15-Apr-17: On the heart-breaking Good Friday murder of a decent young woman on a Jerusalem tram

Kay Wilson was hacked almost to death in an earlier vicious
Arab-on-Israeli attack [Source]

The victim of Friday afternoon's knifing attack on a Jerusalem tram ["14-Apr-17: The urge to stab erupts again: In Jerusalem, a young woman is knifed on a tram"] is a young British student, Hannah Bladon. 

Details of the circumstances around her violent, tragic death at the hands of a middle-aged Palestinian Arab man from the notorious Tamimi clan are captured in a Times of Israel report which we have extracted below. 

Those circumstances highlight the unbridgeable moral chasm between inspirational lives like Heather's and the profound amorality of the Palestinian Arab killer. And not only of him but also of the many who stand with him, urging attacks of the sort he perpetrated.

It's high time people recognized the need to be judgmental.

The moral blame for Hannah's death rests with the anonymous civil service officials and politicians in far-off European and North American government offices who routinely rubber-stamp foreign aid payments to the supremely corrupt Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas. Those payments, funded by ordinary and unwitting taxpayers, provided the means by which the PA continues the unspeakably evil Rewards for Terror scheme about which we have written with rising fury for years.

Hannah Bladon, 21, of
blessed memory [Image Source]

UK student was standing near killer because she gave up her seat for woman with baby | Times of Israel Staff | April 15, 2017, 8:52 pm  

Hannah Bladon, the British student who was stabbed to death on the Jerusalem light rail on Friday, was standing by the exit doors of the train, near to the murderous Palestinian assailant, because she had given up her seat to enable a woman who was holding a baby to sit down, Israeli TV reported Saturday. 

The Palestinian terrorist, Jamil Tamimi, 57, told investigators that he attacked her because he wanted to die and hoped the soldier who was standing next to her on the train would kill him, Channel 2 news further reported, describing the killing as “an attempted suicide attack.” 

Tamimi was on his way from a mental hospital in northern Israel when he carried out the fatal stabbing. He had telephoned his family when he reached Jerusalem, and spoken to one of his sons, who told him that the family wanted no contact with him, in part because he had previously been convicted of sexually abusing his daughter. 

He told investigators that he felt he had “nothing left to lose.” He purchased a knife in the Old City and boarded the light rail at Damascus Gate shortly before 1:00 p.m. Seeing an armed soldier on board, he decided to attack the young woman — Bladon — who was standing nearby. He took out the knife he had just purchased and stabbed her multiple times, critically wounding her. 

“I attacked her so that the soldier would shoot me,” the TV report quoted Tamimi as saying to investigators. Tamimi has been remanded in custody and is being sent for psychiatric tests. 

In a statement on Saturday, her family in the UK said Bladon “was the most caring, sensitive and compassionate daughter you could ever wish for.” Her “final act of kindness,” the TV report said, was to give up her seat on the train for the woman who was holding a baby. Bladon had previously been sitting further back in the carriage, but got up for the woman, and went to stand near the exit door. 

Bladon’s family said they were “devastated” by her death in a “senseless and tragic attack.” The statement noted that Hannah was “a talented student,” an “enthusiastic rugby player” and “a keen Derby County supporter. “She was driven and passionate and her death leaves so much promise unfulfilled.” 

Bladon had been studying religion, theology and archaeology at the University of Birmingham since 2015. As part of her studies she began a program in Jerusalem’s Hebrew University in January, which she was set to complete in September. 

Her family said she had been returning from an archaeological dig when she was killed.
The Hebrew University sent its condolences to the family, saying in a statement that it “condemns such acts of terror that harm innocent people, and especially a student who came to Jerusalem to study and widen her academic horizons.” 

In a Facebook post in January, Bladon wrote that she was doing okay in response to some concerns for her safety amid an ongoing wave of terror attacks that had largely subsided since beginning in October 2015. “Thanks guys. I’m ok thanks!” she posted. “Security is really tight on campus so no worries at mo[ment]! Managed to see a lot of sites before starting my classes today so defo (definitely) having a great time! Xx”.
The comment accompanied a picture of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

After Bladon was stabbed an off-duty police officer and a passerby wrestled Tamimi to the ground before he could harm anyone else...  

Tamimi, from the Ras al-Amoud neighborhood of East Jerusalem, apparently “suffers from mental problems,” a police spokesperson said Friday. Earlier this year, he tried to commit suicide by swallowing a razor blade, according to the Shin Bet. He was also found guilty of sexually abusing his daughter in 2011. 

“This is another case, out of many, where a Palestinian who is suffering from personal, mental or moral issues chooses to carry out a terror attack in order to find a way out of their problems,” the Shin Bet said in a statement...

It's evident from British news reports that it was not because of any personal Jewish connection that Hannah came to Israel. (The stabber almost certainly thought his victim was Jewish.) Will this aspect, along with the timing of the murderous stabbing - Good Friday - spark a few moments of soul-searching on the part of the highest-level officials at the World Council of Churches?

We have drawn attention to the disgraceful public statements they have issued, and their encouragement of terror, for more than three years. Three years of active contribution to the enraging lethal madness that now thoroughly infects every element in Palestinian Arab life.

In an earlier blog post ["17-Apr-14: Christian solidarity with unrepentant murderers: where's the outrage?"], we wrote about how

the World Council of Churches went public today with a statement of solidarity with what it calls "some 5000 Palestinian men, women and children, languishing in Israeli jails". The WCC's chief executive, Olav Fykse Tveit, a Norwegian Lutheran, is quoted in its press release saying that the members for whom he speaks "are called to pray for, visit, and tend to the needs of all prisoners, no matter the reason for their detention. For Israel and Palestine, prisoners have taken on even greater significance than in the past..."

The horrifying reality of the WCC's highly-publicized 2014 call is that they want their member churches to be praying for the depraved Jamil Tamimi and all those other murder-minded Palestinian Arab stabbers, shooters, bombers and vehicle-rammers for whom Hannah Bladon and other innocents will always be legitimate targets.

What kind of theology is that?

