07-Feb-18: In Gush Etzion's Karmei Tzur, another Arab-on-Israeli knifing Wednesday morning

The secured entrance to Karmei Tzur this morning [Image Source]

At the secured entrance to the Israeli community of Karmei Tzur (an hour's drive south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem via the Tunnels Road) in Gush Etzion, a Palestinian Arab equipped with an attack knife stabbed one of the security people inside the booth at around 6:30 this morning (Wednesday). Times of Israel says a second security person shot the assailant and killed him.

The Israeli who suffered knifing injuries, said to be a male of about 34, was treated at the scene by Magen David Adom paramedics. He was then rushed to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital, fully conscious, for emergency care.

We're evidently in the midst of one of those periodic upticks in Arab-on-Israeli knifing attacks.

Meanwhile the narrative-spinning of the Palestinian Arab news media continues in its customary manner:

HEBRON, February 7, 2018 (WAFA) – A Palestinian was shot dead by an Israeli security guard on Wednesday following an alleged stabbing attack at an illegal settlement north of Hebron, Palestinian and Israeli reports said. The Israeli army said a Palestinian stabbed a security guard at Karmi Tsur settlement near Halhoul, north of Hebron, before another guard shot him dead. The stabbed guard was taken to hospital where he was reported in light condition. The Palestinian coordinating office identified the alleged attacker as Hamzeh Yousef Zamaareh, 19, from Halhoul. Palestinians said Israeli soldiers raided the Zamaareh home following the incident. WAFA correspondent said residents of the area where the Zamaareh home is located clashed with the soldiers. No injuries were reported. ["Palestinian shot dead following alleged stabbing attack north of Hebron", WAFA, this morning]

Martyr-style portraits of Zamaareh (or Zamareh) are already circulating in the terrorism-friendly parts of the social media. Here's one that suggests he worked in a pizzeria. His family will now become eligible for payments from the terrorism-encouraging PA Martyr's Fund ("Rewards for Terror"). This however will not be mentioned in any mainstream media reports.

Halhoul appears frequently in our blog posts. No prizes for guessing why. The most recent murderous attack emanating from Halhoul that we reported is this one: "17-Nov-17: Ramming/stabbing attack Friday morning at entrance to Efrat"

01-Dec-15: PA president: When the subject is terror, double-talk and blatant hypocrisy work

PA president Abbas tells the Climate Change conference in Paris
on Monday that Israel is to blame "for all the ecological problems
in the occupied Palestinian territories" [Source] 

Not for the first time, we owe a debt of gratitude to the people at Palestinian Media Watch. Without their monitoring and translating of Arabic-language materials emanating from the PA regime, most people would be left to believe what the autocratic Mahmoud Abbas (elected to a four-year term as PA president almost 11 years ago) says when speech-writers prepare his comments in the English language. His Arabic speeches are considerably more revealing.

A PMW bulletin issued today [here] throws valuable light on why no one in the Palestinian Authority leadership - and certainly not Abbas who controls it - has expressed condemnation, shock, horror or revulsion at the daily acts of violence against Israeli civilians that got into high gear at the end of September.

Out of one side of his mouth, the English-speaking side that finds its way into press releases and evening news programs, he declares his opposition to terror:

• Abbas "reiterated Palestine’s solidarity with the French people and sincere condolences to all countries affected by terrorism... We strongly condemn these terrorist and barbaric acts, which require genuine efforts to combat terrorism in all its forms and everywhere in the world." [Speech to this week's Climate Change conference in Paris, reported via Palestine National News]
• "[T]he PLO affirmed its choice of peace as a strategic option and of a solution resulting from negotiations, it firmly repudiated violence and affirmed an ethical, principled rejection of terrorism in all its forms..." [Speech to the UN General Assembly, September 26, 2013] 
• "The PLO and the Palestinian people adhere to the renouncement of violence and rejection and condemning of terrorism in all its forms..." [Speech to the UN General Assembly, September 23, 2011, submitting his bid for UN recognition of a Palestinian state - via WAFA News Agency, the official mouthpiece of the Palestinian Authority]

Leaves no doubt about his complete, total, wall-to-wall opposition to terror in all its forms, everywhere and forever.

