26-Jul-07: Just what the area needs - more guns

Our friend David Frankfurter points us to today's report that the government of Israel has authorized the transfer of 1,000 rifles from Jordan to the security forces of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

This is beyond absurd. Little more than a week ago, we commented here (17-Jul-07: The Joke's On Us) on the preposterous charade of Israel giving pardons to Fatah gunmen for having turned their weapons in. Where, asks David, did those weapons go? And why do the Fatah terrorists need another thousand?

Answer: the surrender of the weapons was a charade. Hundreds of armed, active, committed Zionist-hating murderous terrorists are now operating freely with freshly minted Israeli free-passes. And their arsenal has just gone through a significant, approved-by-Israel upgrade.

Note also that the Haaretz report completely fails to mention the arms "surrender". Was it too far back for the editors to remember?

Three months ago, one of Israel's extreme left voices, Yossi Beilin, under the headline "Don't give 'em guns: Last thing Palestinian Authority needs at this time is more weapons" wrote this:

It is sad to see how figures such as Sharon and Olmert, who reached positions of influence while holding on to a very hawkish worldview, ended up advocating positions that doves would not even imagine proposing – ranging from withdrawal without getting anything in exchange to handing over weapons to one Palestinian group, as pragmatic as it may be, in order for it to undermine another group. Those who pay the price of these mistakes are Israelis and Palestinians, who see peace moving further away, and meanwhile are forced to live with lack of security and concern over the next war, which is facing them from newspaper headlines.

Today Haaretz reveals that the thousand rifles

"were delivered to the PA security forces three weeks ago following Israeli authorization... [in other words, prior to the charade of the weapons surrender by the Fatah terrorists] This is the largest arms transfer authorized in recent years, and it is meant to aid forces loyal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in preventing the possibility of a Hamas challenge and possible takeover similar to that of the Gaza Strip... The transfer of the M-16s was kept under strict confidence on both sides, in an effort to prevent any possible leak that could undermine Abbas' standing."

George Santayana's dictum that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" might have been written for this neighbourhood.

24-Jul-07: Two sides of the same coin?

Speaking with many journalists and political analysts over the past six years has made it pretty clear to us how confusing the whole middle east conflict is to many of them.

So we're offering some free insight here - something that may help some confused individuals see how unalike the two sides of the allegedly same coin are.

Students at one of the Palestinian Arab world's most important institutions of learning reacted to the massacre of innocents (including our daughter) in a restaurant in the centre of Jerusalem almost six years ago by recreating the scene, emphasizing the gore and the blood. The details are too sickening to go into but for those who want it, there's a description here (for video, click here and then scroll to "Barbarians Viewpoint").

Students in our Jerusalem neighbourhood, members of the youth group in which our murdered daughter was so active, honor her life and that of her murdered childhood friend with an annual charity fair. The details are here. (If you're in Jerusalem this Thursday, we hope you will consider coming along and taking part.)


We took the snapshot above at one of the previous years' bazaars.

Understand these two responses and you have most of the Arab/Israel conflict in a nutshell. Pass it on.

24-Jul-07: And on it goes...

A Qassam rocket fired from the Gaza Strip today made a direct hit on a house in Kibbutz Karmiya. The rocket crashed through the roof and exploded in the bedroom of an 8-month-old baby Zionist girl.

Fortunately, the child's mother had heard the incoming-rocket warning siren and grabbed the baby from her crib and ran with her to a safer part of the house. Houses on this kibbutz have no reinforced "safe rooms". Three members of the same family - a grandmother, the mother, and the baby - were taken to the hospital for medical treatment. (The picture at right shows the effect on the Zionist crib.)

Yesterday a student at Sderot's Sapir College suffered light injuries when another Qassam from Gaza crashed into the grounds of the college campus. And yet another Qassam landed near a Sderot school on Sunday, causing damage to property but fortunately no injuries.

The Islamic Jihad terror organization claimed responsibility for the rocket fire. Haaretz reports that very shortly afterwards, an Israel Air Force strike elminated two Islamic Jihad terrorists in Beit Hanoun, the town in the northern part of the Gaza Strip from which many of the terror rockets are fired. Palestinian sources quoted in Yediot confirm two Islamic Jihad gunmen were killed and four others injured.