07-Apr-17: Not everything's gloom and doom for the family of yesterday's murder-by-vehicle attacker

Single family house in Silwad: Somehow, they manage to get by
[Image Source: Israellycool]

Some follow-on reports arising from the killing yesterday ['06-Apr-17: An Arab-on-Israeli vehicle ramming attack north of Jerusalem this morning"] of a young IDF serviceman outside Ofra in a vehicle-borne terror attack.

According to Ynet today:

• Malak Hamed is the 21-year-old resident of Silwad [population roughly 6,000] who killed Elchai Tahar-Lev הי"ד and injured another soldier in that car-ramming attack on Thursday.
• He had been arrested in 2015 for trying to illegally penetrate Geva Binyamin (also known as Adam) on Jerusalem's northern edge. He was held in custody at the time and then released after three months. Evidently not long enough.
• A joint task force of the IDF, Shin Bet, and Israel and Border Police took control of the homes of Malak Hamed's extended family on Thursday night. Hamed's brother was arrested during the operation. 
• Six cars in their control were seized after being identified as stolen vehicles. In addition, NIS 40,000 in cash was seized on the suspicion of being used to fund terrorism.
• The extended Hamed family is said to be linked to Hamas. Nine members of the family have committed terrorist crimes in the Judea and Samaria districts over the years.

The Ma'an News Agency has these things to add:

• The person they call the "detained Palestinian", meaning the suspected Palestinian Arab vehicle-attack murderer, has a fuller name than Ynet reported. It's Malik Ahmad Moussa Hamed, 23. He's from Silwad, northeast of the Palestinian Arab capital, Ramallah. (Silwad has some seriously lavish living. See the photo above and this Israellycool article.)
• "Israeli forces reportedly tightened security at the military checkpoint installed at the western entrance of Silwad."
• "Locals told Ma’an that Hamed had borrowed his father’s car on Thursday morning, before driving in the direction of Ofra. They described Hamed as a calm and well behaved young man, whose two best friends, Anas Bassam Hamad and Muhammad Abd al-Rahman Ayyad, were killed by Israeli forces two weeks apart in December 2015 while carrying out vehicular attacks, adding that Hamed would frequently talk about his two friends."
• Hamas, the Islamist terrorists who control Gaza and increasingly the West Bank as well, "quickly released statements praising the alleged attack, with Hamas spokesperson Abd al-Latif al-Qanu saying that it was a response to the "continuous Israeli crimes committed against the Palestinians.""

When Hamas refer to something continuous done by Israel, it's a sign they have temporarily run out of vague and meaningless pretexts for the latest act of terror being praised. But they know their image-building demands that they blame their lethal anger on something. So they point to something continuous.

The Hamed clan may have lost six stolen cars and NIS 40,000 in cash last night. But spare the sympathy. Far from the headlines and the attention of most analysts and reporters (who invariably keep quiet about this though in many cases they surely know) they are about to start enjoying the very meaningful (in their society's terms) fruits of having a homicidal son.

First, the young murderer has just become eligible for participating in the Palestinian Authority's Rewards for Terror payment scheme which will continue, and indeed grow, as "calm and well behaved" (sic) Malik accumulates more and more time behind Israeli bars for yesterday's assault and murder. It's a no-lose situation for the family: a son who has become a celebrity, and a guaranteed cash flow starting now, plus the likelihood of an absurdly-well-paid senior position with the PA when he gets out.

And this: depending on how tuned in the refined Hamed clans-people are to spiritual matters, they are going to become the beneficiaries of kind and uplifting prayers from good Christians throughout the world. And if any of our readers think that's a joke, they need to immediately get familiar with things we have written about the World Council of Churches and Olav Fykse Tveit, a Norwegian Lutheran who is its chief executive. 

Back in April 2014 [here], the Rev Mr Tveit published a call for solidarity - between the WCC's faithful and what he called "some 5000 Palestinian men, women and children, languishing in Israeli jails". Many of those convicts are self-confessed murderers. Most of the rest are unrepentant terrorists. But undaunted, the WCC's leader called on the worshipers in its member churches 

"to pray for, visit, and tend to the needs of all prisoners, no matter the reason for their detention. For Israel and Palestine, prisoners have taken on even greater significance than in the past."

The World Council of Churches' Dr Tveit [Image Source]

That breathtaking phrase "no matter the reason for their detention" rattles in our brain even now three years later. It's meant to refer to the case of the thuggish man who murdered Elhai Tahar-Lev yesterday. (And if not, then let the WCC's director of non-communication say so publicly.) What kind of theology does Tveit practice? If we believe in mutual tolerance across religious lines, must we be tolerant of that kind of lethal pollyannaish drivel?

Tveit went on to invite 

"the churches in the Holy Land to remember Palestinian prisoners through prayers and acts of solidarity that restore to them their freedom with justice and dignity”.

For some other furious comments we made at the time, see "17-Apr-14: Christian solidarity with unrepentant murderers: where's the outrage?"

So for the Hamed clan, a little upset perhaps by last night's reduction in their sense of justice and dignity: hang in there! The World Council of Churches is on its way! And for the members of WCC-affiliated churches, we feel your shame.

08-Jan-17: Where the World Council of Churches stands as Israelis are rammed to death

The driver of the truck rammed into a crowd of young Israelis in
Jerusalem [Image Source]

A hideous, cowardly attack by a Palestinian Arab terrorist at the wheel of a heavy truck changed the lives - in the absolute worst possible way - of at least four Israeli families today.

The man drove at high speed onto a Jerusalem sidewalk and into a crowd of IDF cadets and having immediately killed several, turned his vehicle around and prepared to batter and crush some additional victims. He was forcefully stopped and will not be a terrorist ever again.

But had he survived and been caught and arrested and tried and sentenced, here is what the World Council of Churches would likely have urged its faithful followers - hundreds of millions of Christians - to do for him:

"To pray for, visit, and tend to [his] needs... no matter the reason for [his] detention... [And] for the churches in the Holy Land to remember [him] through prayers and acts of solidarity that restore to [him his] freedom with justice and dignity”.

