27-Dec-09: "What sane society would free such people?"

One of this blog's authors, speaking on behalf of himself and his co-blogger, was an invited guest on CNN International's news program "The Brief" on 24th December 2009. The interview by Rosemary Church focused on the proposed deal by which hundreds of Palestinian Arab terrorists will be released from Israeli prisons as the price for the release of a young Israeli serviceman. 

Gilad Shalit has been held hostage under inhumane conditions by the Hamas regime since June 2006. Among the convicted terrorists slated to walk free in the deal are three who engineered and carried out the massacre at the Sbarro restaurant that cost fifteen lives, including that of Malki Roth, our daughter who was 15 years old when her life was stolen from her.

You might also be interested in these links:

The Sbarro massacre

Sbarro Five Years Later (Frimet Roth's op ed article in Haaretz 2006)

Sbarro victim parents counter photo with photo (Jewish Telegraphic Agency syndicated report 2007)

Israel's Bloody Choice (The Australian newspaper interview with Arnold Roth, 16-Dec-09

23-Dec-09: "If they're released, more people will die"

The editors of the Jerusalem Post make what we feel are some sound and important points in this editiorial. The argument that follows makes more sense than the shocking irresponsibility of those who claim to be willing to pay "any price" for the freedom of a hostage held captive by the murderous terrorist regime of the Gazan jihadists.

The fateful decision
Dec 21, 2009 22:01 | Updated Dec 23, 2009 2:21

A portentous decision on whether to trade Gilad Schalit - who has been in Hamas captivity for an excruciating 1,275 days - for a thousand imprisoned Arab terrorists is now being finalized. The raw anguish of Gilad's parents, Noam and Aviva, has been imprinted on the Israeli consciousness since their son fell into enemy hands on June 25, 2006.

Our hearts tell us to pay Hamas's price.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his top ministers, however, have the terrifying responsibility of acting with both their hearts and minds. Their deliberations cut to the essence of what it means to be Israeli.

Israelis do not want a second Ron Arad affair; Gilad is now so close to freedom, he's virtually touchable. For him to slip away now would be devastating.

Paying Hamas's price, though, would constitute a second "Jibril Deal." That 1983 prisoner swap with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine saw 1,150 Arabs exchanged for three Israeli soldiers. One of those Arabs was Ahmed Yassin; others would become his lieutenants. Together they created Hamas.

There are doubtlessly men of Yassin's "caliber" among the 1,000 Hamas seeks. After his release, Yassin was re-arrested, only to be released in 1997 by Binyamin Netanyahu - during his first term as premier - in yet another prisoner exchange.

Beyond the moral bankruptcy of rewarding past evil, with history as our guide - and with heavy hearts - we assert that Israelis will die if the government obtains Gilad's freedom by acting only with its heart.

Things were not supposed to get this far. Days after our Gilad was taken, Hamas demanded the 1,000 prisoners. Ehud Olmert responded: "We won't let anyone believe that kidnapping is a tool to bring Israel to its knees." Privately, however, the then-premier gave Egypt the green light to commence bargaining. Those talks are culminating now under Netanyahu.

Israel concurrently tried pressuring Hamas. The IDF quickly rounded up 64 Hamas "parliamentarians" in the West Bank; it launched Operation Summer Rains sending tanks and commandos into Gaza in search of Gilad. (When this affair is over, Israelis deserve to know why a soldier held within driving distance of the Ministry of Defense could not be rescued.)

By early July 2006, dozens of Palestinian gunmen had been killed, others taken prisoner, to exact a price for Schalit's continued captivity. Israel temporarily re-took parts of Gaza - for the first time since the 2005 disengagement. Hamas absorbed these blows and responded with intensified shelling against Sderot and Ashkelon.

Relentless Hamas rocket attacks ultimately led to Operation Cast Lead in December 2008. All in all, since Schalit was taken, Hamas's recklessness has cost the lives of well over a thousand Palestinians and left a trail of devastation in Gaza. Yet Hamas remained steadfast in its demands certain that Israel would ultimately capitulate. Indeed, within days of Schalit's capture, then-internal security minister Avi Dichter said publicly what Hamas wanted to hear: that Palestinian prisoners should be released for Schalit's freedom.

