29-Jan-18: Freeing unrepentant terrorists and the horrors it has brought

New York Times, October 18, 2011

We haven't been shy about expressing the deeply negative feelings we have for the catastrophic 2011 Shalit Deal and for the decision-making and consultation with members of the community of victims of terror (of which there was none) that led Israel's government to enter into it.

Before the October 2011 mass release, we said this:

“This deal is a disaster,” he [Arnold Roth] said of the exchange for the Israeli soldier, Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit, as he sat with his wife, Frimet, on the balcony of their Jerusalem apartment. “Some of these people will go back to murdering. They pose an existential threat to all of us” ... “This is not a political issue for us,” he said. “I am not some raving right-winger. We too share the joy of the Shalit family. But the victims are being marginalized. We object on principle. We see ourselves as agents of the children who will be killed by the graduates of this release.” ["In Israel, Swap Touches Old Wounds", Ethan Broner in the New York Times, October 14, 2011]

and

"...She's got a life [referring to Ahlam Tamimi, mastermind of the Sbarro massacre] that's being handed back to her as a result of this transaction... Many hundreds of convicted murderers are going to be released for no other reason that the Government of Israel saw no alternative. Obviously, everyone in this country is delighted if this is going to produce a healthy and well Gilad Shalit, but that's not the whole deal - and the parts of the deal that involve allowing terrorists back on the streets are a recipe for a terrible outcome." [Arnold Roth interviewed on Lateline/Australia's ABC, October 13, 2011]

and

"With today’s decision to free the terrorists, prime minister Netanyahu, a savvy politician to the core, conveys to us his disdain for the lives of ordinary citizens like my Malki; his disrespect for Israel's justice system; and his lack of regard for the soldiers who faced death in order to apprehend the terrorists about to be freed. Which rational soldier or police officer is going risk his life in the future to defend us from the monsters like Tamimi, sworn to murder still more Jews? The prime minister is quoted this morning saying that his "heart goes out" to Israel’s many terror victims. His actions and those of his cabinet suggest otherwise. How can they sleep at night, knowing the peril they have brought onto their people?" [Frimet Roth - "A mother's statement", October 14, 2011]

and

[The] murderer of our daughter and of 14 other people, the majority of them women and children, is on the release list as we feared for years she would be... Has our government taken into account what the release means to families like us, and we are in the thousands, who have suffered the worst possible loss and now see the perpetrators dancing and prancing in the arms of their supporters? Everyone wants Gilad Shalit home, safe and well. If we were his parents, we might have done what the Shalits did. But this is not the same as deciding, as prime minister or as the cabinet, what is good for the country, for the people of Israel. The jubilation emanating from the two Palestinian Arab governments tonight, the Hamas and the Abu Mazen regimes, should make clear to Israel's friends everywhere that something dreadful has happened tonight. We may come to bitterly regret this transaction for years to come... [From Frimet and Arnold Roth's statement to an Australian newspaper, October 12, 2011]

and many dozens of similar public statements, interviews and op eds.

Nadav Shragai, a respected veteran of Israel's brand-name media, and for years a correspondent at Haaretz, has a lengthy analytical article in the English edition (which is published online only) of the high-circulation Yisrael Hayom daily. (Amos Schocken, the publisher of Haaretz, is quoted on Wikpedia saying that Shragai was a journalist with clear opinions with which he largely disagreed, but "his opinions never influenced his news reporting, which was always professional".) Datelined January 26, 2018, it's entitled "Warning – abductions planned". Not surprisingly to anyone paying attention to terrorist attacks on Israelis these past six years and in light of what he writes, our statements were painfully accurate.

In our words, some of Shragai's revelations (direct quotes from his article are in italics):