Two weeks ago, speaking on official PA television, he said almost, more or less, practically the same thing. Except upside down. In PMW's words and Abbas':

• Referring to the current Palestinian terror uprising, which at the time of Abbas’ statement had already murdered 14 Israelis [more since then, tragically] Abbas announced on PA TV that it is a “peaceful uprising.”
• Abbas: “No one called for this uprising and no one asked for it. It stemmed from the hearts of the young... We said to everyone that we want peaceful popular uprising, and that’s what this is. That’s what this is. However, the aggression of firing bullets has come from the Israelis.” [Official PA TV, Nov. 16, 2015]
• PMW: According to Abbas, when Palestinians kill young Israeli parents in front of their children, kill Israeli teens, or kill Israeli fathers with their sons, it is not to be condemned as terror because it is an expression of “peace.” And therefore, when Israelis kill the stabbers and shooters who are trying to peacefully kill Israelis - it is the Israelis who are the “aggressors.”
• PMW: Significantly, Abbas openly admitted that he called “to everyone” for this violence: “We said to everyone that we want peaceful popular uprising, and that’s what this is. That’s what this is.”

• PMW continues: One of the many PA calls to Palestinians to participate in this so-called “peaceful uprising” that Abbas might have been referring to was his Sept. 16, 2015 speech “blessing the blood” spilled fighting to prevent Jews from “defiling” the Al-Aqsa Mosque with “their filthy feet” when going to the Temple Mount. This “defiling of an Islamic holy site” was the excuse used by the PA as trigger for this current terror campaign. Excerpt follows -
• "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 and they have no right to defile it with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem." [Official PA TV, Sept. 16, 2015] 
• Neither one to shy away from public demonstrations of rank hypocrisy, Abbas has taken several opportunities during these past two months of blood-letting attacks by his people - many of them children and women - to express solidarity and support for the victims of terror... in other places: France, Russia, Lebanon and Jordan. 
• From another source - the Iranian mouthpiece with the strange name, PressTV - there's this gem of selective jihad-friendly outrage: "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned “the horrific events” in Paris and expressed sympathy and solidarity with the French people and government. “We condemn it in the strongest terms and we hope that this region can get rid of terror and the terrorists,” said Abbas, calling on all nations to “collaborate in the fight against terror... Terror has no religion nor a nation or a loyalty to one, whatever this terror maybe it is condemned by us and we stand against it all the way.”
• From the same source: ""Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat also denounced the assaults as “criminal and murderous,” adding that these acts have nothing to do with Islam."
• PMW [here] reminds us that throughout these two months, "Abbas has not condemned even one attack" by Palestinian Arabs against Israelis. 

Where, in any mainstream news reporting or analysis, have we seen these points made?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First a song:

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

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

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

Another blood-curdling song:

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

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

21-Nov-15: Lethal journalism: Fabricating victimhood at the "moderate" Palestinian Authority

Friday's funeral for Rabbi Ya'akov Don, one of the victims of the Gush Etzion ramming/shooting terror attack
a day earlier [Image Source]

As the tools for creating and disseminating news become more widely available via the Internet, a plague of false reporting and fact distortion has become a growing factor in the incitement of gullible audiences, and eventually the taking of innocent lives. (Think of Al Durah, the children killed in the Shati refugee camp, the Jenin massacre.) We're seeing an egregious instance unfold in front of our eyes.

Ezra Schwartz, 18 - murdered

Shadi Arafa is the name of the Hebron-area Palestinian Arab who was killed in a terror attack aimed at Israelis in the suburban-Jerusalem community of Gush Etzion two days ago ["19-Nov-15: Thursday, bloody Thursday"].

Three people were murdered in the attack: Arafa, along with Rabbi Ya'akov Don, 49, a beloved, lifelong educator (well-known in Toronto for the four years he spent there as a visiting teacher at CHAT) who left a widow and four children, and Ezra Schwartz, a young man of 18 from Sharon, Massachusetts who was spending a post-high school year learning in an Israeli yeshiva and engaging in acts of volunteerism (that was brought him to the Gush Etzion area that fateful day). Five of Ezra's friends, also students from overseas spending the year in Israel, were injured, none of them very seriously.