NOW, Israelis will be assured that the most lethal of the freed prisoners will be confined to Gaza or exiled abroad; as if there is no two-way traffic in Gaza's tunnels.

And with the absolute sincerity of an alcoholic having one final drink before going cold turkey, the government will assert that the Schalit deal will be Israel's last lop-sided prisoner exchange.

A deal will buttress what Palestinians already believe, that Israelis understand only force. Tomorrow's Palestinian leaders, therefore, will be that much more obdurate. It will become still harder for a credible Palestinian leader - no matter how ostensibly moderate - to abjure violence.

Stopping on a dime will mean that the pundits and politicians who orchestrated the campaign that took matters this far will have some explaining to do. If Netanyahu does pull back, it will be because Israelis were bluffing ourselves as much as we were bluffing Hamas.

A "no" now would take Hamas down a peg. Netanyahu could directly address the Islamists' disappointed constituents, emphasizing that meeting Hamas's rapacious demands would have dishonored him and caused Israel to lose face. Palestinians will understand that. So will Israelis.

He should frankly acknowledge that he was ready for an honorable deal. Indeed, he must stress that he remains ready for an honorable deal.

THE HARROWING ordeal of Gilad's selfless parents touches us all. Their son has become our son.

Nevertheless, Netanyahu must reverse course. The killers should remain incarcerated; if they don't, more Israelis will surely die.

The test is: do we care whether more Israelis will do? The failure to ask this question, and to insist on an answer that makes sense, has been at the heart of this grotesque Hamas extortion affair from its outset.

22-Dec-09: "All female prisoners to be released in swap"

YNet says this today about the talk of releasing convicted murderers and other terrorists in exchange for the life of an Israeli hostage...

Mashaal: All female prisoners to be released in swap
Hamas leader says detainees slated for release in Shalit deal include notorious females
Ali Waked | Latest Update:     12.22.09, 08:05 / Israel News
The list of 450 prisoners slated for release as part for he Gilad Shalit deal includes all female detainees, Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal said Monday evening. Mashaal added that Hamas will not make any media comments on any developments in the Shalit swap "in order not to sabotage the deal." "We are determined and we will stick to our demands," he said.

Please spend a moment reading what we and others [and here and here] have written about the terrorist/murderer, a female, who engineered the massacre at the Sbarro restaurant in the heart of Jerusalem.

Please think of this person and the unfathomable cruelty and racist hatred she embodies. Think of her the next time you hear a call for compassion for the 'unfortunate' female prisoners in Israeli jails. Think of how much additional terror this woman wants, with every fibre of her female body and every crevasse of her female soul, to bring afresh into the world.

22-Dec-09: Freeing the kidnappers and the terrorists is unbearably expensive

"The Palestinian motivation and justification today for continued kidnappings is the direct result of the earlier prisoner releases... Israel's release of prisoners in exchange for hostages is not seen by Palestinian society as merely the last stage of one kidnapping, but as the first stage of the next kidnapping." [From the PMW special report]

An invaluable analysis of Palestinian statements about the strategic value of hostage-taking was released yesterday by Palestinian Media Watch. It demonstrates that, for a democratic and rational society, freeing the kidnappers and the terrorists is unbearably expensive.

Israeli society is in the grip this morning (and over the past three years) of a debate over whether to free hundreds of barbarians, murderers and other assorted thugs from its jails in order to get the release of a kidnapped serviceman, Gilad Shalit. One of those slated to be released murdered our 15 year-old daughter. By and large, this debate is being conducted without taking into account those internal Palestinian Arab messages. It saddens us deeply to see how ready our thought-leaders and opinion-makers are willing to take immensely self-damaging steps in pursuit of a dream. We who have already experienced the nightmare reality hope and pray that somehow a catastrophic outcome will be averted.

