28-Jun-07: About sweet-faced young women

Today's New York Times carries a review of a film called "Hot House" that goes inside Israeli prisons and examines the lives of Palestinian prisoners. We're not recommending the film or the review. But we do want to share our feelings with you about the beaming female face that adorns the article. You can see it here.

The film is produced by HBO. So it's presumably HBO's publicity department that was responsible for creating and distributing a glamor-style photograph of a smiling, contented-looking young woman in her twenties to promote the movie.

That female is our child's murderer. She was sentenced to sixteen life sentences or 320 years which she is serving in an Israeli jail. Fifteen people were killed and more than a hundred maimed and injured by the actions of this attractive person and her associates. The background is here.

Neither the New York Times nor HBO are likely to give even a moment's attention to the victims of the barbarians who destroyed the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem and the lives of so many victims. So we would be grateful if you would pass along this link to some pictures of our daughter whose name was Malki. She was unable to reach her twenties - Hamas saw to that.

Though she was only fifteen years old when her life was stolen from her and from us, we think Malki was a beautiful young woman, living a beautiful life. We ask your help so that other people - far fewer than the number who will see the New York Times, of course - can know about her. Please ask your friends to look at the pictures - some of the very few we have - of our murdered daughter.

And remind them of what the woman in the Israeli prison - the woman smiling so happily in the New York Times - said last year. "I'm not sorry for what I did. We'll become free from the occupation and then I will be free from prison."

With so many voices demanding that Israel release its terrorist prisoners, small wonder she's smiling.

26-Jun-07: Releasing murderers

It's one of the most vexing issues of the day in this country - does it make sense to open the gates of Israeli jails and release convicted Palestinian Arab prisoners now. And if yes, what do people hope is going to be achieved by it?

This afternoon, Infolive.tv posted a streaming video of a debate, moderated by journalist Margot Dudkevitch, between two women with quite different viewpoints on this life-and-death question.

One is Naomi Hazan, a respected professor of political science and previously a member, on behalf of a very left-wing party, of Israel's parliament, the Knesset. The other is Frimet Roth, one of this blog's two authors and the mother of Malki who was murdered in the Hamas terror attack on Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant in August 2001.

This being Israel, the debate is a lot closer to the bone than the abstract sort of airey-fairy discussion that sometimes goes on in other places. One of the names being touted for release in the current initiative happens to be that of a convicted murderer who was involved in the murder of our daughter. Prof. Hazan has very definite views about whether and why that convicted felon ought to go free now, right now. (And about whether he's actually a political prisoner.) Frimet Roth has a different position.

The streaming video of the debate is here.

25-Jun-07: Pictures That Tell a Thousand Lies

Last summer's Hizbullah war gave many of us an education in how dishonest the camera - and more importantly, the picture editor - can be in telling a news story.

We're now pleased to have discovered the estimable SnappedShot website which focuses on uncovering image manipulation in the service of agenda-driven journalism. It's a subject close to the heart and passions of Israel's friends. Just knowing that the overwhelming majority of news agency photographers in the Palestinian regime's territory are Palestinians is a step towards understanding the infuriating pattern of misleading, dishonest and ideological imagery that are a fixture of the mainstream news media.

We're particularly impressed with SnappedShot's picture essay exposing the energetic Rage Boy. (He's the gentleman on the left in the picture on the right.) Go have a look. Just viewing the pictures is an invaluable lesson in how far from objective reality you can get with imagery.

As, for example, in the case of this notorious news-photo distortion.

22-Jun-07: Little reported, the terror attacks go on

Qassam rocket barrages fired directly at the non-disputed, non-occupied Israeli communities of Ashkelon and Sderot caused injuries and damage on Wednesday night. But even people strongly interested in events happening in this part of the world would not know since the attacks were almost entirely unreported outside Israel.

The facts:

• Two Israelis were injured by the rockets. Ten others were hospitalized for treatment.
  
• A synagogue (place of worship) was damaged.
• Another rocket crashed into open space near a gas station on the outskirts of Kibbutz Nir Am.
• The attacks do not lack an admitted perpetrator. The terror organization Islamic Jihad openly and publicly claimed responsibility.
  
• Head of the Hamas regime, Ismail Haniyeh, aligned itself as usual with the acts of terror, disingenuously asserting that Hamas "is not responsible for protecting Israel". In reality, members of Hamas have engaged in acts of murder and terror that have taken the lives of hundreds of Israeli adults and children in the past seven years of this ongoing war.

Meanwhile, for those of us in despair at the reality of Hamastan right on our doorstep, armed to the teeth and with a thoroughly successful bloodbath of its own Fatah brethren freshly behind it, here's this cheerful Salon look at how "the nice young men in beards" i.e. Hamas thugs, keep traffic moving and investigate "petty crime".

17-Jun-07: Plain words about games

Israel's Nobel Prize-winning game theory specialist, Prof. Israel (Robert) Aumann, has a voice that needs to be heard by circles much wider than those who hear him today. His common sense and logic, his love of Israel, and his plain-spokenness are all exemplary. Every additional word is superfluous. Listen.