The deaths of the three came as a result of the terrorist, attacking while behind the wheel of his Toyota sedan, opening fire with an Uzi sub-machine gun at people inside other vehicles at the always-busy Tzomet Alon Shvut road junction [video]

[F]ootage from the scene shows that after he [the attacker] drove at high speed with his gun blazing at vehicles stopped in a traffic jam, he crashed into a car and got out unharmed with his hands raised, at which point a Border Patrol officer arrested him... [Israel National News]

Rabbi Ya'akov Don, 49 - murdered

Two Israeli women were hospitalized after the attack: one for wounds suffered in the shooting attack; the other for injuries suffered in the vehicle ramming. Both were sent to Shaarei Zedek Medical Center and released the following day.

The attacker identified by Palestinian Arab media as the terrorist is Mohammed Abdel Basset al-Kharoub, 24 from a village close to Hebron that is reported widely - but inaccurately - as Dir Smat. From our knowledge of the area, we think they mean the place various rendered into English as Dayr Samet, Dayr Samit and Deir Sammit. The killer's background is not our concern - though we do ask rhetorically how long it's going to be before we hear calls for the ramming/shooting murderer's release from behind Israeli bars on the customary nonsense grounds that he's a political prisoner?

But what is very much on our minds is the way our moderate, peace-seeking neighbours (excuse the deep cynicism) in the Mahmoud Abbas-dominated Palestinian Authority have turned reality on its head and declared the death of the Arab victim as another instance of Israeli malfeasance. And how little (meaning no) attention this has aroused in the mainstream news media.

The ramming/shooting terrorist was captured
unharmed. A celebrity now, his photo is
all over the Arabic-language media 
[Image Source] 

Here's how the editors at the European-funded, influential Palestinian Arab news source, Ma'an News Agency, tell it:

Hundreds of Palestinian mourners marched in Hebron on Friday for the funeral of Shadi Arafa, who was killed a day earlier in a shooting attack in Gush Etzion. Arafa's body was carried by mourners along Ein Sara street towards the al-Shuhada cemetery as the crowd shouted "God is Great" and slogans calling for national unity...
Official Palestinian sources said that Arafa, from Hebron, was killed by Israeli forces who opened fire during the shooting attack. Israeli sources say he was killed along with two other Israeli victims when a Palestinian gunmen [sic] opened fire with an automatic weapon. A series of attacks have been carried out by Palestinian individuals on Israeli military and civilians since the beginning of last month, leaving at least 15 Israelis dead.

In its Arabic-language on-line edition [here], Ma'an is less restrained:

A large crowd in the city of Hebron, after Friday prayers today, buried the body of the martyr [الشهيد] Shadi Zuhdi Arafa [شادي عرفة] at his final resting place in the Martyrs Cemetery in the Zoughair neighborhood in Hebron.

Ma'an's not-so-successful attempts to sound independent and authoritative are notorious. But in this case, it's the substance of their reporting that's the point. When, in their English-language edition, they write "Official Palestinian sources", they mean government ministry sources inside the allegedly-moderate Mahmoud Abbas regime, the Palestinian Authority. (There's some background here: "10-Mar-15: The not-so-moderate Palestinian Authority and the terrorism it enables".)

It's likely that every person in this crowd of Arab mourners at Friday's funeral
of Arafa in Hebron is there because his death at the hands of a
shooting/ramming Palestinian Arab terrorist has been knowingly twisted
by the moderates of the PA into another incident of "death by Israelis"
[Image Source: Ma'an] 

Here's an interpretation of what that means:

Israel had delivered Arafa's body to the PA late Thursday, reports the Palestinian Arab Ma'an News Agency. His body was taken from Bethlehem in Judea to the al-Ahli Hospital in Hevron... and there official PA sources [claimed] that IDF forces who responded to the attack killed Arafa... [D]espite the fact that Arafa was killed in a blaze of gunfire rained down on vehicles by an Arab terrorist driving by, the Palestinian Authority (PA) buried him as a victim of Israel in a twisted perversion of the events... [T]he PA Health Ministry's claim was apparently good enough for the masses at Arafa's funeral on Friday, who were organized into a protest by Hamas activists that began the funeral march from a local mosque... Funerals of terrorists in Hevron have been frequently used in recent weeks to incite more terror... Arafa's funeral would seem to show that even Arab victims of Arab terror are being used to incite more attacks. ["Arab bystander in shooting attack buried as 'victim of Israel'", Israel National News, November 20, 2015] 