PMW, led by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, does an outstanding job of identifying from Arab-language sources the internal messages of the Palestinian Arab world and its organizations. Public statements by Hamas and Fatah, massaged into smooth and comforting English, are almost invariably contradicted by the unvarnished, frequently vicious Arabic original. Sadly, only a handful of reliable sources - of which PMW is one - trouble themselves to figure out what is really going on.

Click here to go to PMW's special report on the Palestinian Arab hostage strategy and the bitter philosophical ugliness that underlies it.

16-Dec-09: Israel's Bloody Choice

The feature article below, written by The Australian's Middle East correspondent John Lyons, appears in today's edition of The Australian. [Minor editorial changes have been made to the text below, and hypertext links have been added that do not appear in the original.]

Israel's bloody choice
John Lyons, Middle East Correspondent, The Australian
December 16, 2009 12:00AM

AT lunchtime on August 9, 2001, the lives of two women intersected at a pizza restaurant in Jerusalem. Malki Roth, 15, from Melbourne, walked inside to have pizza with a friend. Outside, Ahlam Tamimi, a Palestinian television news presenter, dropped off Izzadin Al-Masri at the restaurant, which she had chosen as a target for an act of terrorism. Al-Masri walked into the restaurant with a guitar case on his back. What nobody at the scene would have realised, apart from Tamimi, was that the guitar case was loaded with explosives that would tear apart the restaurant in one of the worst attacks of the second intifada. Malki and 14 others were killed and scores were injured or maimed. One woman remains in a coma.

 

But while the restaurant was being blown apart, Tamimi was on her way back to her TV studio. In one of the most chilling stories from the entire period of bombings, Tamimi walked into her studio and broke the news of the bombing to her viewers. Tamimi was convicted for murder and is serving 16 consecutive life sentences in an Israeli jail.

 

But she's again making news, this time as one of the 1,000 prisoners who militant group Hamas wants released in return for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who has been held in a secret location in Gaza since 2006. Tamimi's possible release in the coming weeks has prompted Malki's parents, Arnold and Frimet Roth, to write to the Israeli cabinet to urge Tamimi not be freed.

 

Referring to the "indescribable pain" with which they read of an imminent prisoner release, the Roths write:

"While she is a woman, and for this reason accorded relatively compassionate coverage by the media, Tamimi is a far more prolific murderer than most of the men she will accompany. She slaughtered seven men and women and eight babies and children in cold blood. Tamimi personally led the suicide bomber, Al-Masri, right up to entrance of the target she had selected, Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant, made a hasty getaway to save her own skin and then, in effect, fired her weapon."

For Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Shalit issue could be his most difficult decision. The emotions it is evoking both ways are deep-seated. On the one side is Shalit, the 23-year-old staff sergeant who in Israel is a household name. His supporters have a permanent marquee next to the PM's residence where a number is changed each day to show the length of his captivity. The desire to bring him home is powerful because of the country's military culture. Israel has been at war in one way or another from the day it was formed in 1948, and the military culture imbues society. Most young people join the army at 18.

 

Most parents know the experience of having a child out of contact if they are fighting a war. An understanding the army has with its soldiers is that if they are captured or killed, the government will do everything to bring them home. But as the public has begun focusing on the price that will be paid for Shalit -- the release of up to 1000 Palestinian prisoners -- the debate has become more complicated.

Tamimi's name is in the media as being on Hamas's wish list.

 

"Take a look at what were about to hand over to them," Arnold Roth tells The Australian. "We're going to release from prison people who not only have done the most hideous, barbaric things but are deeply committed to doing them again. "I can't find a better example of that than the woman who engineered the massacre at the Sbarro restaurant. It's hard for me to say her name.

 

"She has never made any secret -- and to her great good fortune she's been given plenty of opportunity to say these things -- that she is proud of what she did. She certainly doesn't seek to be forgiven and she will do it again and help other people to do it again just as soon as she has the opportunity. This is not hyperbole. It is literally the case. What are we doing putting people like that back out on the street?"

 

For Arnold and Frimet Roth the pain of that day in 2001 clearly has not subsided.

 

"For all practical purposes my daughter's murder took place this morning," Arnold Roth says. "I don't mean that in a hyperbolic way.