How do we know? Because those words, very slightly changed in order to address a larger number of Palestinian Arab terrorists behind Israeli bars, issued forth from the publicity bureau of the Secretary General of the World Council of Churches, Olav Fykse Tveit, almost three years ago. Our efforts to engage with them in dialogue have been pointedly ignored over and again.

We documented the WCC's extraordinary stand in a blog post at the time ["17-Apr-14: Christian solidarity with unrepentant murderers: where's the outrage?"].

And then soon afterwards in another ["6-Jun-14: Fear and loathing at the World Council of Churches"].

And another ["11-Jun-14: Where does this strategic deafness and moral blindness at World Council of Churches lead?"]

And another ["15-Sep-16: Justice, peace, terror, truth - and the World Council of Churches"].

And this one last week ["02-Jan-17: At the World Council of Churches, a stunning theology of terror"]

The most recent of our short essays about the baffling amorality of the Christian leadership at the WCC focuses on another call by Tveit for solidarity with and sympathy for the many New Years Eve revelers murdered and injured when an Islamist gunman in the service of ISIS attacked a crowded Istanbul nightclub. Tveit, a Christian moralist and theologian, was moved to observe that

Four victims (left to right) of today's truck ramming attack:
Shir Hajaj, 22; Erez Orbach, 20; Yael Yekutiel, 20; Shira Zur, 20
May their memories be for a blessing. There are many more injured.

"Innocent people are suffering again and again. This is an evil act. This attack is particularly shocking, in the first place because there seems to have been a clear intention deliberately to target people who were simply enjoying themselves... In the face of this brutality, the human family, all people of faith and of good will, must stand together to recommit to respecting and caring for one another, to protecting one another, and to preventing such violence... God in your mercy, be with the victims and their families and those who accompany and help them.” [Quoted here]

Strong, clear and powerful words. 

But neither Tveit nor, as far as we can tell, any other WCC management team insider has expressed sentiments remotely like this for innocent Jewish victims of evil Arab-on-Israeli terror. Not today, and certainly not on August 9, 2001 when our fifteen year-old daughter Malki was murdered here in the center of Jerusalem by people doing lethal, cruel brutality in the name of Hamas. 

In fact, not ever.

We have faith in dialogue. On the one occasion when we made direct contact with WCC officials in their Geneva head office seeking it, we were bluntly told by their corporate spokesperson not to expect any response. His name is Mark Beach and at the time (mid-2014) he served as WCC director of communication. But he had zero interest in directing any communication at us. We wrote about that particular shabbiness here. (He's no longer doing that job but we don't expect a response now either.)

Instead we ask Christians - and especially Christians whose congregations are affiliated with the WCC - to condemn them for their bigotry, for their dangerous hypocrisy and for the succour they provide to bestial practitioners of terrorism. We are more than willing to provide additional background; please email us at thisongoingwar (at) gmail (dot) com

The family of the perpetrator of today's killings say they are “thankful” for what he did and are calling the killer's death “the most beautiful martyrdom”. In their ugly recourse to a religious category, are they so different from the WCC people and their grotesquely-politicized theology of terror?

02-Jan-17: At the World Council of Churches, a stunning theology of terror

WCC's Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit [Image Source]

We have devoted a dozen or more posts to things the World Council of Churches has said or done [click here] about terror. Frankly, and with sincere respect for a value system of which we are not a part, it's been hard to say anything positive about them. Here's the latest example of why.

Yesterday, the WCC secretariat, based in Geneva, issued a statement to the media in relation to the Istanbul New Year's Eve Reina nightclub massacre. You might have noticed that credit for those brutal and cruel killings was today claimed by an Islamist terror group ["The Latest: Islamic State claims Istanbul nightclub attack", Associated Press, today].

Here's the Council's statement:

WCC condemns terrorist attack in Istanbul on innocent New Year revellers | 01 January 2017 | World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary, Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, condemns the latest terrorist attack against people in Istanbul celebrating the New Year. At least 39 people were killed and dozens more were wounded when a single gunman attacked a crowded Istanbul nightclub... "Innocent people are suffering again and again. This is an evil act. This attack is particularly shocking, in the first place because there seems to have been a clear intention deliberately to target people who were simply enjoying themselves at the New Year’ Day,” said Tveit... “In the face of this brutality, the human family, all people of faith and of good will, must stand together to recommit to respecting and caring for one another, to protecting one another, and to preventing such violence.” The WCC offers its deepest condolences to the bereaved and injured. Tveit said “God in your mercy, be with the victims and their families and those who accompany and help them.” [Online here]

Most reasonable people will agree it's right for a highly influential religious group to call on the Almighty to come down on the side of the victims. It would be incomprehensible if the Reverend Mr Tveit had taken the opposing view and called for compassion for the murdering savages of ISIS.

But wait.

We want to point out how differently the same Mr Tveit expressed himself in relation to a different collection of savages who. unlike the perpetrators of the Istanbul barbarism two days ago, have been caught and in most cases tried and convicted on terrorism charges. In relation to those savages, Mr Tveit very publicly urged the Christian faithful who seek leadership from his office to pray and to help them in practical ways and not to give any thought to the things those prisoners had done to be locked up. 

The scene outside Istanbul's Reina night-club [Image Source]

That nauseating appeal for sympathy for actual and thwarted murderers got our attention in April 2014 [here] when the WCC called for solidarity by its faithful with what it disingenuously terms 

"some 5000 Palestinian men, women and children, languishing in Israeli jails". 

For their benefit, believer-members ought

"to pray for, visit, and tend to the needs of all prisoners, no matter the reason for their detention. For Israel and Palestine, prisoners have taken on even greater significance than in the past."

Just turn those words over in your mind: "no matter the reason for their detention". It makes us wonder what kind of evil faux-theology this man amd his cohort practice. 