The official mouthpiece of the Palestinian Authority, WAFA, on Friday published a heart-rending account of Arafa's death at the hands of an Arab terrorist (though he is not mentioned once), focusing on the pain of his mother and his pregnant widow who became his bride only a few months before... and on Israeli culpability. The article quotes his brother:

"This is [because of] the occupation and the crimes against the martyrs... We will follow the legal procedures in order to hold them accountable and bring our case to international courts... " [WAFA]

And brazenly invents a bogus Israeli alibi:

"Israeli forces claimed that they "fired by mistake on the young Arafa during an operation in the area" [WAFA]

On Twitter [click to view], there's a bunch of Arabic-language tweets, many with accompanying photos, proclaiming Shadi Arafa's "martyrdom", laying it at the feet of the Israelis. There are hundreds of hits when you Google (in Arabic) "martyr Shadi Arafa" - try it.

These Arabic-language accounts, along with the rich resources of photos and videos, inevitably have limited impact on Western audiences like the good people reading our blog. But we need to be aware that Arabic-speaking audiences are daily incited to more and more acts of terror, vengeance and hatred by precisely this kind of cynical mis-reporting. The process is appropriately described  as Lethal Journalism. And it's high time the price of allowing its practitioners to keep doing it, and of ignoring the way it's ignored by the global news media channels, is better understood and stopped.

6-May-14: In search of appalled, sickened Palestinian Arabs

The official government-controlled WAFA News Agency gave major
prominence (above) to the funeral of the "martyr" and to the messages
of PA officials inciting to fresh acts of murder and destruction.
Naturally in Arabic only.  [Image Source]

Yesterday's post ["5-May-14: The making of a martyr: it takes more than a village"] reported on the state funeral given to the remaining body parts of a Palestinian Arab human bomb. 

He exploded in August 2001 inside a restaurant filled with Jews, most of them children, and died a happy young man, perhaps even an ecstatic one. His life, in accordance with the insane religious dogmas that had been pumped into his head, had reached its point of fulfillment.

We made the point that representatives of the major segments of Palestinian Arab society took part in the funeral. If you were looking for moderates - for instance the so-called moderates of the Mahmoud Abbas regime - they were indeed there. But they were not moderating anything. Nor were they expressing viewpoints that came close to moderate. When it comes to murder and incitement to murder of Israelis and of Jews, they are not moderate; they are enthusiastic. 

In last Wednesday's funeral procession in Tubas, they participated, heart and soul, to ensure the strongest possible message of support, encouragement, adulation for acts of calculated murder like the one in which the dead human bomb had engaged - and that stole the life of our daughter Malki. 

They amplified this message of hatred and jihad via the official Palestinian Arab state media, as did the Hamas regime in Gaza through theirs. They wanted everyone to know - at least, everyone who speaks Arabic - how united they all are in their passion for jihad, death, mayhem, destruction. 

As for publishing reports of the funeral and its speeches in languages other than Arabic, they were considerably less interested. Try (just as one random example) finding any mention of it on the English-language, Bethlehem-based, high profile European-funded Ma'an News Agency website. 

Then go to Maan's Arabic side [here] where you can find all the death-cult worship an Arabic reader with an interest in such things could want. 

Interesting, no? Perhaps a person could even learn something from it.

We received some reader feedback suggesting this characterization was unfair. They said there are voices in the Palestinian Arab world that are as sickened as people like us are by the unconcealed blood-lust of Hamas, of Islamic Jihad, of Fatah, of the Palestinian Authority and of Mahmoud Abbas.

We're doubtful. 

But we're willing to investigate. So here's an invitation for anyone who has such evidence to send us public, published statements in Arabic - statements in which Palestinian Arab voices condemn what sickens the rest of the world: the process of turning psychopaths like the human bomb who murdered our daughter into martyrs, heroes, figures to be emulated.

Over to you. Send what you have to thisongoingwar@gmail.com or add them to the comments below. We'll publish what we receive here. 

Remember - in Arabic. We'll take care of the translating into English.