 

"I'm not a morose individual. Nor is my wife, and certainly none of our children are. But the act of losing a child to an act of murder, you can never get your mind around it. You deal with it in a functional way, but you can never fully grasp it. What, Malki's not coming back? I can't believe that. It's not possible."

 

Arnold Roth's description of that day as "an incredible nightmare" surely is no understatement. For 12 hours the family did not know where she was. They searched local hospitals, given that the scores of dead and injured were taken to different places. The hospitals, says Roth, were like Dante's Inferno. At 11 o'clock that night their neighbour, a senior doctor, ran into their house: "There's a girl on the operating table at Hadassa, let's go." They drove to the hospital, where their neighbour rushed into emergency but returned with the news: "It's not Malki."

 

Another doctor told them: "There's a dead girl over there, go and have a look, and there's another girl over there who's about to be operated on."

Roth recalls: "I have to say I caught myself at that moment. It was like somehow, right then, it all became real. He's telling me to go have a look at that dead girl over there. And if it's not her, maybe it's the other one over here they're about to operate on. I cannot tell you how difficult that was."

 

The Roths' lives were changed forever. They grew apart from some friends who were unable to deal with their loss but gained new ones. Arnold Roth estimates the family has "a couple of hundred friends" who have lost relatives to terrorism. "We have a common language with people who have been through this experience," he says.

 

In the first intifada of 1987, many of the clashes were stone fights between Palestinian youths and Israeli soldiers. But in the second intifada, which began in 2000 under Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a decision was made to target Israeli civilians. It is an insight into how deeply that intifada has worked itself into the Israeli psyche -- and why trust has broken down between Israelis and Palestinians -- that five children in Roth's street in Jerusalem have been killed.

 

"People call it intifada but I really resist that," Roth says. "I call it the Arafat War. I think that Arafat single-handedly brought on this war and I want people to relate the war to him.

Roth has developed an avoidance mechanism. "You identify situations and people where you're just not going to talk to those people, you just don't want to hear what they have to say because they don't understand what the effect of the loss of this beautiful child and the hundreds of others like her is," he says.

 

"On the other hand, you are forced to listen to some of the arguments that are put forward, like: `Why were you here?' or `She's an enemy agent just as much as the soldier in the tank', or `This is what you get for messing with other people's lives and territory' and many other assertions [that] to me are superficial or wrong, or both. So you've got to figure out where you stand on these issues. You've got to figure out avoidance; to figure out how to deal with some of these things. You've got to be careful before you say things and you've got to also remember that no matter what you say many people will simply never understand what you are talking about."

Roth says Israel should look at alternatives to a prisoner swap for Shalit. One option for instance could be that the large amount of money channelled to the Hamas regime through foreign governments could be stopped.

 

The terrorism that claimed his daughter, he says, has not made him anti-Palestinian. He and his wife have set up the Malki Foundation, which provides therapies to disabled children whose parents choose to keep them at home. So far the foundation has provided about 30,000 therapy sessions, one-third to Palestinian children. [Correction: Overall, about one-third of the families helped by Keren Malki are drawn from Israel's Arab population.] The cause of disabled children was chosen because of the affection Malki had for her disabled younger sister.

"She's very disabled, she's blind, she has no communication with the world. She suffered profound brain damage when she was a year old as a result of uncontrolled epilepsy, so she's a big burden in our lives. Malki loved her and was very involved with her and spent many nights with her," Roth says. "She goes to school, but we were told very early in the piece: `You should institutionalize this child and get on with your lives.' " [Comment: The Roth family refused the suggestion and their disabled youngest child continues to live with her family at home.]

Roth says the release of Malki's killer would be "a deep embitterment".

 

"We have moved on," he says. "We have rich lives. We're doing a lot of good work in our daughter's name. I have a professional life that gives me a great deal of satisfaction. We made a wedding in August, and another wedding in March, all being well. We have a rich, contributing, loving life as a family. We're not stuck at all. However the release of this woman would be a deep embitterment in our lives. Not just because of the woman but because of the confusion in the minds of other people who say: `Oh well.' That's very upsetting to me, but it's no more than that. Our lives won't stop and if we stop them [the release of the terrorists in a deal] it won't bring Malki back, it won't make us whole. But it's upsetting. It's very upsetting. It's more than upsetting, it's enraging."