He and they certainly don't view themselves as a satanic cult. By their own account, they are: 

the broadest and most inclusive among the many organized expressions of the modern ecumenical movement, a movement whose goal is Christian unity.  The WCC brings together churches, denominations and church fellowships in more than 110 countries and territories throughout the world, representing over 500 million Christians and including most of the world's Orthodox churches, scores of Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist and Reformed churches, as well as many United and Independent churches. While the bulk of the WCC's founding churches were European and North American, today most member churches are in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East and the Pacific. There are now 348 member churches. For its member churches, the WCC is a unique space: one in which they can reflect, speak, act, worship and work together, challenge and support each other, share and debate with each other... [From the WCC website today]

It didn't matter to Olav Fykse Tveit, the WCC's chief executive, an educated and cultured man on a mission and a Norwegian Lutheran clergyman, that many of the Palestinian Arab prisoners for whom he intervened are convicted, self-confessed killers of innocent people. 

Mostly of innocent Jewish people, if you're already asking. 

How much did it matter that most of the rest - other than the actual killers - are unrepentant terrorists? Or that Palestinian Arab society from president Mahmoud Abbas on down embraces all of them as heroes, as we have noted with utter revulsion in this blog dozens of times over the past decade? 

The answer: not one little bit. (For other comments we made at the time, see "17-Apr-14: Christian solidarity with unrepentant murderers: where's the outrage?")

So now let's play "what if". 

What would the reaction have been yesterday in Istanbul - or in Paris or Brussels or Sydney or Nairobi - if the head of the World Council of Churches had called for 

• the freedom of the Istanbul killers to be restored; 
• the justice of the Istanbul gunmen's cause to be respected; 
• the dignity of the Istanbul shooters - with their high-powered weapons firing point-blank at innocent, unsuspecting and unarmed revellers in the night-club - to win faithful Christian people's solidarity. 

Mourners prepare to bury one of the Istanbul massacre victims [Image Source]

Freedom, justice, dignity, solidarity. Mr Tveit asked his flock two years ago to beseech all of those from Heaven so as to benefit, and deliver solace to, Palestinian Arab prisoners behind Israeli bars. (Full disclosure: Several of those convicts happen to be the murderers of our fifteen year-old daughter Malki. So yes, we do lack a certain scientific objectivity on this.) 

Would he have dared make a request like that from his Geneva pulpit for the Istanbul shooters and plotters? The answer is obvious. He can do what he did because, and only because, the victims of the Palestinian Arab terrorists are who and what they are. Do we need to be more explicit than that? We hope not.

With time, it gets clearer that this important Christian group has developed and propagates a theology of terror and of terror-victimhood that deserves unsparing critical scrutiny but doesn't - as far as we know - get it.

And in case anyone's wondering why we don't try to get the World Council of Churches to give its viewpoint - we actually did. We wrote to them several times back in 2014. As noted here, the only substantive reaction we ourselves ever got from our efforts came as a couple of polite personal notes on behalf of Mr Tveit from the WCC's then director of communication, a certain Mr. Mark Beach who no longer holds that position. 

In an email from Geneva to us dated June 5, 2014, this Mr Beach addressed - in a not-too-helpful way - the questions and the sharply critical comments we directed over and again at his boss. Now please note, as we asked him to, that we were writing not only as members of a concerned public but as parents of a beautiful child of 15, murdered by the very thugs for whose dignity the Christians of the WCC had been asked to pray. 

Probably not that moved by our letters, Mr Beach informed us that:

"Yes, I believe we would have nothing further to say."

And indeed we never did hear from him again. The background is here ["6-Jun-14: Fear and loathing at the World Council of Churches"]. 

To be clear about this: we don't expect Mr Tviet or the World Council of Churches insiders to change their spots. 

But we're baffled by how ordinary religion- and morality-minded Christians who see the rank hypocrisy and genteel bigotry of the WCC leadership don't demand that the WCC leadership be kicked down the stairs of their exceedingly well-appointed Swiss headquarters and out into the street.

Call us perplexed.

P.S. As happened in 2014, the managing clique at World Council of Churches has remained silent and egregiously unresponsive to the criticisms aired here and elsewhere. So... interested members of WCC-affliated churches - there are millions of you out there - are invited to make contact with us [thisongoingwar (at) gmail (dot) com] so we can confidentially share some plans for expanding this protest of WCC malevolence.

UPDATE January 8, 2017: We found it important to add some observations in the wake of a gruesome and cruel Palestinian Arab terror attack. See "08-Jan-17: Where the World Council of Churches stands as Israelis are rammed to death"

15-Sep-16: Justice, peace, terror, truth - and the World Council of Churches

Like the WCC, these German activists , in their own distinctive way, stood
for "democratic, non-violent actions for justice 
and peace" in the'Thirties [Image Source]

We pay more attention in our blog to what the World Council of Churches says and does than many other bloggers. (Click for our earlier WCC posts.)

This is absolutely not because we subscribe to their dogma. By dogma, of course, we don't mean theology. Actually, theology appears to be one of the least distinctive aspects of the WCC. We mean their political viewpoints as espoused for decades by the WCC's leadership. (From experience, we know those viewpoints are rarely shared by their church-going members.) Politics far more than religion in the conventional sense is what serves as the raison d'etre of the World Council of Churches

We pay them attention because of our annoyance at the mild halo effect that unjustifiably accompanies a religious-sounding global alliance's frequent pronouncements. As we have noted here in the past, the WCC (with annual income in 2014 of 29.4 million Swiss Francs, about USD $30 million) is not just any religious-sounding alliance but 

a roof body that purports to speak for the world's major protestant churches. Here's where they list their members. In Australia, they include the Anglican, Churches of Christ and Uniting Church in Australia. In the UK, the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Church in Wales, the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church of Wales and others. In the United States, they include the Quakers, the United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and many others. That's a lot of worshipers. Do they know how their religious faith is being exploited by a small coterie of self-perpetuating, Geneva-based bureaucrats? ["17-Apr-14: Christian solidarity with unrepentant murderers: where's the outrage?"]