See to our needs first
There is no leadership crisis, but rather a crisis among the people
Prof. Israel Aumann

The question is not whether to enter the Gaza Strip or not. Before discussing Gaza we must first enter Israel and mend the deep crises created among the people.

What is happening today in the Gaza Strip is the direct result of Israel's failed and defeatist policies over the past 15 years. Since my opinion has been sought, I say that this is a policy destined to bring about the demise of the State of Israel. It's not just the policies. It's also the defeatist state of mind. All day long people are screaming "Peace, peace, and gestures, gestures!" Concessions and disengagements were made and settlers expelled. All this has ultimately achieved the opposite result.

We have to stop the empty slogans such as "Peace is made with enemies and not with friends." In order to achieve peace we must first and foremost be prepared for war. We have to change this state of mind at the core. It wasn't only the Romans who said that those who seek peace should prepare for war. Even game theory, for which I received the Nobel Prize, says so. We have to be emotionally prepared to bear and to inflict casualties – and not to scream "peace, peace," all day long. Only if we are prepared to kill and be killed – we shall not be killed. This is the paradox of war.

We have to extract ourselves from the bubble in which we are living and to understand that we are under a great existential threat.

I hear the arguments saying that everything stems from a leadership crisis. There is no leadership crisis - the crisis is entirely among the people. We elected our leadership knowing full well who these leaders are and what they are capable of. We elected this leadership six months after the expulsion from Gush Katif – and thus we endorsed the expulsion with our own hands. So don't say there is a leadership crisis, the crisis is entirely among the people.

Prof. Israel Aumann is an economics Nobel Prize laureate

16-Jun-07: Asset transfers

As Palestinians - evidently members of Fatah - flee across the Erez Crossing into Israel today, seeking refuge from the massacres carried out by their brother Palestinian-Arabs, we need to recall this:

Our World: The waning of American will
Caroline Glick - The Jerusalem Post (5-Feb-07)
...Fatah forces make no attempt to hide their involvement in terror attacks against Israel. They wear their Aksa Martyr Brigades T-shirts beneath their official uniforms. And yet, this week it was revealed that some $76.4 million of the $86.4 million that the US plans to give to Fatah will go to training 13,500 terror forces. That is, the US is now openly involved in training and equipping Palestinian terrorists who, as Abbas makes clear, are seeking to expand their operations to kill Israelis.

Next this

Congress okays $59m in U.S. funds for Abbas' security forces
Reuters (10-Apr-07)
The Bush administration has been given a green light by Congress to spend $59 million to bolster Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' presidential guard and for other security expenses, a senior State Department official said on Tuesday.
"We are good to go ... we have addressed Congress's concerns and there is good political support for this," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He said the money, which had been held up by Congress, would also be used for security improvements at Gaza's main commercial crossings with Israel, for logistics and communications equipment, and other security expenses.

And this...

Abbas to use taxes transferred from Israel to pay PA security forces
A senior aide to Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday that the Palestinian Authority chairman will use some of the $100 million in tax rebates recently transferred by Israel to pay overdue salaries of the Palestinian security forces.
The announcement came as fighting between the Abbas-allied security forces and Hamas gunmen flared in the Gaza Strip over the weekend, leaving 17 people dead.
In all, Abbas is spending $152 million for salaries of the security forces and other items, such as debt payment and welfare services, his aide, Rafiq Husseini, told a news conference.
In addition to the Israeli tax rebates - money that was frozen after Hamas came to power last year - Abbas has received $30 million from the United Arab Emirates and $22 million from Qatar, Husseini said.

And now this...

Fatah flees, abandoning U.S.-supplied weapons, vehicles to Hamas
GAZA CITY — Friday, June 15, 2007: Hamas has captured thousands of assault rifles and scores of combat vehicles financed by the United States and supplied by Egypt and Jordan to the Palestinian Authority. Hamas seized the weapons, ammunition and vehicles while capturing security installations in the Gaza Strip aligned with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. For the most part, Fatah-aligned PA officers fled the Hamas assaults.
"I would say that they have most of the weapons and armored vehicles sent by Egypt and Jordan over the last year," a PA security officer said.
On Wednesday, Hamas's website posted photographs of the weapons and vehicles seized from PA installations, according to Middle East Newsline. Some of the vehicles were covered with Hamas's insignia. The officer said Hamas seized thousands of U.S.-origin M-16 and Soviet-origin AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifles as well as military radios. He said other booty captured by Hamas included trucks, mortars and hand grenades.
Hamas also blew up the headquarters of the Preventive Security Apparatus in Khan Yunis. At least three people were killed.The officer said Hamas forces took over arsenals of the PG and NSF throughout the central and northern Gaza Strip. He said most of the new weapons, particularly armored vehicles, were in PG installations.