• No fewer than 420 of the 1,027 let loose in the Shalit Deal are again engaged in the satanic work of doing more terror. 210 of the 1,027 have already been re-arrested by the IDF. Some 100 are currently back in the Israeli prison system.
• "Terrorists freed in the Schalit deal have directly or indirectly been involved in the murder of seven Israelis, including the three teens abducted in Gush Etzion in June 2014, as well as Rabbi Michael Mark and Baruch Mizrahi."
• Shragai, referring to reports from the Palestinian Authority, says Shalit Deal releasees are currently "working to carry out attacks in various parts of the West Bank and their main goal is another abduction of an Israeli". 
• The Gaza operations of Hamas are now led by graduates of the Shalit Deal who are keeping Gaza relatively quiet while they "rebuild themselves [and] hatching plans for terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria, all while continuing to shake up the regime of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas." 
• One of those is Yahya Sinwar of whom we wrote recently ["13-Feb-17: Another Shalit Deal milestone: Four terms of life imprisonment but this murdering jihadist now heads Hamas in Gaza"]. He is aided by Tawfiq Abu Naim [we mentioned him in 2012] and Zuhair Jabarin, another Shalit Deal graduate. Sinwar, while serving a term of four life sentences for planning terrorist attacks and before being freed by Israel, was involved in planning the lethal kidnapping of a young IDF service man, Nahshon Waxman.
• In the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, Shalit Deal beneficiaries play a major terrorist role as well. A Jordanian with close ties to Iran, Maher Obeid was put in charge of Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks in the West Bank in late-2017 [see this Ynet backgrounder] after Saleh al-Arouri, who was freed prior to the Shalit Deal, was promoted in October 2017 to become the deputy head of Hamas. 
• al-Arouri has been the focus of several of our posts. One of the founders of Hamas, he is a veteran of Israel's prison system where he spent 15 (some say 18) years. On release in 2007, he was expelled to Syria. Hamas' offices in Syria were shut down in 2012, at which point he and several terrorist colleagues were welcomed to Turkey. He appears in several of ours posts: "22-Dec-15: Has a Hamas terror insider just been thrown out of Turkey?"; "11-Dec-15: The price of the Shalit Deal and the countries that help it keep rising"; "27-Nov-14: Hamas terrorist ring is busted; Israel says the handlers operate from Turkey; Qatar is involved"; "30-Sep-14: Martyrs and monsters"; "11-Sep-14: Freeing terrorists: The price in human lives lost and in justice perverted keeps getting clearer".
• Three Shalit Deal graduates now report directly to Obeid: Abdel Rahman Ranimat (also written as Abed a-Rahman Ghaminat) [a central figure in this post of ours: "11-Sep-14: Freeing terrorists: The price in human lives lost and in justice perverted keeps getting clearer"] is in charge of the Bethlehem, Hebron and Jericho regions. Abdullah Arar [profiled in "01-Jan-18: Another reason we call it the catastrophic Shalit Deal"] controls Jerusalem and Ramallah. Forsan Khalifa runs what we call Samaria, the northern part of the West Bank.
• Dozens of terrorist attacks, including many that were thwarted, over the past year were initiated by this leadership and by other Shalit Deal releasees.
• They have also been instrumental in so-called smaller Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks in which firebombs (otherwise known as Molotov Cocktails) were the weapons of choice rather than guns, rifles, knives and vehicle rammings. These have risen greatly in number over the past few weeks: 84 in November 2017, but then 249 in December 2017. Shragai notes that another Shalit Deal releasee was the driver of the wave of such attacks in the area of Dura until he was sent back to prison.

Other prominent Shalit Deal releasees mentioned in the Yisrael Hayom article because of their revived active terrorism roles:

• Hussam Badaran who "oversaw an attempt by Hamas operatives from Hebron to commit terrorist kidnappings of Israeli civilians or soldiers". We have much more to say about this terrorist: see "13-Jun-13: Little-known sides to the post-Shalit careers of unjustly released killers"
• Hashem Abdel Kader Ibrahim Hijaz "tried to launch terrorist abductions near Ramallah, using a local Hamas operative." 
• Mazen Fuqaha, another leader of Hamas' West Bank command who was killed in Gaza in March 2017, also devoted his energy to preparing a massive abduction. Fuqha was responsible for the suicide bus bombing at the Meron junction in 2002 that killed nine people. Sentenced to nine terms of life imprisonment, he served only nine years before being freed in the Shalit Deal.
• "The Hamas cell that planned a series of terrorist attacks to be launched at the train station in Binyamina, the central synagogue in Zikhron Yaakov and the bus station in Wadi Ara, was also planning a kidnapping. The cell, which consisted of two residents of the village of Bani Naim near Hebron and an Israeli Arab from Wadi Ara, was funded by a group of terrorists freed in the Schalit deal. They kept in touch via Facebook."
• Ruhi Mushtaha "another senior figure in Hamas who is close to Sinwar, had been assigned seven life sentences for his involvement in the Waxman abduction, was also released in the Schalit deal. Mushtaha was involved in assembling the list of prisoners Hamas wanted to be released. Since Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, he has also been in charge of the Hamas prisoners portfolio."
• Mohammad al-Sharatha, "a member of the terrorist cell that kidnapped and murdered IDF soldiers Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon in two separate abductions in 1989."

All of them, back in the same lethal business that long prison sentences ought by rights, and by reason of justice, to have terminated.

Image Source: FBI

Shragai doesn't mention her but Ahlam Tamimi deserves a place in the gallery of monsters. 

We have written frequently about her; she's our child's unrepentant murderer. The Shalit Deal enabled her to walk free, return to Jordan where she was born and where most of her family lives, to marry in a widely-watched celebration - to another Shalit Deal murderer/releasee, to start a family, to host her own TV show and present it to a global audience for nearly five years, to become a celebrity guest at guilds, colleges, schools and universities in several Arab countries and especially in Jordan, and to be a media-smart spokesperson for the deeply bigoted jihadist mission personified by Hamas.

The strikingly undeserved peace and quiet she has found in Jordan despite (full credit to the Hashemite regime and its ruler - "26-Jul-17: We listened carefully to Jordan's foreign minister and we have 10 questions") being on the run from the FBI is one of the many reasons we hold, and will continue to express, strongly critical opinions about the process that handed her freedom back to her and to many hundreds of additional loathsome murderers.

04-Jul-17: Guess whose forgiveness Qatar is seeking for its latest steps on Islamist terror

Al-Arouri

Given

1. how widely Qatar's captive, fabulously-well-funded Aljazeera satellite news channels are watched, how massively influential they are on public opinion in places that get very little uncontrolled access to news and views and how extraordinarily well-resourced they are (with "more than 4,000 staff around the world" and 70 globally-dispersed bureaux - only the monstrously large and powerful BBC has more)
2. the utter hideousness of Hamas' terror-centric actions, ideology, history, views, plans and ethics; and
3. that Qatar is soon - unless stopped - going to be the host of the world's most watched sporting tournament, the 2022 FIFA World Cup

it's a shame the news report below is getting so little coverage.