And

the broadest and most inclusive among the many organized expressions of the modern ecumenical movement, a movement whose goal is Christian unity... breaking down barriers between people, seeking justice and peace ["About us: What is the World Council of Churches?", on the WCC website]

The WCC's Geneva-based secretary-general [Image Source]

(If you're not sure whether they presume to speak on behalf of your house of worship, we posted the names and websites of all the WCC member churches at the time in this blog post: "23-May-14: On the dignity of murderers and their victims: An appeal to Christian friends".)    

In a public call datelined September 15, 2016 (today), the WCC bureaucracy has just launched once more into a full-throated assault on Israel and Israelis, calling in the name of Christianity for more terror, more "Kauft-nicht-bei-Juden"-style boycotts of Jewish businesses and more disregard for justice and the rights of Jews and Israelis. 

Some direct-quote World Council of Churches excerpts:

1. They... called for the US to end what they described as a "wave of legislative efforts" to penalise the use of non-violent economic measures to influence policy in Israel, noting that churches have used such strategies to "advance the rights of people and further the cause of justice both domestically and internationally for many years"...
2. [They] noted that the unresolved conflict in Israel and Palestine is "primarily about justice, and until the requirement of justice is met, peace cannot be established"...
3. "Too often the structural and permanent violence against a whole people is ignored. But keeping an entire population under occupation and even in a closed area, such as Gaza, in prison-like conditions is a grave and unsustainable situation. 
4. We are also well aware that Israel is the occupying force and has commanding power over the people of Palestine and, thus, bears special responsibility for taking the initiative."
5. They called for an end to the "occupation and to settlements on occupied land, with all its grave and deteriorating dimensions for the Palestinian people, but also for Israel and the whole region beyond".
6. "We ask for full respect and protection of human rights defenders, for the rights to tell the truth, to express concern, and to take democratic, non-violent actions for justice and peace... 
7. "We are deeply concerned by Israeli legislative and other measures to curtail the work of Palestinian and Israeli development and human rights organisations, as well as the lack of transparency concerning investigations into international humanitarian (including faith-based) organisations in the Gaza Strip and the possible negative consequences to delivering critically needed aid to this besieged area."

That's a lot of euphemisms and irresponsible double-talk.

1. When they advocate "non-violent economic measures", they mean the bigotry-rich program of boycotts, divestment and sanctions or BDS, in which the World Council of Churches takes a lead advocacy role. It's an aggressive campaign initiated by a cluster of Palestinian Arab groups 11 years ago that "disincentivizes the Palestinian leadership from negotiating with Israel at present, is antisemitic [and] promotes the delegitimization of Israel" [Wikipedia]
2. Don't expect the conflict "in Israel and Palestine" (a narrow way of looking at the state of war declared by the Arab states in 1948 and in large measure still continuing) to get resolved or the terrorism conducted by the two Palestinian "states" to end so long as "the requirement of justice" for the Arabs, not for the Israelis, not for the Roths, continues to be unmet. In other words, the Arabs alone are the side to whom injustice is being served. Resolving this doesn't depend on them.
3. Gaza is prison-like, suffering "structural and permanent violence". Those tens of thousands of Hamas rockets fired at Israeli homes? The enforcement of Arab poverty by an Islamist leadership residing luxuriously in Qatar and Dubai? The ongoing misappropriation of foreign aid to ensure endless Gazan misery? All totally absent - as if they never existed. If there is a wicked person in this Bible lesson, the WCC leaders know he's not an Arab.
4. Only the Israelis as "the occupying force", the "commanding power", have the responsibility to do something peaceful. In the pseudo-redemptive theology of the WCC's preachers, the Palestinian Arabs get a permanent free pass. Though not Christians, the insiders in the two Palestinian Arab regimes understand this parable to mean: "Don't change, don't cease fire, don't consider being flexible. Just keep going while we provide protection". 
5. This exceedingly strange thing - "occupation" - is said to be not only at the heart of the Arab/Israel conflict but also the "grave and deteriorating" state of "the region beyond". Serious-minded Christians might be thinking of today's Iraq, Libya, Syria and Lebanon. Like us, are they wondering what the Christian leadership in its Geneva office complex, witness to the rapid and violent end of two thousand years of Christian life at the hands of Islamists, along with savagery on a scale that challenges the worst nightmares, are smoking?
6. Rights, justice, peace. Are both sides entitled to these? The answer is obvious.
7. This refers to Israel's recently-announced arrest and prosecution of a Hamas agent inside World Vision, and reports that additional charities active in the Palestinian Arab domains have been similarly penetrated and pillaged. The WCC has said not one word about the allegations of massive abuse of Christian charity by the bigoted, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish Islamist forces. Nor about the Gazan housing construction budgets misappropriated to the construction of attack tunnels and rockets and mortars.

We believe in dialogue. We know a person cannot be completely well-informed without hearing the opposing side's case. In April 2014, when the World Council of Churches came out with an earlier public call that involved actual praying for the freedom and dignity of Palestinian Arab prisoners, almost all of them were and are behind bars because of the anti-Jewish terrorism in which they engaged, we blogged these two posts: "17-Apr-14: Christian solidarity with unrepentant murderers: where's the outrage?" and "22-Apr-14: Attention World Council of Churches: Will you now follow your own advice and speak up for the Arabs tortured and imprisoned by the PA?"

Right after that, we sent a letter to the then (and still) WCC secretary general, Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, on April 24, 2014. We were ignored. So we sent the same again, along with copies to a number of WCC insiders, a few days later. Still ignored. Then we had a tiny flurry of exchanges with the WCC's Director of Communications. He seemed willing to engage, but then changed tacks complete. Here's the full text of his letter to us dated June 5, 2014:

Dear Mr. Roth, Yes, I believe we would have nothing further to say.  Best wishes to you and your family. Mark Beach, WCC Director of Communication

The context and additional detail are in our post: "6-Jun-14: Fear and loathing at the World Council of Churches". Here's how we summed it up: 

So take it from this non-Christian, non-Moslem couple: there's something seriously wrong with a major global-facing church roof-body that wishes freedom, justice and dignity for convicted murderers but rolls down the shutters when a family devastated by the actions of those very murderers engages them in serious, albeit critical, discussion.

