24-Aug-12: Lone wolf killer of children with his hundreds of contacts and lengthy visits to jihadist training schools might not have acted entirely alone, it seems

We know about the dead. We know about the killer. We are starting to know about his friends and colleagues. Connecting the dots.

Four months ago, we wrote here that 

The murders of three French servicemen followed shortly afterwards by the killing of a four innocent Jews – a young schoolteacher and two of his small children and then a third little girl – are receding into the background.  ["19-Apr-12: How the murder of three French children has become the launch of a new chapter in the conquest of Europe by the terrorists"]

Those killings, and especially the murder of the three little children near the town's Jewish school, now turn out to have been done by someone who, it is beginning to start to seem to possibly be potentially suspected, was not merely an "angry petty criminal" who had "radicalised himself" - to quote today's BBC report. 

But rushing to make premature judgments would be deeply, seriously wrong.

The evidence shows the self-described jihadist, a garage mechanic who said he was connected to al-Qaeda, made more than 1,800 calls to over 180 contacts in 20 different countries (mainly Egypt, Morocco, Kenya, Kazhakstan, Saudi Arabia, Bhutan and the UK) between September 2010 and February 2011. He made several trips to the Middle East and Afghanistan in the same period. This was noticed, though not enough by the people paid to protect the public security. France's intelligence services started paying attention in 2009 as a result of an investigation into his sister, Souad, and his brother, Abdelkhadar. They are both currently in the custody of French police. 

In February 2011, the Germans alerted their French colleagues that Merah had travelled from Cairo, via Frankfurt, to Toulouse. His trip included a visit to a Salafist/Sunni Islamist school of obedience in Egypt. Then in March 2011, after Merah had a long stay in Afghanistan, the police in France put him under tighter surveillance (no one is saying what this means, for now at least, perhaps since the outcome is so tragic). During this period he frequently changed SIM cards that were registered in his mother's name, suggesting the Merah clan was aware of the investigation and sought to protect him. The BBC quoting Le Monde says he had contact with one known Salafist in Toulouse during this period, and with two others "who recently left for Mauritania" [source].

It's worth recalling that the Merah clan is not sitting this investigation process out passively. The father, Mohamed Benalel Merah, said soon after his son's death on March 22, 2012, that he plans to sue the French government. 

A lawyer for Mohamed Benalel Merah, who lives in Algeria, said the suit was against those "who gave the orders at the top of the police"... French lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, who is assisting Algerian lawyer Zahia Mokhtari, filed the suit in Paris [in early June]. "This is a suit against unnamed persons for murder with aggravating circumstances concerning those who gave the orders at the top of the police," said Ms Coutant-Peyre. [source]

On the other hand, there's no sign so far of anyone suing the persons who gave orders at the top of the jihadist hierarchy. We can hope. Perhaps eventually someone in a position of French authority will connect the dots.

23-Aug-12: Theology and sociopaths

Our daughter Malki

We are an ordinary family who, for more than a decade, have known the identity of the murderer of our fifteen year-old daughter, Malki. She is a woman who appears in her own television program each Friday night. She is the central figure in hundreds of YouTube videos.

From a distance (since our own government never communicated with us about this, never allowed us to be heard, never consulted with us), we watched as the woman who brought unspeakable pain into our lives was charged, convicted and sentenced to many terms of life imprisonment. 

Then with a rising sense of horror, we saw a media campaign unfold which presented her as a hero and warrior and that sought her release. We were confident the famous 'red lines' of our government would never be breached and mass murderers of Israeli children would remain behind Israeli bars until the day they drew their last breath. That illusion irretrievably fell away in October 2011.

Even then, having endured the worldwide news coverage of the rapturous welcomes given to the woman in Cairo and Amman, we were unprepared for the steps that followed: the official reception held at Jordan’s Family Court [Corbis image]; the self-hosted weekly television program beamed by satellite throughout the world; the tumultuous crowds in Arab capitals proclaiming their adulation during her visits; the grand public June wedding in which she was the shining, smiling star alongside the convicted, unpardoned and unjustly freed murderer who is now her husband. 

All along, we knew that civilized people everywhere, at least those outside the Arab world, were revolted by the deeds, the declarations, the triumphalism of the barbaric woman with the lying, smiling eyes.

Now meet James M. Wall. His is a name we had never heard until this week. It turns out to be a name worth knowing if, like us, your fifteen year old child was murdered in cold blood along with fourteen other innocent patrons in a restaurant.

As comforting as it might be to think otherwise, Wall is not marginal to the public discourse of the United States. Nor is he regarded (as far as we can tell) as a shrieking crank or a red-neck. He served as editor of a prominent journal called The Christian Century for 27 years, from 1972 to 1999. Wikipedia calls it "the flagship magazine of U.S. mainline Protestantism" [source]. He continued there as a regular columnist until a few years ago, even after his retirement. Though it appears he has stopped writing for it, his name remains on the masthead as Senior Contributing Editor.

These days, Wall writes a blog under the title “Wall Writings”. From where we sit, his output has some quite unpleasant tones. In a December 2011 piece on US politics, for instance, he characterizes pro-Israel Republican candidates as “wear[ing] the Jewish kippah”.

But as we learned, Wall is capable of advocacy journalism of a far more pungent sort. In October 2011, he posted a lengthy article to coincide with the extorted release from prison of Ahlam Tamimi, our child's murderer. We were referred to that article for the first time yesterday, in the wake of what we wrote here and here earlier this week.

At about the time he wrote it, in October 2011, an Arab newspaper dotingly quoted Tamimi making this statement: 

“I have never regretted what I have done, and if given another chance I’ll do it again” [source]. 