Bottom line: Virtually every confidence-building measure, every piece of foreign aid, directed at the corrupt and self-serving Palestinian Authority regime of Abbas for the past several years has benefited no one more than the barbarian gunmen and thugocracy of Hamas. They have now taken possession or will shortly control virtually everything military and strategic that flowed into Gaza in the past two years. The process is not yet complete, and is about to get into high gear in the West Bank.

A persistent failure to understand the nature of the terrorist regime - a wilful failure to look at the plain facts coupled with a steady stream of imbecilic advice from wishful-thinkers - has produced a catastrophe. We now have a well-armed jihadist regime on our southern border, the long-dreaded Hamastan. Its clear intentions are to join with our enemies in the north who waged a full-scale war against our cities last summer and have every intention and ability to do it again in the near future.

Where are the resignations of the long line of "peace activists" and Middle East strategic 'experts'?

15-Jun-07: It's far from business as usual

The changes that have descended on this area in the past week are larger and a good deal more dramatic than most people seem to realize.

The dark forces of Hamas now have control of everything of importance in Gaza. They have looted the homes of those Fatah figures who have for so long been the television face of the Palestinian Authority. They have carried out massacres in schools, hospitals and town squares and it's now only a matter of time - not much time - before the towns of Judea and Samaria get similar treatment.

None of this is good for Israel or for peace. Here's a thought-provoking analysis from the UK Telegraph.

Fundamentalists threaten Israel from all sides

By Con Coughlin
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 15/06/2007
Welcome to the new Islamic Republic of Hamas-stan, where every Palestinian woman is obliged to wear the veil and all traces of corrupting Western influences, from pop music to internet cafés, are strictly banned.
The creation of a mini Islamic state in Gaza now appears the most likely outcome as the militant Palestinian group Hamas strikes against the more secular-minded government of President Mahmoud Abbas. And with fighters loyal to Mr Abbas's Fatah movement either surrendering or fleeing, it seems that not even the might of Israel can prevent Hamas from fulfilling its long-held ambition of establishing an Islamic state within the Palestinian territories.
The Gaza Strip, the 20-mile stretch of desert scrub wedged between Israel and the Sinai Desert, has never been a happy place. The majority of the 1.4 million Palestinians who live there are mainly refugees from Israel's 1948 war of independence and have rarely seen their living standards rise above subsistence level. But the addition of religious fanaticism to economic privation has severely worsened their plight.
Even before this week's violence, activists had been busy attacking cafés, video shops and restaurants that serve alcohol or sell what are regarded as subversive Western films. An internet café at the Jabaliyah refugee camp was bombed because zealots believed its customers might be exposed to pornography or pop music. The desire to enforce a strict interpretation of Islamic law even resulted in a gunman attacking a UN primary school because it allowed young boys and girls to mix together in the playground...
Hamas... sees economic deprivation as a form of political oppression. The World Bank reported that donors contributed about £375 million to the Palestinian territories in 2006, twice the amount they received in 2005. But since taking power, Hamas ensures any funds are spent on Islamic causes and its 6,000-strong militia, leaving the majority to fend for themselves. The bonus for Hamas is that, by forcing the majority of Palestinians to exist in dire poverty, it succeeds in attracting widespread sympathy from international do-gooders who do not understand the sadistic economic manipulation that is taking place.

The writer's conclusion is especially bleak:

Hamas is trying to replicate Hizbollah's success in Gaza, not a pleasing prospect for Israel, which now faces the threat of having two Iranian-backed, Islamic fundamentalist organisations dedicated to its destruction camped on its northern and southern borders. It is not a thought that will help Israelis sleep easy.

Read it to the end.

In Lebanon, they're reaching similar conclusions.

Palestine threatens to move from gang wars to de-legitimization

Lebanon - Daily Star - Editorial
Friday, June 15, 2007
The current fighting among Hamas and Fateh gunmen in Gaza has gone beyond the realm of the merely irresponsible and cruel at the Palestinian level, and has entered the realm of an existential loss for all Arabs... How can it be that the Fatah and Hamas leaderships have been so incompetent and brutal as to allow their followers to stoop to this level of political imbecility and human irresponsibility?

Read the rest here.

The smart analysis here in Israel is focused on the cause behind the cause: Iran. An editorial in yesterday's Chicago Tribune points the way:

Tehran's tentacles

It's impossible to talk about Hamas, apparently on the verge of vanquishing a rival Palestinian faction in Gaza on Wednesday, without talking about Iran. Iran has been arming Hamas terrorists via smuggling tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border. A Hamas takeover of Gaza would create immense new security problems for Israel and potentially carve out a terrorist haven in the region.

More here.

It's depressing now to think back to all the optimistic talk of two summers ago: the confidence-building measures; the new momentum to be generated by Israeli abandonment ("withdrawal"; "disengagement") of the towns and communities of the Gaza Strip; the brave new pathway to peace.

As the barbarians of Hamas-stan wipe the blood from their knives, has peace ever been further away?

15-Jun-07: "It was supposed to be different"

Journalists in this area, covering the self-destruction of the Palestinian Authority during the past several weeks, are running into situations that their Political Correctness simply doesn't prepare them well for.