We are in the midst of the Jewish season for thinking hard about sin and about the truly redemptive value of forgiveness and repentance. In that spirit, here'a a repeat of a World Council of Churches thought we expressed here in the past

We'll sign off with a word to the WCC management team sitting there in Geneva: it's never too late to do sincere repentance and to come back and openly discuss these very serious life-and-death issues - even with people as marginal as we are to your mission. ["11-Jun-14: Where does this strategic deafness and moral blindness at World Council of Churches lead?"]

And this epilogue:

We know from experience that the world has many, many Christian believers whose abhorrence of terrorism, rejection of cries for the murder of innocent children, and belief in the central role of justice and morality in 21st century life differ hugely from the messages being advanced by the WCC. We don't share their theological outlook but we feel we have a great deal of common ground with their humanity. But finding common ground with church leaders for whom calls to prayer and "acts of solidarity" that "restore" to the convicted, unrepentant murderers of innocent children "their freedom with justice and dignity” - that truly feels like mission impossible. ["6-Jun-14: Fear and loathing at the World Council of Churches"] 

UPDATE Sunday September 18, 2016: Please check out "Five Things You Need to Know About World Council of Churches" by Dexter Van Zile. Brief and highly recommended.

01-Aug-16: At the crossings and road junctions: Scenes from a war

Vehicles line up for security inspection at Huwwara
(not yesterday) [Image Source]

Israel's internal security arrangements tend to get very bad press despite the fact that - or is it because? - they frequently prevent acts of terror from taking place.

We happen to believe strongly in security arrangements. When we say "human rights", we actually mean to be thinking, first and foremost, about the human right to stay alive. It's a right that was denied our daughter Malki, murdered in a Hamas attack when she was fifteen, and a right the breach of which aroused, in simple terms, terribly little outrage by the human rights industry.

Yesterday (Sunday), a balmy summer day when much of the country was vacationing, provided several insights into how security works and who benefits. This is true not because yesterday was a special day but because it actually was not. And what's striking is that for all the arguing that security barriers are pointless, worthless, useless, ineffective because terrorists can easily avoid them, and a torture for those forced to endure them, the uncomfortable fact remains: those are exactly where malevolent people with weapons of death on their bodies or in their bags or cars keep turning up and keep getting caught.

• At the IDF security checkpoint at Huwwara, south of Shechem (Nablus), an Arab male driving a vehicle stopped shortly before reaching the soldiers manning the barrier, got out of his car and came running at them with his knife brandished. The soldiers acting on orders opened fire in the face of a hostile action with clearly-articulated intentions, and the attack ended. The assailant, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, quoted by Israel National News, is a 31 year old resident of Shechem. Ma'an News Agency gives his name as Rami Muhammad Zaim Awartani. The circumstances suggest he was intent on launching the sort of interaction for which knives are needed, and not - as is frequently claimed - en route to some other peaceful purpose when assailed by hostile IDF personnel. The attacker is now dead - assassinated, in the words of parts of the English-language Palestinian Arab media [click].
• Also on Sunday, a little later in the day, Israeli police stopped a Palestinian Arab taxi cab at the busy Tapuah intersection in the Samaria district. Such searches are common and routine, and often triggered by suspicions stemming from indicators for which the security people are trained to identify. In this case, their search turned up parts of M16-type weapons in the cab. The driver is now helping the authorities with their enquiries. He is unharmed.
• Then last night (Sunday) at the Trans-Samaria Crossing, a vehicle driven by an Israeli Arab with Israeli citizenship papers was stopped and in the course of a search was found to have four pipe bombs on board. The driver was heading back across the Green Line from the communities of Judea and Samaria. A police sapper was called to the scene to neutralize the bombs. While that was underway, the very heavily-traveled east-west Route 5 highway was temporarily shut down to traffic in both directions. The driver turns out to be a resident of the Bedouin city of Rahat in the Negev. He is now arrested and he too is helping the authorities in their enquiries.

The Trans-Samaria Crossing on Israel's east-west Route 5 [Image Source]

Closely related to that last intercept - just the evening before (Saturday night) at the same Trans-Samaria Crossing - a different Palestinian Arab driver was was arrested when a security check turned up a stock of weapons, including two large knives, two axes and a cache of 25 nine-millimeter bullets, inside his vehicle. Times of Israel said his car had Israeli license plates.

It's safe to assume that in the absence of the security arrangements in each of the locations we just described, very different outcomes would have eventuated.

That's a reality that has played a central role in the posts we wrote over the years. Take a look at "5-Jul-06: Preventive Measures... Work" from more than a decade ago. We noted there that

There are many aspects of the news coverage of this war that infuriate us. One of them is the dishonest and cowardly way some reporters and photographers distort how the Israeli authorities carry out preventive security. Among the favorite cliches of agenda-driven reporters and photographers... is the Israeli security check. Nothing captures quite so well their perception of an asymmetrical war. You can count on words like "forced to stand in the heat", "treated rudely by Israeli troops", "seething anger", "humiliation" and "demeaning" sprouting from each sentence. But never the unbearable truth that this is the strategy of last resort and it saves lives on both sides...

For those of us not infected by the Fiskean approach to this war, the role of active, preventive security is probably better appreciated. A classic of the genre is Robert Fisk's memorable article with the unmemorable title "How Pointless Checkpoints Humiliate the Lions of Palestine, Sending Them on the Road to Vengeance" [reviewed here - we are still hunting for an online version of the Fisk piece]. If you click the link to read it, please keep in mind it was written several weeks before the murder by Hamas terrorists of our fifteen year-old daughter. Ponder also on the fact that Malki's killer hid his explosives inside a guitar case on his back. Under current Israeli security procedures (but not at that time), he would have been stopped and our daughter would be twenty and alive. (The death toll that day was 15, plus 130 injured, plus a young mother left unconscious and still unconscious today.) 

The appalling Fisk, and perhaps also his editors at Britain's Independent newspaper, would find it hard to see what that has to do with him and his writing. But for us the connection is clear. 