Yet extraordinarily, the Wall piece 'lionizes' her. (That’s the term used by the clear-eyed Christian analyst who pointed us to it). With loving attention to the human aspects of her story, Wall urges his readers to resist the Israeli view of the Jordanian woman's "crimes"; those quote marks around the word crimes appear in Wall's essay. Wall leaves readers in little doubt that the atrocities to which Tamimi confessed in court - atrocities to which she confesses afresh frequently, proudly and in public - were not crimes at all but something very different.

A small handful of excerpts from Wall's rambling article entitled “Ahlam and Nezar, A Palestinian CoupleReleased in The Prisoner Exchange” captures the logic of his case:

• “This bias against Palestinians [in the news reports about Israel freeing 1,027 killers and terrorists] was so blatant that… Noam Chomsky was moved to accuse the media of treating the released Palestinian prisoners as “unpeople”. It is time to tell their stories, and to do so without apology.”
• “The Palestinians who were sent to jail… saw themselves as resisting an occupying army, taking actions they believed appropriate to deal with that occupation. What Israel did is what all occupying, colonizing armies do. They punished those who resisted their colonizing... What this comes down to is a conflict of narratives, based on who is telling the story, the military occupiers or those who are resisting occupation/colonization.”
• “From Israel’s perspective, Ahlam played a role in causing a massive act of murder [but] she saw it, initially, as an act of war. And of course, war itself is organized, sanctioned murder.
• “[Tamimi’s] crime, for which she was sentenced by a military court for multiple life terms, was for “choosing the location and securing transportation to reach that location”.

Concerning that last bullet, Wall probably missed out on reading the court papers. Tamimi was indicted on 23 charges. One is for possession of explosives and three concern related offences. 19 relate to deliberate killing and conspiracy to kill. She pleaded guilty to them all. As prisoners in this country may, she addressed the court:

"The deed which I did… leaves me happy. Why? The anger expressed in your faces regarding what I did is the same anger that lies within me and within the entire Palestinian people and is surely even greater than that. 15 killed, 122 injured, this is a small number relative to the many, large numbers of those who are gone, because of you." [Our translation of the Hebrew transcript]

No one, certainly not James M. Wall, can have thought this woman was framed or tortured into confessing her crimes or misquoted. Wall must have known what every other news reporter and political pundit knew: that Ahlam Tamimi was - and is - unstoppably proud of causing the deaths of Israelis. She set out to find a corner of Jerusalem where the number of young Jewish lives that could be snuffed out by a bomb concealed in a guitar case was as large as possible. In this, she succeeded hugely. She says she will do it again if her god gives her the opportunity. We don’t know Wall, but we know he knew this. And yet what he writes about Ahlam Tamimi is imbued with admiration for her. 

What kind of Christian values inform the opinions of a man who cannot bring himself to condemn the murders of fifteen innocents? 

What theological insight brings a man with Wall’s prominence, intelligence, standing in the community, to look right past the overwhelming, explicit pride of a killer who says “I did well. I will do it again. And so should you”? 

If his appreciation of the deeds of this sociopath is not an obscenity, what is?

James M. Wall’s views are hardly the opinions of a nobody. They are uttered by one who speaks from the foremost ranks of Christian leadership in the US. As Senior Contributing Editor of The Christian Century and its driver for more than a quarter century, he and the journal lay claim to formidable credentials since it is

a progressive, ecumenical magazine based in Chicago. Committed to thinking critically and living faithfully, the Century explores what it means to believe and live out the Christian faith in our time. Founded in 1884 as the Christian Oracle, the magazine took its current name at the turn of the 20th century. Notable contributors in the early decades included Jane Addams and Reinhold Niebuhr. In 1963, the Century was the first major periodical to publish the full text of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail." The Century continues to inform and shape mainline Christianity...  [More]

Wall engages in unambiguous advocacy for the self-admitted murderer and her deeds. He has the right to express himself freely, obnoxiously and even offensively. But what does it mean that The Christian Century still has him on its masthead nearly a year after the Tamimi article? Does the editorial board agree with his line? Do they disagree? Will they disavow him and them? Are his views Christian?

Is it Christian to embrace the unrepentant murderer of children who says she prays for the chance to do it again?

23-Aug-12: Another two rockets are fired into southern Israel today. Situation normal.

As absurd as this is, Israel suffered yet another rocket attack around noon today. The source, as is so often the case, was the rocket men of Gaza - the horde of terrorists who sit on a mountain of weaponry and explosives and who store them in residential neighbourhoods, mosques, hospitals and schools hoping that Israel fires back at the source. Civilian hostage taking at its most cynical.

Today's rockets exploded harmlessly [source], as is so often the case, in an open area - this time, an open area in the Sha'ar Hanegev region. That's midway between the southern cities of Beersheba and Ashkelon. "Exploded harmlessly" is not what the terrorists intended. They will keep firing these explosives at anything Israeli until they hit something human and/or serious. They have no strategic objective other than to (a) terrorize and (b) inflict damage and pain on their enemy. This is it is right to call them terrorists.

22-Aug-12: Scenes from the front lines, courtesy of the Tayar Report

Rachel's Tomb on Jerusalem's southern margin: The fortifications
are a result of the ceaseless acts of violence perpetrated
by Palestinian Arabs despite - or because of - the site's unparalleled
historical significance

The chronology below is a continuation of the reports we have published in recent months based on information received via the Tayar Security Report, with some editing and annotating by us. Yehudit Tayar produces her invaluable bulletins on the basis of first-responder, police and army reports.

Tuesday August 14, 2012

• The security authorities allow us to reveal that an Arab was arrested in the Shechem (Nablus) area arising out of a police investigation into the poisoning of a Ra'anana family. It is believed the suspect broke into the family's home and placed poison into a beverage container that he found in the residence. The husband is critically injured as a result of the poisoning; his wife, and the grandmother, plus a toddler and a police officer are all moderately injured as a result of poisoning.