How did the world's media cover the attack on innocent civilians? Google News tells us. The near-disaster in the kibbutz bedroom is reported by the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz; words, no pictures. Non-Israeli media coverage? Nil.

The deaths of the Islamic Jihadists? Associated Press has this and four other pictures just like it. Funerals of dead Palestinians are their own justification in the eyes of many editors. The context is immaterial. That these recently-dead men were cold-blooded fanatical killers is of zero interest to the people who bring us the news.

17-Jul-07: Commitments

Someone has just just mailed us the official Israel government press release announcing the release of the murderers. We can breathe a lot easier now because it says: "Prime Minister Olmert instructs that a prisoner designated for release, who refuses to sign a commitment form, will not be released."

Tough language. We're sitting here now, thinking to ourselves about the hidden powers of commitment forms.

But then it occurs to us to wonder: What if one of the prisoners due to be released on Friday - one of the murderers of children, one of the planners of a drive-by shooting - turns out to be not only a barbarian but a liar as well?

17-Jul-07: The Joke's On Us

The deadly turmoil in Hamas-occupied Palestine during the past month has had some bizarre and dangerous outcomes for us Israelis.

As usually happens, the news coverage is dominated by spin and nonsense. The authentic goings-on away from the flash cameras and press conferences are very different – the mirror opposite – of the way the mainstream media tell it.

A few horrifying examples from Caroline Glick at the Jerusalem Post.

• 178 gunmen from the routed Al-Aksa Brigades of the Fatah terror organization have agreed to hand in their weapons and pledged to stop being terrorists. Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the powerless Palestinian Authority, has very publicly undertaken to pay them thousands of dollars. It's a joke right? No. Instead of laughing into his poker-player's face, the government of Israel has unbelievably pledged to take these murderers off of its wanted list. They're getting an amnesty for (as Glick so insightfully puts it) participating in a satire. They get to walk without fear for the first time in years.
• Next: "From now on the only Palestinians in Judea and Samaria who will bear arms will be members of Abbas's "official" security forces. But since most of these men are already members of those official militias, and the rest are set to be commissioned in short order, the deal has no impact on any of them." It's like when we played cowboys and Indians as children. You got shot, you fell down, you got up and you said "Now I'm not a cowboy any more. I'm an Indian". Only this is not kindergarten.
• The IDF has been told to end its nightly raids in Judea and Samaria. For five years, those raids resulted in the apprehension of thousands of terrorists, and the disruption of their networks. The murders can now sleep tight. Caroline Glick points out that "it is these raids, rather than Abbas's vaunted efforts to strengthen the so-called peace camp in Palestinian society or the security fence that have prevented suicide bombers from entering Israeli cities with any frequency."
• The 178 terrorists who Olmert just took off the wanted list are themselves the IDF's main targets.
• Zacharia Zudbeidi (pictured above), the Aksa Brigades commander in Jenin and the darling of Israel's Left (due to his well-developed propaganda skills and gutter Hebrew) directed at least two suicide bombings and has so far overseen scores of shooting attacks that cost the lives of dozens of Israeli civilians and soldiers. He's been given immunity. Not this is not a joke. He's free to go about his business in the open, along with hundreds of other murderers and unrepentant practitioners of terror.

Caroline Glick's article starts with this sentence: 'It's all a joke. It's just a joke." That's how the Palestinian terror commanders in Judea and Samaria explained the show they made of handing in their weapons to Fatah commander Mahmoud Abbas's official militias over the weekend.

We're sometimes asked why, as victims of terror, we don't reach closure, move on, get a life etc. Developments like these are the reason why. Our experience has turned us into deeply worried observers who no longer get the joke. That's because nothing about this is funny. Not at all.

16-Jul-07: On Suffering

In its current edition, The New Criterion invites a distinguished panel to explore the meaning of suffering. The managing editor of Frontpagemag.com , Jamie Glazov, arranged and hosted the panel. He introduces the subject with these words:

Is there a meaning to suffering? The question of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov comes to mind -- returning the ticket to G-d (rejecting G-d and His order) if there is one innocent suffering child in the world. At the same time, the paradox appears to be that at the moment of greatest weakness and mans brokenness potentially lies the moment of his spiritual triumph. And perhaps the redemption of others. Or is suffering futile?

