16-Jul-18: What do the Palestinian Arabs want? What do they believe? What do they think?

The last time we addressed the important matter of Palestinian Arab opinion polls ["04-Apr-18: Here's (one view of) what the Palestinian Arabs want"] we started this way:

Palestinian Arab polls of Palestinian Arab opinion can be valuable tools for understanding what they think at any given time. And no less importantly, how accurate the assessments of what they want for the future are. And to be blunt about this, they're invariably more valuable by far than media guesses about what the Palestinian Arabs think and want. Claims are made freely and often about Palestinian Arab aspirations. Very often, though, the data tell a story that's at total variance from what's being claimed about them. That's why we have chosen from time to time to publicize here the results of opinion polls conducted by relatively respected organizations within Palestinian Arab society.

We stand by every word of that.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) has just posted the findings of its latest opinion poll conducted in "the West Bank and the Gaza Strip between 25 June and 1 July 2018". PSR is headed by a respected professional, Dr. Khalil Shikaki. We know him only by his work and reputation; we have no personal connection. We have reported on his organization's past findings at intervals over the past four years - here are some of the posts we wrote:

Most of our previous poll-centered posts have been based on the published data of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), whose head is Dr. Khalil Shikaki. They include:

• 10-Dec-14: What else do Palestinian Arabs want, beyond the 80% who say killing of ordinary Israelis is a good thing?
• 22-Sep-15: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 03-Nov-15: What do they mean when the Palestinian Arabs say they oppose terror?
• 14-Dec-15: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 16-May-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 15-Jun-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?
• 26-Sep-17: What do the Palestinian Arabs think now

(Click here for the full list.)

The latest PSR Public Opinion Poll is Number 68 and was released yesterday. It's based on a survey sample of 2,150 adults interviewed face to face in 127 randomly selected locations. Margin of error is 2.5%. Some of the findings that caught our attention:

How rotten are their lives? Palestinian Arab society is highly dysfunctional on multiple plains, and strongly marked by very wide citizen fear of its own institutions. How strongly? 60% of them (maybe read that again - sixty percent!) say people cannot criticize the PA "without fear". This may be connected to the next finding - that "perception of corruption" is 80%. We interpret this to mean that eight out ten of them believe the people with whom they are forced to deal in the PA and Hamas regime offices are on the take or applying wrong and subjective criteria and will put personal benefit or other irrelevant interests ahead of doing an honest job. That's a nightmare world.

The downward spiraling of Gaza: The pollsters asked what they call an open-ended question: which party or which side is causing the worsening of conditions in the Gaza Strip? 34% say it's Israel - no great surprise given the full-blast hate messaging emanating from Hamas. But what of the other two thirds? So 26% blame Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority; and despite the thuggish grip they and their Islamist insiders have over Gaza, no fewer than 20% believe it's Hamas' fault. Conclusion: most of the anger about Gaza that Palestinian Arabs are willing to express is directed at two of the Palestinian Arab regimes. (They were not given the option of blaming the third Palestinian Arab entity, Jordan.)

Leadership: If Palestinian Arab elections were held now, and they took the form of a two-horse race, Fatah/PA/PLO president-for-life Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas terrorist-in-chief Ismail Haniyeh would produce a near-dead-heat: 47% versus 46%. If the convicted, imprisoned and unrepentant ex-leader of the Fatah/Tanzim terrorist gunmen Marwan Barghouti were to run against the Hamas guy, Barghouti would walk it in: 58% versus 37%. This is not the only indication that Palestinian Arab public opinion respects men who know how to kill (meaning they know how to tell their underlings how to kill).

Abbas go home: From his standpoint, it's good that president-for-life Mahmoud Abbas doesn't have to actually face up to elections, but there is a tiny silver lining to the cloud of rejection that his leadership evokes among ordinary Palestinian Arabs. The latest measure of "satisfaction" with Abbas' leadership is a pathetic 37%; active dissatisfaction stands at 59%. Sounds bad, right? (According to the Gallup Polls website, satisfaction with how President Trump is doing his job is just a bit higher: 41% as of a week ago.) The silver part of this for Abbas is he was doing worse three months ago. Back then, PSR found a dismal 33% were satisfied with his leadership and 68% wanted him out of office immediately. Today 61% of all Palestinian Arabs want to see him leave office immediately. Which isn't entirely bad since 90 days ago it was 62%. (He's doing great by his own standards.)

Jerusalem: The recent relocation of part of the US embassy's functions from its beachside Tel Aviv location to the long-established US consulate in Jerusalem is seen as weakening the Palestinian Arab "position" (we're frankly not certain what that word means in this context - probably the "position" that Jerusalem which has never been the capital city of any Arab entity in history should become "Palestine"'s capital) by most Palestinian Arabs: 55% of them. We're frankly puzzled at the strength of this concern which, in practical terms, has not changed anything on the ground. But being a Palestinian Arab is nothing if not a matter of perceptions and watching over your own shoulder.

Israeli municipal elections: When eligible voters vote on October 30, 2018, most East Jerusalem Arab residents who can vote (holders of so-called Blue Israeli IDs - the vast bulk of the Arabs we see everyday commuting into downtown Jerusalem by car, bus or light rail) say they won't. A mere 22% say they will. We guess going to the election centers comes at a certain price in a community where most people see most officials as dishonest and dangerous. A pity for all of us. But especially for them - especially since other data show they demonstrate a solid, practical and growing connection to living under Israeli sovereignty compared with the past ["Jerusalem Palestinians still seek Israeli citizenship despite Trump declaration", USAtoday, December 18, 2017]

The "peace" process: Here's where it gets especially painful - if you believe the widespread and irresponsible media narrative of a desperate Palestinian Arab search for more and better peace with their Israeli neighbors. The most effective means of establishing a Palestinian state next to the state of Israel is, according to respondents to the poll:

Negotiation: 39% (West Bankers 41%; Gazans 35%)
Armed "resistance": 34%
"Non-violent resistance": 22%. We could write an essay about the gulf that separates that simple-seeming term and what the highly immoderate "moderate" Abbas and his cohort mean when they use it. In fact, we have written several - click for some. We especially recommend "18-Aug-17: On vehicle rammings, Mahmoud Abbas, moderate advocate for terror, is open-minded, sees both sides".

