20-Aug-06: "Pained and Devastated by... Terrorist Actions"

This ad (click to see larger version) appears in the Los Angeles Times on 17th August 2006. Its message is neither complicated nor (if you're going to be fair-minded about it) controversial. The Hollywood insiders who signed up are people who evidently believe what most people say: that terrorism is a shocking, horrifying thing and that unless it's stopped, innocent people will die.

In alphabetical order by surname, the list comprises: Avi Arad, Jon Avnet, Gary Barber, Lawrence Bender, Roger Birnbaum, Phil Blazer, Eric Braeden, Colin Callender, Gloria Carlin, Kristin Chenowith, Lionel Chetwynd, Michael Chiklis, Arthur Cohn, Bryan Cranston, Clint Culpepper, Boaz Davidson, Matt DelPiano, Danny De Vito, Danny Dimbort, Dick Donnor, Lauren Shuler Donner, Stephen Dorff, Michael Douglas, Tom Dressen, Larry Elder, Ari Emanuel, Randall Emmett, Ben Feingold, Rick Finkelstein, Vivica A. Fox, William Friedkin, Bob Gale, Larry Gelbart, Jack Gilardi, Mark Gochman, Howard Gordon, Meyer Gottlieb, Patricia Heaton, Dennis Hopper, William Hurt, Don Johnson, Nicole Kidman, Anne Kopelson, Arnold Kopelson, Scott Lambert, Sherry Lansing, Avi Lerner, Jon Liebman, Doug Liman, David Lonner, Branko Lustig, Bruce Ramer, Bernie Mac, Joshua Malina, Michael Mann, David Matalon, Ron Meyer, Arnon Milchan, Rupert Murdoch, Emmanual Nunez, Amy Pascal, Millie Perkins, Cyntheia Pett-Dante, Kelly Preston, Frank Price, Sam Raimi, Summer Redstone, Ivan Reitman, Haim Saban, Pat Sajak, Deran Sarafian, Steve Scheffer, Sam Schwartz , Sir Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Gary Sinise, Sylvestor Stallone, Joel Surnow, Daniel Adam Sussman, Sandy Wernick, Serena Williams, Bruce Willis, Irwin Winkler, James Woods, Laura Ziskin (Thanks to Urban Grounds for most of the hyperlinks.)

Here's the text:

"We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas. If we do not succeed in stopping terrorism around the world, chaos will rule and innocent people will continue to die. We need to support democratic societies and stop terrorism at all costs."

Since it appeared, various blogs and newspapers have commented on the show-business names that are not here, while others congratulate those who are. 

That's not really our concern. We'll just remind ourselves that sometimes there's a very concrete downside to such public declarations. The film maker Theo Van Gogh, working from a script by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (a Somali refugee and liberal parliamentarian who recently abandoned her adopted country) who for years had been fighting for women's rights in the Netherlands, created the 10-minute movie Submission, dealing with violence against women in Islamic societies. For having taken on jihadist Islam as a target, Van Gogh was murdered in 2004 by a Dutch Moslem.

That's one way to silence the voices that condemn terror.

20-Aug-06: Small Dots of Light in the Darkness

Voices that speak from within the world of extreme Islam delivering a message of hatred and triumphalism are hardly news, and if they are what you're seeking, this blog is not the place to find them. There are endless such voices and an unlimited number of forums to give them a public audience. Islamic hatred of Jews, of Christians, of non-Islam, is a plague, and not only on the web.

But when a voice is heard that speaks from deep inside that frightening, non-democratic world, and a Shi'ite Lebanese voice no less - a voice that questions some of the basics of that message of Islamic hatred and racism - it deserves some help so that it reaches a larger audience. (Thanks to Tom Gross.)

One such voice, an exceedingly rare one, is found in a scathing essay titled "To be a Shi'ite now", written by Mona Fayad, a psychology professor at a Lebanese university, in which she attacks her fellow Shi'ites for blindly following Hezbollah along a path she calls "no different from suicide." It's embarrassing (to the Lebanese) to have to point out that Dr Fayad is using suicide as something negative.

Published earlier this month in the An-Nahar daily newspaper , Fayad complains bitterly that to be a Shi'ite now "is to block your mind". It is to let Iran's supreme leader and ideologue-of-death Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "command you, drive you, decide for you what he wants from the weapons of Hezbollah, and force on you a victory that is no different from suicide."

Interviewed in the aftermath of her Arabic article by the Boston Globe, Fayad says: "People thank me, encourage me, and ask me if I am scared. But I am not scared because I live in a country where a bomb can fall on my head at any time, so I want to express my opinion... People have been lying to themselves, afraid of Hezbollah because it is loaded with weapons but it is time to stand up and ask why."

"We've been forced to shut up for decades because we are at war but we have to speak in critical periods so that the leaders know who are with them and who are not," Fayad said. "The future of Lebanon is at stake."

She's no friend of Israel, and neither is An-Nahar. But besieged (needless to say) by criticism from all parts of Shi'ite society, it's important for people outside the region to listen carefully when she says: "If I get to the point where I can't write what I believe in, life has no meaning." Google points to some other Lebanese who are bothered by these concerns.

The fundamentally anti-democratic and ideologically-extreme aspects of life in Arab societies are chronically swept under the carpet, most noticably by writers and so-called analysts from the west. Writing from robustly open, noisy Israeli society, the contrast with our side of the border could not be clearer. What's also very clear to us is that when non-Arabic-speaking mainstream media sources - the BBCs, the CNNs, the Times of London and of New York - purport to convey what Arab society thinks, they pretend that they are in a position to know. Most of the time they're not.

18-Aug-06: The Real Scope of Damage to Lebanon

From 13th August 2006 edition of the Los Angeles Times:

Lebanon's Renewal Is Dashed in Weeks
Rebuilding could top $2.5 billion, officials say, as recent repairs from past war are wiped out | Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writer
...The government review shows that Israel has largely avoided some types of targets: major power plants, water treatment facilities, telephone systems, central government buildings and most factories. The bombing has focused on Shiite areas of southern Lebanon and the Beirut suburbs. Although roads and bridges have been hit all over the capital, most of the damage in Beirut has been limited to a single square mile of the southern suburbs: The neighborhoods of Bir Abed and Hrat Hreik. An almost daily barrage of missiles, bombs and gunship artillery has systematically removed Hezbollah's headquarters, its schools, clinics, sports centers and homes, along with the homes of thousands of civilians who live nearby...

18-Aug-06: A Lebanese View of Hizbollah's "Victory"

Under the headline "La victoire fictive du Hezbollah au Liban", the francophone Lebanese site Libanoscopie summarizes Hizbollah's 'victory' with some conclusions that must be fairly uncommon in the Arab world. (Thanks to Google Translate for providing us with a rough French-to-English translation to get started with.)

Hizbollah's Fictitious Victory in Lebanon
At the end of 34 days of combat, Hezbollah's secretary general announces victory... Syria applauds, Iran is jubilant. The victory of the Umma over the Zionist enterprise. But how to measure victory? Libanoscopie put this question to an expert in political strategy:
Declaring victory in war calls for three conditions to be satisfied. Military force prevents the losing party from being in a position to continue fighting. Military invasion gives the victor possession of the enemy's territory. And the victor achieves the objectives which it declared for that war. In the case of Hezbollah, none of these conditions has been satisfied.

• The Israeli army, though it has suffered some reverses, is far from having suffered significant losses. The capacity of its air, naval and land forces remain practically intact.
• Far from achieving the invasion of the enemy's territory, it is the Israeli army which invaded [Hizbollah's] territory and now occupies parts of South Lebanon.
• As for Hizbollah's declared objectives - recovering the Shabaa farms area and the release of the Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli prisons, the first is not even close, and Israel now holds 15 more prisoners from Hizbollah's ranks.