For instance, the medical care which Pal-Arab victims of Pal-Arab bestiality are finding... in Israel.

Shot by their own side, healed by the enemy
Telegraph

In the Gaza Strip's Jabaliya refugee camp, Aref Suleiman was raised on Palestinian struggle against the Jewish state. Today he lies in an Israeli hospital bed, his body riddled with Palestinian bullets, his wounds tended daily by Israeli nurses. For the 22-year-old Mr Suleiman, who was shot five times point blank by Hamas militants last month during a renewed bout of Palestinian infighting, this is not the Arab-Israeli conflict he learnt about as a child growing up in Gaza's desperate, rubbish-strewn alleys.
"Palestinians shoot me and Jews treat me," he laughs bitterly. "It was supposed to be different."

Read the rest here. Now in the interests of balance, a few notes about what the Pal-Arabs do to one another in this ongoing war.

First, from the same British paper (and the same journalist) as the report above:

Hamas Bids for Total Control
Telegraph
In the past 48 hours 19 Palestinians have been killed, tossed from rooftops, executed at point-blank range, and shot in hospital wards. That number seems certain to rise. More than 80 Palestinians have now been killed since mid May.
Among yesterday's dead was a 14-year-old boy and three women, all killed in a Hamas attack on a Fatah security officer's home.
"They're firing at us, firing RPGs, firing mortars. We're not Jews," the brother of Jamal Abu Jediyan, a Fatah commander, pleaded during a live telephone conversation with a Palestinian radio station.
Minutes later both men were dragged into the streets and riddled with bullets.

As Gaza unravels, Palestinians flee
By Ilene R. Prusher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Thousands have already left the coastal strip because of its social and economic degradation... Hazem Balousha, a journalist, says that during the fighting between Hamas and Fatah, bullets and mortar rounds have been flying past his home at a furious clip.
"Some of the bullets entered my house," Mr. Balousha said in a phone call from his home. "It's a civil war. Why should I stay here? Hang around waiting to get killed?" Balousha is one of the relatively lucky ones. He's already been abroad – he did his B.A. degree and a master's in international relations in Turkey – and has recently obtained visas to more than one European country. The trick is getting out of Gaza itself.

Hamas fighters and looters control Gaza

Reuters - Fri Jun 15, 2007 6:10 AM EDT
Hamas Islamist fighters and looters ransacked the blood-spattered Palestinian presidential compound in Gaza on Friday, rejoicing at the rout of their well-armed, secular rivals from the president's Fatah faction... Despite firing in the air by Hamas fighters, who paraded captured Fatah vehicles and seized weapons, civilians poured through what had been the last bastion of Western-backed forces in Gaza, hauling away fridges, satellite dishes, even doors.

But the Middle East being what it is, and Political Correctness being what it is, we have this too:



Archbishop Tutu Calls Events in Gaza Natural Consequence of Occupation

Red Bolivia - Junio 14, 2007, 13:10 EDT
Geneva -- Archbishop Desmond Tutu agrees the fighting between Hamas and Fatah increasingly looks like civil war. He says he is in despair over these events, but understands why these rival factions are fighting each other. "When you are oppressed, it is so very easy to turn on yourselves," he said.

And so easy, too, to blow up innocent women, children, men, schools, hospitals, restaurants. So easy. And to have church leaders slobber their sympathy all over your poor oppressed heads.

The only thing more appalling about what the Palestinian Arabs have done to themselves is the unforgivable forgiveness, the incomprehensible understanding emanating from such ill-informed, theologically-addled, hand-wringing, high-profile individuals as the pious church-man quoted above.

Without him and the many others like him, the devastation and misery of the Pal-Arabs could have ended decades ago.

15-Jun-07: Objective questions for our journalist visitors

These ads ran in the New York Times over the past week. They raise some pertinent questions, in our view, about a recent decision by Britain's university academics (details here) and the British National Union of Journalists (details here).



And this.



And this.



And finally this.



Journalists and university professionals are just as prejudiced as most other people. But most other people don't have their self-serving pretensions.

15-Jun-07: Journalistic Objectivity from BBC and Other Oxymorons

A joint complaint by four British groups representing Arab interests has scored what has to be called a simply stupefying apology from the BBC.

Arab Media Watch, Muslim Public Affairs Committee, Friends of Al-Aksa and the Institute of Islamic Political Thought filed a joint complaint to the BBC after a presenter on the BBC's Football Focus (yes, football) program on March 24 called Jerusalem Israel's capital and "historic soul." The Institute of Islamic Political Thought is run by Azzam Tamimi, a Hamas supporter and a member of the Muslim Association of Britain, part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

On its Web site, the BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit posted this response

"The reference was a passing one in a context where the focus was on sport, not politics. While recognizing the sensitivity of the issue of the status of Jerusalem, the ECU took the view that the program-makers had taken sufficient action by acknowledging the error and rectifying the Web site."