Friday August 18, 2012

• At sunset and just as the Sabbath was commencing, a traveler in the hills near Eilat came across the remains of a rocket - evidently one of the rockets that had been fired at Eilat on Wednesday night (see "15-Aug-12: Double explosion in Eilat tonight seems to be terrorist rocket fire, but they're still checking")
• The Border Police post at Rachel's Tomb, situated on the Jerusalem side of Bethlehem and one of the Jewish people's most beloved historical shrines, came under attack by Palestinian Arabs equipped with Molotov cocktails and rocks. Property damage resulted, but fortunately no injuries.

Saturday August 19, 2012

• South of Shechem (Nablus) at or close to the Hawwara security checkpoint, Arabs traveling in a vehicle mounted a rock-hurling attack at the passengers and driver of an Israeli vehicle. Yehudit Tayar writes: "I wish to point out that the press does not relate to the continuous attacks and acts of attempted murder of innocent Israeli travelers on the roads."
• Near El Arub on the Gush Etzion-Hebron road: An Israeli bus belonging to the Gush Etzion Development Authority came under attack by rock-throwing Arabs. The bus was carrying Israeli youngsters. Such rock-throwing attacks have become very common in that area, as well as elsewhere in Judea and Samaria.

Sunday August 20, 2012

• IDF allows us to release this: The Shabak (Israel Security Agency) and the IDF apprehended the members of a terror cell back in May 2012. This was evidently part of the activity of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP follows a Marxist-Leninist line, and is the second-largest of the groups forming the Palestine Liberation Organization, after Fatah. The terror gang members were preparing to execute shooting attacks and kidnappings in order to acquire bargaining chips to secure the release of currently-imprisoned terrorist colleagues. Their intended targets included the heavily-traveled security crossing at Maccabim-Re'ut on the major Highway 443 artery serving Jerusalem.
• The road connecting Kiryat Arba and Hebron: Palestinian Arabs attacked a young Israeli cyclist with rocks.
• The Azuz Junction near Karnei Shomron: Several Israeli vehicles came under rock attack by Palestinian Arabs.

Monday August 21, 2012

• A rocket was fired from Gaza into a location within southern Israel. Yehudit Tayar says: "I am not at liberty to disclose the location for reasons of national security."
• Adam Junction (Tsomet Adam) in the Benjamin Region: An Israeli vehicle comes under rock attack by Palestinian Arabs and is damaged.
• The community of Itamar, near Bet Faruk, in the Shomron (Samaria district): An Israeli driver reports to the IDF that he saw Palestinian Arabs preparing to launch a Molotov cocktail attack at him. Some time later, a different Israeli vehicle is attacked near Bet Faruk - the perpetrators appear to be Palestinian Arabs hurling Molotov cocktails. The IDF initiated an investigation of the attack.
• North-west of Ramallah, between Rantis and Beit Arye/Ofarim: An Israeli driver reports that Arabs attacked him with rocks. The IDF is investigating.
• Abu Dis, north of Bethlehem in the Jerusalem suburbs: A group of Palestinian Arabs throws Molotov cocktails at a Border Police post.

The Tayar Security Report is compiled by Yehudit Tayar based on inputs from the Hatzalah Yehudah and Shomron organization, cleared and confirmed by the IDF.

21-Aug-12: What might civilized people be thinking when sociopaths like Tamimi bask in adulation?

The unrepentant, unjustly freed murderer Tamimi
with the unrepentant, unjustly freed murderer Tamimi
at their June 2012 wedding in Amman, Jordan

After receiving some offline comments on the Tamimi speech we publicized yesterday, we have a few further thoughts to share. The urge to do this is triggered by a sense that something deeply disturbing is going on; it's being ignored or willfully not noticed by people who ought to be noticing.

When a politician or public figure on our side of the fence makes an ignorant or dumb or smart or incisive statement, particularly when it's about the Arabs (you know the examples), his/her comments are greeted with near-instant analysis and frequently with condemnation from a global array of press and politicians. The Arab media focus obsessively on such things. Outside the Arab/Islamic world, we frequently see European, American, Australian and other critics drawing wide inferences about how those specific Israeli views are going to bring on the next Black Plague or an increase in pogroms in France. The claim, at minimum, is that irreparable harm is going to be caused to the souls and DNA of innocent Israeli children, to world peace and so on. 

To illustrate: when a posse of Israeli delinquents (it happens to be a very current issue here) beat up an Arab youth in a street fight, the New York Times says the event has led to "a stark national conversation about racism, violence, and how Israeli society could have come to this point" That's an actual quote: check it out. We think the Times' journalist's conclusion is overwrought nonsense, but that's not the point. Israel is not, never has been and should never be, immune to criticism, or even object to it, and mostly doesn't. 

Now think for a moment about how Ahlam Tamimi and her hundreds of published interviews and speeches are treated by global public opinion. Pay attention in particular to how Arabs view her, since they are her principal audience.

No one - certainly not the woman herself - denies the fact that she planned and carried out a premeditated killing on a large and vicious scale, which was the whole point of doing it. The law convicted her on the basis that she's a murderer; she says (more or less) that she did it for the freedom and honour of her nation. The fact that she planned to kill and succeeded mightily has never been in dispute. She does not miss an opportunity to say that it was children, and specifically Jewish children, and even more specifically orthodox Jewish children like ours, who were the target. She regrets that she did not kill more - it's there in yesterday's video and in numerous other speeches and earlier videos recorded in her Jordanian freedom.