But first a little background:

One week after hosting U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Qatar will be hosting a conference by Hamas. Is there a better symbol of Qatar’s two-faced foreign policy?
Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, is officially designated as a terrorist group by the United States, the Europe Union, Canada and Israel. Its human-rights abuses have been condemned by by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. It earned its "terrorist" title the old-fashioned way, through decades of killings and kidnappings. Hamas has rained rockets into Israel, causing death and destruction, since 2001. Its shower of Fajr-5 and other rockets have struck Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv. Hamas deploys suicide-bombers who kill Americans visiting Israel, as well as our Israeli allies. Its 15-member governing body, which it calls without irony its politburo, has been based in Qatar since 2012.
Likewise, Qatar’s support for terrorist groups, like Hamas, is not in doubt. Hamas’ head lives in a hotel in Qatar’s capital, where he moves about freely. Qatar’s sheikhs have poured billions in the Brotherhood and its offshoots, including Hamas, over the years, according the U.S and EU reports. What's more, the Qataris don't deny their support for Hamas... ["Why Is Our Ally Qatar Hosting Terrorists Like Hamas?", Richard Miniter in Forbes Magazine, April 28, 2017]

Doha, Qatar [Image Source]

Now the news.

According to Times of Israel, which focuses sharply on Qatar and Hamas and thank goodness for that,

One of the most wanted Palestinian terrorists, believed by Israeli intelligence to have planned the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens in the West Bank in the summer of 2014, has moved to Lebanon after being expelled last month from Qatar.
Lebanese terror group Hezbollah is hosting Saleh al-Arouri in its Dahieh stronghold in southern Beirut, Channel 2 news reported Monday. Citing unnamed Palestinian sources, the television station said that Arouri and two other senior Hamas figures have relocated to the Hezbollah-dominated neighborhood in the Lebanese capital, an area heavily protected with checkpoints on every access road...
On June 4, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and Egypt decided to cut ties with Qatar and force it out of an Arab coalition fighting in Yemen, claiming that it supported Iran and Islamist terrorism. Yemen joined the boycott a day later...
On June 5, Palestinian sources confirmed that Qatar — which is embroiled in a boycott by Saudi Arabia and four other Arab states — had asked several top Hamas officials to leave for Lebanon, Turkey and Malaysia...
In its report Monday, Channel 2 said that Arouri may have chosen Beirut because the list of countries willing to host him are now limited and he fears Israel may try to exact revenge for the murder of the teenagers...
The list of Hamas officials Qatar has asked to leave its territory — reportedly gleaned from interrogations of Palestinian security prisoners in Israel — included Arouri, who is said to be the group’s military commander in the West Bank and the founder of the West Bank branch of its military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades...
Israeli intelligence officials believe that Arouri helped plan the June 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens — Gil-ad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Fraenkel. That event was followed by a sharp crackdown on Hamas operatives in the West Bank by Israel, to which Hamas responded with heavy rocket fire. The rocket fire was answered, in turn, by Israel’s launching of a major operation against Gaza, which turned into all-out war between Hamas and the Jewish state during that summer...
Qatari officials have reportedly apologized for having to expel Hamas officials, but said it came as a result of “external pressures.”
["Top Hamas commander, booted from Qatar, said hiding with Hezbollah", Times of Israel, July 3, 2017]

Those last words highlighted in yellow-marker are enraging.

Qatar, a family-owned business operation camouflaged as a country, expects to be - and for the most part is - treated as a regular sovereign entity. Its royalty is received as your average noble rulers. But the bottom-line reality is that Qatar operates just like a thuggish Mob family and its Mafia culture does. Their principal allegiance is to fellow thugs. Do the appropriate people in the White House, the Department of Defense, the State Department comprehend this?

As for Arouri, we have had reason to bring him into our commentary numerous times in the past few years. For instance

• "11-Sep-14: Freeing terrorists: The price in human lives lost and in justice perverted keeps getting clearer" where the thug's central role in the brutal 2014 kidnapping and murder of three young Israeli seminary students turned this country inside out
• "18-Sep-15: Jerusalem Watch | Ongoing violence" which examines what we knew then about his central role in fomenting - from his safe haven in Turkey - the vicious Arab-on-Israeli violence that ebbs and flows in Israel's capital where we live
• "11-Dec-15: The price of the Shalit Deal and the countries that help it keep rising" where we traced Arouri's trajectory as a founder of Hamas' so-called military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades: 18 years behind Israeli bars, then freed in the run-down to the catastrophic Shalit Deal in 2011; then Jordan, then Syria, then Turkey.
• "22-Dec-15: Has a Hamas terror insider just been thrown out of Turkey?" which starts with this: "If the name Saleh Mohammad Suleiman Al-‘Arouri is not familiar to you, it should be."

The man is a monster.