Then in a letter to the complaining parties, the head of editorial complaints at the BBC said:

"We of course accept that the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and that the BBC should not describe it as such. I was therefore pleased to see that Katherine Tsang [BBC Information adviser], when she wrote to you in April, acknowledged the error and apologized for it. [Presenter] Steve Boulton and other senior managers in BBC Sport told us they very much regret the mistake and apologize for it. Senior managers will try to ensure, as you suggest, that the mistake is not repeated. Because it appears on the Web site, there will be a public acknowledgement of the error, and the action taken in consequence. I'd like to add my apologies for this most regrettable, but I'm sure accidental, factual mistake. I appreciate that the status of Jerusalem is of particular concern to Palestinians, and it is important that it is not misrepresented. I am confident that lessons have already been learned, and they will be emphasized as a result of my decision."

The Jerusalem Post points out this morning that the Institute of Islamic Political Thought is run by Azzam Tamimi, a Hamas supporter and a member of the Muslim Association of Britain, part of the Muslim Brotherhood. Tamimi's kinswoman is serving 16 life-sentences in an Israeli prison for the murder of 15 people in a Jerusalem restaurant. One of those victims was our fifteen year-old daughter Malki. Tamimi spoke at last Saturday's anti-Israel rally in London's Trafalgar Square where, to huge applause, he called Israel "a racist entity that sees us [Palestinians] as subhuman while they see themselves as superhuman."

No stranger to the BBC, Tamimi said in a 2004 interview that he would be willing to become a suicide bomber. (The JPost points out that in 2006, Merrill Lynch pulled its sponsorship from an event hosted by the London Middle East Institute because of Tamimi's participation.)

The Jerusalem Post has some background here on the history of racism and prejudice which characterizes the work of the four victorious complaining parties.

For years, anyone listening to BBC reports on events in this part of the world will have gotten used to the absurd phrase "the authorities in Tel-Aviv" when referring to decisions made by the government of Israel. For the record, and notwithstanding the BBC's world-is-flat-because-we-say-it-is logic, Israel's parliament is in Jerusalem (and not 60 kilometers away in Tel-Aviv); Israel's central government offices - all of them - are in Jerusalem (and not 60 kilometers away in Tel-Aviv); and the BBC's own bureau is in Jerusalem (and not 60 kilometers away in Tel-Aviv) along with the bureaus of Sky, the New York Times and almost every other major media player who wants to cover what happens in the government of Israel. The address of that building is 206 Jaffa Rd. We Jerusalemites know it better by the sign on the outside of the building, the Jerusalem Capital Studios building.

This is all known to the people of the BBC, of course. They are not pretending to change the facts on the ground. They realize that Israel and its democratically-elected government can choose to put its capital anywhere it chooses, just as any other country can. They also know that Jerusalem has been the beating heart of the Jewish people and of the sole Jewish sovereign entity since the time of Jesus and long before it. No capital city anywhere comes close to making a claim as solid as this for any other people.

Plainly, this is embarrassing to people who are uncomfortable with the fact that there is a Jewish state, a sovereign political entity that is the home of the Jewish people. Even more embarrassing to those who know the story of wanton vandalism that the occupying Jordanian power carried out in this city during the nineteen years between 1948 and 1967 when it was in control of half of Jerusalem.

The BBC's self-humiliating apology has nothing to do with accuracy or objectivity, and everything to do with politics, appeasement and hypocrisy.

13-Jun-07: What Hath That Nation Wrought?!

Any political dispute, and especially one that's been conducted between nations and religious blocs for generations, is capable of being interpreted this way or that way. There's room, in other words, to see some justice and perhaps some wrong on both sides. You can't be treated as a lunatic if you choose one or the other viewpoints because there's plenty of ground to support whatever side you take.

But that's not true when it comes to the terrorists. Absolutely not true. What the terrorists have done to their own communities is appalling, sickening, satanic. It has to stop, and it must be stopped. This is true everywhere, at all times, and without pre-conditions. Civilized society depends on understanding this.

Now let's turn to what we are learning, day after day, after Palestinian Arab terror and the remarkable things their people have done to themselves, to their society and especially to their children.

Official Israeli government channels released a report this afternoon about a terrorist massacre that didn't happen because it was discovered in time. The details are beyond belief - so bestial, so barbaric, so primitive - they're sufficient grounds for treating Palestinian Arab society as being in a class of its own, outside the community of normal human society.

On 20th May 2007, three weeks ago, two Palestinian Arab women presented themselves at the Erez Crossing in the Gaza Strip, intending to enter Israel for medical treatment. Israel admits hundreds of such Arabs every day on those grounds. Has done so for decades.

Acting on detailed and accurate intelligence, Israeli security personnel arrested them. The screams and shouts of protest at the crossing can be imagined without too much effort. The scene, had it been filmed by foreign news crews, would undoubtedly have prompted sneering news reports and angry demonstrations (and might still) in many of the world's fashionable boulevards and town squares.

So here's what followed. Both women now admit to being members of Islamic Jihad, and say they were on their way to do a double-bombing in some crowded place or other - a restaurant, a wedding hall, any place where large numbers of Israelis gather - in Tel Aviv and Netanya. No specific location, just as long as plenty of Jews are there. The bombs were to be their own bodies.