The panel comprises:

• Roger Kimball, co-editor and publisher of the New Criterion and publisher of Encounter Books. He is the author of many books, including The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art.
• Dr. Gregory Yuri Glazov, Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology at Seton Hall University and the Coordinator of the Great Spiritual Books Program for the Seminary's Institute for Christian Spirituality.
• Judea Pearl, the father of Daniel Pearl and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation (www.danielpearl.org) is a professor of computer science and artificial intelligence at UCLA.
• Frimet Roth, one of this site's bloggers, and a freelance writer based in Jerusalem who frequently contributes articles dealing with terrorism and with special-needs children.
• Sheikh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi, Director of the Cultural Institute of the Italian Islamic Community.
• Fr. Maurice Guimond, a Trappist monk at Our Lady of Calvary Abbey, in Rogersville, New Brunswick, Canada. He was superior of his community for ten years.
• Rabbi Richard Yellin, a pulpit rabbi in Florida
• David Evanier, a novelist and journalist, and a former fiction editor of The Paris Review.

Frimet Roth's contribution is actually the first one in the series. Here's a taste:

I don't envy parents whose children's murderers beg their forgiveness. Theirs is a troubling dilemma. But it's one that I am confident will never confront me. In a new documentary the imprisoned murderer of my daughter, Ahlam Tamimi, smiled when she learned that the bombing she helped execute actually killed fifteen people, not the eight she had presumed. In an earlier statement to the media she boasted that she had no regrets about her actions and was confident she would soon be free despite her 16 consecutive life sentences. I am determined to do everything possible to prevent not only her release but that of all Palestinian prisoners "with blood on their hands", as the murderers are referred to in these parts.

Judaism takes what I consider a most sensible view of forgiveness. If someone who has wronged you asks your forgiveness, you may only rebuff him twice. After his third approach, he is released from blame and you become a wrong-doer. But this is entirely unrelated to any punishment meted out by the judiciary, which he must serve regardless. The Bible and other traditional sources abound with examples of repentant enemies of Israel who were welcomed into the fold with open hands.

I have heard parents of murdered children report "release" and "closure" after reaching out to unrepentant murderers. They baffle me. I'm all for forgiveness - but only when it is appropriate.

The rest is here.

7-Jul-07: A Palestinian Terrorist

Under the heading "A Palestinian Terrorist", the New York Times carries a letter in today's edition written by Frimet Roth.

Frimet's comments relate to a film review described in an earlier blog entry on this site, entitled "About sweet-faced women".

To the Editor:

Re “An Odd Understanding Reached in Israeli Prisons,” by Neil Genzlinger (Television review, June 27):

I wonder when the photo of Ahlam Tamimi was taken. Perhaps when she learned that the bombing of Jerusalem’s Sbarro restaurant had killed 15 and not 8, as she had presumed. She helped execute that massacre and actually smiled upon hearing that.

Ms. Tamimi decimated one family — a mother, a father and three of their eight children; robbed another American couple of their only child, pregnant with their first grandchild; and ended the life of my beautiful, kind 15-year-old daughter, Malki.

The photo reinforced Mr. Genzlinger’s message: There is no black or white here. Just intransigents playing at “cat and mouse.” But he did not mention this: Hundreds of Israeli children have been targeted and murdered in playgrounds, on school buses and in pizza shops.

Their murderers were not freedom fighters or militants or attractive young women. They were simply evil people who, like Ms. Tamimi, enjoy murdering children and babies.

Frimet Roth
Jerusalem
July 6, 2007

To illustrate this note, we decided to publish a somewhat less glamorous picture of Ahlam Tamimi's work than the one chosen by HBO and the NY Times. (See above.)

For more about what she and her co-conspirators did, please refer to "A Life of Beauty" (describing our daughter) and "An Act of Barbarism".

5-Jul-07: A Balance of Views?