Eliyahu Asheri Hy"d: Murdered a decade ago

Not everyone sees things as we do. That's because not everyone sees security as a significant factor in keeping their own lives and those of their loved ones safe and intact. But those of us who do are very serious about it and very appreciative of those who make it happen.

Incidentally, if you visit Tapuah Junction (mentioned above), you will find a brand-new rest facility there for travelers. It was inaugurated very recently by the Asheri family in honor of their son, Eliyahu Hy"d, to mark ten years since he was abducted and murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists. 

We wrote about them at the time of their terrible loss: see "29-Jun-06: The face of the enemy" and "4-Jul-06: Saving Hostages". 

Though we felt drawn to the tragedy of their son's death and took part in his funeral in Jerusalem all those years ago, we don't know the Asheris and have never met them. Still, we're confident they have not spent the past decade plotting revenge, stewing in their anger or incubating hatred. We are confident of that because of our close familiarity with that powerful urge in Jewish tradition to connect really bad events - personal and communal tragedies - to positive responses: acts of charity or of chesed - acts that bring a little more goodness into a world that needs as much as we can possibly provide.

The Asheris understand that. Mr Fisk and his editors, we assume, surely do not. And nor will the families of the violence-minded individuals in yesterday's three jihadist near-misses.

19-Nov-15: Time-sharing on Temple Mount: World Council of Churches knows all about it

Games Arab children play on the Temple Mount: Background here

Anyone know when Jewish hour at Al Aqsa takes place? Asking for a Zionist friend. They're not answering the phone at the WCC.

World Council of Churches | Statement on situation in Israel and Palestine | 18 November 2015 | EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE -Bossey, Switzerland... The WCC executive committee, meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, on 13-18 November 2015, accordingly expresses its grave concern at recent developments in Israel and Palestine, involving renewed violent attacks against people of both communities and measures entailing long-term time division of access to Al-Aqsa mosque and affecting access to other holy sites. Such measures further diminish hope in the realization of this vision.

You have to take off your kippah to a lavishly-funded, hugely influential group like this that can labor to produce a summary of the turbulence going on in the Holy Land for its top management and be so skewed about it.

Look at the two factors that lead their analysis.

1. That safe old stand-by, the cycle of violence, where 16 year old wanna-be knifers get stopped from doing what their leaders program them to do thereby preventing more bloodshed.
2. The most holiness-infused place in Jewish geography where Jews are forbidden to pray and are daily harassed, threatened and abused by Arabs, delusionally depicted as some sort of enforced time-share.

The appalling thing is this will reliably be swallowed up uncritically by 600 million believers, pastors and priests. (For some of our previous observations about the work of the WCC, click here.)

30-Dec-14: Killers, heroes, passions and (sadly) churches

The now-convicted and imprisoned terrorist Al-Araja
at his trial, April 2013 [Image Source]

In the news reporting of this ongoing war, few voices are quite as malevolent as that of Issa Karake (sometimes written Qaraqe). Somewhat less than a household name outside the Palestinian Arab world, he gets wide and frequent coverage in the Arabic media, much of it serving as incitement for the people in his sphere of influence to do more terror.

Until recently, he was the Minister of Prisoners' Affairs in the Mahmoud Abbas regime. During the summer, he became the head of a brand new PLO entity, the Prisoners Affairs Authority that does pretty much exactly the same work - but now outside the PA. The reason why, like much of what happens in the terror business, is money-related and is described here. 

The man's frequent public speeches and talk-show appearances center on one theme: the heroic nature of Palestinian Arab terror and those who do it. That plus the unreasonable cruelty of the Israelis who stubbornly keep putting terrorists behind bars, refusing to let them out to be honored as men and women of transcendent achievement. (The good people of Palestinian Media Watch.have compiled an on-line archive of Karake video clips and speech texts, translated from the Arabic,) 

Now for his latest rant: 

PA minister legitimizes murdering Israelis [Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, Palestinian Media Watch, yesterday] Ali Sa’ada, a terrorist prisoner who murdered a father and his one-year-old baby, was fined 3.5 million shekels by Israel. [But] that fine is "delegitimizing ‎the [Palestinian] national resistance", says Prisoners’ Affairs Authority Director ‎and PA Parliament Member Issa Karake. According to Karake, who holds the rank of ‎minister, the killing of one-year-old Israelis is legitimate "resistance". 

PA/PLO's Karake [Image Source]

Karake's ire about the practitioners of vicious terror being delegitimized has, of course, some relevant background. Perhaps this eludes the busy Palestinian Arab politician. Or else he hopes his audience will not want to know. So we want you to know.

Sa'ada, along with a number of other savages including one called Al-Araja, murdered Asher Palmer, 25, and his year-old baby son Yonatan on September 23, 2011. They were convicted of serious crimes and imprisoned. Leading up to the attack, they had formed themselves into a terror platoon that, over a period of months, honed the skills needed to become a car-based, boulder-hurling, mobile artillery squad. On that fateful September day, they propelled rocks into Asher Palmer's vehicle from the car in which they were riding on the same road. They succeeded in striking the infant in the head and caused the father to lose control of his car which ran off the road at speed. Father and baby son were killed. 

The tragic and senseless killing of Asher Palmer and Yonatan have held our attention here several times: 

25-Sep-11: "Only" rock throwers - but now a father and his infant son are dead;
27-Jan-12: Rocks of reality? A postscript;
18-Apr-12: Real rocks, real terror, real extremism, real deaths;16-Dec-12: Those murders and attempted murders about which you almost never hear.
2-Apr-13: Justice and rocks

Karake's shameless whine appeared in a news report carried by WAFA, the official Palestinian Arab news agency, on December 16, 2014. He asserts there that Israeli courts

collect large sums from the prisoners, and that 95% of the verdicts pronounced by these courts involve fines, some of which are exceedingly high... Karake noted the existence of an even more severe policy, which the occupation courts have been adopting, and which involves the passing of sentences on prisoners that force them to pay large sums in financial compensation to Israelis who have been exposed to resistance by Palestinians (i.e., terror attacks). He noted that [a fine of] 3.5 million shekels had been imposed on prisoner Ali Sa’ada, as compensation for the families of the killed settlers, with the aim of delegitimizing the [Palestinian] national resistance against the occupation.