Here's what we know about the two intended murderers.

Fatma Yunes Hassan Zak is 39, lives in Gaza, a mother of eight children, pregnant with her ninth. She's an experienced handler of Islamic Jihad terrorists and coordinator of Islamic Jihad women who volunteer to be suicide bombers. She also works as a manager in Islamic Jihad's "employment" office.

Her 19-year-old son, also an Islamic Jihad terrorist, was in on the conspiracy.

So was her niece, Ruda Ibrahim Yunes Haviv, 30, a resident of Gaza. She's the mother of four children. The two women were a team, and were planning to die a violent and messy death. Not going to happen now, thank heavens.

Keep these little details in mind the next time your local lunatic fringe takes to the streets demanding that the Israeli "occupying" power releases "innocent" Pal-Arab women and children. And try to contemplate what it must be like to live in the neighbourhood, or be the children, of this sort of mother from hell.

13-Jun-07: A matter of Palestinian-Arab priorities

Like the Nazi Germans who managed to find time to continue their extermination-by-murder of Europe's Jews even while their own country was burning in the final days of World War II, the Pal-Arab terrorists know to keep their real priorities in mind.

A Qassam rocket crashed into the yard of an elementary school in the uncontested, unoccupied, uncontroversial town of Sha'ar Hanegev, near Sderot in southern Israel early this morning. That's an aerial picture of the town over there on the right. Property damage was caused, but thankfully no injuries since students had not yet begun to arrive for their school day. Of course, elementary schools are hardly off-limits to these creatures. Look here at what they're doing right now to their own hospitals, to their own brothers, sisters and children. (Let's not hold our breath waiting for an emergency session of the UN Security Council. It's Arabs doing the carnage. And as most international lawyers, politicians and diplomats know, Arab-killing-Arab is such a natural condition that it barely rates the resolution paper on which the condemnations would otherwise have been written.)

Unlikely your local news media will consider this attack on an Israeli school worth reporting. The mainstream media narrative of "outrageous" Israeli "over-reaction" will continue to fall on ever-receptive, woefully-ignorant ears.

It's astonishing when you think about it, that with the Palestinian Arabs blowing one another's brains out to demonstrate how really badly they want to build their own homeland, up to and including this morning, they still manage to find the time and resources to continue their jihad against the Jews. That's dedication.

13-Jun-07: UN gets a wake-up call

As civil war rages throughout the Palestinian Authority's towns and cities, Lebanon roils from nearly three weeks of vicious fighting between its army and Palestinian terror groups, and Iran continues to beat its chest, it's getting harder by the day to blame the entire mess on "Israeli occupation".

Yesterday, the United Nations was treated to one of those rare moments of insight that too-quickly get overtaken by bombastic, self-serving political double-talk. Just for a moment, a clear statement of how things are, and perhaps how they have always been.

According to the BBC, one of the UN's senior civil servants, Terje Roed-Larsen, yesterday told the UN Security Council that "illegal arms are being smuggled into Lebanon from neighbouring Syria" and "weapons and fighters often cross the border". (He might have added that rain makes the flowers grow.) Roed-Larsen, evidently noticing for the first time what we Israelis have known and suffered for decades, that there is a steady flow of fighters and weapons crossing into Lebanon, declared that this "new development" is "alarming and deeply disturbing". Good morning.

He told the Security Council that the general situation in the Middle East is "very dark, and apparently getting darker". The build-up of Arab militias is the "greatest obstacle to stabilising Lebanon." (Not so, says this Iranian source. And this Syrian one.)

In a declaration, the Security Council said it regretted that both Lebanese and non-Lebanese militia - like the Palestinians - had not yet been compelled to disarm. Meaning that the entire basis on which Israel withdrew its forces from southern Lebanon last summer (where they were snuffing out endless sources of wanton Hizbullah rocket fire into every part of northern Israel) was a fraud.

What's especially interesting is the punchline. The UN's man has discovered that what he calls "new and interlinked issues such as Iraq, Iran and Syria-Lebanon" are "complicating efforts to promote peace". Rather absurdly calling this a "new phenomenon", he declares that "all these conflicts are now completely intertwined so that it is very difficult, maybe impossible, to find a solution to one of them without finding a solution to all of them."

Naive though the statement is, it does mean we're spared another "solve the Israeli occupation and you solve everything" moment, which is a welcome change.

11-Jun-07: Amnesty's anti-fence rhetoric shows indifference to loss of Israeli lives

One of this blog's authors publishes an opinion piece in today's edition of YNet...

Humanitarian or heartless?
Amnesty's anti-fence rhetoric shows indifference to loss of Israeli lives
Frimet Roth
Published: 06.11.07, 14:01

For a while it looked as though Amnesty International had lost its sting. The organization, long vocal about the plight of the Palestinians, has been nearly mum about those caught in the cross-fire between terrorists based in their camps and the Lebanese army.