Despite its efforts to conceal the facts from the local and Arab media and to prevent the disclosure of the true data, it is clear from semi-official sources - often needing to preserve their anonymity for fear of reprisal - that Hezbollah has undergone the total destruction of its logistic and economic infrastructure. The number of its militia and leaders killed in this war is around 1,500.
To advertise this as an achievement is an attempt to convert defeat into victory - consistent with the culture from which the Party of Gd [Hizbollah] emanates.

Libanoscopie may be the only Arab news source prepared to imply the question that needs to be on the mind of every Lebanese: How many more 'victories' like this can Lebanon possibly endure?

16-Aug-06: The Times of India: Terrorism Connected to Hatred, Intolerance

Like Israel, India finds itself in the cross-hairs of terrorists, the depths of whose hatred and barbarity defy comprehension.

Last month in Mumbai, India's most important commercial centre, 207 people were murdered in a series of co-ordinated terror bombings on commuter trains during a period of eleven minutes in the morning rush hour. (For those with a strong constitution, there's a powerful collection of images here.) Thousands more were injured. And hundreds of millions of Indians were left wondering - along with the citizens of Bali, Madrid, London and Tel-Aviv - what could possibly motivate such boundless, unfathomable contempt for human life.

A few days later, a journalist for the Times of India, visited Israel and interviewed Arnold Roth. The interview was published in the 25th July 2006 paper edition of the Times of India, and is now available on-line (click here). We have extracted the text.

LIVING WITH TERROR IN ISRAEL
‘Terrorism is connected to hatred and intolerance’
Nina Martyris | TNN

On August 9, 2001, when 15-year-old Malki Roth was at a Jerusalem pizzeria for lunch, a young Palestinian walked in with a guitar strapped to his back. Minutes later, the bomb concealed within the instrument exploded, killing 15 people, including Malki, her friend and the Palestinian man. It was a suicide bombing that made headlines the world over. Malki’s distraught parents Arnold and Firmet subsequently started the Malki Foundation, an organisation that funds Israeli parents who have severely handicapped children, whether they are Christian, Muslim, Druze or Jewish. In this interview with TOI, Arnold Roth talks about terror and politics in Israel. Excerpts:

Q: How are you dealing with the loss of your child?
A: Our child’s life was stolen from us and from her by people of hatred. From where I stand, I can testify that coping is a daily process that goes on for years. It’s not like an illness where you get cured­it’s a permanent pain and a deep change in almost all your relationships. Mindless hatred made the act of terror possible, and awareness of this hatred stays in your mind and causes you think differently about almost everything.

Q: After the tragedy, were you terrified of the outside world? Did you consider counselling?
A: Malki was the middle child of our seven children - ­she called herself the meat in the sandwich. After her murder, we made permanent changes in our daughters’ routine - ­they are not allowed to travel by public transport or go to public places without our permission. They hate the restrictions but they understand. My wife and I spend a lot of time taxi-ing our children around.
However, we also know that there are no guarantees. No one can say where or how the terrorists will strike next. Everyone knows that terrorists are not limited by any sense of fairness or self-restraint. If there is any way for them to hurt us, they will try.
Counselling was offered to all of us by the social security authority. For some of us it proved to be tremendously helpful (for instance, for my wife and me); others did not even take up the offer. Sometimes people (like our chuldren) in their 20's are too proud or perhaps lack self-awareness to know that they can be helped. In those cases, the support of others like themselves [in peer support groups] can be remarkably constructive.

Q: What has the government done to protect its citizens?
A: Since the earliest days, it has been obligatory for almost every building in Israel to have a bomb shelter or a public shelter in a nearby public space. After the 1991 Iraq missile attacks, every new building must have an internal room with thicker walls to serve as a shelter. There are also ‘security holes’ in buildings and public spaces - ­a vacuum embedded in concrete where explosive material can be safely dropped without hurting people.
We have security guards everywhere: outside supermarkets, schools, buses. My daughter’s murder was one of the last to happen before that big change. If the murderer had attempted his strike just a few weeks later, he would been unsuccessful, since his guitar case would surely have been searched.

Q: Although full of anger, you say you do not feel hatred towards those who killed Malki.
A: I’m not at all unusual. Our culture, our education, the very institutions of Israeli life are all based on our respect for diversity and the idea that that democracy can absorb a wide range of diverging viewpoints. Thus, we know there are people who have fundamentally different viewpoints from us and who don’t tolerate our presence. Does this mean we have to hate them? We have nothing against them except their actions. There is a firm belief in this country that Arab society suffers from exploitation at the hands of its own civil and religious leadership. Most Israelis, including me, are therefore both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. We’re optimistic that with the introduction of democratic and enlightened education, Arab society will eventually develop a respect for the rights of the other and that this will include respect for Israelis and Jews. We’re pessimistic because there is simply no sign that this is even beginning to happen. This is not something to hate. It’s something to pity and to protect oneself against.

Q: Don’t you think the Palestinians have a genuine grievance? Isn’t their right to a country a basic human right?
A: There’s a lot of support in Israel for a Palestinian state and has been for years. I used to march in the streets, as a university student in Australia, demonstrating for the right of self-determination of the Palestinians. Back then, we hoped they would develop a strong leadership that would bring them towards their own state, their own national achievements. I’m personally disappointed at the repeated failures of the Palestinian leadership in creating something of value for their people. But even more than my personal disappointment with their leadership­ -- and especially with Arafat­ -- I am disappointed at the lack of disappointment on the part of the Palestinians. They are so busy being angry and resentful at what is, in their view, being done to them by us and by others that they have failed to see what they have done to themselves.
Terror from the Arab world has been happening to us long before Israeli policies could be blamed­ -- even before there was an Israel. I frequently see analysts and critics of Israel referring to what they like to call ‘underlying causes’. The favourite such cause is ‘the occupation’. I like to point out that when the PLO was created, and even when Arafat took over its leadership, the total number of ‘occupied’ Arab towns, cities and houses was zero. (This was in 1964-’65.)
As terrorism acquires more victims, it will become clearer that it is tightly connected to hatred and intolerance. For these phenomena, there will never be a political solution. Indeed, there might not be any solution at all other than to do everything in our power to keep the practitioners of terror far away from us. And if that fails, then good societies must destroy them without mercy before they destroy everything good in our lives.
For more information on the foundation, visit www.kerenmalki.org

16-Aug-06: For Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs, a moment of truth

An exchange of emails with friends in Australia this morning got us thinking about how the state of relations between Israel's Jews and Israel's Arabs was impacted by the Hezbollah War. It surprised us to know that, from a distance, there's a perception of a "we're all in the same basket" state of mind.

Our Australian friends believed Israel's Arabs had been united with us Israeli Jews by a shared perception of the threat to all of us from the lunatic to the north. Nasrullah's missiles, after all, did not distinguish between victims, and many Israeli Arab families are now freshly bereaved as a result.

It would have been encouraging if this happened, but in truth the public perception here is the opposite, with a lot of angry resentment that is likely to fester for a long while.

There were stand-up shouting matches in the Knesset, with Arab MKs exercising their democratic right to be heard screaming abuse at the IDF and the Israeli leadership. Several MK's and prominent leaders from the Israeli Arab sector took the opportunity to run to the international media (the BBC had its welcoming arms open especially wide for stories like this) with appalling stories of how Israel is deliberately discriminating against the Arab sector, and is placing its armaments near Arab villages in the Galilee in order to draw Hizbollah fire. Inveterate Israel-bashing Israeli Arabs like Ahmed Tibi, Ibrahim Sarsur and especially Azmi Bishara have been on fast-forward for the past four weeks, doing a great deal of damage to good relations between the social segments of Israeli society. Even when Lower Nazareth - the Arab section of town - was bombed by Nasrullah, just about the only media comments to be heard were Arab Israeli voices like this one expressing their understanding of the "resistance" in Lebanon and their hostility to Israel.