What do the Israelis want? A large majority of Palestinian Arabs, 58% of them, say Israel’s "long-term aspiration" (undefined) is to expand Israel to stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and to expel the Palestinian Arabs. A more moderate view, held by 21% of Palestinian Arabs, is that Israel plans to annexe "the occupied territories" (undefined) and then "deny the Palestinian citizens their rights" (undefined). Fewer than one in five Palestinian Arabs think Israel’s intention is to withdraw from all or parts of those occupied territories after ensuring its security.

AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed

If there's a single take-away that we wish the Western media would absorb from this and all the previous poll results we have posted here, it's that among Palestinian Arabs there's far less belief in their own leaders than a difficult process like making peace needs. This trumps all the better-publicized problems like the endless rivalry between the Fatah people and the overtly-Islamist people, and the sense among the Arabs that the Israelis want to kill them all, expel them all or absorb them all while stealing their rights. 

There is literally no possibility of a deeply split society (which is what the Palestinian Arabs surely have) even starting the process of adjusting their expectations towards the compromise that peace necessarily demands. That will remain true so long as the leadership is steeped in personal and institutional corruption, a total unwilling to surrender power or even submit to elections and obsessively focused on the need for outsiders - the UN agencies in general and UNRWA in particular - to solve Palestinian Arabs' economic and development problems.

Though they never seem to be asked about this by pollsters, what will it take for ordinary Palestinian Arabs to see that their collective destiny depends on them and their own initiatives?

This post, like a number of others before it, has been translated to Polish ("Czego chcą Arabowie? W co wierzą? Co myślą?") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.

18-Apr-17: So what, in reality, is Marwan Barghouti?

Barghouti, convicted on multiple counts of murder by shooting,

is a candidate for the next Nobel Peace Prize [Image Source: Arab media]

There are serious efforts underway this week to re-engineer the public image of the convicted Palestinian Arab felon, Marwan Barghouti.

Based on disinformation, partial information and lots of spin, they are directed at concealing the facts of his crimes and imprisonment and putting some wind into the sails of this ambitious man's on/off political career.

Outrageously, the key thing to know about Barghouti, according to one of the world's most influential newspapers which yesterday provided him yesterday with an invaluable op ed platform ["Why We Are on Hunger Strike in Israel’s Prisons", New York Times, April 17, 2017] to megaphone his extreme views, is that

Source: New York Times

In the following 24 hours, the Times found itself in the midst of a storm of protest. We have little sympathy for how the NYT's public editor summed things up today.

A side issue: Barghouti's English is poor. Yet "his" op ed, datelined Hadarim Prison, is a slickly-written piece of eloquent self-promotion. We think there's a teensie-tiny possibility it was written by professional pubic relations people in his name. But then who pays attention to such trivia when the cause is just so compelling?

Barghouti has an interesting group of admirers who help his self-promotion process move forward. Here are just a few.

Desmond Mpilo Tutu, the South African church leader who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, regularly sings Barghouti's praises. On one view, this is exceedingly odd, given how the Nobel committee specifically noted Tutu's own "nonviolent path to liberation" in its citation. So then is Tutu unware of Barghouti's lethal criminality, as widely outlined in the media for anyone who cares to look (for instance Dr Emmanuel Navon's cogently argued "Desmond Tutu is Wrong about Marwan Barghouti")? No, it does not seem that he is unaware. Instead, like many at that extreme end of the political spectrum, he seems to feel criminality of Barghouti's kind just doesn't count. And to show he means it, he has lately been touting the deeply offensive notion that Barghouti ought to get the same rich prize that Tutu himself did ["Bishop Tutu Nominates Jailed Palestinian Leader Barghouti for Nobel Peace Prize", Michael Friedson, June 8, 2016].

Al Jazeera, referring to the noble hero of the South African struggle to defeat apartheaid, calls Barghouti "the Palestinian Mandela". So do the Ma'an News Agency and a commentator at The Guardian. On the other hand, Le Monde, in the course of an interview with Barghouti, calls the comparison "debatable".

Adolfo Perez Esquivel, an Argentine human rights activist who received the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize and is a leader of the non-violent Latin American Christian group Servicio Paz y Justicia, is another supporter of a Barghouti Nobel [May 2016 source]. So is the parliament of Tunisia [source]. And so are sixteen mayors of towns in France [source] including Valenton and Bergerac (unfortunately we don't know the names of the other metropolises).

A cluster of Belgians, all of them involved in their country's national politics, followed suit and wrote to the Nobel committee in May 2016, improbably calling Barghouti "a peace activist":

“Peace requires the freedom of Marwan Barghouti and of the political prisoners, and more generally the freedom of the Palestinian people living for decades under occupation.”

Thinking logically, we might have surmised that the Belgians meant to exclude homicidal thugs from the list of those to be freed because what possible basis can there be to label such felons "political prisoners"? But then they do seem serious about wanting Barghouti to go to Oslo. So evidently they - like Tutu - don't see a conflict between being (a) a convicted murderer and (b) a peace activist. Sort of like being both a cheese-burger addict and an activist for veganism.

But for those to whom facts and realities still mean something, here's a brief excursion through the contemporary reports that accompanied his journey into the Israeli penal system. To emphasize the point, we refer to news reports carried by Haaretz which is much closer to Tutu's views than to ours.