At the start of that conflict, on 23rd May 2007, Amnesty issued a press release laying the responsibility for minimizing civilian Palestinian suffering squarely on the terrorists themselves, which must be a first for the organization. Then on 4th June it voiced "concern" for the "innocent Palestinians who have been killed, injured, displaced and subjected to cruel and inhumane conditions during this conflict."

No outrage, no censure, no condemnation

By contrast, Amnesty International's report last week about Israel's security fence is replete with censure and condemnation.

Few Israelis entertain the fantasy, famously stated in Robert Frost's "Mending Wall," that "good fences make good neighbors." But there is no escaping the cold, hard yet encouraging facts: This much maligned barrier has helped to nearly eradicate terror bombings. It has saved many Israeli lives. Against terrorist neighbors, this benign and highly effective tool works.

So last week's call by Amnesty International to tear down what it calls the "illegal" security fence is a bitter pill for Israelis. It is particularly infuriating for those whose loved ones died because of delays in construction of the fence.

My daughter Malki's murderer, a Hamas operative, slipped easily into Jerusalem's city center from his home in Nablus because, in August 2001, the number of terror-victims had not yet convinced the Israeli government that a security fence needed to be a top priority.

Other countries have recognized the merits of security barriers. In a recent essay, A World Divided, TIME magazine listed numerous countries throughout the world that have erected barriers, are in the process of constructing or are planning them. These include: Pakistan, India, Iran, Botswana, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and the United States.

Still, TIME's essayist Simon Robinson found it necessary to zero in on - you guessed it - only Israel. He concedes that "The slab surrounding the West Bank has dramatically reduced the number of suicide bombings inside Israel." But then Robinson seeks out an Israeli who is committed to the fence's dismantlement. Quoting the critic, Danny Seidmann, he writes: "Physical barriers are a legitimate, limited tactical response to terrorism but they're ultimately counterproductive". He warns that a wall reflects badly on its builder... (it) is a physical manifestation of failed policies." Seidmann and Robinson worry that a wall "says a lot more about the people who built it than those it's keeping out."

Abandoning impartiality

They are so right. Building a fence is the least invasive anti-terrorist tactic. There is no more considerate way to handle blood-thirsty neighbors like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and other Palestinian terror organizations. The fact that Israelis have opted for that tactic does indeed say a lot about them. In a saner world, this would be taken as an accurate sign that Israelis crave peace and want nothing more than to go about their daily routines without fear and without fighting.

Amnesty long ago provided ample evidence that it abandoned impartiality. Aside from its indifference to ruthless, genocidal regimes like Sudan's, Amnesty's latest statement about the anti-terror fence exhibits callous indifference to the loss of Israeli lives. It complains that "Israel's legitimate security concerns are no excuse" for building the fence. Those "legitimate security concerns" are, plainly, the desire to save innocent Israeli lives.

My bet is that if the lives at stake were the loved ones of Amnesty's management team, they would build a fence with their own bare hands. What I doubt is that they would deal with complaints against their fence with the thoroughness and transparency that Israel has exhibited.

In a recent article in FrontPageMag, Joseph Klein reports that some 140 Palestinian legal actions against the route have been reviewed by Israel's high Court, resulting in several orders of re-routing, and of compensation totaling nearly $1.5 million.

Israel must not allow Amnesty International's biased meddling to distract it from a long overdue task: completion of the remaining 130 miles of security fence. And while it is at it, the government could launch a public relations campaign to counter the lies that our enemies have actively disseminated about it. For example, it is not a wall or a "slab" but simply a fence for 95% of its length.

The fence may be benign, but Amnesty's activities are not.

...
Frimet Roth is a freelance writer based in Jerusalem who frequently contributes articles dealing with terrorism and with issues connected with special-needs children. She and her husband founded and run (as unpaid volunteers) the Malki Foundation in memory of their daughter who was murdered at the age of 15 in a terror attack on a Jerusalem restaurant in 2001. The foundation provides concrete support for Israeli families of all religions who care at home for a special-needs child. She can be reached at frimet.roth@gmail.com

9-Jun-07: At the heart of the ongoing tragedy, official indoctrination

The ongoing destruction of the lives, culture and society of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian-Arab children at the hands of their own religious and political leadership continues to be ignored.

We were among many observers to write last month about a Disney-like mouse character created by the Hamas regime who appears on their TV screens encouraging suicide in the name of hating the Jews.

An incisive report in today's Australian newspaper focuses on the unparalleled work of Palestinian Media Watch, a Jerusalem-based organization almost unique in the world in connecting the dots and revealing the horror of the widespread Pal-Arab manipulation of their own children.

For a population of little more than two million people in the territories, Palestinians would seem to have a thriving media with as many as 25 private TV stations. But there is remarkable uniformity. Programming on the two main satellite TV stations, PBC TV, also Fatah-controlled, and Hamas's al-Aqsa TV, which began satellite broadcasts in February, is indistinguishable. Fatah TV is very religious, interrupting programs for prayers five times a day and broadcasting nothing but sermons during Ramadan. There are also three newspapers: one belongs to Hamas, another to Fatah, and one is independent. Yet there is not much diversity of views.