If we had to point to a single quote the captures the mood of the past month, it would be like this one from the BBC:

While opinion polls show that the Israeli public overwhelming supports continued military action in Lebanon, many of the Jewish state's approximately one million-strong Israeli Arab community blame Israel for the violence. "We're caught in the middle," says Ms Sheikh. "We are on the wrong side of the battle... Even while suffering a disproportionately high number of casualties in Hezbollah rocket attacks, Dr Azmi Bishara, an Israeli Arab Knesset member and leader of the Balad political party, says that most Israeli Arabs empathise with the Lebanese. "The division between us and the Lebanese is artificial," he says. "They are Arabs, they look like us, laugh like us, and eat the same food." Some Israelis are angered by what they see as Israeli Arab sympathy with their enemy... "

The handful of prominent Arab Israeli journalists have also been singularly out of step with overwhelming Jewish public sentiment. A good example of this is Faiz Abbas, latterly of Yediot - see this report. The Druze sector on the other hand did their customary job of being loyal and patriotic, making a positive contribution above and beyond their numbers.

The picture is not uniformly bleak, of course. Riad Ali who works at Israel Television's Channel One has written a series of opinion pieces for Haaretz in the past four weeks that deserve wide circulation. Here's what he wrote a week ago, in the depths of the suffering on both sides occasioned by the fires of war:

In the name of Allah
By Riad Ali
It tears one's heart and stills one's breath to see the images coming from Lebanon. The same goes for the images in Israel, and this is not added for the sake of balance.
But sorrow and grief over the war's victims shouldn't blur its prime objectives, both in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories. When the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza adopted suicide bombing as their strategy in fighting Israel, I concluded that their war against the occupation is over, and an indiscriminate war on Jews has begun. I was convinced then, as I am now, that at that moment, the Palestinians lost the war, at least in the moral sense.
In one of my reports from Gaza, I talked to a Palestinian boy by the name of Haled. He was 10 years old at the time. He said he wanted to be a teacher. When we switched to the topic of the intifada, Haled said that he had another dream - to be a shahid. I asked him how could he be a teacher and a shahid at the same time. Ten-year-old Haled had no answer. He was only a child. It was then I realized that the Palestinian people have lost their inner compass. A whole generation of children was born and reared in their midst, and all their hopes and aspirations are to die a holy death.
A Palestinian moral-ethical debate on the status of the suicide bomber never took place. The saboteur was and remained a shahid, with all of the positive attributes that the word carries in Islamic terminology. Palestinians who still opposed the bombings did so on tactical grounds; that is to say, if it had furthered their cause, they would have seen no wrong in it.
A similar process happened with Hezbollah. If before 2000 the organization could have had the benefit of the doubt and claim it is fighting Israeli occupation of Lebanon, today it is clear to see that its war is against Jews wherever they may be. You have to be deaf in order not to hear the voice of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as it emerges from Nasrallah's throat, and naive in order to believe that the purpose of the arsenal Nasrallah has accumulated is the release of prisoners and the liberation of the Shaba Farms.
This is the time to address the Arab citizens of Israel, and tell them that the time has come for them to decide where they stand. And they should do so for their own sake, and not for the sake of the Jews. For the sake of the values they want to instill in their children. For the sake of retaining their intellectual dignity. It is clear to all that a Hamas-led Palestinian government and a Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon will not bring democratic societies with a flourishing political and social pluralism. It is clear that in regimes such as those, the rule of law, human rights, the freedom of religion and worship, women's rights, the freedom of creation, the freedom of movement, the freedom of expression and thought - all will be alien, ridiculed concepts, to say the least.
Ideological Islam has long been master of the Palestinian society's agenda in the West Bank and Gaza. But what worries me is that the same Islamic agenda that rules there rules also here in Israel, and crosses all parties and movements including those who consider themselves to be secular. The spirit of battle has overtaken the believers, and all who consider themselves as part of the Islamic nation also have to take part in its war. If not with guns, then with funds, and if not with funds, then through words, and if not through words, then in heart, as the Muslim preachers tell the masses.
I am not at war with the Jews, nor with the people of Israel. I have an argument with the Jews, and I have an argument with the State of Israel. On one point I do not argue, and that is the right of the Jewish people to their own independent state. To the best of my understanding, this war, as with the intifada, has to be judged from this perspective.
Arab citizens of the state who truly believe in the principle of two states for two peoples and those who believe in a democratic liberal society must ask themselves if the Islamic ideology that is leading the war today against Israel and the West in the guise of a war against the occupation and heathens is representative of their ambitions. We must separate the pain and sorrow for the innocent victims from the purpose of the war, as seen by those who lead it - in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and in any place where people seek to liberate land in the name of Allah.

In today's Haaretz, Riad Ali develops the idea further. Here's a brief extract:

The time has come to admit that the mother of all ills in the Arab world is the absence of a secular alternative that has the power to offer people a different way of thinking. An option that is an alternative to the one offered by political Islam. It is not the Israeli occupation that needs to be ended, but rather the fanatic religious occupation of the Arab-Muslim intellect, which is blocking the masses from the pleasure of thinking. This is an occupation that makes astonishingly effective use of the term "Israel" as a wonder nostrum to neutralize the capacity for critical vision among the many who have frozen the clock of history at the picture of Kfar Kana, and pointed without thinking in the direction of Israel. The cancerous tumor from which the Islamic world is suffering must be initially sought in the bunkers of Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and not in the maw of the cannon on the Israeli tank. And no - I'm still not saying that Israel is as pure as the driven snow. In one of his brilliant comments, Ra'am-Ta'al MK Ahmed Tibi said that Israel is a country that is "democratic for its Jews and Jewish for it Arabs." You know what? My life's dream is to see one Arab country that is at least "democratic for its Muslims, and Muslim toward its minorities." Amen.

Read the entire piece and share it with your friends.

Now if there were another, say, thousand voices like Riad Ali's emanating from the Arab world, constructive dialogue and co-existence might be a lot more reality, a lot less slogan.

On the whole, this past month has done far, far more harm than good to the sense of shared destiny among Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews. Almost everyone agrees it's better to have the cannons and missiles silenced. But there's strikingly little optimism here right across the political spectrum that the quiet will last long.

15-Aug-06: The Outbreak of Quiet

It's been 36 hours and thankfully the ceasefire between Hizbollah and the state of Israel is holding so far. While it does, here are some more dry statistics to offset the striking disinclination of the media to give coverage outside Israel to what Israel has endured since the outbreak of fighting on its northern border on July 12.

Hezbollah missiles and their consequences: The damage and destruction have been tremendous.

• Missiles fired into Israeli territory by Hizbollah: 3,790
• Missiles that landed in Israeli cities, towns, settlements and houses: 901
• Israel civilians killed by Hizbollah missiles: 42
• Israeli civilians injured by Hizbollah missiles and requiring hospitalization for their injuries: 4,262. Of these, 33 are classed as seriously injured. 68 as moderately injured. 1,388 lightly injured.
• Israeli civilians treated for shock and anxiety: 2,773
• Israeli servicemen and -women killed in the fighting: 114. (All the names and many of the portraits are on the Yediot website.)
• Missile attacks on Kiryat Shmona and surrounding communities close to Lebanon: 1,012 missile landings. 372 inside Kiryat Shmona itself, 354 within its municipal boundaries. 25 residents of Kiryat Shmona were injured; 81 suffered from shock. 2,003 houses and apartments and 151 vehicles are damaged. In addition, dozens of schools, factories, businesses, synagogues, kindergartens and other public facilities were hit and damaged.

