October 12 in Ramallah. One of the private Italian television stations which competes with us (and not the official Italian television station RAI) filmed the events; that station filmed the events. Afterwards Israeli Television broadcast the pictures, as taken from one of the Italian stations, and thus the public impression was created as if we (RAI) took these pictures. We emphasize to all of you that the events did not happen this way, because we always respect (will continue to respect) the journalistic procedures with the Palestinian Authority for (journalistic) work in Palestine and we are credible in our precise work. We thank you for your trust, and you can be sure that this is not our way of acting. We do not (will not) do such a thing. Please accept our dear blessings. [Source]

More offensive and frightening than the message itself by far is the equanimity with which it is greeted by RAI's colleagues and competitors in the news business. Apologize to the Palestinian Arabs for revealing some of the pathology that characterizes its life? Sure, no sweat, got to stay close to events and report the news, right? But (to remind us of the Canadian story above) is it the truth?

Fast forward now to the latest chapter of this ongoing war and the seven weeks of rocket attacks from Gaza and what's changed?

As Matti Friedman explains in a well-documented and compelling analysis "An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth | A former AP correspondent explains how and why reporters get Israel so wrong, and why it matters" [Tablet, August 256, 2014], not much. And certainly not enough.

The lasting importance of this summer’s war, I believe, doesn’t lie in the war itself. It lies instead in the way the war has been described and responded to abroad, and the way this has laid bare the resurgence of an old, twisted pattern of thought and its migration from the margins to the mainstream of Western discourse—namely, a hostile obsession with Jews. The key to understanding this resurgence is not to be found among jihadi webmasters, basement conspiracy theorists, or radical activists. It is instead to be found first among the educated and respectable people who populate the international news industry; decent people, many of them, and some of them my former colleagues. ["An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth"]

As the title says, Friedman spent some years working inside Associated Press. This is a long piece by magazine standards. But it's filled with the kind of well-framed nuggets that people sickened by media dishonesty and lethal journalism - the sort that leads to people having their heads cut off, for instance - find stunningly illuminating.

One small example of a nugget:

It is not coincidence that the few journalists who have documented Hamas fighters and rocket launches in civilian areas this summer were generally not, as you might expect, from the large news organizations with big and permanent Gaza operations. They were mostly scrappy, peripheral, and newly arrived players—a Finn, an Indian crew, a few others. 

Each of those is an instance that we covered here: the Indian news report, an Italian reporter and the Finnish reporter, and others. But Friedman offers much more. Then under the sub-heading "Who Cares If the World Gets the Israel Story Wrong?", he gets to an especially crucial point, and expresses what we have tried to do for some years now:

Understanding what happened in Gaza this summer means understanding Hezbollah in Lebanon, the rise of the Sunni jihadis in Syria and Iraq, and the long tentacles of Iran. It requires figuring out why countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia now see themselves as closer to Israel than to Hamas. Above all, it requires us to understand what is clear to nearly everyone in the Middle East: The ascendant force in our part of the world is not democracy or modernity. It is rather an empowered strain of Islam that assumes different and sometimes conflicting forms, and that is willing to employ extreme violence in a quest to unite the region under its control and confront the West. Those who grasp this fact will be able to look around and connect the dots. Israel is not an idea, a symbol of good or evil, or a litmus test for liberal opinion at dinner parties. It is a small country in a scary part of the world that is getting scarier. It should be reported as critically as any other place, and understood in context and in proportion. Israel is not one of the most important stories in the world, or even in the Middle East; whatever the outcome in this region in the next decade, it will have as much to do with Israel as World War II had to do with Spain. Israel is a speck on the map—a sideshow that happens to carry an unusual emotional charge.

And ends with this:

Journalists engage in these fantasies at the cost of their credibility and that of their profession. And, as Orwell would tell us, the world entertains fantasies at its peril.

Or in simpler terms: a large part of the damage caused in those conflicts in which the reporting is done by people with ideological concerns on their minds is not on the battlefields but in the editing suites and the media conference rooms, and in people's homes far from the rockets and the tunnels.