She appears on television and in front of adoring crowds (ask us if you want to view the video files) and expresses the vilest kind of racist hatred of Jews, Israelis and Zionists. She has done this many times since she unjustly got her freedom in October and her message is hugely amplified by the social media. She is a star on YouTube, a hero on Facebook. She is globally broadcast via satellite television into every corner of the Arabic-speaking world. It's arguable that she has the largest footprint of any ordinary murderer (ignoring "celebrities" like Hitler, Mao, Stalin et al) in human history. If that seems like an overstatement then we urge you to concede that she is in the major leagues. The fact that most people don't know this is largely because most people don't speak Arabic.

She smiles warmly when she says she killed those Jews, and her god wanted her to do it. She points to how she has subsequently been rewarded with freedom, fame, a wedding that received live television coverage. The adoring crowds applaud and ululate. The encouragement (and probably the will) to emulate her actions is clear.

How many Arabic speakers are there in the world? A quick query on the web turns up these numbers: "280 million native speakers, and an extra 250 million non-native speakers" [source]. How many Arabic newspapers? Many.

Here's our point: We have searched and have not yet found a blog, article, published speech or op-ed in her language, Arabic, which criticizes the woman or her views. So far, not one. If our readers can point us to exceptions, please do.

This is deeply shocking. Tamimi's message resonates throughout the Arab and Islamic world. Her views don't even rise to the level of controversial. She's simply a hero, wall to wall. She and her vile deeds, opinions and intentions appear to represent some sort of global consensus in the Arab and Islamic world. There is no public debate, no expressions of outrage - not even concerning the passivity of the Kingdom of Jordan where she lives and from where a vibrant Tamimi-focused industry of online and broadcast videos sends its message of hatred and death out to the world. 

Does the absence of criticism throughout the Arab world mean they support the deliberate killing of the innocent people among their enemy? Does their silence mean they support the murder of children as Tamimi certainly does, and they want to see it happen again and again as she certainly does?

What does this say about the discourse underway in the Arab world? What light does it throw on the global news media? 

What can we learn from here about the chances of ever making peace? 

20-Aug-12: What would it take to make you as happy as this woman?

The link to the 2m 46s video is here

Please spend two minutes and 46 seconds in watching the edited extract of a television  interview with the woman who planned and executed a massacre of innocent civilians, most of them children, eleven years ago. Following the killings, she went to her place of work which happens to have been a television studio, and calmly read the evening news bulletin, starting with a report of the massacre that she herself had perpetrated some hours earlier.

After an intense criminal investigation, she was arrested less than two months later and charged with the murders of fifteen people, along with a host of other felonies. She was convicted and sentenced to sixteen terms of life imprisonment. But as a result of a controversial and cynical political deal, she was freed (not pardoned) in October 2011 and released to the land of her birth where she has become a major celebrity. Her recent wedding to her cousin, another unjustly freed murderer, received live television coverage and extensive media attention. Not only a celebrity but a hero.

Watch how the woman's face radiates the joy that comes from recounting how the death toll grew steadily in the hour or so that she spent fleeing the scene via public transport, unhindered by the police. Absorb the message of how members of the public, unaware the murderer was seated beside them, expressed happiness at the deaths of anonymous children. 

Imagine the feelings of the families of the innocents murdered by a person like this as they see her achievements celebrated and honored, as they listen to the prideful boasting of an unrepentant killer whose only regret is that she did not manage to kill more. She has confessed over and again since being allowed out of captivity. There can be absolutely no doubt that her deeds are an inspiration to countless others seeking the glory and vindication that her society has delivered to her.

The video, which went to air in July and has just been translated and edited by MEMRI, is here. 

This post continues after the pictures below.

Ahlam Tamimi, a very happy person, lives in complete and unfettered freedom in the Kingdom of Jordan from where she has traveled several times in the ten months since her release to such places as Tunisia, Lebanon and Qatar to give public speeches. She hosts a television program of her own that is broadcast by satellite throughout the Arabic-speaking world. She married her cousin in June. 

Among the fifteen people murdered by her on August 9, 2001 is our daughter Malki who was fifteen years old. A sixteenth victim, the young mother of a two year old child, has remained in a vegetative state since being injured in the attack.

What should a civilized society do in the wake of this woman's story?

[UPDATE: Please read our follow-up post: "21-Aug-12: What might civilized people be thinking when sociopaths like Tamimi bask in adulation?] 

18-Aug-12: Why the Palestinian Arab economy remains so weak - and what this means

Construction site in Israeli city of Maale Adumim

Let's start with a quotation:

The Palestinians could have built one of the best economies in the region after the beginning of the peace process in 1993. But instead of using the billions of dollars that were given to them by Americans and Europeans to create new jobs, the PLO leadership stole most of the funds and later blamed Israel for damaging the Palestinian economy. Suicide bombings and financial and administrative corruption are the main reason why the Palestinian economy remains as weak as ever. The Palestinians are experts in shooting themselves in the foot and then blaming Israel.

We know little about Hisham Jarallah other than that he is described as a journalist based in the West Bank and that he wrote the words above. Few Palestinian Arab voices have been heard that speak plain sense about the central role that people's personal welfare plays in the way they relate to Arab/Israel conflict. His appears to be one. The Gatestone Institute published his article on their website yesterday. The title - not so politically-correct but absolutely justified - is: "How Palestinians Keep Shooting Themselves in the Foot".

Instead of using the billions of dollars that were given to them by Americans and Europeans to create new jobs, the PLO leadership stole most of the funds and later blamed Israel for damaging the Palestinian economy... [Meanwhile] as the Arab countries continue to impose strict employment restrictions on Palestinians, Israel is opening its doors to Palestinian workers from the West Bank. Palestinians say, in fact, that Israel is becoming one of the largest employers of Palestinians in the Middle East.

He refers to data released this past week by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in Ramallah. They show some 80,000 Palestinian Arabs are now working in Israel, including the demonized "settlements". There has been modest growth in the past year, and then last week Israel's government issued work permits to 10,000 more Palestinian Arabs from the West Bank.