The capture:

Wiretapping revealed that Barghouti was hiding in a safe house. The commander of the army’s Ramallah Brigade... told Haaretz: “When the intelligence arrived that he was in a building in the heart of a Ramallah neighborhood... an armored brigade surrounded the site and the baton was passed to me. The Duvdevan unit was under my command. We understood that he was in the building. One of the soldiers saw him through the window, taking cover close to what looked to us, at least, like an old woman who was lying on a bed. We removed everyone from the building... ["Will Marwan Barghouti be the Palestinian Nelson Mandela?", Haaretz, July 5, 2016]

The conviction

The Tel Aviv District Court convicted former West Bank Tanzim commander Marwan Barghouti in the deaths of five people on Thursday. Barghouti was convicted of three terror attacks in which the five were murdered, as well as in another charge of attempted murder, membership in a terror organization and conspiring to commit a crime. However, the court acquitted him of 33 other murders with which he was charged, noting that there was no evidence that he was a full partner to those incidents...  The court ruled that Barghouti was directly responsible for a January 2002 terror attack on a gas station in Givat Zeev in which Israeli Yoela Chen was murdered. The attack, the judges said, was carried out at his direct order in revenge for the assassination of Raed Carmi. Barghouti had admitted his responsibility for this attack. The attack in which a Greek monk was murdered in Ma'aleh Adumim on June of 2001 was also carried out at the instruction of Barghouti, the judges said. The former Tanzim leader, the court ruled, also approved the March 2002 attack at Tel Aviv's Seafood Market restaurant in which three people were murdered, as well as a car bomb attack in Jerusalem... [He] was charged with leading dozens of terror operations against Israeli targets since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising, including suicide and shooting attacks that led to the death and injury of hundreds of Israeli citizens and Israel Defense Force soldiers. According to the charge sheet, Barghouti headed the Fatah, Tanzim and Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade terror groups in the West Bank and was subordinate to Arafat... The state prosecutor said Barghouti funded and planned terror attacks and is not the political activist he claimed to be... Barghouti's supporters in the European parliament were expected to show up for the ruling... ["Barghouti Convicted in Deaths of Five People", Haaretz, May 20, 2004]

Barghouti was sentenced by judges Sarah Sirota, Amiram Benyamini and Avraham Tal to five consecutive life terms plus an additional 40 years. The judges observed that

Barghouti used to receive reports of the attacks carried out by his associates only after they were completed. This was an effort to preserve his image as a political leader not involved in armed attacks against Israelis... [Haaretz, June 6, 2004] 

And some occasionally overlooked points, via JTA:

When Israeli authorities chose to put Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti on trial in a criminal court rather than a military court, prosecutors may have set the stage for an even bigger prize: Yasser Arafat. That possibility was given a boost last week with Barghouti’s conviction on five counts of murder, for Israelis killed in three separate shooting ambushes... The judges said Barghouti could be convicted only in cases where it was proven that he had prior knowledge of imminent terrorist attacks and that he approved the attacks... [He] was acquitted on 21 other counts of murder for lack of evidence. Both outcomes bolstered the argument for putting Palestinian terrorists on trial in regular Israeli courts rather than in military courts, where the standards of evidence are not as strict. Barghouti’s conviction shows that there is sufficient evidence to put terrorists behind bars using standard criminal procedures, and his acquittal on the other counts lends legitimacy to the argument that even Palestinian terrorists will get fair trials in Israel... ["Barghouti conviction could foretell Arafat trial", JTA, May 24, 2004]

Some additional overlooked dimensions:

• Marwan Barghouti publicly boasted of his role in igniting what many call the Second Intifada in 2000. We published his direct quotes (translated to English at the archived Wayback Machine]. This may come as a surprise to those who think of Ariel Sharon visiting the Temple Mount in September 2000 as being the real story. 
• He personally laid out $500 [source: the archived Wayback Machine quoting a November 30, 2004 Margot Dudkevitch report in the Jerusalem Post] for the making of the explosive-filled guitar case that was brought to, and exploded inside, Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria destroying it on August 9, 2001 and killing fifteen innocent people including our daughter Malki. The bombmaker was Abdullah Barghouti, Marwan's clansman.
• We sat through Marwan Barghouti's trial in a Tel Aviv court.
• When another clansman Bilal Barghouti, a senior Hamas operative, was on the run from the Israeli security forces because of his involvement in the massacre at the Sbarro pizzeria (he was later convicted for his part), Marwan Barghouti sheltered him for a time in his home. Bilal Barghouti said for the record that, during his stay there, "he saw a number of weapons, and when he left the house Barghouti armed him with a gun for his use." [Source: CAMERA] Marwan Barghouti is an unindicted accessory after the fact to the Sbarro murders.
• And since we're mentioning the Barghouti clan, let the record show that Ahlam Tamimi, the Jordanian Hamas agent who boasts of taking the central role in the 2001 Sbarro massacre and who faces terrorism charges in Washington that were made public on March 14, 2017, is the daughter of a woman named Hasna al-Barghouti [Arabic source]

Leader and parliamentarian, battler for non-violence and peace, candidate for the world's most important reward for bringing peace to the world. And also a cold-blooded thug closely directing other thugs. A man happy to appear in public gripping a sub-machine gun as he claims credit for the blood-drenched Intifadeh years from 2000 onwards.

We don't think it's all that difficult to distinguish between Barghouti the plastic-coated fantasy and invention of parts of the media, and Barghouti the loathsome killer of innocents. 

In the end, it seems to come down - tragically - to whom and what you want to believe.

25-Jul-16: More on Tutu, Barghouti, terror, peace and prizes

Nobel Peace Prize laureate,
Bishop Desmond Tutu [Image Source]

A Pakistani website today published an op ed lauding Marwan Barghouti, providing us (we're guessing this was not their intention) with an opportunity to share our feelings concerning the man and those who seek to aggrandize him.

The article is entitled simply "Marwan Barghouti". We had not heard of the author before; his name is Abbas Hasan and his self-description is sparse: "an engineer and a cricket fan who works in the Middle East".

Here's our comment.

It's helpful to see acolytes of Barghouti highlighting, as this piece does, the emphatically *anti-peace* stance of the convicted and imprisoned murderer. Our attention was drawn to this article because of our tracking the efforts of Bishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace laureate himself, in shilling for Barghouti to get the same prize. In his public statements, Mr Tutu repeatedly speaks of Barghouti as an agent for peace. But as this fine article makes clear, Barghouti totally rejects peace in the Arab vs Israel wars as this quote makes clear:-
“The role and mission of the Palestinian authority should be reassessed so that its main mission must be in supporting and assisting a comprehensive resistance, which necessitates the immediate termination of security coordination and cooperation with Israel as this only reinforces occupation and is a tremendous detriment to the Palestinian people. We must stop betting on the illusion of peace negotiations”.
It's a valuable service to the cause of peace (in which most Israelis, us among them, believe passionately) that Abbas Hasan has done. Sincere thanks to him.