Many loyal New York Times readers were as incensed as we were by Neil Gelzinger's July 27th review of HBO's film "Hot House".

We publicized our reaction to the piece and to its prominent, glamorous photo of a convicted terrorist featured in the film. The woman, Ahlam Tamimi, happens to be our daughter's murderer.

Quite a few of those readers told us that they had complained to the paper. Some also posted our comments on their own blogs and urged others to write their own letters to the editors of the NYT expressing their disgust. Needless to say, we sent one too.

So it would be a fair estimate that a significant number of letters regarding this item reached the letters editors at the New York Times.

Yet here we are, more than a week later, and not a single response has appeared on the NY Times website.

How does this jibe with New York Times' posturing as an impartial source of news? In a 2004 essay describing the operation of the Letters Page, its editor, Thomas Feyer, wrote: "In selecting letters, I try to present a fair sampling of reader opinion, as well as a balance of views, pro and con."

Feyer might have added this proviso: Letters that label terrorists as evil will be discarded.

UPDATE (6-Jul-07): The Letters department of the New York Times have been in touch. They say a letter from Frimet Roth is under consideration for publication.

2-Jul-07: Murderers Belong in Prison

Frimet Roth (one of this site's co-bloggers) has an op-ed today on the YNet site. YNet is the electronic edition of Israel's Yediot Aharonot newspaper

Murderers Belong in Prison
Releasing terrorists not the only way to secure Gilad Shalit's release
Frimet Roth

I know the pain Gilad Shalit's parents are enduring. This is no empty platitude; my child was murdered by Hamas terrorists six years ago.

Obtaining Gilad's release must be a top priority for our government. Sadly, myriad other matters - political, personal and very trivial - have garnered far more attention from Olmert and his cabinet than the Shalits' ordeal has.

What might have been done? Rather than sit and wait for Hamas' latest prisoner release list to be deposited on his desk, Olmert could have spent the past year pro-actively laboring for Gilad's freedom. He could have created his own ultimatums for Hamas. Cutting off any one of the basic services that Israel has been providing Gaza and then conditioning its reconnection on Gilad's release is a tactic that many experts have suggested. Why hasn't it been tried?

Many advocates of a prisoner-release cave-in argue that all of the terrorists' demands must be met in order to return Gilad and Goldwasser and Regev. That no price is too high to pay for a soldier's freedom.

But do they mean what they say?

Imagine that Hamas announced its willingness to hand back Shalit with this condition: that Israel first execute one Israeli citizen, perhaps, a senile eighty-year-old or a person with a terminal illness. Would we comply? Would we weigh the value of the two lives at stake?

In releasing convicted Palestinian murderers, Israel is weighing the lives of the innocent victims of future attacks attacks by the terrorists to be released against Gilad's life. Nobody is worthy of making such determinations and nobody should presume to be.

2 questions for MK Levy

Fortunately, we are relieved of that moral burden. Israeli society is endowed with an impartial, respected judicial system. It tries murderers without regard for political considerations. When it sentences someone to several consecutive life sentences, clearly the equivalent of execution in some democratic countries, its decision must be respected by all citizens. Including by our prime minister.

Knesset member Yitzhak Levy is a bereaved parent whose daughter was murdered, like mine was, by Palestinian terrorists. In a letter to the prime minister last week, Levy said the only way to release Arab terrorists from prison was by expelling them from Israel entirely. His letter reminded the prime minister that "we have seen several times that prisoners who are released in various deals return to their evil ways and take active part in terrorist activity". He, therefore, urged the government to make humanitarian assistance to Gaza contingent upon Gilad's release. However, he concluded that a mass prisoner release "could be reasonable" with the abovementioned proviso of banishment.

I have two questions for Knesset Member Levy:

1. Who will guarantee that the prisoners remain in the countries that Levy would select as their homes? Hamas? The very same terror group committed in word and deed to wiping Israel off the map? The very same people who could not honor ceasefires signed with fellow Palestinians for more than several hours? Or Egypt? The neighbor that has been permitting the free flow of weapons into Gaza through the Rafah crossing ever since Israel left Gaza?