And Qatar's "aristocratic nobility" - a key American strategic ally - have just begged forgiveness for having moved him along to another safe haven? They must be praying hard that their beloved comrades in Hamas don't hold a grudge.

22-Dec-15: Has a Hamas terror insider just been thrown out of Turkey?

Al-Arouri addresses a global gathering of Islamic scholars in Istanbul's
Cevahir Hotel, August 20, 2014, and claims credit on behalf of Hamas
for the abduction and murder of three Israeli boys in Gush Etzion
some weeks earlier [Screen shot]

If the name Saleh Mohammad Suleiman Al-‘Arouri is not familiar to you, it should be.

Saleh Al-Arouri is in the news this evening because, according to reports published today, the senior terrorist, Hamas politbureau member and Islamist preacher has just been expelled from Turkey. News reports today say this is in accordance with an Israeli request in the context of the re-normalization of relations between the two countries. But there are differing versions of what has just happened.

According to the Ynet version today,

Israel established al-Arouri's expulsion from the country as a condition for achieving full reconciliation between Ankara and Jerusalem. Al-Arouri's "voluntary" departure was agreed upon during the meeting between Hamas' political chief, Khaled Mashal and Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu last Saturday. Nevertheless, Erdogan clarified to close associates that he had no intention of closing Hamas' offices in Turkey and would not stop his financial and moral support of Hamas, as Israel requested...  It was also agreed upon that al-Arouri would be expelled from Turkey and that talks about laying a gas pipeline between Israel and Turkey would soon begin. [Hamas leader expelled from Turkey | Ynet, December 22, 2015]

One of the founders of Hamas, Al-Arouri is a veteran of Israel's prison system where he spent 15 (some say 18) years. On release in 2007, he was expelled to Syria. Hamas' offices in Syria were shut down in 2012, at which point he and several terrorist colleagues were welcomed to Turkey. We have had occasion to write several times about the savagery over which he presided from there:

• 11-Dec-15: The price of the Shalit Deal and the countries that help it keep rising
• 27-Nov-14: Hamas terrorist ring is busted; Israel says the handlers operate from Turkey; Qatar is involved
• 30-Sep-14: Martyrs and monsters
• 11-Sep-14: Freeing terrorists: The price in human lives lost and in justice perverted keeps getting clearer

On August 20, 2014, speaking from the principal dais at a gathering in Istanbul of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, Al-Arouri publicly confessed that Hamas was behind the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenage boys some weeks earlier, an act of terror that ignited passions right across the spectrum of Israeli public opinion. (The global association of "scholars" has its own YouTube channel. His speech, in Arabic with English-language subtitles, is online.)

It seems Turkey's decision to separate itself from Al-Arouri is not intended for full disclosure, if Ynet's sources are right:

Turkish media were asked Monday to not publish the reason for al-Arouri's expulsion from the country. Newspaper editors were told that the official reason given would be that he left of his "own free will"... [Ynet]

The same sources say the terrorist is likely to take up residence in Qatar where several of his Hamas colleagues are luxuriously ensconced already, or - which seems less likely - in Lebanon.

The Jerusalem Post offers a different take. Quoting Al-Quds Al-Arabi, a London-based newspaper, it says today that Al-Arouri left Turkey several months ago "so as not to embarrass Turkey, which was facing big pressure from Israel and the US Administration”, and is now "shuttling between Qatar and Lebanon... The source also denied that Turkey had banned Al-Arouri from entering the country".

In Turkey, credible reports have been circulating for months that Al-Arouri had already moved elsewhere. Hurriyet Daily News, in an August 12, 2015 report headlined "Hamas leader Arouri not in Turkey" quoted officials from that country's foreign ministry saying not only that he was no longer a resident of Turkey but never had been. The same report quotes Israel's Channel 10 News saying in early August pretty much what Ynet and the Jerusalem Post have reported as news today - that

Turkey had bowed to pressure by the United States and ordered al-Arouri, who Israel has accused of organizing terrorist attacks in the West Bank, to leave the country... [Hurriyet, August 12, 2015]

Why did Turkey agree? Because, according to the August 2015 report, that was one of the Western prerequisites for Turkey’s entry into the coalition of forces fighting ISIS. (Personally, we're not persuaded.)

A respected Turkish newspaper, Today's Zaman, tells things over a little differently, asserting that

Turkey and Israel have agreed that Salah al-Arouri, a senior leader of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, who has been living in Turkey will not be allowed to operate from there...  The AK Party's recent change of heart towards the Israelis came after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signaled when returning from a trip to Turkmenistan earlier in December that the region would benefit from Turkey and Israel's rapprochement... ["Turkey says talks to mend ties with Israel positive, no change in preconditions", Today's Zaman, December 22, 2015]

Whatever the fine details, if the Islamist savage is now involuntarily on the move and no longer able to call Turkey home, we can hope something good might yet come of it.

11-Dec-15: The price of the Shalit Deal and the countries that help it keep rising

Mutual admiration society: Hamas' Haniye, Turkey's Erdogan
[Image Source]

It was always clear that the release of 1,027 convicted and imprisoned Arab terrorists from Israeli jails in the ill-conceived Shalit Deal would lead to, and has in fact caused, the deaths of numerous innocent Israeli victims.