In case you missed our recent commentary on the odious and fundamentally dishonest efforts by Bishop Desmond Tutu to have the murderer Barghouti awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, it's posted at "09-Jun-16: The convicted killer, the churchman, the prize". We hope you will click and read it.

We have felt the need to speak out against Mr. Tutu several times in the past, the first time some nine years ago [link]. At that time, the learned churchman said he was "in despair" over the savagery being visited on one another in Gaza by the forces of Fatah and Hamas - actually a blood-soaked struggle for control of the Gaza Strip that was resoundingly won by the side (i.e. Hamas) that managed to be more effective at hacking, shooting and beating to death and hurling from high building more of its brethren than the other (i.e. Fatah).

But not totally in despair at the Arab-on-Arab carnage for, as Tutu noted, 

"When you are oppressed, it is so very easy to turn on yourselves..." [June 2007 Source]

Forgive us, Bishop, but we find that view racist, irrational and frankly nauseating. As we wrote all those years back:

And so easy, too, to blow up innocent women, children, men, schools, hospitals, restaurants. So easy. And to have church leaders slobber their sympathy all over your poor oppressed heads. The only thing more appalling about what the Palestinian Arabs have done to themselves is the unforgivable forgiveness, the incomprehensible understanding emanating from such ill-informed, theologically-addled, hand-wringing, high-profile individuals as the pious church-man quoted above. Without him and the many others like him, the devastation and misery of the Pal-Arabs could have ended decades ago.

It hasn't ended, as we all know. And as Tutu's campaigning for a prize to be given to Barghouti demonstrates, his ill-informed hand-wringing and irrational urge to forgive remains unaffected by any knowledge he might have acquired - but clearly has not - in the intervening years. 

09-Jun-16: The convicted killer, the churchman, the prize

Convicted murderer Barghouti: Man of peace? [Image Source]

Twelve years ago, the career of an ambitious Palestinian Arab gang leader, a member of Arafat's inner circle, ended when he was convicted in Tel Aviv District Court in relation to the deaths of five innocent people.

There were other charges as well: attempted murder, membership of a terror organization and conspiracy to commit a crime; he was convicted of those as well. He was acquitted on technical grounds in relation to 33 additional counts of murder. 

Our impression (we were personally present in the court room for part of the trial) was that the prosecution could have pressed those extra charges. Evidently a decision was taken that the accused would be imprisoned for a long-enough term if convicted on those charges where technical factors did not play a role. 

And indeed, that's what happened.

At the conclusion of Marwan Barghouti's trial in May 2004, the prosecution sought a sentence of one life term for each murdered victim and he was sentenced to - and is currently serving - five life terms behind bars:

Murdered on Marwan Barghouti's 

orders in 2001: Father George Tsibouktsakis

The court said in its verdict that "the defendant most of the time did not have direct contact with the field operatives who carried out the attacks. That connection was maintained through associates close to the defendant. Barghouti was responsible for providing the field units with money and arms via these associates..." The judges said Barghouti's orders for terror attacks were sometimes "based on instructions" from Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. "Arafat would never give explicit instructions for attacks but he let it be known when the timing was right," the judges said. "He made sure his subordinates understood very well when he was interested in a cease-fire and when he was interested in terror attacks against Israel," the verdict said.
["Barghouti Convicted in Deaths of Five People", Haaretz, May 20, 2004] 

Barghouti was one of those Arafat subordinates. And when we wrote above that his career ended, we were engaging in what seems more and more to be wishful thinking. We'll get to that in a moment.

A few brief words about his victims, none of whom has been honored with even a tiny fraction of the often-fawning media coverage of their convicted killer:

Murdered on Marwan Barghouti's orders 

in 2002: Yoela Chen, mother of 2, 

shot dead at a gas station on her way
to a Jerusalem family celebration

• The court ruled that Barghouti was directly responsible for a January 2002 terror attack on a gas station in Givat Zeev in which an Israeli woman, Yoela Chen, 45 and a mother of two, was murdered. The attack, the judges said, was carried out at his direct order in revenge for the assassination of another Palestinian Arab terrorist called Carmi who had been responsible for a long list of murderous attacks on Israeli civilians. Barghouti admitted his responsibility for Yoela Cohen's killing.
• The killing of a Jewish-looking, traditionally bearded man, driving his car in the early summer of 2001 along one of Judea's intercity desert roads was carried out on Barghouti's orders, the judges said. That man was in reality not Jewish. Shot dead from a distance by Barghouti's sharp-shooters and a volley of 13 bullets, he was in fact a young, bearded Greek Orthodox monk, George Tsibouktsakis, also known as Father Herman, a religious devotee, one of two monks who lived in, and maintained, the ancient St. George Monastery perched on the edge of Wadi Kelt. Tragically, shot dead while looking Jewish.
• The court found that Barghouti explicitly approved the murderous March 2002 shooting and hand-grenade terror attack at Tel Aviv's Seafood Market restaurant where three people were murdered in a frenzied assault just after 2 in the morning. The victims were Police Sergeant-Major Salim Barakat, 33, from the Israeli-Druze community of Yarka - killed by one of the attackers who fled the restaurant; and Yosef Haybi, 52, of Herzliya and Eliyahu Dahan, 53, of Lod - both of them killed inside the restaurant.
• He was convicted as well for masterminding a car bomb attack in Jerusalem.

The 2004 Barghouti trial in Tel Aviv District Court was public,

transparent, and definitive: the accused was convicted on multiple

charges of murder and sentenced to five terms of life

imprisonment [Image Source]

None of these convictions in a non-military court and in front of an overflowing and often unruly crowd of witnesses, many of them Arabs, and overseas observers who flew in especially for the trial, prevented tendentious media coverage before, during and after Barghouti's conviction. Much of it is just as tendentious today.

