16-Aug-07: Quick, let's talk to these moderates

Despite a sudden shortage of manure in its Gazan domain, things are not entirely bad in Hamas-land. Diplomatically, you could say the world is waking up to the possibilities of a constructive engagement with the forward-looking nation-building statesmen of the Hamas Movement.

Just consider these events of the past week:

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi called for negotiating with Hamas to help the movement "develop politically."

The Norwegian government annnounced it intends to maintain contact with Hamas at the envoy level. This in response to earlier mistaken reports that Norway had cut off ties with Hamas after the June massacres of Fatah forces in Gaza.

The British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee released a non-partisan report on Monday recommending that Westminster lawmakers "urgently consider ways of engaging politically with moderate elements within Hamas."

The UK committee appealed to former prime minister Tony Blair to join the effort to reunite Hamas with Abbas's Fatah faction. "The international community must bear in mind that Hamas came to power as a result of a democratic and free election," helpfully adds Dr. Mohamed Al-Madhoun, who heads the bureau of Hamas strong-man Ismail Haniya. (His words are echoed by many otherwise respectable, democracy-loving politicians in western countries like this British labor spokesperson quoted in the pages of the Guardian.)

(In the interests of balance, let's add that a senior un-named Palestinian Arab official in Ramallah says he is "disgusted" to hear that some Europeans were calling for negotiations with Hamas. "Those in Italy and Britain who want to talk to Hamas are undermining moderate Palestinians and emboldening the radicals. We hope that the Europeans will wake up and refrain from committing such a huge mistake.")

From Gaza, already awake, Hamas expressed its wish for a dialogue with the west in response to Prodi's call. "Such a statement by Prodi and other Western officials reflects the West's understanding that the policy of ignoring Hamas has failed," senior Hamas spokesman and part-time mule Sami Abu Zuhri said in a press statement.

Fair enough. Let's assume Abu Zuhri is right and that isolating Hamas has failed. If so, it may be time to take another look at what Hamas stands for - at the issues it believes divide Palestinian Arabs from us Israelis, and the possible basis for two people to live together in future in harmony and constructive neighborliness.

The following are the words of the official Hamas representative in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan. Hamdan's name may be less than a household word in Europe. But Google supplies more than 18,000 links to the man and his words, speaking in the name of Hamas and expressing what are clearly mainstream Hamas viewpoints.

Hamdan's statements below aired a week ago on Al-Kawthar TV (despite the unfamiliar name, a genuine and influential media entity - you can watch its live video stream here).

Interviewer: Do you consider all the Jews in Palestine to be combatants who have plundered the land? We've witnessed martyrdom operations that targeted buses and restaurants.

Osama Hamdan: First of all, let me clarify something very important. What is the ruling regarding those who live in Palestine, in the so-called Israel, and who are aggressors and plunderers of the land? The way we see it, they all came to Palestine from abroad, whether before the declaration of the Zionist entity or after it. If you were to conduct statistics within the Zionist entity, you would find that all these people have their origins in other countries - they came from Europe, Eastern Europe, from America, South America, or other places.

Interviewer: In other words, there were no Palestinian Jews?

Osama Hamdan: No, there were no Palestinian Jews. When the British Mandate began in 1917, there was only one settlement on Palestinian land, which included several dozen Jews, who were living there in violation of the law at the time. I would like to mention that under the Ottoman state - regardless of the many reservations we have about it - there was a law that prohibited the Jews from staying in Palestine for over a month. Their passports and personal documents were taken away from them, and they were given an Ottoman permit at the border, which allowed them to stay for a month on Palestinian land. The only group that can be called Jewish was the one in Nablus. They still live there to this day. The Palestinians regard them as part of the makeup of Palestinian society, and they number no more than several hundred. As for those who immigrated from various countries - they are not Jews.
Anyone who comes to live in a war zone is a combatant, regardless of whether he wears a uniform.
Secondly, neither Hamas nor the Palestinian resistance force intentionally killed civilians.
You mentioned the buses. What's an easier target - a bus, which is protected by various security measures, or a school [or] a theater, or a stadium, for example? These civilian targets - in which the killing of women and children is intentional - were not targeted by the resistance.
Why were buses targeted? Because they are the means of transport used by the soldiers as well. The Zionist soldiers, who go from their homes to their bases and back, use public transportation, because it is free or almost free. In my opinion, the occupation soldiers also have a security motive in using public transport: They shield themselves behind the so-called 'civilians' within the Zionist entity.
Therefore, the way I see it, they need to stop using public transportation, or else society should prevent them from using it, because it is the soldiers who are targeted. Just to prove it, in the dozens of operations that were carried out, the Zionists never announced, for example, that 20 children were killed, or that 50 women were killed. On the contrary, if you were to examine who was killed in martyrdom operations that targeted buses, you would find that 70% were occupation soldiers, and they may even have been in uniform at the time of the operation.
We are making the preparations for a confrontation.... The final goal of the resistance is to wipe this entity off the face of the Earth. This goal necessitates the development of the capabilities of the resistance, until this entity is wiped out."