What is less clear even now is the enabling role provided by certain countries in empowering a cohort of Shalit Deal graduates to emerge as key figures in a campaign of anti-Israel terrorism by remote control. The note below focuses on just four: Turkey, Qatar, Jordan and Malaysia.

A small flurry of media attention in the past day indicates that the worst of the deadly consequences of the 2011 Shalit Deal are still ahead:

Palestinian prisoners released and deported to Gaza, Turkey, and Qatar as part of the Shalit deal are organizing their own terrorist cells in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, according to a report on Thursday. The deported prisoners, who are members of Hamas’ military wing, are providing guidance and funds to these cells, Hamas sources told Ynet...  The operation is being run by senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri, who is based in Turkey... The exiled Hamas members also have created their own cells in the West Bank to incite, protest and clash with Israeli security forces... The sources said, according to the report, that the Hamas leadership in Gaza is pushing for suicide bomb attacks to be carried out in the West Bank and east Jerusalem...  Israeli officials are convinced that Hamas will make every effort to execute a large-scale attack by using whatever means are available to its men in the field. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior figure in Hamas' political bureau, told an Islamist-affiliated web site in Gaza in October that he was hopeful the current violence would escalate into "an armed intifada." ["Freed Hamas prisoners from Schalit deal forming independent terror cells, says report", Jerusalem Post, December 10, 2015]

Al-Zahar, Hamas foreign minister [Image Source: Reuters]

(We would add that Mahmoud al-Zahar, mentioned above, is more than just a senior Hamas figure. He's usually identified as Hamas' foreign minister in the media. Not being part of Hamas' armed "wing" doesn't prevent him from saying he is hopeful the violence now happening here daily will evolve into "an armed intifada".)

Quoted in the little-noticed Jerusalem Post article, the Ynet report written by Elior Levy, describes a shadow organization, largely independent of both Fatah and Hamas and with an intense focus on doing terror. Members of its leadership, taking advantage of the unjustified freedom handed to them via the government of Israel and the extortion made possible by the Shalit transaction

are using the connections they made in the villages and cities of the West Bank and East Jerusalem before they were arrested. They each operate separately, working with a contact in the territories, each in a different area. The expelled prisoners provide their contacts in the territories with funding and guidance, while the contacts form the cells. The fact the communication between the expelled prisoners and their contact in the West Bank is done directly makes these military cells decentralized and compartmentalized. These operations are led and financed by the head of the Hamas military wing's West Bank Division, Saleh al-Arouri, who is located in Turkey... According to the Hamas source, an escalation of the situation in the West Bank will provide the terror organization with a way out of the crisis it faces in the Gaza Strip. [Ynet, December 10, 2015] 

This emerging branch of Palestinian Arab terror has been evident for some time. The existence of an amorphous terror structure operating from Judea and Samaria and led by released Palestinian Arab prisoners was documented this past summer in a monograph [here] published by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, directed by Dr. Reuven Erlich (it's often called ITIC). The report focuses on three men, all sentenced by Israeli courts to long prison terms for terror, all freed and all currently engaged in plotting fresh murders from the safety of other countries. Two were released in the Shalit Deal; the third was released from prison in 2010 and took an active, perhaps key, role in the Shalit negotiations.

• Turkey-based Saleh Mohammed Suleiman Al-Arouri is a founder of Hamas' so-called military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. He spent 18 years behind Israeli bars until being freed in the year before the Shalit Deal. He was then deported to Jordan, moving on from there to Syria from where he had a hand in the Shalit negotiations. When Hamas abandoned Damascus, he moved on to Turkey. He's based there now as the person in charge of Hamas terrorist operations in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. He's also a member of the Hamas political bureau. He claimed credit in a public speech last year [here] for the June 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens. (Hamas' strategy of having ostensibly separate political and military "wings" aims to shield its terror-spouting leaders from from responsibility for Hamas terrorism - a shabby form of plausible deniability that confers fig-leaf protection for reporters and politicians seeking a cost-free engagement with the blood-lusting Islamist terrorists.) 
• Hussam Atef Badran, released in the Shalit Deal, living and operating freely in Qatar from where he often appears in global news media as Hamas spokesman. An Islamist terror insider, he has responsibilities in the fields of terrorist network management and recruitment in Judea and Samaria. ITIC says he also spends terror-related time in Turkey.
• Ahmed al-Najjar, convicted for the terror-related shooting murders of six Israelis, was also released in the 2011 Shalit Deal. He holds US citizenship, according to ITIC quoting an Arabic-language report from March 19, 2011 on the amin.org site, shortly before being let loose. Deported to the Gaza Strip, he moved on to Jordan from where he oversees terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria. The murder of Malachi Rosenfeld in July 2015 ["19-Aug-15: The road to Malachi's death and the decisions that made it possible"] is one of them. 