It's still not clear whether the school year will open as scheduled on September 1. Some 10,000 northern residents have been housed on an emergency basis in boarding schools. Until they are able to return to their homes, preparations for the school year will be uncertain.

IDF activity: In military terms, this has been an intense period.

• Israel Air Force sorties over Lebanon: 15,500. Made up of 10,000 combat sorties, 2,000 battle helicopter sorties, 1,000 helicopter sorties, 1,300 reconnaissance flights, 1,200 transport sorties
• Targets struck by these sorties: 7,000
• Israel Navy vessels spent more than 8,000 hours sailing off the Lebanese coast
• Israel Navy vessels fired 2,500 rounds at Lebanese targets.
• IDF air and naval activity was targeted at missile launch sites, launchers, weapons stores, roads, Hezbollah infrastructures and radars, fuel depots and the coastal road.

Blockade: While conducting a naval blockade of Lebanon, the IDF has permitted more than 200 ships to reach Lebanon to evacuate civilians and deliver relief supplies. The IDF says the blockade is going to continue until a way is found to prevent the smuggling of war materials into Lebanon.

And now? While Israel is focused on rebuilding, restarting, recovering, and burying its dead, voices from Syria and Lebanon keep reminding us that this has been about a decades-long desire to throw us into the sea, a process which - to judge from the triumphant tones - has merely been interrupted. We'll come back to this theme later.

15-Aug-06: We'll Be Back Soon

While August is holiday time for many people, it's when we're pre-occupied with family matters. Sorry for the slow postings. We plan to be back in the next 24 hours.

13-Aug-06: People who love death... and what this means for the rest of us

From today's Daily Telegraph in Sydney:

Bottle and baby used as bomb
By Fiona Hudson | August 14, 2006 12:00 |
A HUSBAND and wife [we've added their pictures at right] arrested in the British terror raids allegedly planned to take their six-month-old baby on a mid-air suicide mission. Scotland Yard police are quizzing Abdula Ahmed Ali, 25, and his 23-year-old wife Cossor over suspicions they were to use their baby's bottle to hide a liquid bomb. The theory is one of the reasons security chiefs are now insisting mothers taste babies' milk at check-in desks before allowing them to take bottles aboard flights. 

The pair are among up to 23 suspects being questioned over a plot to bring down nine airliners over five US cities, killing thousands of people in the air and on the ground. The questioning of the group comes as British Government sources yesterday revealed many of those suspects posed as relief workers to travel to al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan. 

It has also been revealed that security services are secretly monitoring "dozens" of fresh plots involving hundreds of suspects which could be unleashed at any time. One government source said at least 30 priority cases were under urgent investigation. " All those 30 are seen as serious, determined attacks that will happen unless we stop them," the source said. Police spent yesterday combing through the Alis' east London housing commission flat for clues. Cossor took her baby with her to the police station during last week's raids but her son is now being cared for by grandparents. 

Cossor's grandfather, Nazir Ahmed, 84, said Abdula had travelled to Pakistan about four weeks ago. "We didn't understand what the hurry was and why he needed to go," Mr Ahmed said. A neighbour at the flats where the married couple lived said he would be stunned if claims were true. "I simply cannot believe he could have been involved in a plot like this. He is religious and seemed to love his family," the neighbour said. "I would never have dreamed he could have been involved in anything like this." 

A family friend of Cossor said she had known the arrested mother 12 years and believed her to be innocent. "I think it is a case of mistaken identity. The last thing she'd be interested in is terrorism. They are just simple day-to-day people going about their own business," she said. Police in England have reportedly recovered bottles containing peroxide, including some with false bottoms, from a recycling centre close to the homes of some of the arrested suspects. 

It has emerged MI5 agents launched covert intrusions on the homes of some suspects several weeks ago in "sneak and peek" operations to plant listening devices and gather evidence ahead of the arrests last week. Links between suspects in the jet bomb plot and those behind the London 7/7 attacks have also come to light. There are reports as many as five of those arrested attended the same terror training camp in Pakistan as two of the July 7 London suicide bombers. And US intelligence sources said they believed at least two of the suspects had trained in Karachi and met al-Qaeda operatives in the lead up to the 7/7 attacks.

Keeping firmly in mind that this report is based entirely on unfounded allegations, that no evidence has been led in court at this stage, and that no convictions have yet been requested by the prosecution let alone obtained, we offer some observations:

• Once upon a time, long long ago, it would have been beyond belief, simply incomprehensible, that a family would sacrifice their lives and the life of their baby. Now it's very much not incomprehensible. Furthermore, the mere insertion of the element of religion - and specifically Islam - together with the mass murders that would have gone along with the suicides makes the story credible and also compelling.
• The media, especially the British media, are once more (obviously 7/7 was a previous such occasion) doing contortions, trying to understand how native-born Brits, albeit Brits whose parents immigrated from the sub-continent, could possibly turn into merchants of death and self-destruction. We anticipate the process of vexation will go on for some time. Meanwhile the answer is staring them in the face.
• Already the dreaded search for "root causes" is underway. Those of us who watch Sky, BBC and CNN have already heard the plaintive cries of "How do we make them feel less estranged and more a part of our fine British society?" Based on past experience, this search will lead away from illumination rather than towards it.
• Comparisons have been made to the festering anger of America's black population. But Britain's Moslems, to the very last one of them, are in the United Kingdom because they wanted to be there; because they moved heaven and earth to get there; and they stayed there because they wanted to stay there. The option of leaving was always available, and perfectly feasible. Describing them as oppressed, disenfranchised, unconnected is misleading, dishonest and completely avoiding the issue.
• But even if it were possible to describe some of Britain's Moslems this way, even if some or many of them face bleak job prospects and poor education, the indications are that this group are mainly middle class and relatively well-educated. Nor is there any sign of their having fallen under the spell of the brand-name fringe-insane imams like Omar Bakri or Abu Hamza. And yet.
• Terrorism is routinely carried out, everywhere, by people who don't seem to fit the part. This remains difficult for some people to digest. If the terrorists had signs branded onto their foreheads, the global civil aviation industry would be able to cope a lot better than in practice it now is. And the kindergartens and supermarkets and buses and cafes of Israel would not need round-the-clock armed guards. Terrorists look like the rest of us.
• The emergence of a dominant death cult in Islamic society is no longer a subject for controversy. It's a reality, and the denials are an embarrassment to those who make them. With our personal experience of terrorist murder, we have a permanent interest in outrageous statements from outrageous personalities who insist on denying. For instance, the Palestinian apologist Dr Hanan Ashrawi who is on record making wildly irresponsible statements on the subject. Like this one in which she asserts that claims like the one we are making are the epitome of racism. "They're telling us we have no feelings for our children. We're not human beings, we're not parents, we're not mothers and fathers," says Ashrawi. "Sometimes I don't want to sink to the level of responding, of proving I'm human. I mean, even animals have feelings for their children."
• Dr Ashrawi is right. Animals do have feelings for their children and the people who produce the television films and documents (MEMRI freely provides access to an entire library of them, complete with English sub-titles and translation for those unfamiliar with Arabic) praising child martyrdom do not. Or to say that more carefully: the proponents of jihad have feelings for their children, for their own lives, for life itself, that most of mankind is incapable of understanding. They are baffling, appalling, terrifying. Such people, and there are millions of them, have stepped outside the family of man, and did it willingly and triumphantly.
• None of this means that Islam is at fault. Nor is the problem with Moslems. Yes, Moslem society in all its forms and wherever it is found, has an enormous problem on its hands, even if only the smallest of minorities of its ranks recognizes this and if denial is the standard posture. The problem is with the rest of us who have yet to identify appropriate ways of protecting our societies and our lives against an attack that defies analysis: an attack led by mothers armed with bottles of baby formula.