Of all the many distortions, inaccuracies and open lies connected with that coverage, none is as galling as the way this vicious, violent man is routinely - and dishonestly - called a "political prisoner", and sometimes a "detainee". He has never been either. 

As a matter of objective reality, he ought to be called convicted murderer. And taking into account his undisputed role as head of the Tanzim shooting-and-bombing division of Fatah, he fully qualifies to be termed a terrorist.

Associated Press, as we wrote in an earlier blog post ["21-Mar-14: Allegedly objective journalism"] produced one of these distorted, politically-spun articles two years ago. That AP piece, entitled "Jailed militant key to Mideast talk" (March 19, 2014), sought to depict Marwan Barghouti as a Mandela-like man of peace who, if only he were sprung from jail, would take his natural place in the pantheon of Palestinian Arab statespersons and blaze a path to whatever peaceful destination they believe the Palestinian Arabs are heading. (UKMediawatch documented similar news-media efforts in an excellent analysis in 2013.) 

Murdered on Marwan Barghouti's

orders in March 2002: Yosef Haybi

Here's some of what we wrote two years ago:

We personally sat through the [2004] murder trial of Marwan Barghouti... The hearing was in Tel Aviv, in the Magistrates Court complex that rarely gets the kind of lavish media attention in evidence that week. Aljazeera's TV crew were there along with reporters from all over. A motley assemblage of lawyers from Israel, the PA and overseas were too, intent on defending the 'great' man from the lowly offenses of which he was charged. Some of the most entertaining moments on the trial's first day involved one of those would-be advocates, an unusually boorish individual intent on making a splash, being physically picked up by the security people and thrown out the door of the court room and onto the floor of the adjacent lobby. (You dream of moments like that.) 

Two main factors (among many) persuaded us to be there. One: Marwan Barghouti had personally given post-massacre shelter and money to members of the Hamas gang that planned and carried out the bombing of the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem in which our teenage daughter was murdered three years earlier. He was, in legal terms, an accessory after the fact to the terrorism...  

For us as recently bereaved Israelis, grieving for the lost life of a fifteen year-old daughter with such goodness and potential, it was almost unbearably painful to observe the lengths to which Israel's organs of justice bent over backwards to give this prominent member of the loathsome Palestinian political 'elite', a first-degree Arafat inner-circle insider, the fairest and most transparent of trials.  

One of lawyers in the defense counsel team was the self-parodying (and subsequently disgraced) Shamai Leibowitz, grandson of one of modern Israel's great religious philosophers. Leibowitz proposed to the court, with chutzpah that brought some of us to point of choking with rage, that the cold-blooded Barghouti with those deeply blood-drenched hands ought to be viewed as a warrior in the service of freedom, challenging the Pharaohs of his time. The court ought to think of him as being like Moses, Israel's great Law Giver. There were less bizarre moments too. 

Murdered on Marwan Barghouti's

orders in March 2002: Police Sgt Major Salim

Barakat, 33, an Israeli Druze, father of a

3 year old daughter

It appears we are now facing a fresh round of bizarre Barghouti moments, the theological equivalent of fashioning a silk purse out of a female pig's aural orifice. 

As reported by a church news site a few hours ago [Episcopal Digital Network] 

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has endorsed the nomination of Palestinian political prisoner, Marwan Barghouthi, for the Nobel Peace Prize. In the nomination letter sent by the Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, he said, “I decided to support this campaign alongside seven other Nobel Peace Prize laureates as a reflection of our belief that freedom was the only path to peace… I hope the Nobel Committee will take a bold decision bringing us closer to the day this holy land, charged with unique symbolic value, can stop being a living testimony of injustice and impunity, occupation and apartheid, and can finally be a beacon of freedom, hope and peace.”

Tutu, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, is, to put it mildly, not one of our favourite church-people - or people of any kind - on the basis of his years of explicit support for Palestinian Arab terror and for Barghouti. He has been a member of the modestly-named International High Level Committee of the Campaign for the Freedom of Marwan Barghouti and all Palestinian Prisoners, launched in October 2013.

Nine years ago we noted [here] what he said when Gaza erupted in an Arab-on-Arab bloodbath with Hamas and Fatah battling it out for winner-takes-all control of the rich-in-absolutely-nothing enclave: Tutu, watching the thuggery and the slaughter from a safe distance, said he was "in despair over these events", though he claimed to understand why the rival factions were at each other's throats:

"When you are oppressed, it is so very easy to turn on yourselves," he said.

Murdered on Marwan Barghouti's

orders in March 2002: Eli Dahan, 53

And so easy, we reminded ourselves at the time, to blow up innocent women, children, men, schools, hospitals, restaurants. 

So easy. And to have church leaders slobber their sympathy all over your poor oppressed heads.

The only thing more appalling about what the Palestinian Arabs have done to themselves is the unforgivable forgiveness, the incomprehensible understanding emanating from such ill-informed, theologically-addled, hand-wringing, high-profile individuals as the pious church-man quoted above. Without him and the many others like him, the devastation and misery of the Pal-Arabs could have ended decades ago. [Our June 2007 blog post]

Painful as this is, Barghouti and his terrorist handlers must be quietly confident the crimes of the bigoted, violent Fatah apparatchik will recede into the past as a groundswell of support builds for the frankly absurd notion that he is a peacemaker - perhaps the peacemaker - who can bring the Palestinian Arabs into a meaningful dialogue with the despised Israelis. 

The moral gymnastics involved in seeing things in that upside-down, black-is-white fashion are reality in this part of the world, and explain why we find it necessary to spend so much time reminding audiences of the catastrophic Shalit Deal and the ongoing suffering it has delivered.

The idea that Barghouti is now a serious contender for the same award that the Nobel Committee gave to Tutu - and with Tutu's enthusiastic endorsement - is an indictment of Tutu's twisted values and the values of the ideologues promoting this ugly initiative.

25-Dec-15: T'is the season to be very, very wary

Newsweek cover, March 2015

News reporting from Israel at this time of year often adopts a theme that Israelis, at least those Israelis like us who are tuned into the nuances of foreign reporting - find offensive. We think it reflects an infuriating, tone-deaf approach to centuries of fraught Christian/Jewish history.