Hussam Badran, Hamas's Qatar-based spokesman, appearing on
Turkey's TRT television, June 2014 [Image Source]

Many of our readers live in countries that have ongoing diplomatic and friendly ties with the states that host these terrorists and their operations. ITIC describes how those states play an invaluable role in anti-Israel terror:

Communication between the handlers and the operatives in Judea and Samaria is mainly by phone or via the Internet. Money transfers are performed by utilizing people who hold an entry permit into Israel (for example, for medical treatment) and the Palestinian Authority. In some cases, meetings are held outside Judea and Samaria by means of a courier who goes abroad. In the ITIC’s assessment, Turkey and Jordan are the two countries of choice for these meetings. This is due to their geographical proximity to Judea and Samaria and the relative ease with which one can create a suitable cover story in order to travel to them. [ITIC Report, August 4, 2015 - page 7]

Turkey also provides a congenial setting for field training of freshly-recruited terrorists

Saleh al-Arouri and additional operatives at the military headquarters in Turkey are also engaged in training operatives recruited by Hamas. Some of the terrorist operatives exposed in Judea and Samaria in August and September 2014 had received training in Turkey on planning military operations and methods for carrying out attacks against targets in Israeli territory, in Judea and Samaria, and abroad. After completing their military training, the recruits were given various tasks and assigned to squads by senior Hamas officials in Turkey... [ITIC Report, August 4, 2015 - page 11]

We noted in a blog post a year ago ["27-Nov-14: Hamas terrorist ring is busted; Israel says the handlers operate from Turkey; Qatar is involved"] that several bloody attacks - along with even more that were thwarted thanks to good Israeli intelligence - would probably have been labeled "lone wolf" terrorism if not for the now-exposed role, mostly ignored outside Israel, of these terror manipulators working unhindered from Jordan, Qatar and Turkey.

And before anyone makes holiday plans for Turkey in particular, here's a reminder of some thoughts we shared here some months ago? ["25-Feb-15: Talking Turkey on terror"]

ITIC has collected evidence that Malaysia provides the Hamas terrorists with covert support (though Malaysian sources deny this), partly based on things the Shin Bet has said. Wasim Qawasmeh, a resident of Hebron and one of numerous Qawasmehs to be mentioned in this blog over the years for their passion for murdering Jews, was recruited by Hamas in Malaysia [details here], as were numerous other Palestinian Arabs studying there. Other reports have mentioned Palestinian Arabs having undergone hang glider training in Malaysia, intended to be applied to terrorist attacks against Israelis.

When we wrote about Malaysia here some months back ["28-Apr-15: In Malaysia, years of anti-semitic exhortations along the path to anti-Israel terror"] we referred to the nauseating incitement that has emanated at intervals from the country's prominent, though it has to be said somewhat bizarre, former leader Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. He was his country's prime minister for 22 years between 1981 and 2002:

"I am glad to be labelled anti-Semitic... How can I be otherwise, when the Jews who so often talk of the horrors they suffered during the Holocaust show the same Nazi cruelty and hard-heartedness towards not just their enemies but even towards their allies should any try to stop the senseless killing of their Palestinian enemies..."

And this from Mahathir's speech to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit in 2003, published in The Malaysian Insider:

"[T]he Nazis killed six million Jews out of 12 million (during the Holocaust). But today, the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them"... adding this time that any sympathy accorded to the victims of the Holocaust was "wasted and misplaced".

Worth noting that Malaysia currently occupies one of the non-permanent-member seats on the
United Nations Security Council.

We plan to come back to the roles of Jordan and Qatar shortly.

30-Sep-14: Martyrs and monsters

The street scene outside the burnt-out hide-away in Hebron after the elimination
of the fugitives in a firefight [Image Source]

The kidnapping and cold-blooded murder of three unarmed teen-age Israeli boys in June 2014 horrified and to a great extent united the Israeli public. The names and fates of Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Frenkel, 16, implanted in the Israeli collective consciousness since the events of three months ago, make concrete the terrorist passions animating the Islamist savages just across Israel's border with the Gaza Strip and the murder-addicted Hamas regime dug in there.

Rarely have Israelis had a clearer sense of what we stand for, what they stand for, and the unbridgeable gulf that separates us from them.

An audio record of the frantic call to an emergency number by one of the ways is part of that collective experience. In it, we hear a whispered call for help, followed by shouting and shots. Right after that, Marwan Al-Qawasmi and Amer Abu Aisheh, the killers, are heard laughing and rejoicing.

Others involved in the plot were arrested fairly quickly. But the two principal terrorists evaded capture from the time of the kidnap and murder until their demise on Tuesday September 23, 2014. The two fugitives were located shortly before that, and the Hebron residence in which they were hiding was surrounded by Israeli security forces. What happened next, according to Reuters:

Marwan Kawasme and Amar Abu Aysha, both in their 30s, were shot dead during a gun battle after Israeli troops surrounded a house in the city before dawn, the army and residents said. Israel had been hunting the men for three months... The military said army and police forces were trying to arrest the two suspects when a firefight erupted. "We opened fire, they returned fire and they were killed in the exchange," Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner said. The governor of Hebron, Kamel Hmeid, confirmed on Palestinian radio that the two were dead. "It's clear now the two martyrs, al-Kawasme and Abu Aysha, were assassinated this morning during a military operation in the Hebron University area. We condemn this crime, this assassination, as deliberate and premeditated murder," he said. [Reuters, September 23, 2014]

Hmeid, the senior local political figure on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, understood that what had happened was a crime, an act of premeditated murder. The three unarmed, innocent boys who fell prey to the terrorists were not on his mind, however. He expressed no regret at the acts of murder that ended their young lives. "Assassination" is the word he chose for the deaths resulting from a gunfight between heavily-armed soldiers and two heavily-armed and desperate fugitives. The fugitive gunmen were the innocents in his narrative.