 

Wherever Roth travels he seeks to talk about terrorism. Last year he addressed the UN. "I look for opportunities to come and present in a non-political way, non-ideological way, some things that I think people aren't intuiting or learning from the media or from any other means," he says.

 

What is his basic message? "That terrorism is a major issue in our lives that's not going away. No matter what direction it's coming from, we've got to put it higher up on the list. It's a major issue and it's going to get a lot worse for all of us before it gets better. Terrorism is a function of education, not of politics, not of territorial arguments. It's a function of education and we've got to deal with the education that produces terrorism. Education towards hatred; I see it everywhere.

 

"Some of the things that people say about terrorism are plainly wrong. Like: they're underprivileged people at their wits end; they don't have any other direction to go in, therefore you've left them with no alternative. This is rubbish. Everyone that I've ever looked at among terrorists turns out to be someone who's highly motivated. The suicide agents among them are the highest motivated. They're not depressed people, and so on."

The bomber who killed his daughter was from a wealthy family, a fanatic who became religious only in the last year of his life.

 

"Terrorism is a really serious issue. It's everywhere and it's spreading and we're not doing enough to stop it," Roth says. "And if things aren't worse today, it's only because of our good luck and not because of our good management." 

 

13-Dec-09: Today's rocket attack

The Jerusalem Post reports this morning that two more Qassam rockets were fired into Israel by Gazan Palestinian-Arab terrorists. One landed in an open area in the western Negev. The other crashed into the Hamas-Gazan-Palestinian-Arab side of the security fence. As far as is known, no injuries resulted, though this was plainly not the intention of the terrorists and their many, many supporters.

Afternoon postscript: The rocket which landed on the Israeli side is now identified as a Russian-made S5K, the type used in battle in Iran and Afghanistan. It's depicted in the Wikipedia photo above.

"The IDF said it was the first time this type of weapon has been fired from the territory", says Haaretz. But this is probably not so. According to Wikipedia:

"On Sunday 6th January 2009, the Israel Defense Forces identified a rocket fired at Israel earlier in the day by militants in the Gaza Strip as a Russian-made S5K... According to the IDF, the rocket fired at Kibbutz Alumim in the Negev marked the first time militants in Gaza have used this type of weapon. Although this type is intended to be launched aerially, said the IDF, Gaza militants on Sunday chose to launch their rocket from on-the-ground. Unlike a Qassam rocket, the S5K contains more explosives, but is less precise."

In other words, precisely what you expect from terrorists: enhanced firepower to maximize the damage, and no worthwhile precision since who cares who gets injured or killed? And if, as appears to be the case this morning, the explosive lands in your own lines,so what? This war of terror has never been about protecting and defending the families of the terrorists or their society. Nothing could be further from the goals of such barbarians.

13-Dec-09: Today's stabbing

Those who want to believe that terrorism by the Palestinian Arabs is under control can skip this note. Around midnight last night, a young Israeli woman, about 22, waiting for bus at Gush Etzion junction just south of Jerusalem was stabbed by a Palestinian. The wounds to her lower back are light-moderate. The stabber fled and is being hunted.

9-Dec-09: It happened at a security crossing... again

At the Qalandiya security checkpoint located only a few minutes drive north of where we live in the Jerusalem suburbs, a Palestinian Arab man of 20 was arrested this afternoon after Border Guards found six pipe bombs on his body. The bombs were handed over to army sappers who dismantled them. The terrorist is being asked to help the authorities with their enquiries.

We hear a good deal about how terrorism has subsided in recent days. The trouble with terror is that it only takes one security slip and those declining numbers are quickly forgotten. The numbers may be down but this has much more to do with Israeli vigilance than with a reduced appetite on the part of the jihadists to express their hatred in the most physical ways possible.