The move has been received with a sigh of relief among Palestinians, especially as it comes on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan. The figures also showed that Palestinians employed by Israelis earn more than those who work for their Palestinian brethren in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A Palestinian construction laborer often earns more than a senior ministry official in the Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank or the Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip.What is interesting about the bureau's report is that the number of Palestinians working in Jewish settlements has increased despite calls from the Palestinian Authority to boycott the settlements. 

Billions of dollars have been handed over to the Palestinian Authority in the past decade, but the results are thin and few. Arab governments routinely pledge undying support to the their Palestinian Arab brothers and when the spotlight has moved on, quickly forget their promises and commitments. Jarallah notes that Lebanon, Egypt, Kuwait and Jordan impose apartheid-like restrictions on their Arab brethren from Palestine, 

This strategy needs to be viewed in connection with the decades-long history of Palestinian Arab kleptocracy. That's the process of theft and pillage practiced by the Arafat circle and then later (until today) the Abbas circle: they help themselves to the bulk of the goodies arriving as international aid, ensuring their personal enrichment while consigning their fellow Palestinian Arabs to the dust-heap. Understanding how the massive inflow of aid money and foreign contracts has made the decision makers in Palestinian society rich and their towns and communities poor is a necessary step to comprehending how and why this ongoing war goes on. Why would these 'leaders' ever want to see the bonanza end?

Munib R. al-Masri, a business tycoon, is generally regarded as the wealthiest Palestinian Arab alive today. In 2005, The Atlantic magazine ran a major piece entitled "In a Ruined Country: How Yasir Arafat destroyed Palestine" [here]. It focused on some comments made by al-Masri. Hear now what he said:

The money [Arafat] spent to buy the loyalty of his court, al-Masri gently suggests, could easily have paid for a functioning Palestinian state instead. “With three hundred, four hundred million dollars we could have built Palestine in ten years. Waste, waste, waste. I flew over the West Bank in a helicopter with Arafat at the beginning of Oslo, and I told him how easy we could make five, six, seven towns here; we could absorb a lot of people here; and have the right of return for the refugees. If you have good intentions and you say you want to reach a solution, we could do it. I said, if you have money and water, it could be comparable to Israel, this piece of land.”

The reality was always quite different from the vision. 

"For those at the top of the heap the rewards were much larger and more systematic. The amounts of money stolen from the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people through the corrupt practices of Arafat’s inner circle are so staggeringly large that they may exceed one half of the total of $7 billion in foreign aid contributed to the Palestinian Authority. The biggest thief was Arafat himself." [The entire September 2005 article is very long but worthy of your attention.]

[H/tip The Palestinian Failure, by A. Jay Adler.]

Why is it that the proclivity of the Palestinian Arabs over decades to consistently and repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot gets so little analytical attention?

17-Aug-12: Hail of mortar fire directed by Gazan terror forces at southern Israel

The fire continues.

This morning (Friday), around 11:20, a hail of five to seven mortar rounds [source] were fired by unknown parties from within the terrorist-infested Gaza Strip into southern Israel's Eshkol region (population: about 11,000). There have been numerous mortar and rocket attacks on the same region in the recent past: earlier this month, in late June, in mid June, and several times [29, 22, 21, 20, 13, 12) and numerous other times.

While we were writing this, we noted a Hebrew report saying that seven additional mortars were fired by the terrorists from Gaza in the past half hour (it's now 3:20pm). All of them, according to this report, "dropped short" (again) and crashed and presumably exploded on the Hamas-controlled side of the Gaza/Israel boundary. No reports of casualties, but news reports of Palestinian Arab self-inflicted damage (Palestinian Arabs killed or injured by Palestinian Arab fire) almost never get any coverage.

16-Aug-12: Incoming mortars this morning

The search [fragmentary video here] in and around Eilat for the source of last night's explosions goes on this morning, but meanwhile the fire from Gaza and/or Sinai is renewed. Two (possibly more) mortar rounds were fired from Gaza into southern Israel around 08:30 this morning [source].

15-Aug-12: [UPDATED] Double explosion in Eilat tonight seems to be terrorist rocket fire, but they're still checking

The coast and hotels of Eilat, a major center of Israeli recreation
and tourism [Image Source]

There were reports from Eilat tonight, a little before 10:00 pm, of two very powerful explosions. The source was a spokesperson for the Eilat police. Over the past hour, there has been considerable speculation in the Israeli media that the cause was a pair of GRAD missiles fired from the Sinai peninsula. However the latest information we have (it's just a quarter to midnight, Wednesday night here) is that the police and the IDF have not yet identified the cause and are withholding further comment.

Being so close to Egypt and the Sinai desert, the city of Eilat - Israel's southernmost point - knows something about the dangers of living in a very bad neighborhood. On June 16, 2012, Eilat came under GRAD attack [source]. The 122mm missiles (two of them) exploded harmlessly in open fields, but could just as easily have struck human beings - that was clearly the intention of the terrorists. On April 5, 2012, a GRAD missile exploded in Eilat, just 150 meters from a cluster of residential buildings [source] - and again, luck was with the Israeli side and against the terrorists who fired it. There was a more serious attack in August 2010. Two missiles, each weighing 6 kgs, crashed to earth next to Aqaba's InterContinental hotel just across the Jordanian border. Five Jordanians in a taxi nearby were injured, and the driver was killed [source]. In the same volley, three GRADS fell onto Eilat, one exploding in a drainage pool in northern Eilat. But fortunately (again) there were neither injuries nor damage.

Good luck is not the way countries manage the threats and actions of bomb/rocket/missile-equipped terrorists. So we can assume there will be soon be some Israeli countermeasures.