This important speech is online, in streaming video, courtesy of MEMRI TV. View the clip here.

It only remains for us non-European non-politicians to point out that every word of the Hamas representative above is a knowing lie, pumped out like those before it to an ill-informed global audience.

Hate-filled nonsense like Hamdan's, together with the naive and foolish pronouncements of parliamentarians and politicians in countries far from the scene, fuel the massacres in restaurants and the deliberate and willful targeting of innocent civilians - especially women and children - like our daughter.

13-Aug-07: The extraordinary effect of market forces

Though three Qassam rockets were fired into Israel yesterday (Sunday), fortunately without causing injury or serious damage, there's a general sense here that the terrorists and their killing equipment are currently slightly less active than in the recent past.

YNet offers an unexpected reason - market forces. Under the heading "Fertilizer shortages hamper rocket fire", the news channel reports that the Pal-Arab thugs of Gaza, mostly card-carrying Hamas associates, are running short of two key ingredient: fertilizer and steel rods, as the price of both is currently soaring in Gaza.

Shortages in fertilizers used by Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip to produce makeshift rockets have led to a decrease in the number of rockets fired towards Israel. Ynet found that Palestinian terror groups prefer to save their rockets for rainy days. But rockets continued to be fired towards Israel on Sunday, with three rockets landing in the western Negev. The shortages have been blamed on Egypt's clampdown on smugglers operating along the border with the Gaza Strip and Israel's closure of border crossings used to transfer goods into the coastal territory.The price of a kilo of fertilizer rose from $20 to $50. Palestinian operatives confirmed the shortages to Ynet but said they still had large quantities of rockets stored in secret caches. "In addition to the smugglings, our people are producing a similar substitute. But the shortages also apply to materials we use to produce fertilizers and substitutes to it and therefore there is a crisis and the situation is difficult," one operative said. The shortage led Hamas gunmen to storm the Fatah-affiliated al-Azhar University where they confiscated dozens of kilos of fertilizers. Terror groups also face shortages in steel used to build the rockets. The price of a steel rod rose from NIS 120 to NIS 800. "God willing, our men will find other alternatives. The most important thing is that the resistance remains unharmed. Thank God we have brilliant brains in the Strip," another operative said.

Amazing. People's lives are literally being saved because of shortages in the availability of manure.

Meanwhile let's recall for a moment how the Palestinian Authority spoke so bombastically two years ago of turning the Gaza Strip into the Singapore of the Middle East.

Their oligarchs and kleptcrats, busy attending to their own personal Swiss bank accounts, conjured up visions of jobs for the hordes of unemployed and uneducated Pal-Arabs via the development of phenomenally productive agricultural lands created, and then left behind, by Israelis forced off their own land in the name of creating "confidence-building measures.

So since we're already speaking about manure, let's quickly review what became over these past two years of the plan to turn Gaza into Switzerland. Ali Waked writing in today's Yediot Aharanot gives us this uplifting snapshot.

• Forty international experts were brought in two years ago to draft strategies for developing Gaza's economy and - above all - to create jobs for people with huge families to support. Two years of unfettered Palestinian Arab control, it's now clear, has produced ashes for them. Nothing else.
• Rafah airport, the only one in the Gaza Strip, is in ruins. It's damaged structures are used by gunmen to launch attacks against Israeli targets. The only part still undamaged - the control tower - was finally leveled by last week by an Israeli air attack, reflecting Israel's final despair that the Pal-Arabs would rein in their own gunmen and rocket shooters who had been operating there without interference.
• Gaza's fishing industry is in hopeless condition after Israel's sea embargo, responding to missile-bearing Palestinian boats, restricted the movement of Palestinian fishermen in the Mediterranean.
• The constantly-under-Palestinian-fire border crossings are closed, costing the Palestinian economy millions of dollars each month in lost and wasted exports.
• Seventy percent of the magnificently productive greenhouses left intact by Israel after the destruction of the Jewish towns of Gaza in 2005 are destroyed. Their plastic covers and steel arcs have been stolen and sold by looters.
• Roads and other infrastructure networks are unrecognizable. Months of deadly internal warfare between Fatah and Hamas, as well as frequent Israeli airstrikes and land incursions responding to the endless barrages of rockets from Gaza into Israeli towns and homes, saw to that.
• Factories? Sure. Built on land evacuated by Israel, they're now fully engaged... as training camps and military bases.
• 80 percent of Gaza's 1.3 million inhabitants live in poverty or below the poverty line, according to the UN.
• And one of the most beloved of Gazan entertainments - the spotaneous street rally, with thousands taking to the streets for hours on end, screaming, waving flags, burning tyres, firing rifles into the air - has now been made illegal by their Hamas masters.
  