Here where we live, today is a bright, sunny, chilly winter Friday - a delight to be outdoors, but cold when the sun sets. Classic Jerusalem.

Less bright is the violence in the news. Here's what Times of Israel is saying at this hour about the mood in the town that borders the southern flank of Israel's capital city. The headline reads "Palestinians beef up Bethlehem security amid fears of IS attack":

The Palestinian Authority was reportedly concerned that Salafists aligned with the Islamic State would attempt to perpetrate an attack in Bethlehem, as thousands of Christian pilgrims flocked to the West Bank city for the holidays. Seeking to thwart an attack, PA security forces placed 16 radical Islamists in administrative detention without charge, according to an Israel Radio report. Palestinian security was beefed up throughout the city in anticipation of an attempted shooting or bombing attack on tourists and Palestinian Christians, the report said. The Palestinian security forces were said to have received concrete threats of an attack by IS-linked militants... [Times of Israel, today]

Bethlehem's problems with the likes of ISIS are a small sub-set of a much larger catastrophe for Christians, unfolding right across the Middle East, '

Associated Press, in a seasonal report this morning, says devotees from around the world

descended on the biblical city of Bethlehem for Christmas Eve celebrations at the traditional birthplace of Jesus, trying to lift spirits on a holiday dampened by months of Israeli-Palestinian violence. [But] crowds were thin and hotel rooms were empty. While the annual festivities in Bethlehem’s Manger Square went on, other celebrations in the city were canceled or toned down. [AP via Al Arabiya, today]

It's downhill from there. Why are the celebrations "toned down"? How to explain empty hotel rooms? AP says it's because of the

months of Israeli-Palestinian violence... Israeli authorities said three Palestinian assailants were killed as they carried out or tried to carry out stabbing or car-ramming attacks against Israeli security personnel, and a fourth Palestinian was killed in clashes with Israeli troops, a Palestinian hospital official said. Two Israeli security guards and a soldier were wounded...

That's a disturbingly inaccurate view. The reality is there's been a vicious campaign underway here for the past three months. It's being explicitly urged on by the duplicitous "peace-seeking" Mahmoud Abbas regime in Ramallah and it's energized by calls for more stabbings, rammings and shootings by the Christianity-hating Islamists of Hamas. The result is hundreds of violent attacks on Israelis - and not only on Israeli security personnel - executed by Palestinian men, women and especially young boys and girls. That's not mentioned anywhere in AP's syndicated news report.

To the extent AP acknowledges any motive on the Arab side, it's lamely called "the result of nearly 50 years of military occupation". But in truth, when Abbas and his clique address their own people in the Arabic language, they base their case on more immediate and incendiary issues. As Jonathan Tobin wrote this week in Commentary Magazine:

Palestinian leaders like Abbas who will speak tomorrow of Jesus’s message and of a desire for “peace on earth” and “justice” have also played a principle role in inciting these bloody attacks. It is the same Abbas who spoke just a few months ago about the need for Palestinians to prevent “stinking Jewish feet” from polluting holy places sacred to all three monotheistic faiths and who praises those who try to butcher Jews as “martyrs” that will be allowed to grandstand on international television tomorrow. And it is also the same Abbas that refused multiple Israeli offers of peace and statehood, in spite of his claims that this is what he wants. But, of course, Abbas isn’t the only source of Palestinian leadership. Though they will not put on a Christmas show for the world, Hamas is also making its presence felt. Unlike Abbas’s Fatah Party, those Islamists make no pretense of respecting Christianity. But it is fear of competition from the rulers of Gaza that impels Abbas to continue to stoke the fires of conflict when not preening for the foreign press... ["The Real Palestinian Christmas Show", Jonathan S. Tobin, December 23, 2015]

Inadvertently perhaps, the AP piece helps alert readers see that Bethlehem's problems are something other than "months of Israeli-Palestinian violence".

As the festivities got underway, Miral Siriani, a 35-year-old publicist from Jerusalem, said she was relieved to get a break from three months of tension that has included numerous attacks in her city. “I feel safe in Bethlehem,” she said.

There's a reason the Jerusalem-based Arab lady feels safe in Bethlehem, and less so in the city she shares with us and our children. The Israeli military and police are arrayed right across our country right now, especially in Jerusalem, in order - not to suppress peaceful seasonal celebrations, not to interfere with ordinary people's lives, not to threaten random violence - to blunt the wave of terror attacks by Palestinian Arab zealots pumped up by the lethal rhetoric of their elites.

To put it more plainly, Bethlehem, an Arab town populated by Arabs and with no Jewish residents, is safe from "Israeli-Palestinian violence". Jerusalem, an Israeli city with a mixed Arab/Israeli population, is not. Underlining why it is not are the data we presented here a few days ago: "14-Dec-15: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?"

Local vendors, Manger Square, Bethlehem, this week
[Image Source]

AP could have said, but never does, that the security barrier - walls, fences, crossing points - has been dramatically effective in slowing down the rate of human bomb attacks. It has stopped the shootings by Tanzim gunmen who occupied the northern edge of Bethlehem in 2000-2002 and fired round the clock into southern Jerusalem and especially into the Gilo neighbourhood, bringing death and misery into lives on both sides. Still, we have gotten used to how agenda-driven reporters and their editors keep referring to Israel's Apartheid Wall. The reality is it has saved untold lives - Israeli, Arab, foreign. No one has yet been killed or injured by the security barrier, or by the road tunnel that runs beneath Bethlehem, protecting travelers from the sniper fire and fire-bombings that plagued the road it replaces.