Almost everything in that Karake sentence is invented nonsense. The idea that a system of law and order (Israel's) that arrests and imprisons men (Palestinian Arabs) who murder babies can be called a delegitimization of the killers and their self-justification is a breathtaking chutzpah. 

But there is a serious point here.

In the week before Karake's gems appeared in print, an IDF court handed down a ruling on a novel argument put forward by legal counsel for the grieving Palmer family. They, like most Israelis who are haunted by the specter of convicted, unrepentant Palestinian Arab murderers walking free, know from bitter experience that multiple life sentences imposed by Israeli courts can evaporate into the air once the politicians decide to let the killers walk free. 

How can Israelis with a serious passion for justice reduce the likelihood of further self-defeating, politician-engineered, prisoner-release deals like the infamous Gilad Shalit transaction of 2011?

The doubly-bereaved Palmer family's response was to come up with a tactic that substantially increases the price (literally) to be paid on some future date for any commutation of sentence of those convicted of murdering their loved ones. As the Jerusalem Post reported two weeks ago, they persuaded the court of their view:

An IDF court has granted massive punitive damages, in the amount of NIS 3.5 million, to the family of Asher and Yonatan Palmer, victims of a terrorist attack perpetrated by Ali Saada and Waal al-Arjeh. The unprecedented ruling was handed down late Thursday by the Judea Military Court against Saada, along with a prison sentence of two life terms plus 50 years, but has not been publicly announced. In February, the Palmer family’s lawyer, Adrian Agassi, requested massive punitive damages, but for an extended period there has been no decision, likely in part due to the novelty of the issue, as Israeli civilian courts in similar cases are capped in granting punitive damages beyond NIS 200,000.
Agassi called the decision a “legal price tag” which could better deter future terrorism and possibly make it harder to release those sentenced in any future prisoner exchange deal... The NIS 3.5m. is lower than the NIS 10m. that Agassi originally requested, but is still unprecedented, and Saada is expected to appeal. ["IDF court fines one of Asher Palmer’s murderers", Jerusalem Post, December 14, 2014]

Like us, Michael Palmer, Asher's father, has learned the hardest way not to rely on the political echelon's respect for the moral rights of terror victims. Instead, via some creative thinking and a dedicated legal team, he has taken steps to get court-ordered, novel, financial compensation that may make it harder for justice to be infuriatingly "pardoned" away again, as has happened over and over during the past three years. 

It's hardly a guarantee that the murdering thug is going to serve out his sentence. But as things stand today, the killer's freedom is going to cost someone about a million dollars in compensatory fines. 

WCC headquarters, Geneva: A notable lack of empathic warm
[Image Source]

Now if anyone out there is thinking that no person in his or her right mind could possibly share Minister Karake's sick view that the court-ordered fine amounts to delegitimizing Palestinian Arab "resistance", we now bring the world's largest church group into the discussion. 

It's a scandal about which we began writing in April 2014 [here] when the World Council of Churches published a call for solidarity by its faithful with what it called "some 5000 Palestinian men, women and children, languishing in Israeli jails". 

Though many of the convicts are self-confessed murderers and most of the rest are unrepentant terrorists, the WCC's chief executive, Olav Fykse Tveit, a Norwegian Lutheran, called on the worshipers in its member churches 

"to pray for, visit, and tend to the needs of all prisoners, no matter the reason for their detention. For Israel and Palestine, prisoners have taken on even greater significance than in the past."

That breathtaking phrase "no matter the reason for their detention" still rattles in our brain. What kind of theology does this man practice? Rev. Tveit went on to invite 

"the churches in the Holy Land to remember Palestinian prisoners through prayers and acts of solidarity that restore to them their freedom with justice and dignity”.

(You want to see the other comments we made at the time: "17-Apr-14: Christian solidarity with unrepentant murderers: where's the outrage?")

Like the unspeakable Karake, the head of the World Council of Churches weeps for the terrorists. His pastoral message calls for the unjustifiable freedom of the killers of babies to be restored; for the undeserving justice of the human bombs to be respected; and (yes, that's his word) for the dignity of the men who stuff nails inside bombs that they place on Israeli buses to win faithful Christian people's solidarity. 

WCC's Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit [Image Source]

As for the victims of those lethal passions, there is (how to put this charitably?) considerably less WCC empathy. 

As we noted here just a few days ago, the only substantive reaction we ourselves ever got (and we tried hard and repeatedly) came in the form of a personal note from the WCC's then Director of Communication, Mark Beach (he's evidently no longer in that position as of this month). In an email from Geneva to us dated June 5, 2014, Beach addressed the questions and sharply critical comments we had directed over and again at his boss. We wrote as parents of a beautiful child of 15, murdered by the thugs for whose dignity the Christians of the WCC had been asked to pray. Probably not that moved, Mr Beach helpfully informed us that:

Yes, I believe we would have nothing further to say.

And he has been as good as his word ever since. 

The background is here ["6-Jun-14: Fear and loathing at the World Council of Churches"]. The lyrics of a modern Hebrew song  entitled "Ha-Kotel" ("The Western Wall") come to mind: 

"Yesh anashim im lev shel even. Yesh avanim im lev adam". In English, "Some people have hearts of stone. Some stones have a human heart."

There is not much doubt, it has to be said, that on the life and death terrorism-centred matters about which we are writing, the upstanding Christians of the World Council of Churches and the terrorist thugs represented by Karake of the PLO/Palestinian Authority are on about the same plane. They share a similar nauseating regard for jihad and murder. They appeal for ever greater understanding of the terrorists and their lethal 'resistance' industry. And about the Jewish victims? Enough said.

We're baffled by the idea that religion-minded Christians can see this and yet not scream for the WCC leadership to be kicked down the stairs of their well-appointed Swiss office headquarters and out of their pulpits.