So is there nothing to look forward to?

Not at all, says Waked. Observing that the Hamas Islamists are increasingly imposing their black and bleak version of Islam on their brethren, Gazan Pal-Arabs, he says, "have to brace for a Taliban-style disengagement that will cut them off from the rest of the world."

At least then they will likely be able to produce all the manure their economy needs, without fear of outside market forces. Steel rods might a little more problematic.

Singapore indeed.

7-Aug-07: What disaster have these thugs wrought on their people

It's reported this evening that a Qassam rocket -- yet another one of hundreds fired off by Palestinian terrorists in the past several years -- today killed an eight-year-old boy and his six-year-old sister. Five more children were injured. The rocket was fired at Israel. But as happens often when you have neither the wit nor the concern to fight like a man, it fell short and struck the children's house in the village of Beit Lahiya, a Gazan Arab town. Atypically of Palestine's revolutionary "heroes", no group claimed responsibility.

As of this writing, Australia's ABC and the Iranian "news" network Alalam both say the deaths happened because "an Israeli shell they were playing with exploded, witnesses and medics said." Some witnesses. (Even the Irish Times has been reporting for the past nine hours that a rocket "fired at Israel by Palestinian militants today fell short and killed two Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip, ambulance crews said.")

Neither source deems newsworthy the fact that Beit Lahiya has for the past two years served as the principal staging area for many of the deadly Palestinian Arab rockets fired daily into Israeli farms, home, schools and towns.

7-Aug-07: Hot House: Cold Truths

Israel, in the throes of an existential war on terror, saw no reason to deny Ahlam Tamimi - the person who planned the Jerusalem terror massacre that killed Malki Roth - the privilege to ascend a cinematic soapbox, spew her venom and get her smiling, glamorous promotional picture in the international papers. She and dozens of other Palestinian terrorists were allowed to star in a documentary film that has sold out theaters.

One of this site's bloggers writes in today's Haaretz:

The cold truth about 'Hot House'
By Frimet Roth *
Haaretz - Tuesday 7th August 2007

Reading reviews of the Israeli documentary "Hot House" has been a traumatic experience for me. Is this normal? I doubt if even psychologists could say.

No compassionate state would subject a mother to such torture. No sane government would help a cold-blooded mass murderer ascend a cinematic soapbox, spew her venom and get her smiling, glamorous promotional picture in the international papers.

But Israel, in the throes of an existential war on terror, saw no reason to deny Ahlam Tamimi - the person who planned the Jerusalem terror massacre that killed my daughter - that privilege. She and dozens of other Palestinian terrorists were allowed to star in a documentary film that has sold out theaters.

Shimon Dotan, the Romanian-born former Israeli who made "Hot House," says the Prisons Service freely admitted him to half a dozen prisons across Israel over the course of a year. The authorities deserve a "certificate of honor," he says, for their permissiveness, adding: "It is difficult for me to say that, and I don't want to brag about it."

His film exposes astonishing aspects of life behind bars in Israel where convicted Palestinian terrorists enjoy country-club-like conditions. They all have access to Israeli and Palestinian radio, television and newspapers. Cells, shared with terror-group cronies, are equipped with their choice of colorful rugs and wall hangings. Cooking facilities allow them to indulge their personal culinary tastes. They enjoy bi-weekly family visits. They are free to hone their political skills, conduct internal elections and nurture their political careers. Prison garb is waived; women sport Islamic attire, down to the colorful silk scarves my daughter's murderer favors. Prayer halls are available for the free practice of the very faith that inspired their crimes. And as the film points out, many of them earn, at the Israeli citizen's expense, university degrees. In Israel, the death penalty is never applied to terrorists.

No one in the Prisons Service challenges this absurd state of affairs.

"Hot House" could have been used to counter the rampant disinformation about Israel's treatment of Palestinian prisoners. Yet nothing was farther from the producers' minds.