The disclosure by Scotland Yard of the "activists" plot, including the arrest of Abdula Ahmed Ali and his wife Cossor, is not a victory. It's not even a defeat. It's an alarm bell, shrieking out a warning that we're running out of time.

[UPDATE 25-Aug-06: There's more on the deranged parents from hell here.]

13-Aug-06: Iran and the pursuit of balance

Reuters today throws this helpful light on how Shi'ite Iran, the chief financier and equipper of Hezbullah and thus a central player in the process that has devastated Lebanon and northern Israel, views the upcoming ceasefire and what we can expect from it:

Iran says disarming Lebanese Hizbullah 'illogical'
Iran welcomed on Sunday a planned ceasefire to halt the month-long war between Lebanon's Hizbullah and Israel but described the UN Security Council's call for disarming the Iranian-backed group as "illogical". "We are happy for the ceasefire in Lebanon. But the resolution is not balanced," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference. "It does not condemn the Zionist regime (Israel) and its crimes in Lebanon." Asked about the call for disarming Hizbullah, Asefi said: "This is a totally unreasonable demand. It is illogical." Opposition to Israel was one of the founding principles of the Islamic Republic. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map".

Speaking to a Jordanian newsagency, the Iranian foreign ministry was a little more expansive:

Iran: Israelis are losers in Lebanon

After one-month of war against Lebanon's resistance, Israelis are the absolute losers and Hizbullah is the absolute winner of the war, Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman said Sunday. Hamida-Reza Asefi pointed to the Israeli media admittance that the regime has been defeated in the war, adding the "Quds (Jerusalem) occupiers" failed even though they were enjoying all sorts of military, economic, intelligence and diplomatic backings. "The war turned into a complete fiasco for the regime," Asefi added, according to IRIB. Asefi criticized the United Nations for its weak performance in issuing resolution against Israel, adding that the delay undermined the UN credibility and discredited it before the world public opinion. Asefi affirmed that the Islamic Republic of Iran is very pleased with any ceasefire and ending the massacre of the Lebanese people. "The resolution 1701 fails to point to the aggressor party and so opens the way for the Zionist regime," Asefi warned. Asefi underlined however that the Lebanese government and nation must decide about the resolution. Asefi called the Zionist regime source of tension, crisis and war in the Middle East, adding legitimate resistance and defense will continue as far as occupation lingers. "Lebanon and legitimate resistance of Hizbullah broke the Middle East equation in favor of the dignity of the world of Islam," Asefi said.So we should all feel a lot better now, particularly the "peace" protestors marching yesterday with Hezbollah banners and Nasrullah portraits held aloft in San Francisco, Washington, Ankara, Damascus, Toronto, Edinburgh and other places. The peaceful peace protestors in the picture above are in Ankara, Turkey.

Turkey is to supply one of the military contingents to the UN the critical piece of whose mission will be to disarm Hizbollah.

12-Aug-06: The peace toll

The toll from yesterday's missile attacks on Israel:

• 68 missile landings
• Injured by shrapnel: 8 people
• Treated for shock: 17 people
• The damage toll since 12th July: Missiles striking Israel: 3,650; Missiles landing in an urban area of Israel: 835

Missile strikes in the area of:

• Kiryat Shmona: 930
• Nahariya: 730
• Maalot: 584
• Safed: 448
• Tiberias: 181

And of course many deaths and many injuries.

The civilian toll so far today (Sunday):

• Heavy missile barrages all morning in the general direction of Israel's northern communities, with several landings in the Haifa suburbs. (UPDATE: Yediot says there have been 153 missile landings so far today, Sunday.) (5.45pm UPDATE: The tally of missiles has risen to more than 210 for the day. The havoc and hatred that every one of them delivers is incalculable.) (8.15pm UPDATE: 250 missile so far; 6 hits on Haifa at 7pm, and some sixteen separate rounds fired at Haifa throughout the day)
• One person, a man of about 70, killed following a direct missile hit on a house in Shlomi (the town itself is pictured above)
• Nine injured - most of them treated in Safed and Nahariya public hospitals, both of which have been struck several times themselves by Hizbollah's missiles.
• Street demonstrations in the United States and Europe yesterday, supporting the people who launch these missiles at Israel, are extensively photographed in Sunday's media. What puzzles us most about these images and reports is that AP and Reuters consistently refer to the people holding Hizbollah posters and pictures of the fanatical Shi'ite leader Nasrallah in these often-violent demonstrations, as 'peace' protesters.

We check routinely, and have yet to see a single caption referring to Israeli efforts at stopping Nasrullah's monumentally large missile arsenal as being related to peace. But the fact is, for anyone close enough to the action to not be misled by distorted reportage, that when Nasrullah's arsenal is destroyed, there will be peace. We Israelis expect little more than the peace of the graveyard until that time.

11-Aug-06: Good and evil

In the midst of tragedy, violence, hatred, turbulence, death, a laconic report that most likely will never reach the mainstream media outside of Israel and Italy, and even if it does will pass without causing more than the barest ripple, has just caught our eye.

Here's the background. We wrote here last night that in the wave of extreme violence delivered to Israel's northern and southern borders, a stabbing took place in Jerusalem, part of the evolving third front courtesy of the terrorists in our midst. The victim, anonymous (in the news sense) for several hours while the family were presumably notified, turned out to be an Italian tourist. The news report said he was walking with friends in East Jerusalem near the walls of the Old City. He was 25, and the assailant escaped. He died after being stabbed. End of story.

But for the people directly involved, this is of course not the end of the story. It's only the beginning.

We now know much more, and for us, as Malki's parents, there is a connection which is hard for us to not notice or to be moved by.

Yediot reports that the victim of last night's stabbing has a name and had a life. He is Angelo Frammartino. He's 24 year, a peace activist from Monta Rotondo in Italy, who arrived in Israel at the start of August with an Italian organization, ARCI, "working to advance human rights in the world". He was due to leave for home in Italy today. His parents are away on vacation and his sister who was home alone when the terrible news came from Jerusalem says she doesn't know how they will cope.

Newspapers know to do things with lines like "he was a peace activist". We see peace activists snarling and screaming and holding signs like "kill the Israeli occupiers" all the time. Peace is a curse word in this part of the world; almost always a sword, almost never a shield. We've learned from bitter experience to avoid the people who introduce themselves as peace activists. We've met many of them, and peace is the last thing on their minds.

It's not much different with people who describe themselves as advancing human rights. The rest of us presumably push human rights backwards. But in this case, Angelo the peace activist had a specific involvement. He was here to organize summer camps for Palestinian children. Those are the human rights that make sense even when (perhaps especially when) the cannons are blazing and there is death in the air. Summer camps for children.

Our daughter Malki, whose murder five years ago we are in the midst of remembering (the civil anniversary was on Wednesday, the Hebrew calendar date is this coming Monday) spent the last week of her violently-abbreviated life as a volunteer counsellor at a summer camp for children with developmental delays and special needs. The camp takes place each summer in the north of Israel, and involves many hundreds of participants from all parts of the country. It's organized by Etgarim, an association with some lovely people running it. Malki and her friend Rachel traveled up north without being sure they would be accepted as volunteers. They were, in the end, and Malki came back from there smiling from ear to ear. She loved everything about it. She was murdered a few days afterwards, and we heard most of the stories we know about that camp from the other counsellors and the organizers.

Angelo, whose name like Malki's is connected with angels, came here to work with children, to help put smiles on their faces.

This does not interest the terrorists. This is why they are terrorists. The humanity of the victims is of zero importance to them. You see it in the way Hizbollah fires hundreds of deadly missiles a day into Israel - couldn't care less where they land, just as long as someone dies.

You see it in the way terrorist bombers walk into restaurants or onto buses. No interest in whether there are good people there, or bad people. The humanity of their victims is not on the agenda.