UPDATE 25-Aug-12: Ynet reports ["Third jihadist group claims responsibility for Eilat rockets] that Ansar Beit al-Makdas, a terrorist group said to be connected to global jihad activities, has released a video that documents the GRAD rocket fire that targeted Eilat on August 15, 2012, and the preparation that preceded it. Two other groups, Ansar al-Quds and the Salafi Sinai Front, have also claimed responsibility for the rockets in the last few days. These may be nothing more than names and empty claims - time will tell.

14-Aug-12: [UPDATED] Iran, the bankers and the chicken eaters

Sanctions matter: Iranian chickens [Image Source]

Writing ("Iran's Favorite Bankers") in the Wall Street Journal today, columnist L. Gordon Crovitz observes that sanctions against belligerents can take multiple forms outside the physical battlefields, including those which are entirely within the world of commerce. He starts with an analogy from the second world war:

The British policy of appeasing Nazi Germany became less tenable when the Bank of England in March 1939 secretly transferred gold reserves it was holding for Czechoslovakia to Hitler's central bank soon after his troops conquered the country. When the transfer became public, the British bankers claimed they had no choice: The Germans had the Czech gold, even if it was gained by force and would fuel the Nazi war effort. Today, finance is conducted digitally, not by moving gold bars from country to country. This makes it possible—so long as banks cooperate—to impose economic sanctions on belligerents like Iran, with its clandestine efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. And this is why there is outrage if sanctions are evaded.

His comments are triggered by what happened a few days ago in New York City. Allegations were made that one of the largest British banks, Standard Chartered,

became a "rogue institution" that "schemed" with Iran to cover up illegal transactions, leaving the "U.S. financial system vulnerable to terrorists." 

Crovitz quotes an unnamed Standard Chartered executive director, explaining his company's actions in technical Wall Street language:

"You f---ing Americans. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we're not going to deal with Iranians?" 

WSJ uses its own, somewhat more conventional terms, to explain what was done here:

Standard Chartered bankers inserted "No name given" in the required message field in order to hide the names of Iranian customers... Standard Chartered will have to explain to regulators its alleged "wire stripping," a practice that deleted the names of Iranian banks from the digital records of U.S. dollar wire transfers...  Financial sanctions may not work either, but it's not up to bankers to decide whether they like the policy. Just as the Bank of England's reputation suffered by appeasing Hitler, any bank that helps Iran's nuclear ambitions by undermining sanctions deserves all the harm done to its reputation.

As to how effective economic sanctions against Iran can be, consider "Tehran’s very fowl summer", a short but illuminating analysis from MacLeans, the Canadian business magazine. It describes how Iranian television has been recruited to warn ordinary citizens in that country of what it calls "a new taboo": the eating of chicken. 

Tehran’s police chief Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam urged networks not to show anyone consuming chicken, lest the images inflame class tensions and lead to violence. “Certain people witnessing this class gap between the rich and the poor might grab a knife and think they will get their fair share from the wealthy,” he said. Ahmadi Moghaddam’s warning comes amid a countrywide chicken shortage, with prices for remaining birds soaring beyond the reach of many consumers. The crisis has been blamed on a combination of economic mismanagement and international sanctions, which make it difficult to do even legitimate business with Iran. At least one ship full of chicken feed reportedly left Iran earlier this year without unloading its cargo because it couldn’t get paid... [A US-based expert says that] because Iran uses its banks to disguise transactions that might violate laws regarding money laundering and financing terrorism, other financial institutions are leery about doing business with them... Iran is increasingly being isolated from the international financial system.

Israeli Iran-expert Meir Javedanfar, writing for Bloomberg ["Iran’s Big Crisis: The Price of Chicken"] says Iran's chicken meat prices have tripled since last year.

UPDATE: Late tonight, Israel time (Monday), Standard Chartered reportedly reached agreement [source] with at least some of the American regulators on its tail:

Aug. 14, 2012, 4:01 p.m. EDT
Standard Chartered to pay regulator $340M              NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Standard Chartered PLC agreed to pay New York’s top banking regulator $340 million, averting a public showdown and ending a weeklong, trans-Atlantic regulatory drama. After a harried week of debate, the U.K.’s fifth-largest bank by assets reached a settlement with New York’s Department of Financial Services. The agreement came eight days after Benjamin M. Lawsky, the superintendent of the New York regulator, accused the bank of illegally scheming over a decade to hide more than 60,000 financial transactions totaling $250 billion for Iranian clients... Four other U.S. regulators that have been probing the bank’s actions weren’t part of the settlement. The U.S. Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office have been negotiating with Standard Chartered since 2011 to reach a settlement over its Iran-related transactions. A settlement between Standard Chartered and the other U.S. regulators is likely “weeks away,” said a person close to the bank. Standard Chartered wanted to settle with all U.S. authorities as a group to assuage investors’ concerns about its exposure to future penalties, but the other regulators didn’t move quickly enough, said the person.

12-Aug-12: More firing, virtually no reporting

Home-made

It's Sunday evening here, and very warm. 

Around 5:30 this evening local time, we received an unofficial report of three mortar rounds having been fired into the Eshkol region of southern Israel. Eshkol abuts the Gaza Strip and is home to some fourteen kibbutzim and 13 moshavim, as well as several additional communities. Fortunately no reports of injuries or damage, with the mortars exploding either on the Gazan side of the border or in open fields. 

From the Gazan side, we received a report this morning via the EU-funded GANSO office of what it delicately calls "1 HMR fired from Al Maghazi, MA, toward the Green Line" where HMR stands for "home-made rocket". It's a highly misleading way of describing lethal rockets that have killed people on the Israeli side and sowed widespread terror right across southern Israel. 