The Palestinian Arab politician was hardly alone in his moral perversion.

Palestinian Media Watch, which does invaluable work monitoring Arabic voices that fail to cross the language barrier and thus remain unknown to western public opinion, issued a report today surveying how the killers of three unarmed Jewish schoolboys - and their actions - have become sanctified by Palestinian Arab public and political opinion.

Some instances cited by PMW today:

• Hamas, the ruling power in Gaza and the Palestinian Arab arm of the Moslem Brotherhood, claimed credit for the actions of the two gunmen/kidnappers on August 22, 2014. See interview with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal quoted by PMW.
• Another senior Hamas figure, Saleh al-Arouri, among the founders of its Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades arm, addressed a conference in Istanbul (where he now lives) of the International Union of Islamic Scholars on August 20, 2014. In comments recorded on tape and later posted online by conference organisers. he said: "There was much speculation about this operation; some said it was a conspiracy... The popular will was exercised throughout our occupied land, and culminated in the heroic operation by [Hamas's armed wing] the Qassam Brigades in imprisoning the three settlers in Hebron." [Source: The Guardian on August 22, 2014]
• Nonetheless WAFA, the public voice of the Palestinian Authority, refers in a september 23, 2014 report to the hunt for the killers and their deaths in the shoot-out as an "execution", and the freshly-dead terrorists as "Martyrs" (shahids). PMW notes that "WAFA did not mention why Israel sought to arrest them".
• The PA's minister for religious affairs is also quoted by PMW calling the dead killers "martyrs" whom Israeli forces "assassinated", an act it called "a crime".
•  On official PA TV news, the PMW translation of the headline report on September 23, 2014 is: "Occupation forces executed the two citizens Marwan Al-Qawasmi and Amer Abu Aisheh in cold-blood..."
• Over at Fatah, whose head is the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, its spokesperson Ahmad Assaf "condemned the cowardly execution of Palestinian citizens" which he termed "a serious violation of international law."
• The Palestinian delegation to the ceasefire talks in Cairo called it a "heinous crime" and an "assassination... intended to conceal the truth behind the [occupation's] version of events since the disappearance of the three settlers in Hebron." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, September 24, 2014]

Two funerals [Image Source]

A different form of morality-free viewpoint appears in an Al-Akhbar (Egypt) op ed column:

"What distinguished the abduction operation is that it left a deep impact on the Israeli psyche and constituted a resounding message to all parties, namely, that the Palestinian people will spare no effort to liberate their prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons..." [Ali Haydar, Al Akhbar, September 24, 2014]

Thousands attended the funerals of the two men:

In Qatar, Hussam Badran, a spokesman for top Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, praised the two militants on his Twitter account. "The martyrdom of Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisheh came after a long life full of jihad sacrifice and giving. This is the path of resistance, which we all are moving in," he said. [Associated Press, September 25, 2014]

Heroes they will inevitably be, and thousands may be moving on their path as Mashaal says. But unlike others elevated by Palestinian Arab society to that status, they are not going to take part in any future extortion-driven release deals. They will not study for a university degree at the expense of Israeli taxpayers like us. They won't be walking free again as media cameramen snap and flash around them. 

Above all, their arms are never going to be raised high by two-faced politicians playing to impassioned crowds braying for more killings, more revenge, more martyrs.

11-Sep-14: Freeing terrorists: The price in human lives lost and in justice perverted keeps getting clearer

From left: Three murder victims: Eyal Yifrah, Gilad Shaer,
Naftali Frankel

Regular readers of this blog probably know that, in our eyes, the posts we publish are more than mere reflections on events. 

Beyond the aspect of memorializing our daughter's life, we are engaged here in an impassioned and ongoing cry from the heart against terrorism and those who do it while drawing attention to its impact on the victims. 

None of these matters, we have learned from painful personal experience, is well enough understood. This is especially true of people holding high public office and those who advise them.

For the past several years, a recurring aspect of our writing (and public speaking) has been our efforts to give rational, respectful expression to some of the deep bitterness we feel about decisions taken by a series of political figures on both sides of the Atlantic to free convicted murdering terrorists. (Clicking on articles with the labels Prisoners, Shalit, State Department and Tamimi in this blog will quickly bring up some of the posts we mean.)

Our position can be summed up in a single short paragraph that we wrote here a few months back:

Freeing convicted and unrepentant murderers has predictable and very negative outcomes. No politician should ever again dare to deny this. Nor may they ignore the moral, constitutional and legal consequences that flow from this truth.

We came back to this theme exactly a month ago to the day, in a post titled "11-Aug-14: Shalit Transaction revisited: At what point does facing up to the cost of a disastrous decision become unavoidable?"

In it, we referred to three young Israeli yeshiva students -  Naftali Fraenkel, 16, from Nof Ayalon; Gilad Sha'er, 16, from Talmon; and Eyal Yifrach, 19, from Elad. Their kidnapping, the search for their whereabouts and for those who snatched them from a hitch-hiking post at night, and the subsequent revelation of their cold-blooded murder, elicited deep concern, energy, unity and prayerfulness on a scale that was almost without precedent in modern Israel's history. 