They deny their victims' humanity in the absolute, ultimate way a person can. By killing them without having any idea who they are. Without the slightest interest in their past or present, without any hesitation, with a total absence of humanity. The innocent victims of the terrorists are not caught up in the cross-fire. They are the objective.

Angelo, who wanted to make happy summer camps for Palestinian children, who understood the meaning of good deeds, is as dead as our child who wanted to make happy summer camps for children with special needs. The terrorists who are praised by demented religious leaders (Nasrallah is a religious leader) as martyrs, as members of a resistance, as peace activists, rejoice in these deaths.

This is why terrorists have no place in human society. Not because we hate them; we do not. But because no civilized human society can tolerate their existence without committing suicide.

11-Aug-06: Remembering the Sbarro massacre

An edited version of this essay by Frimet Roth was published yesterday by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Additional information about the events of August 9, 2001 can be found on the website established by Frimet and Arnold Roth in their daughter's memory: The Malki Foundation

Remembering the Sbarro Massacre
By FRIMET ROTH

With war raging against Hizbollah, it is easy to overlook Israel's other existential threat. The events of this day, five years ago, provide a stark reminder of the thriving demon across our southern border: Hamas.

On 9 August, 2001, Izzadin al-Masri, the 22 year old son of a well-to-do restaurateur, and Ahlam Tamimi, a 20 year old university student and part-time journalist, set out to murder a lot of Jews. Hamas had trained and equipped them. Tamimi had scouted for and located the target. They were primed for a successful mission.

Tamimi, in revealing Western clothing, was disguised to look like a young Israeli woman. Al-Masri had a guitar case slung over his shoulder, packed with five kilos of explosives - along with nails, screws and bolts to exacerbate the injuries. Chatting in English and carrying a camera, they looked harmless enough for an unsuspecting soldier at the Israeli checkpoint between East and West Jerusalem to allow them to pass. The Jerusalem police force, previously alerted to a planned terror attack, failed to locate them. They strolled freely through Jerusalem's streets.

At the city's busiest intersection, the unguarded entrance to a crowded restaurant beckoned. Tamimi and Al-Masri parted. He entered the eatery alone and surveyed the dozens of women, children and babies. Satisfied with the numbers, he detonated his bomb. My fifteen year old daughter, Malki had entered moments earlier with her friend, Michal Raziel. I know from speaking with a survivor that the girls were standing on line waiting to order. Each was urging the other to go first. That was all I knew about what happened inside the restaurant at 2pm that day.

Until I interviewed Esther Shoshan.

"I was upstairs with one of my daughters," Esther recalls. "We'd wanted to sit downstairs where it's roomy, near the windows. But it was too crowded. Two of my daughters had gone to park the car. Two others, Miriam and Yocheved, went down to the lower level to get our food."

Esther speaks quickly. "Then there was an enormous blast. The place went dark. People started screaming 'Pigua! Pigua!' (terror attack) But at first I didn't believe it."

"People shouted 'Get out! There may be another blast.' Finally, we ran downstairs. There was a terrible stench. I saw body parts everywhere. Here a limb, there a head. The bodies were bloated. There was water everywhere; I have no idea where it came from. I searched for my children."

"My two daughters who had gone to the car-park arrived seconds later. The older one came inside and found Miriam and Yocheved. They were on fire. She managed to put out the flames but then was rushed away by rescue workers."

"I couldn't leave. I was torn. The rescue workers kept dragging me to the door. I'd start to go, then run back screaming, 'My girls, my girls!' I wanted to help them."

Esther was taken to a local hospital. She left shortly afterwards to keep searching for the two children she had left at the scene.

Rushing from one hospital to another, she located Miriam at Hadassah Ein Karem. Her fifteen year-old had suffered third degree burns over forty percent of her body. Sixty nails were lodged inside her, many only millimeters from vital organs. Her spleen was ruptured and there was a gaping hole in her right thigh.

Yocheved, the younger child, could not be found in any of the city's hospitals. Later that day a cousin and uncle identified her body at the Abu Kabir morgue. She was buried at midnight.

"I was torn between grief and Miriam's rehabilitation", Esther recalls. "She came home only a year later after five operations."

All told, fifteen died in the Sbarro massacre that day, among them eight children. 130 were injured.

Since then, sixteen families have been grappling with grief. They do it every day, silently, far from the cameras and microphones of the media. Many have never before been interviewed.

Shifra Hayman and her husband are among them. In 2001 they were living in Los Angeles when their married daughter, their only child, Shoshana Greenbaum, spent a few weeks studying in Israel. The Haymans are very religious and wanted Shoshana buried according to Jewish tradition as quickly as possible and in the Holy Land. Since they do not travel on Shabbat, this meant they were unable to be here in time for their daughter's funeral.

Shifra, a medical social worker, sat the entire week of mourning in her Los Angeles home holding and caressing a toy dog in her lap. She had bought it because it was identical to a larger one she had given Shoshana many years back when, as a teen, she had undergone a tonsillectomy. Shoshana was three months pregnant and Shifra had eagerly envisaged new mother and baby holding the matching furry toys.

It is an image she can only dream of now. Yet Shifra seeks the positive in remembering Shoshana's life and death.

"Everyone was there for us from the moment we arrived home after hearing the news of her death," she begins, "Fortunately we had strong connections with three LA Jewish communities who all stood by us.

"Shoshana's wrist-watch, which was sent to us after the attack was, miraculously, still running when we got it," Shifra recounts, "which must reflect some gentleness in the way He took her life."

She mentions G-d frequently. "That she died in Israel and was able to be buried in Jerusalem with so many friends and relatives in attendance reflects G-d's 'hands-on' involvement", she says.

Shifra recalls her last conversation with her daughter, a night before her murder: "I remember how grateful I was for the conversation I'd had the previous night with Shoshana. She'd been so happy."

Now, she consoles herself with the thought that according to Jewish tradition a teacher's students are deemed his children. In the ten years that Shoshana was a Bible studies teacher, she nurtured many such 'children', some of whom live near the Haymans in their new home in Ramat Beit Shemesh. A few of them, now parents, are raising their children to call the Haymans 'Bubbie' and 'Zaidie' (Yiddish for grandma and grandpa).

Shifra is human, though. "I'm working on the envy I sometimes feel," she concedes. "It's particularly difficult when I see a pregnant woman. I'm working on that too."

Like Shoshana's unborn child, Chana Nachenberg is omitted from the official toll of Sbarro victims. Technically, she is one of the 130 injured in the massacre. But she is not actually alive. Deep in a five-year-long coma, she is neither wife to her husband nor mother to her daughter, now eight years old. Her parents visit her in the hospital every day.

David Nachenberg works as a sports journalist and as a child-care assistant close to his home so he can be available for his daughter. He does not allow her to be interviewed. Even while we speak, he pauses time and again and, with the utmost patience, tends to her requests.

While he recently obtained a rare 'dispensation of 100 rabbi's' to re-marry, he has not been able to bring himself to begin dating. "Who would want to go out with me?" he asks. "I'm not like a widower or a divorce? Women will be afraid that my wife might wake up one day and that I'd divorce them to return to her," he explains. "Besides", he adds "I would feel like a bigamist. I just wish I could go back to our happy life before."

Of course pain cannot be measured and tragedy cannot be ranked. Yet the blow that struck the Schijveschuurder family is undeniably on a level of barbarity all its own.

Mordechai and Tzira had brought five of their eight children to Jerusalem for a break from the tense security situation at home in their settlement of Talmon. Only two family members, Leah and Chaya, survived Sbarro.

Elisheva Moshkovitz, Mordechai's sister, and her husband, Moshe, Tzira's uncle, are raising the orphaned girls. Three older brothers who were not at Sbarro that day live independently.