Then again, European money is not being spent in this part of the world in order to protect Israeli lives or to be, Heaven forbid, judgmental about the motives of the Islamists of Gaza who sit on a stockpile of tens of thousands of such devices. For European consumption, then, the routine use of this "HMR" label is meant to delegitimize the dangers of having a terrorist regime sitting on our southern border, with rocket launchers and explosives embedded deeply within Gazan residential structures. It's not really a threat, you understand. It's home made.

War by other means.

We have not seen any reports of an overnight rocket today which might indicate it was another "dropped short", exploding somewhere on the Gazan side of the fence. As we keep reminding our readers, and entirely without cynicism or exaggeration: no one in the news industry pays the slightest attention to Arab rockets that strike Arab civilians in Gaza. The newsworthiness starts only when Israelis are victims or perpetrators. 

10-Aug-12: Egypt is pouring forces into Sinai but does anyone know for sure what they are actually doing there?

Epypt: From Israel's perspective in the ongoing war
against the terrorists - a riddle 

A syndicated report from EuroNews headed "Egypt army kills and arrests ‘terrorists’ in Sinai" says Egyptian soldiers have "poured into the region, and claim to have killed 20 people considered ‘terrorists’ during an offensive... New [Moslem Brotherhood] head of state, Mohammed Mursi fired the regional governor and Egypt’s Intelligence Chief on Wednesday, and has vowed to restore stability in the area.

On the other hand, Reuters is reporting under the heading "Little sign of battle in Egypt's Sinai region" that despite the reports that "Egypt poured troops into North Sinai on Thursday in an offensive meant to tackle militants in the Israeli border region", local residents 

were skeptical, saying they had seen no sign of anyone being killed in what they described as a "haphazard" operation. Army commanders said as many as 20 "terrorists" had died in the offensive launched after suspected Islamist militants killed 16 Egyptian border guards on Sunday and drove a stolen armored car into Israel which was then destroyed by Israeli forces. Hundreds of troops and dozens of military vehicles had reached al-Arish, the main administrative center in North Sinai, security sources said on Thursday. Armored vehicles, some equipped with machineguns, could then be seen driving out of al-Arish towards the border settlement of Sheikh Zuwaid - which had been targeted by aircraft on Wednesday. The troops saluted passersby and flashed victory signs, or filmed their departure with video cameras. But residents interviewed later in Shaikh Zuwaid and surrounding villages said they had seen no sign of fighting. In al Toumah, a village surrounded by olive fields, one witness said he saw troops firing in the air. "We thought they were chasing someone, but their arms were directed up and we didn't see who they were fighting with," the witness, who declined to be named, said. "We couldn't find any bodies or signs of battle after they left." [Full story]

The signs of confusion were already there yesterday (Thursday). AFP reported ("Renewed clashes hit Egypt's Sinai: Clashes between armed forces and militants continue in Sinai for the second day running") that 

Police and gunmen clashed Thursday in the Sinai town of El-Arish, Egyptian TV said after authorities vowed to crush a surge in Islamist militancy, although the state news agency MENA denied the report. The state-owned Nile News television said there were clashes outside a police station in the north Sinai town a day after reported air strikes killed 20 militants in a neighbouring village. However, MENA said later that a "security official denied reports that the ... police station in El-Arish came under fire," in an account backed by witnesses who said they did not see or hear any clashes. MENA said that a man driving a unlicensed car had fired several shots in the air on the street housing the police station, without aiming at it.

The idea that the Egyptians are in fact engaging the Sinai terrorists is a popular one here in Israel as well as in Egypt. Here's analyst Makram Muhammad Ahmad writing in the Al-Ahram newspaper:

Nobody would disagree that ultimate priority should be given to the issue of bringing back Egypt's security… because in the absence of Egypt's security it is difficult to achieve stability.

And Sharif Riyad in Al-Akhbar

Operation Eagle should extend to destroy all the tunnels leading to the Gaza Strip. It should continue until this whole issue is closed. The entire people stand by their armed forces, supporting and encouraging them.

And Israeli analyst Yossi Beilin, a former Deputy Foreign Minister, in Yisrael Hayom

The military operation Egypt carried out this week was a vital move for both Egypt and Israel, and it is a pity it was not done earlier… The emerging new situation obliges all of us to rethink the demilitarisation as a solution … The real interest of Israel is to give the Egyptian army the possibility of taking over the peninsula and preventing the Bedouins from doing what they like.

On the other hand, Dan Margalit also writing in Yisrael Hayom ("In Sinai, Israel sees a double-edged sword")  has some unconventional takes on the unfolding events and the unanswered questions behind them:

• Egyptian planes bombing targets in the Sinai? Missiles are again being fired in the Peninsula? For those who fought in this grand but also terrible desert, these reports are accompanied by tough memories. Thirty-nine years ago, Egyptian planes and missiles were attacking IDF soldiers defending the Bar-Lev line [Israel's Egyptian front].
• The current Egyptian military's operations in Sinai are welcome, but they also set a precedent [because]... in the end... there will also be a price tag for the erosion of Egypt's commitment to keeping Sinai demilitarized of large forces. 
• Israel must remain vigilant that the Egyptian army's latest moves, ordered by Morsi, won’t in the future become a trend whereby decisions such as these are taken unilaterally by Cairo, without consulation with and the agreement of Israel. 
• There are also disturbing voices in Egypt, where an order was given that Israeli commentators should not be interviewed on media outlets about the bloody incident in Sinai. The Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas have claimed that Israel, of course, initiated the attack, the proof of which was that the terrorists succeeded against Egyptian soldiers but failed against the IDF. These claims are ungrounded.

So is this unprecedented Egyptian military campaign a "haphazard operation" or something more serious and professional? Are the victory signs premature or a sign that the battle was won? Does Egypt under a Moslem Brotherhood president stand on the right side of the war to defeat the terrorists? And is Israel reducing the dangers from Sinai or exacerbating them in agreeing to a renewed Egyptian military presence there?