Itamar Marcus, PMW's director, has published evidence of a transformation in the Palestinian struggle from a nationalist battle to a religious conflict - and the implications of that transformation.

"From 1996 to 2000 we saw a steady incitement to hatred but it wasn't violence," he says. "In July 2000, it shifted to violence for God. It became so intense that on September 30 [2000] we reported that 'the atmosphere today in Palestinian media is on the eve of the outbreak of war'. A week later, the intifada began."

Palestinian schoolbooks, which have been produced since 2000 by the Fatah-controlled ministry of education, couch the Palestinian struggle in religious terminology. The invaluable euFunding website has been documenting this for years, with photographic evidence. But it continues unabated.

"As long as the conflict was nationalistic, territorial, compromise could be a possibility. Once it's been packaged as a religious conflict for God, it makes it literally impossible to compromise," Marcus says.

Apologists for the Pal-Arabs will likely identify with yet another call today on behalf of the Hamas regime, this time via Palestinian Minister of "Health", Dr. Radwan Al Akhras, that "Israel should stop targeting, women, children elderly and handicapped persons".

For people looking for simplistic analysis of a complex conflict, this is all they need to hear. Pal-Arab culpability will not even enter the picture. Meanwhile the brazen, cold-blooded cultivation of a death-cult among its own children by the Palestinian ruling clique continues unabated.

The entire Australian article is here.

2-Jun-07: Victimhood of Pal-Arab Children... on Film

From today's New York Sun:

In 2004, 24-year-old Brooke Goldstein spent her summer in the West Bank filming more than five hours of in-person interviews with terrorists — all of which she conducted without a bodyguard and without a weapon... She interviewed suicide bombers' families and children, who aspire to "martyrdom." The resulting film, "The Making of a Martyr," will screen as part of the Brooklyn International Film Festival on Saturday and Tuesday. In the interviews, parents of suicide bombers sit in living rooms adorned with posters of their dead, and teenage terrorists sit with their hands tensely gripping machine guns that rest against their knees as they answer Ms. Goldstein's questions... The fanaticism was worse than she ever imagined. "The most shocking thing was reconciling the normal appearance of these kids and what was coming out of their mouths," she said. "I was holding these beautiful children in my lap, and my translator was translating words of hate."

Read it all.

In the recent past here in Jerusalem, we've had the opportunity to personally raise the appalling subject of what Palestinian Arab society is doing to its own children. The context was face-to-face private conversations with officials of the UN. (We have never written about these meetings before, but it's time we did.)

The most recent was with Radhika Coomaraswamy, UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, in April. A second was with Louise Arbour, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights last November. The third, and by far the most disturbing, was with John Dugard, Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, two years ago.

All three individuals are intelligent, over-achieving professionals with impressive careers behind them. And all three produced not the smallest indication that anyone at the UN or anywhere else plans to do anything about catastrophic Arab abuse of its own youth.

Seems there are far more important issues on the agenda of these officials and their employer.

1-Jun-07: Three Children

People who get their Middle East news coverage from headlines (long textual stories are so boring, so confusing) a brief tip-off. Israeli insensitivity and genocidal ambitions are in evidence again today.

Israeli army fire kills two children in northern Gaza (People's Daily Online, China)
Israeli army shell kills two Palestinian children (Malaysian Sun)
Israeli troops 'kill two Gaza children' (Irish Times)
Gaza boys 'shot dead by Israelis' (BBC World)

Things of significance you might not know from reading only those headlines...

• The children were killed close to the ruins of an Israel community, Dugit, in the northern Gaza Strip, abandoned by the government of Israel two summers ago in a failed attempt to improve the chances for peaceful co-existence in the area.
• The two children were with another child, aged 16, when the Israelis "struck".
• At the time, the three were in the midst of placing a bomb next to the border fence, opposite the long-suffering Kibbutz Zikim.
• According to Haaretz' correspondent, "The army believes that they had been paid by one of the militant groups to place an explosive device."
• Haaretz: "We know that a number of Palestinians crawled towards the border fence. They know that it is a dangerous area but they did not heed repeated calls to stop and they planted a suspicious device close to the fence," the spokeswoman said.
• The 16-year-old Pal-Arab child was taken to an Israeli hospital for treatment. He's there now.
  
• Yediot: "Since IDF forces left the Gaza Strip, more than 100 terrorists have been killed near the border fence in dozens of incidents in which cells attempted to plant explosive devices, infiltrate Israel or carry out terror attacks. In many incidents in the past youths had been sent to examine the forces' alertness or prepare for terror attacks in exchange for money.
  
• Yediot: "Military officials said that the entire Israel was banned for movement as it is very close to Israel, and this has been made clear once again recently, after IDF forces entered the Palestinian territory, in messages conveyed on Palestinian media."

So sad. So predictable. So little understood, this death-cult of the Palestinian Arabs.