Inside Bethlehem, as the report at the top of this post shows, things are more complicated. Arab-on-Arab violence gets much less media attention. But in a town that has undergone a dramatic demographic skewing since coming under the control of the Palestinian Authority in the early nineties, Christians know what they are up against:

Sobhy Makhoul, the chancellor of the Maronite Patriarchate in Jerusalem, told AsiaNews that the fire that broke out over the weekend at St Charbel Maronite Monastery in Bethlehem was deliberately set. “It was an act of arson, not a fire caused by an electrical problem, an act of sectarian vandalism by radical Muslims”... For the chancellor of the Maronite Patriarchate, “The attack is sectarian in nature. It is anti-Christian, like many other incidents across the Middle East. Extremist groups operate in the area, including some Hamas cells. There are also some loose cannons that give vent to their ideology." The St Charbel Maronite Convent is located in Wadi Maali, a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood in Bethlehem... [Asia News, September 28, 2015]

The unmistakable trend in Bethlehem's population tells its own story.

• Wikipedia's data quotes an American visitor describing the town as having a population of 3,000 to 4,000 in 1867; about 100 were Protestants, an insignificant 300 or so were Muslims and "the remainder belonging to the Latin and Greek Churches with a few Armenians". 
• In 1948, when the Jordanian army began its 19-year occupation of the town, 85% of its inhabitants were Christian, mostly Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic. Muslims were 13%.
• When Israel defeated the Jordanians in 1967 and conducted a census, it found 14,439 inhabitants, of whom Muslims were 54%. 
• Under Israeli stewardship, Bethlehem grew to 22,000 by 1997. 
• The most recent census in Bethlehem was conducted by the PA in 2006: it showed Bethlehem with a population of 25,000 to 29,000, with Muslims more than two-thirds of the total. 

And to remind the faithful that no matter how badly things are going, worse is almost certainly ahead:

Christianity faces "elimination" in the Middle East, the region where it began, the Archbishop of Canterbury will warn in his Christmas Day sermon. The Most Reverend Justin Welby will say so-called Islamic State is "igniting a trail of fear, violence, hatred and determined oppression". He will also brand IS as "a Herod of today" - a reference to the Biblical king at the time of Jesus's birth. The archbishop will deliver his sermon at Canterbury Cathedral... "They hate difference, whether it is Muslims who think differently, Yazidis or Christians, and because of them the Christians face elimination in the very region in which Christian faith began. This apocalypse is defined by themselves and heralded only by the angel of death." [BBC, today]

Nonetheless, let's take a moment to wish peace to all men, women and children.

16-Jul-15: Abbas' expensive PA reward-for-terror funding scheme pays dividend yet again

European funding of terror is not a mere slogan or a notion
but a lethal ongoing scandal with a bitter price [Image Source]

A month ago, we wrote here ["19-Jun-15: Reports of sniper attack on Israelis north of Jerusalem"] of a shooting attack on two young Israeli men visiting a popular natural spring near the Israeli community of Dolev, a short drive north-west of Jerusalem.

One of the two, Danny Gonen, died soon afterwards of his injuries.

The Islamist terrorists of Hamas disclaimed any connection but offered evidently-sincere congratulations to the shooter and those who sent him.

We also mentioned that the authorities in the town in which the deceased man lived then embarked on a series of actions ("26-Jun-15: Spring of hope and revenge") that, while understandable from an Israeli standpoint, likely baffled people less familiar with the Israeli ethos.

Yesterday we learned ["Terrorist who killed Israeli arrested in West Bank", Haaretz, July 15, 2015] that the shooter has been arrested. And he was not alone. Mohammad Abu Shahin, 39, from Kalandia will be charged with the murder.

In the past weeks a number of Palestinians from the Ramallah area have been apprehended who admitted they were involved in the shooting attack, as well as several other attacks. Abu Shahin, who was imprisoned in the past for involvement in stabbing and shooting attacks, is a Fatah-Tanzim militant who receives a salary from the Palestinian Authority. Among those arrested was Asama Asad, another Tanzim member who was released in the Gilad Shalit deal.

Everyone released in the Shalit Deal, without exception we are reliably told, gets admitted into the PA's reward-for-terror scheme. They call it something else, but that's what it is.

At Ynet they add that Abu Shahin is

a member of the Palestinian Authority's elite Force 17 unit. He was imprisoned between 2006-2008 after confessing his intention to carry out a terror attack. During questioning, Abu Shaheen confessed to the shooting and said he had collected intelligence before committing the attack. He also admitted to six other shooting attacks in the last year, including one in November 2014 in Al-Ram, in which a soldier was wounded. The five were arrested about a week and a half after the attack, when troops raided the suspects' homes... The attack took place on June 19, when Gonen and a friend were driving away from a spring near the Dolev settlement in the Binyamin area of the West Bank. A Palestinian man signaled for them to stop as if to ask for help before firing at them from point-blank range, critically wounding Gonen... [Israeli security forces arrest terror cell behind murder of Danny Gonen | Ynet, July 15, 2015] 

More on Force 17 here. The others arrested:

• Asraf Amar, 24, a member of the PA's military Intelligence
• Osama (or Asama) Assad, 29, a Fatah member and convicted terrorist who was released by Israel in the 2011 Shalit Deal
• Muhammed Aduan, 37 

Mahmoud Abbas greets - with hugs and kisses - a long line of terrorists
freed that day from their Israeli prison cells. The PA's European-funded
reward-for-terror bonuses were issued to them soon afterwards
[Image Source: CNN Video grab]

(A related matter: prisoners released in the 2011 act of Hamas extortion known as the Shalit Deal who are subsequently arrested on terrorism charges are supposed, under the terms of the commutation, to be sent right back to serve the terms which had been conditionally commuted prior to the deal being done. There have been some seventy such re-arrests. Are they all now back behind bars and serving out the balance of their original un-commuted sentences? It's a very serious question. Write to us [thisongoingwar@gmail.com] if you are interested to know.)

One of the key points to arise from these arrests is the involvement in the killing of people receiving Palestinian Authority reward-for-terror payments. It's a subject that simply incenses us. At the same time, we have noticed that leaves the people - mainly European taxpayers, European government officials, and European politicians - who fund it mostly unmoved, for reasons that are simply beyond us. For background, please re-visit these posts:

• 20-May-11: Rewarding the Palestinian Arab terrorists: is this being done in your name?
• 28-Jul-11: Taxpayer-funded salaries to convicted Palestinian Arab terrorists. What a good idea
• 4-Sep-12: Where's the shame? How much of your tax dollars went to fund the pension of our child's murderer? More than you probably thought
• 08-Feb-15: Foreign money and the Palestinian Arab terror it buys
• 10-Mar-15: The not-so-moderate Palestinian Authority and the terrorism it enables
• 02-Jun-15: The obvious, petty lies that keep European money flowing into the hands of the PA's terrorists

UPDATE: The indefatigable BBCwatch which does an excellent job of noticing such things points out [here] that both the shooting attack and the murder in June went unreported at "The World's Radio Station", and so have the arrests.