8-Aug-12: Malki, your death will not remain demeaned

Frimet Roth has an op-ed in tomorrow's paper edition of the Jerusalem Post. A version of it is posted on the JPost.com online edition now; the one cross posted here includes hyperlinks to sources.

As the grief deepens

By FRIMET ROTH

Malki, my angel, know we will never cease fighting for justice. Your death will not remain demeaned.

Eleven years ago today, Israel was rocked by one of the worst terror attacks it has known. The suicide bombing of Jerusalem’s Sbarro restaurant left fifteen men, women and children dead – the equivalent of 643 Americans or 121 Britons.

Memories of that horrific day are chillingly vivid for my family: our teenage daughter and sister, Malki, was among the fifteen who perished in the inferno produced by the 10 kilograms of explosives concealed in the terrorist’s guitar case.

On the heels of that grief, we have suffered an unprecedented travesty of justice perpetrated by our own leaders. Malki’s murderer, Ahlam Tamimi, was one of 1,027 Palestinian terrorists released in the Shalit deal of October 2011. Alongside our untold personal pain, that move shook the foundations of Israel’s justice system and, perhaps most disturbing, has endangered all Israelis.

Uncontroverted evidence has emerged of the consequences of that fateful move. Starting the day after Gilad Shalit returned to Israeli soil, a succession of journalists, IDF officers and Netanyahu confidantes have publicized damning information hidden from the public throughout Shalit’s captivity.

First we learned that, contrary to our prime minister’s insistence, the release of murderers was not the only way to rescue Shalit. Intelligence and military options existed for locating and saving him but were never pursued. [See "Why Did Netanyahu Free My Daughter's Killer? Mother Blasts Prisoner Exchange To Free Gilad Shalit", published in FORWARD December 09, 2011 [source]

In July 2012, David Meidan, who served for many months as Netanyahu’s envoy to the Shalit negotiations, delivered a lecture at Tel Aviv University. Contradicting Netanyahu’s strident assertions, Meidan disclosed [source] that politics, and not only security and diplomacy, were a factor in the prime minister’s decision to sign the deal. According to Haaretz [source], Netanyahu also recently conceded to the German newspaper Bild that his decision to sign the deal was in part due to pressure from his wife, Sara.

The ramifications of Netanyahu’s selfish gambit have proven dire.

Six months after the deal, the IDF website [source] posted the following: “Several of the terrorists recently released from captivity as part of the deal… have returned to terrorist activity… with ten terrorists arrested so far.”

This was a consequence of the deal against which we and other terror victims warned. Tamimi had declared “I do not regret what happened. Absolutely not… Do you want me to denounce what I did? That's out of the question. I would do it again today, and in the same manner.” [source]

Last month, Army Radio interviewed Col. Saar Tzur, the outgoing commander of the Binyamin division. Tzur said that the Shalit deal triggered a steady and noticeable rise in the number of attempted terror attacks in Judea and Samaria and inside the Green Line [source]. "It doesn't matter whether they were released to Gaza, the West Bank or abroad,” Tzur said. “We see a return to terrorism.”

This last point is particularly telling in light of an assertion by Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev in June [source]: “Israel does not have a problem with terrorists leaving,” said Regev. “It’s easier for us when hardcore terrorists actually leave. Their ability to hurt us in the future is much more limited.”  Apparently, Netanyahu presumes to know better than the IDF.

Regev was responding to a reporter’s question about the government’s decision to permit a convicted murderer, Nazir al-Tamimi, to cross from the West Bank into Jordan. According to the conditions of his release in the Shalit swap, al-Tamimi was to be confined to the West Bank for life. Yet in June 2012, Netanyahu agreed to ignore that restriction thereby enabling him to marry his fiancée. She happens to be Ahlam Tamimi.

Granting marital bliss to two such evil souls is probably the most infuriating of Netanyahu’s confounding actions.

As the parents of a child who died in Israel’s ongoing war with its bellicose neighbors, we have enjoyed not one iota of consideration from the man who now holds our lives in his hands. Netanyahu has ignored each of several impassioned pleas by us to keep Malki’s murderer behind bars. He has never explained or justified to us his decision to consent to the mass release of convicted murderers.

Today, on the anniversary of their deaths, some Israelis will visit the graves of Tamimi’s victims: Mordechai and Tzira Schijveschuurder and three of their eight children; Shoshana Greenbaum and her unborn baby, the only child of Shifra and Dr. Alan Hayman; Michal Raziel and Malki Roth, best friends buried side by side; and the seven other men, women and children whose deaths caused Tamimi to smile joyously on video [video].

We can be certain that one Israeli will not honor these precious souls today - our prime minister. He has made it clear that people without political currency simply do not merit his attention.

He and his cohorts could learn a lesson from Malki. In the final year of her life, she kept a lengthy daily journal [source] of her thoughts and activities. She was a smiling, active, vibrant and talented girl but she carefully recorded the details of each Israeli terror victim on the day he or she died. They mattered to her. On May 29, 2001 for example, three Israelis were shot dead by terrorists. Malki wrote: “In homeroom class, I couldn’t concentrate at all and it was very difficult for me. Everything that is happening with this “situation” has thrown me into a tough depression and I was terribly sad.”

If only our leaders felt even a fraction of Malki’s love for their fellow Israelis. This nation deserves that.

8-Aug-12: Remembering a beautiful life

Malki, making music on her school bus, April 2001

The death of our daughter Malki in the Sbarro restaurant bombing took place 11 years ago today: Wednesday August 8 according to the Hebrew calendar, Thursday August 9 according to the civil calendar.

Please take a moment to remember her and her beautiful life.

For information about this afternoon's graveside memorial service in memory of Malki and her friend Michal Raziel, email us at thisongoingwar@gmail.com