A journalist, Avi Issacharoff from Times of Israel, had found, and we re-posted, that a central figure in that terrorist outrage, a man called Mahmoud Ali Kawasme is one of the Shalit 1,027. We noted that his premature and unwarranted release, like that of every other terrorist - including our daughter's murderer - freed in that deal at the time, was the result of a monumentally successful act of extortion directed against the Government of Israel. His freedom had been conditional on his being "exiled" to the Gaza Strip, and to his refraining from further involvement in terrorism. Instead, he became deeply enmeshed in the Hamas terrorist organization after walking from prison, eventually taking the role of funder and planner of the attack in which the three Israeli teens unwittingly accepted a ride in a stolen Israeli vehicle in which Palestinian Arab terrorists masqueraded as Jews at one of the roadside stops in the Jewish community of Gush Etzion.

Two Arab men remain as of today the subjects of an ongoing manhunt for the kidnappings and murders. They are Marwan Kawasme - a member of the same clan as the ring-leader - and Amer Abu Aysh. Issacharoff has today revealed further aspects of the same kidnap/murder. 

In a fresh Times of Israel expose ["Hamas higher-up in Gaza pulled trigger on teens’ abduction"] published last night, Issacharoff says that although the Hamas leadership repeatedly denied any involvement in the kidnapping and murder of the three boys, key officials in the military and political parts of Hamas 

knew about the plans in advance and had approved similar activities. Abed a-Rahman Ghaminat, one of the heads of a cell in Zurif [near Bethlehem] was the Hamas military wing’s appointed leader over the Hebron area... [Times of Israel]

Abducted and murdered
soldier, Sharon Edri:
another Ghaminat victim
in 1996

Like Mahmoud Ali Kawasme, Ghanimat (his name is sometimes written as Ginat, Animat or Ranimat, and in Hebrew as עבד א-רחמן ע'נימאת) was released from an Israeli prison in October 2011 as part of the infamous Shalit Transaction. He had been sentenced to a lengthy term for his involvement in several murders. Among them:

• The abduction and murder of Sharon Edri. On September 9, 1996, the 20-year-old IDF serviceman disappeared after leaving the Tzrifin army base late at night en route to his home in Moshav Zanoah. Soon after his disappearance, the Red Cross offices in Gaza and Jerusalem received anonymous calls saying he had been captured and killed by Hamas. His body was found seven months later, in April 1997, near Zurif, the home town of this Ghaminat/Ghanimat/Ginat/Animat/Ranimat [2005 Ynet report].
• The human bomb attack on the crowded outdoor venue, Café Apropo in March 1997 on the eve of the Jewish festival day of Purim. Three accomplished young women - Michal Meidan-Avrahami, 32, a Wolfson Hospital radiologist, pregnant with her first child; Yael Gilad, 32, a social worker; and Anat Rosen-Winter, 30 year old lawyer whose 8-month-old daughter, Shani, was saved by her mother shielding her from the blast - were all killed in the attack. 48 others were injured.
• And several more lethal attacks on unarmed civilian Israelis. In short, a vicious and effective sociopath with much innocent blood on his hands.

Newspaper front page: The baby
survived a 1997 attack engineered
by Hamas' man, Ghaminat; the
mother was killed

Issacharoff notes that the killer he calls Ghanimat, like many others freed in the Shalit Transaction, promptly embarked on a fresh phase in his career as terrorist. He:

joined a special office under the Hamas military wing in Gaza, which operated under the leadership of the Turkey-based Saleh al-Arouri, one of the heads of the organization living in Ankara. The office hired several of the exiled prisoners to oversee the terror cells in the West Bank. Working from Gaza, Ghaminat was responsible for the Hebron area, along with another ex-prisoner released under the Shalit deal, Ayed Dodin, a Hamas man and resident of Dura, south of Hebron... Traveling through Egypt, the two also visited Turkey and Qatar more than once in the past two years to coordinate the Hamas schemes with Arouri, as well as with other political heads of Hamas living abroad. According to the Palestinian sources, Mahmoud Kawasme [the other Shalit Transaction graduate we mentioned above and here] worked under Ghaminat (sic) in Gaza. 

Had he remained behind bars (as Israel's legal system had determined he must) and not been given the priceless gift of undeserved freedom in 2011 by politicians, could this brutal man have engineered the murders of the three young men mourned by an entire grieving nation?

Arising out of this, we make two requests. 

One: to understand how those of us directly impacted by Hamas terror feel our government ought to act, please consider this post of ours: "27-Jul-13: To defeat the terrorists, what one thing must a government never do?"  

And two: if you happen to be the Secretary of State of the United States or work for him (or he works for you), or if you belong to one of the hundreds of houses of worship affiliated with the World Council of Churches or belong to its management team in Geneva, please read this: "30-Jun-14: The message of the murdering terrorists, its logical outcome and the indispensable support that enables it". Everyone else is welcome, even invited, to pass these sentiments - and the posts in which they are expressed - to people about whom they care. 

Those who make large decisions in our lives must know that, on terrorism, they are getting them wrong too often. This, for those paying attention, is getting clearer with each passing day.