2. What will prevent these mass murderers from engaging in terrorism in any land other than Gaza or the West Bank?

I admire Levy's courage and sincerity. But the implication in his statements - both written and in interviews - is that he is resigned to a release that he actually opposes. Is surrender our only course? Isn't it time we voice our disgust with this government's handling of the Shalit affair?

'State under caution'

Our society is fraying at the edges. In a recent graduation address to Bar Ilan University law students, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz issued the following dire assessment of our state: We are being led by public figures under investigation, leaders prevented from carrying out their duties. This crisis is leading us to "national depression." There is "no king in Israel" he continued. "Every man does what he sees fit."

He referred to Israel as a "state under caution." Can a state with such precarious standing determine that convicted mass murderers be rewarded for their atrocities with a ticket to freedom and to a new life? How will the knowledge that court sentences are so easily dispensable influence potential murderers?

MK Levy's message concluded: "I am not driven by vengeance, and Gilad's return home is more important than holding any Palestinian prisoner." This suggests that a refusal to release prisoners with "blood on their hands" emanates from a lust for revenge. Which misses the point entirely. The trial, conviction and imprisonment of murderers has little if anything to do with vengeance. It serves to punish criminals, to deter those considering crimes and to protect the non-criminal public from victimization. Trampling those vital safeguards spells doom.

Prime Minister Olmert has fought tooth and nail to retain his office. It is time for him to demonstrate some prime ministerial initiative in winning Shalit's return home.

---
Frimet Roth is a freelance writer based in Jerusalem who frequently contributes articles dealing with terrorism and with special-needs children. She and her husband founded and run (as unpaid volunteers) the Malki Foundation (www.kerenmalki.org) in their daughter's memory. The foundation provides concrete support for Israeli families of all religions who care at home for a special-needs child.

30-Jun-07: Britain at war

The attacks in central London yesterday and Glasgow airport today are headline news tonight. These are not the first terror attacks on British soil in recent times - far from it. When another British airport came under attack last summer, we made a few observations that it would be impolite to repeat. (But re-reading what we wrote then may be interesting to some.)

Sadly, there are some messages here which, somehow, the British are failing to understand. We don't claim to be more knowledgeable about terror than others, but having experienced the murder of our child at the hands of hate-driven terrorists, and endured agenda-driven media reportage of the most superficial and inane kind, we have a passion for helping others understand.

This is why we offer the following advice.

• To the BBC - bravo for using the right word in tonight's headlines: "UK terror threat now critical". Your absurd and self-serving guidelines have for years provided you with cover for distorted and dishonest coverage of what we Israelis endure at the hands of the haters. Those guidelines say: "The word "terrorist" itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding. We should try to avoid the term, without attribution. We should let other people characterise while we report the facts as we know them."
  This is rubbish - something with which you plainly agree, at least when it comes to attacks on your homes. And rightly so. Please do stick with the use of the word "terrror" and "terrorists" when the facts support it and you will be doing your compatriots and tax-paying owners a large favour.
  This is not about militants in London or activists in Glasgow. War has been declared on you by the agents of terror. They know it and you know it. Terror is the right word - over there in the UK, over here in Israel, and everywhere else that the terrorists and their protagonists (a very, very large class) are to be found.
  
• To our British friends: We ended our August 2006 blog entry with these words which we believe are as important and true now as then: "The war against the terrorists is a real war, as real as the Battle of Britain was, as real as the Hezbollah War is, as real as the Arafat War (some call it the Second Intifadeh) is. In war, you do what you need to do to win. When it is not happening to you, you can engage in silly rhetoric and superficial phraseology. When it is happening to you, your children, your home, your society, you do what you need to do. The terrorists understand that better than the rest of us."

We wrote that these are not the first terror attacks on British soil in recent times. The sad reality is they will not be the last. These attacks were neither foiled nor thwarted, as the media like to claim. They failed because of factors entirely unrelated to preventative measures. The largest of those factors seems at this time to have been luck. But luck is fickle and the war of civilized societies against terror is not being won. It's likely to get much, much worse before it gets better. There are absolutely no reasons to think otherwise.

This is the raw reality of living through an ongoing war.