28-Mar-13: Another terrorist gang apprehended today

The significance of terrorism-related intercepts like the one reported below is even greater than it seems because of the sad fact that they largely go unreported.

So what, you say? So reporters and analysts can go on claiming that the Palestinian Arab side have laid down their weapons of terror and therefore the ongoing Israeli preoccupation with anti-terrorism measures, security barriers, armed guards is a function of some sort of Israeli psychosis.

But it's not. Those of us who face up to the terrorism that goes on day after day here in Israel and well beyond Israel's borders have a moral obligation to report on what is happening. The mainstream media have stopped doing it.

Shin Bet arrests 5 Palestinians charged with carrying out shooting attacks | Ynet | Published March 28, 2013 at 12:29 | The Shin Bet, with the assistance of the IDF and police, arrested five Tanzim operatives in a house in Beit Fajjar, near Bethlehem. The men were charged at a military court with carrying out shooting attacks and throwing firebombs at the Migdal Oz settlement in Gush Etzion. The detainees were also charged with placing a mock bomb in the area. No one was injured in these incidents. During their arrest the men were in possession of six makeshift weapons and a fake explosive device (Yoav Zitun).

Beit Fajr is a town of about 11,000 people, located on the edge of Bethlehem and under the control of the PA. Kibbutz Migdal Oz, a thriving agricultural and educational community of some 400 Jews, is located close by, and has suffered repeated shooting and firebomb attacks from Arabs who fled post-attack in the direction of Fajr.

2-Oct-07: Releasing terrorists - the track record so far

Israel's release of imprisoned terrorists today and yesterday can be understood against the decades-long historical background. This was not the first such confidence-building prisoner release. It might not be the last. But ignoring the past outcomes... that's not smart.

A few instances to mull. (And more here.)

Marwan Barghouti
Arrested first in 1976; released and became a leader in the first Arafat War ("intifada"). Arrested and expelled to Jordan; then allowed to return in 1994. Became head of the Tanzim terrorists in 2000, supervising multiple terror attacks, and the deaths by murder of 35 Israelis. Arrested again in 2002, sentenced after a highly-public and full criminal trial to five life sentences. Current status: PA is demanding his release. The Israeli security service (Shabak) objects, but numerous Israeli politicians believe nothing good will come from the dialogue with the Palestinians until Barghouti is released and takes his place as their leader. Many Israelis believe this is hopelessly misguided. Meanwhile he's in prison.

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
First arrested in 1983. Released a year later as part of the Ahmed Jibril exchange. Became a founder of Hamas in 1987. Then arrested for ordering the kidnapping and killing of two soldiers and sentenced to life in prison. Israeli government decided to release him in 1997 as part of the apologies that followed an unsuccessful assassination of Khaled Mashaal, an arch Hamas terrorist. Yassin continued to organize terrorist attacks until he was killed by an Israeli pin-point rocket attack in 2004.

Saleh Shehade
Released from prison in 2000. Went on to head the Hamas military wing from where he oversaw multiple terror attacks, including the infiltration into an IDF outpost in which four soldiers were killed, and the terror attack on Atzmona where five young students were killed. Was quoted in May 2002 on the Islamic Online Web site saying: "One should prepare children carefully before carrying out attacks and recruit them into a special military section of [Hamas] in order to teach them the culture of jihad". His career ended in an IDF air attack on his home in 2002.

Abdullah Kawasme
First arrested in 1988 and then exiled by Israel to southern Lebanon in 1992. Upon his return to Israel he was imprisoned, and when released in 1994, he returned to his home in Hebron. Although arrested by the Palestinian Authority, he was released and allowed to return to his Hamas operations at the start of the Intifada. Kawasme became commander of Hamas's Izz-a-din al-Kassam military wing in March 2003. Supervised many terror attacks and more than 40 Israeli deaths: nicknamed "Father of the Ticking Time Bombs. Killed in an Israeli operation while trying to escape arrest in June 2003.

Karim Ratab Yunis Awis
Sentenced to life in prison in 1991 for intentionally causing the deaths of several Palestinian Arabs regarded by his circle as 'collaborators'. Released in another "confidence-building' gesture by the government of Israel. Subsequently in November 2001, he despatched two terrorists to fire on Afula's central bus station: 2 killed, 84 wounded. In March 2003, he despatched a human-bomb to Jerusalem's King George street where he murdered three and wounded 81 others. Re-arrested, and at his trial the court observed that his release led to the murder of additional innocent people. "The level of danger the accused poses was clear after he was found guilty the first time. The need to remove him from human society forever was obvious. After his release, the accused proved that this gesture was not justified, and a very high price was paid by many Israeli families". Now serving multiple life-sentences in an Israeli prison. Until...?

Nasser Abu Hameid
Spent 13 years in Israeli prisons after being sentenced to several life sentences for murder. Released by Israel in September 1999 in the Sharm-a-Sheikh 'understanding'. Subsequently was personally involved in the lynch mob that murdered two Israeli servicemen in 2000, personally murdered several other Israelis in 2000 and then in 2002 seupervised a series of terror attacks that cost the lives of several more. Sentenced in Jerusalem's District Court in December 2002 to seven life sentences and 50 years imprisonment after confessing to the murder of 7 Israelis and convicted on 12 counts of attempted murder and other crimes. Still in prison for now.

Abbas Mahmoud Al-Said
Imprisoned for his role in riots in Tul Karem in 1993. Released in 1996 and then convicted in 2003 of supervising the Passover massacre at Netanya's Park Hotel (30 killed, 144 injured) and other attacks. Still in prison for now.

The full list is a good deal longer.