Dotan, who has resided in the U.S. and Canada for several years, missed one of Israel's most harrowing periods. Yet he says his motive is to "make Israelis understand the issue of Palestinian prisoners [and] think we are doing exactly the same things [to the Palestinians] in their civilian life. We owe them empathy." Dotan is not alone in his conviction that to defend yourself against murderers is no different than murder. Many Israelis espouse and express this perverted morality.

In Israel, as in any authentic democracy, everyone may freely voice his views. Yet "Hot House" goes beyond free speech. It was primarily underwritten by Israeli government sources - not Dotan's personal funds. In other words, by us taxpayers. The New Foundation for Film and Television was established in 1993 to essentially support the production of documentary films. With 60 percent of its budget, millions of shekels annually, coming from the Education, Culture and Sports Ministry, this foundation was a primary source of the film's budget.

Compared to the release of 256 Palestinian prisoners and amnesty granted to 180 wanted terrorists, both of which Israel recently did, funding a pro-terrorist film may seem like child's play. But films are skillful victors over naive hearts and minds.

Israel's leaders have been notoriously lax in their attitude toward public relations. "Hot House" reveals that they have actually been pro-actively blackening their country's image.

Consider one of the human beings they have chosen to profile: my daughter's murderer. Dotan says he sat with her for two hours, having a "gripping" conversation. He asked whether she knew how many children had perished in the bombing of Sbarro. Smiling, as she generally does, she guessed "three." "It was eight," Dotan corrected her. She seemed delighted and smiled again, asking, "really?"

Dotan and his fellow producers are marketing this film aggressively throughout the world. If it hasn't yet, "Hot House" will undoubtedly reach a theater near you soon. Before entering the building, please consider this:

You will be bringing this evil creature, Tamimi, untold pleasure. Dotan says she was keen to publicize her views.

You will pad the bank accounts of individuals who revile Israel.

And you may emerge convinced that this film conveys a balanced picture of the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A film without a single appearance by a victim of the terrorists. Not one photograph. Not even one name.

* Frimet Roth is a freelance writer in Jerusalem who frequently contributes articles dealing with terrorism, and with special-needs children. She and her husband founded and manage 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.

3-Aug-07: Six Years

As the sun sets this evening, Friday, here in Jerusalem, we will be marking the sixth yahrzeit of the death of our daughter Malka Chana z"l. The date is the twentieth day of the month of Av, and this year that date falls on the Sabbath.

Jewish tradition focuses much more attention on life than on death. One of the ways we see this is in how the upbeat and pleasant nature of the Sabbath prevails over the well-defined practices associated with mourning and grief. There are very few public, outward manifestations of grief on Sabbath. So strong is this inclination that apart from the saying of the very brief Kaddish memorial prayer, the anniversary (which is what the Yiddish word yahrzeit refers to) is hardly noticed.

Hardly noticed, that is, by outsiders. For us, the family, the day is full of memories, pain and regret.

The public remembering of Malki's life will take place on Sunday late afternoon, deferred in accordance with tradition to a time other than the Sabbath.

At 6pm this Sunday, 5th August, at Jerusalem's Mt Tamir Cemetery, the families and friends of two girls, our daughter Malki Roth and her friend Michal Raziel will gather at the two side-by-side graves for a simple ceremony of remembrance, psalms and prayer.

Even if Malki's 15 years of life were personally unknown to you, even if her death was just another news report among many, please take a moment to read about our daughter and the things we try to do in her memory. You might start here.

We get a steady stream of hate mail to this blog - ugly, ignorant and boorish. (Everyone who writes in defence of Israel knows the experience.) We sometimes fantasize about what it would be like to take some of those know-nuttin' thuggish writers and walk them through the activities of the Malki Foundation and let them see how we work hard to help families who are caring for a child with serious special needs irrespective of whether they're Jewish, Moslem, Christian, Druze or anything else.

But we know it's not going to happen.

This is why it's so important for us to invite the good people - like you - to please visit the Foundation's website yourself and learn about our daughter's goodness, innocence, victimhood. Malki was not a special victim. Hundreds of children have died as deliberate victims of Palestinian Arabs on a mission from their god and his barbaric servants. But while Malki was like so many other innocents whose beautiful lives were stolen from us, this does not mean those who knew and loved her are content to let her fade away as just another statistic.

The Malki Foundation's work is entirely based on money provided by friends and supporters, and it's very well and carefully spent. If you have a few minutes, please start on this page, and if it makes sense to you then please become a supporter and please pass the message along.

Yehi zichra baruch. May the remembrance of Malki and her good deeds serve as a blessing. May her life, the life of her friend Michal and the lives of the hundreds of other innocent victims of the Arafat War never be lost in oblivion or in the pages of statistics.