"We moved into my brother's home in Talmon immediately afterwards and stayed there for six weeks." Elisheva begins. "It was a very difficult time for us, even financially. I had been in an accident and wasn't working. We had trouble paying the grocery bills. There was almost no help from anyone."

An ensuing custody battle resulted in the girls going to live with Elisheva's brother in Switzerland for a year. Eventually, after Elisheva and Moshe's perseverance in court proceedings, they were awarded permanent custody and the girls came back to Israel.

"Many friends and family broke off ties with us. But colleague of Tzira's, a bright, practical woman, would come and talk to me often. She'd stay three or four hours each time. I could speak about everything with her. She was a 'gift from G-d.'

"Another person we went to is the Talner Rebbe. He helped a lot. One couple, friends of ours stuck by us too. Then there was a friend who came by once and gave me a massage. That was very nice. The truth is many have left, have avoided us But then were we ourselves any different before?"

"The girls and I used to talk about their parents and their older sister. But never about the babies (Avraham Yitzchak and Chemda). Because, you know, the babies, well, that is just too painful."

"Has it affected my faith? Well, my parents and my in-laws all went through the Shoah. My mother lost her entire family when she was eighteen years old. And they all stayed alive and frum (religious) afterwards. I think about them and that keeps me going."

Encountering other Sbarro victims strengthens my personal resolve to keep the memory of this crime against humanity alive.

When, as happens a lot these days, the government mentions the possibility of a prisoner release, a shiver goes down my spine. One of the names on the list of candidates for release is that of Ahlam Tamimi. She is serving 16 life sentences in an Israeli prison.

Remorse or repentance could not be further from that woman's mind. She made this clear five months ago when she told journalists:

"I'm not sorry for what I did. I will get out of prison and I refuse to recognize Israel's existence I know that we will become free from Israeli occupation and then I will also be free from prison."

Along with the other Sbarro families, I remember Shoshana, and Yocheved and Chana and Malki and Michal and the Schijveschuurders.

We are determined to help keep their murderer, Ahlam Tamimi, behind bars until the end of her days.

10-Aug-06: Green Helmet and the hijacking of the media

Click to view a just-released German video of how the Shi'ite Resistance makes jackasses out of the assembled media in Southern Lebanon. This is beyond propaganda - it's an indictment of all the parties involved.

10-Aug-06: Quietly, quietly, the war against the terrorists goes on

While the British and American authorities are claiming loud and public knock-out victories over terrorism at Heathrow today, Israel's quiet ongoing decades-long struggle with the forces of extreme darkness goes on.

The intense warfare on Israel's northern and southern borders grabs most of the attention here. Despite – but probably because of – this, the appalling battle for prestige among the various Palestinian terror groups goes on, as does Israel's constant and essential vigilance.

Few news media will report the tense high-stakes battle going on in the towns and suburbs of Israel. So we will, as we have been doing since the fraudulent Hamas truce was declared in February 2005:-

Last night, Israeli security forces spotted and arrested 2 Palestinian females at a checkpoint near Shechem (also known as Nablus) in Samaria (the northern half of the West Bank. The two women belong to the Tanzim militant group, which owes its alliegance to the 'moderate' Mahmoud Abbas-led Fatah. They were intending to kill Israeli civilians, and were on their way to an Israeli urban centre to carry out their terrorist plan by blowing themselves and everyone around them up.

It may be surprising to some to hear that this was the ninth (in a row) intecept of a Palestinian terrorist or terrorists en route to carry out a mass murder of civilians since the outbreak of the Hezbollah War. All nine have been caught in the act, in the final stages of their journey to the paradise promised them by their 'religious' 'leaders'.

The Shin Bet security service are quited in today's Haaretz newspaper saying that in addition to the nine intercepts, 12 other Palestinians have been arrested in the same time period. These 12 too were in the planning stages of carrying out terrorist bombings intended to murder Israeli civilians. The Shin Bet's analysis is that Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are making extra efforts to remain in the headlines as an essential part of retaining the financial support that flows to terrorist bank accounts from the financiers of terror based outside Israel and the Palestinian Authority areas.

Today in PA-controlled Ramallah, two long-sought 'militants' belonging to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades were arrested by Israeli forces. Ramzi Obeid was one of them. Long pursued by Israel, he is a senior operative who has been involved in a number of terror attacks.

400 additional Palestinian Arabs have been arrested since the Hezbollah War started on July 12 for their involvement in terror. Two more terrorists were permanently eliminated by means of a precision, pin-point strike by helicopter yesterday in the refugee camp section of Jenin. No other person was injured or killed in the process. This received almost zero media coverage outside Israel.

UPDATE: A late evening report that a man of 25, evidently an Italian tourist, was stabbed to death in Jerusalem tonight when walking with three friends in the eastern part of the city near the walls of the Old City. The assailant fled and has not been caught yet. Unprovoked, anonymous attacks by terrorist heroes of the Palestinian resistance on unarmed civilians, generally from behind, remain a blight on life in this country.

10-Aug-06: One Page, Two Voices

It was along the lines of Alice in Wonderland.

In Wednesday's Haaretz, we have a Jewish Israeli admonishing the Israeli government for pursuing its war against terrorists without engaging in diplomacy with them.

On the same page and alongside, we have an Arab Israeli exhorting his compatriots to join Israel in opposing Hezbollah and Hamas.

The former, Gideon Samet, concedes that this war "has made clear the extent of the danger emanating from the contemptible enemy in the backyard." He relates that his recent two week trip to East Asia illuminated for him "the extent of the Islamic fundamentalist threat to the east of us." He writes of the "Islamic axis" and of the "tom-tom drums of world jihad' that reverberate in the region. He warns us that this "radical Islamic chain feeds the local threat".

So far so reasonable.

But then Samet does a 180 degree turn on us to conclude that after trying the military approach and failing: "this is the time to move to a completely different front, serious negotiations with Hamas and the Palestinian administration. This is also the time to talk to Syria or at least to take its pulse."

You have to wonder what Samet took with his coffee before he wrote the piece.

The Israeli Arab journalist, Riad Ali, on the other hand, maintains that the events of this past month made it clear that: "[Hezbollah's] war is against Jews wherever they may be. You have to be deaf in order not to hear the voice of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as it emerges from Nasrallah's throat, and naive in order to believe that the purpose of the arsenal Nasrallah has accumulated is the release of prisoners and the liberation of the Shaba Farms.

Ali urges Israeli Arabs to resist the urge to join the Arab masses throughout the region who extend support to Hezbollah and Hamas "if not with guns, then with funds, and if not with funds, then through words, and if not through words, then in heart, as the Muslim preachers tell the masses."

He urges them to do so "for their own sake, and not for the sake of the Jews. For the sake of the values they want to instill in their children. For the sake of retaining their intellectual dignity."

It is uplifting to hear another Arab voice speaking truth.

By the way, he doesn't place a halo over Israel. And we don't expect any Israeli citizen to do so, particularly not Arab Israelis who have often suffered from governmental indifference to their needs and problems. However, he is firm on

"...the right of the Jewish people to their own independent state. To the best of my understanding, this war, as with the intifada, has to be judged from this perspective."

Ali Riad pleads with his fellow Arab Israelis to "ask themselves if the Islamic ideology that is leading the war today against Israel and the West in the guise of a war against the occupation and heathens is representative of their ambitions."

We wonder whether Samet saw Ali's article.

10-Aug-06: Reacting to a "thwarted" terrorist plot that remains "imminent"

The major report from London this morning (BBC headline: 'Airlines terror plot' disrupted) is still unfolding. But it raises some questions for people like us who have experienced terrorism and think about it a great deal.