This afternoon's terrorist did not mean to be stopped or separated from his explosives. They were in his pants because he evidently had the urge to go to his 72 virgins and take some innocent Jewish lives and limbs with him.

How good it is to be able to say that this hate-filled loser will not be able to try again, at least for a while.

At the same security crossing on October 25, an innocent-looking Palestinian Arab woman of 21, seeking -- as she claimed -- medical care in Israel, pulled a knife from her clothes and stabbed a young Israeli security guard, injuring him in the lower abdomen. Security cameras captured the attempted murder. The two-minute video shows the guards checking the woman's items in an x-ray machine. They turn their backs for a moment, and she pulls out a knife and stabs the closest man.

Please view the video; it's here. If you do, remind yourself of all those calls for security barriers to be removed and for Israelis to find ways to be nicer, kinder, more accommodating to Palestinian Arabs who pass through those checkpoints daily.

7-Dec-09: From the International Alliance Against Terrorism

Media release | December 6th 2009

International Alliance Against Terrorism calls for greater support of terror’s victims: Impunity for terrorists must not be the rule of our world!

The International Alliance Against Terrorism supports all terror victims, all hostages and their families and aims at raising awareness to terrorism as a major violation of human rights.

The international community should have two guidelines to deal with terrorism:

• All hostages must be freed, in the name of universal human rights, because all hostages are innocent.
• All terrorists judged and condemned should remain in prison, in the name of international justice, whatever their identity and the cause they claim to serve, provided  they have been given fair trials and humane detention conditions.
  

Informed by Arnold Roth, President of Keren Malki, the Israeli partner of our International Alliance, of the possible liberation of Ahlam Tamimi, among many other Palestinian prisoners to be exchanged for the liberation of Guilad Shalit, Franco-Israeli hostage, kept incommunicado by the Hamas, we wish to express to the Roth family and all terror victims affected by the case, our full solidarity with their fight for justice and truth.

Ahlam Tamimi was the organizer and active accomplice of the mass murder committed on 9 August 2001 at the Sbarro Pizzeria in Jerusalem, a terror attack in which Mr and Mrs Roth’s daughter, Malki, was one of 15 victims, among 8 children and infants.

Judged and condemned to life imprisonment, Ms Tamimi has purged only 5 years of her sentence.
Interviewed and filmed in her Israeli prison, she stated she felt no regret.

To the journalist, Barbara Victor, she declared: “I did not regret the death of all those children. They should have returned to Poland, Russia or the United States, from which countries their parents came.”

Our Alliance does not judge the negotiations entered into by governments attempting to free their kidnapped citizens.

We have no mandate and no wish  to take part in the various conflicts that beset our planet.

We are appalled, not on account of the possible liberation of murderers to save the life of a hostage but because of the world silence: the unfairness, the moral iniquity of such an “exchange” is not only tolerated but denied.

We are appalled to see the line between innocence and guilt blurred.

We warn against the deadly danger of perverted values, of a world in which moral condemnation fails to focus on individual responsibility and moral support fails to be bestowed on civilian victims targeted by terrorist actions.

We warn against the incentive effect of triumphant impunity granted to those who perpetrated terror attacks and kidnapping may have in our global world to spread the terrorist scourge.

We call on our fellow citizens in our different countries, on civil society, on all terror victims organizations and all NGOs, on national and international authorities to voice their indignation and defend the human rights of terror victims and their families.

***

The organizations and network members of the International Alliance Against Terrorism are: Mouvement Pour la Paix et Contre le Terrorisme (France); Omagh Support and Self Help Group (Northern Ireland); AIVITER Associazione Italiana Vittime del Terrorismo (Italy); Djazairouna (Algeria); AVT Asociacion Victimas del Terrorismo (Spain); Malki Foundation (Israel); Philip Spencer, Représentative of Euston Manifesto (Great-Britain) Centro des estudes legales sobre el terrorismo y sus victimas (Argentine)

Representatives of IAAT are available for media comments and interviews. Contact: Huguette Chomski Magnis +33-6-6626-4223. Or by email at alliance.against.terrorism@googlemail.com