• The words "militants" or "activists" appear nowhere in any report. "Terror" or "terrorist" or "terrorism" feature prominently in all reports. Appropriate for us to remind our friends at the BBC and the British media not to lose sight of the BBC's guidelines, online here, which provide: "TERROR: We must report acts of terror quickly, accurately, fully and responsibly. Our credibility is undermined by the careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgements. The word "terrorist" itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding. We should try to avoid the term, without attribution. We should let other people characterise while we report the facts as we know them."
• If you're watching BBC World on television right now, you'll get the message immediately. No matter what the BBC's guidelines say, on screen right now and for the past hour, in gigantic white letters on a bright scarey red background are the words TERROR PLOT. And rest assured, the word TERROR is not in quote marks. (And neither should it be.)
• If the plot was thwarted - a word that is being endlessly repeated in the British television reports on our screens this morning - why has the security alert level in the UK been pushed up just now to its highest possible setting - "critical" meaning an attack is expected imminently, according to the BBC. Suggested interpretation: when it's being done to you and your family, you don't take chances. We absolutely agree that if there is an imminent threat of something awful, every possible security measure has to be taken. But then stop claiming it was thwarted. At best, it was discovered, and the real work is still ahead. You're at war.
• On the other hand, there has not been a single victim at this stage. Not one person wounded unless the police 'inquiries' led to some bruises or breaks among the suspects. Not one person killed. So we sincerely hope the British don't over-react. Or, Heaven forfend, react, disproportionately.
• The images of thousands of innocent people at Heathrow, lining up to go nowhere, make us wonder whether the authorities are taking the right approach to security. Profiling is a way of pre-selecting people who, by their behaviour or appearance or background, represent a larger potential risk. At Ben Gurion airport, where some of the most effective flight security in the world is done, 'selectors' (that's the Hebrew word) interrogate travelers and watch their reactions and body-language before opening or checking a single bag. There may be some lessons which Israel's experience with terrorism can offer the rest of the world.
• The media are repeating how successful this uncovering of a plot is, how the investigations have been going on for a long time, how good the intelligence work was. But if so, why is the entire British airline system now in total chaos with no plan for the immediate future. We're not blaming anyone other than those trying to claim this is a victory. Terrorism is going on almost everywhere, all the time, and the terrorists are way ahead.
• All the attention is on the airports, specifically Heathrow. And there are suggestions of liquid explosives are at the heart of the plot. So... why does anyone assume only aircraft, and only Heathrow, and only the UK are at risk? Why not trains, subways, buses, schools, hospitals, water supply sources?
• The most useful quoted statement we have heard in all the noise of this morning is a British policeman saying that this is about "mass murder on an unimaginable scale". The sad truth is that terror is always about the unimaginable, and always will be, no matter how creative our imaginations.
• The British TV news programs are also emphasizing in the past hour the massive disruption to ordinary life, especially to the tens of thousands of people now stuck in the airports or on board planes that have not been unable to unload. This will not continue for more than a matter of hours - unlike the acute security situation here where it has gone on for a month or more, as has been the case for hundreds of thousands of Israelis in northern communities, and for millions throughout the rest of Israel. Some Brits are likely to be in a much better position now or soon to understand why Israelis are demanding of their leaders to take out the militants, the activists, the terrorists, the mass murderers.
• We note that the words "Islamic" and "Moslem" have not been mentioned in any of the reports. This is good, right and proper. What possible connection would anyone imagine there might be between Moslems and a massive threat of terror? The last thing on anyone's mind.

The war against the terrorists is a real war, as real as the Battle of Britain was, as real as the Hezbollah War is, as real as the Arafat War (some call it the Second Intifadeh) is. In war, you do what you need to do to win. When it is not happening to you, you can engage in silly rhetoric and superficial phraseology. When it is happening to you, your children, your home, your society, you do what you need to do. The terrorists understand that better than the rest of us.

9-Aug-06: Sbarro, Five Years Later

Exactly five years ago today, a young man with a guitar case on his back walked into a pizza restaurant in the centre of Jerusalem and changed our lives permanently.

Fifteen people, most of them women and children, were murdered that hot, summer afternoon when the Hamas operative, the son of a well-to-do restaurant owner and a recent convert to a virulently extreme form of Islam, detonated the contents of his guitar case. More than 130 people were maimed and injured. One of those injured, the young mother of a three year-old child, has never regained consciousness.

Hamas and Hezbollah, separate terrorist entities, share a common emphasis on racist hatred along with their pseudo-political rhetoric. How do we know? From the way they add ball bearings and nails to the bombs they detonate.

We see this daily as Katyusha rockets explode in the residential areas of northern Israel, releasing high-velocity metal particles, as many as 50,000 of them per payload, that rip through walls and flesh and children's bodies but which, as Human Rights Watch uncharacteristically points out, are of "limited use against military targets". It's an additive that military experts have never seen before in rockets, and which leaves them astounded. We saw it on 9th August 2001. Our murdered daughter's cell phone, in its protective ballistic nylon case, was shredded by the Hamas shrapnel built into the terrorist's bomb. The same shrapnel that killed and maimed so many that day.

Metal balls and nails are not an incidental characteristic of their weaponry, but a fundamental aspect of it. The terror groups don't plan to capture strategic pieces of Israel. They have no expectation of destroying our bridges or highways. Our infrastructure has never been a large part of their lust for violence. It's people they want to destroy: Jewish people and their lives. And in this, they are propelled by a contempt, a hatred, that is beyond the capacity of most of us to comprehend. Certainly beyond the capacity of most news-readers, editors and journalists.

Broadly speaking, there are two ways for people to respond. One is like the ISM. They know about as much as the rest of us do about Hizbollah's provocative attacks on northern Israel; about the thousands of missiles crashing into cities, towns and houses; about the innocent victims. They're not ignorant. Just ideologically extreme, incredibly naive and a danger to everyone and everything around them. And their action plan? To travel to Southern Lebanon and interfere, as much as they can, in what Israel is doing there. From today's Washington Post:

So far, activists who have shown up in Lebanon from the United States and Europe are part of an exploratory group, but Shapiro believes they can attract hundreds more, including from Arab states, once they come up with a strategy.

Here's a suggested strategy for Adam Shapiro and his fellow ISM moonbats: far more good could come from you positioning yourselves in Kiryat Shmonah and Maalot. Extremely dangerous, of course, and somewhat unlikely to impress Hizbollah or their Iranian and Syrian masters. But what an impact the loss of an ISM limb or two to some Hizbollah shrapnel might make. The column inches! The pictures!

That's one response, as we said. But here's another.

To express total rejection of Hezbollah's racist hatred, its radical Islamist demonization of everything good and cultured about our lives, its anti-humanism and its viciousness - go here now, today, on the 5th anniversary of the Sbarro restaurant massacre and donate a small sum to the foundation we established in memory of our daughter, Malki.

This won't change the destiny of the middle east; it won't end jihadism or racism; it won't halt the Katyushas or the Qassams. But what it will do is help Moslem, Druze, Jewish and Christian families in Israel in practical and meaningful ways to cope with the challenge of caring for a special-needs child where the child benefits the most: at home. Despite its very modest size and extremely lean cost structure, the Malki Foundation currently helps about 1,200 such families, a number that grows larger every week.

The Malki Foundation's activity will baffle the ISM and the other haters and racists. But anyone who knows anything about Israeli society will understand why and how it exists without much difficulty.

More on the Malki Foundation and about the beautiful life of our daughter Malki here.

8-Aug-06: Dry stats

As of this morning, according to the Israeli police, some 3,050 Hizbollah missiles have been fired into Israel since July 12. 750 have landed in residential areas, killing 49 human beings.

It's not always recognized that Hizbollah's weaponry is guided to its targets by what is known among military observers as pot-luck. They lob their rockets into the air and care not one bit about what gets hit. The point is to sow destruction, death and chaos to the greatest extent possible. There is no Hezollah military strategy more significant than this. This is one of several reasons why they are terrorists.