30-Jul-10: Please remember our daughter today

According to the Hebrew calendar, the ninth anniversary of our daughter Malki's death starts at sundown on Friday 30th July 2010. Please consider honoring Malki's memory by playing her song and passing it along to your friends and friendly radio stations.

Our daughter Malka Chana Roth, murdered nine years ago today, at the age of 15

30-Jul-10: Firing on Ashkelon again

Eight civilians, residents of the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon (population about 120,000), suffered shock this morning when a Palestinian-Gazan-Arab jihadist Grad rocket landed in a populated area in the city, right next to a high-rise apartment building. The Chinese newsagency Xinhua reports that the rocket caused a huge explosion and damaged a building and several cars parking in the area. The Jerusalem Post says it landed in a central, residential area of Ashkelon. Numerous windows of the surrounding, multi-story buildings and vehicles in the area were shattered.
YNet says that an initial military estimate assesses that Hamas was not responsible for this rocket, which was fired from an open area near Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip.

But the Gazans were not done. A second explosion was heard in the Eshkol region in the past couple of hours (it’s now Friday afternoon). It appears two mortar shells landed in the area. Fortunately, there are no reports of injuries or damage.

The made-in-Russia-or-sometimes-China Grads are a deadly piece of military-grade equipment. Four of them have been fired from Gaza since the end of the Israeli Cast Lead operation in the Gaza Strip in early 2009; 3 exploded in Ashkelon and one in the vicinity of Gan Yavneh.

The BBC has given detailed and extensive coverage to today's multiple attacks.

Just kidding.

As of this hour (16:00 Israel time, on Friday) there's not a word about today's escalation of terrorism to be found anywhere on the very extensive Middle East pages of BBC World's website.

30-Jul-10: Once again, from the world's largest 'prison camp'

For most of us, most of the time the things we know about life in conflict zones are what the news media choose for us.

The military aspects of this ongoing war of terrorism - in particular the almost-entirely-unreported and incessant bombardment via rockets and missiles of Israeli civilian communities and homes by the jihadists of Gaza - are poorly understood by most people looking in from outside.

This is part of the reason why Israeli policies towards the Hamas regime's terrorists can be criticized so easily. The astonishingly unfounded speech by the new British prime minister speaking in Turkey this week pretty much captures what happens when you have a distorted, politically-motivated sense of the reality going on behind the Islamist curtain. [But only part of  the reason: the Financial Times report of his speech points out that the Cameron speech "won plaudits in Ankara after attacking Israel".]

Two weeks ago (on 17th July) the authoritative Egyptian daily Al-Ahram published a visitor's perceptions of life in Gaza. The startling impressions of Egyptian journalist Ashraf Abu Al-Houl, reporting on stores overflowing with goods, were published in Arabic only. But the excellent MEMRI organization that focuses on translating the Arabic media has now provided an English translation.

Some highlights:

A sense of absolute prosperity prevails, as manifested by the grand resorts along and near Gaza's coast. Further, the sight of the merchandise and luxuries filling the Gaza shops amazed me. Merchandise is sold more cheaply than in Egypt...

... Began my search for the truth regarding the siege in Rafah, at the Saturday market, which was loaded with large quantities of merchandise and products of various kinds – at prices mostly lower than in Egypt, particularly for food products. Nevertheless, there weren't many customers, and this for two reasons: One, supply is much greater than demand, and two, the workers were all waiting to get paid their wages. Business owner Abu Yousuf stood at his shop surrounded by hundreds of cans of food. Their price had dropped significantly in the past two months; in some cases by as much as 50%...

Despite the drop in price due to the plethora of goods in the Gaza markets, the residents sense that even lower prices are on the way, due to the easing of the Israeli blockade. The consumers are carefully watching prices, [particularly for] smuggled electrical appliances and cars, and refrain from buying, expecting that merchandise will arrive via the border crossings [leading to a further drop in prices]...

Several months ago, Gaza had only one luxury resort, Zahrat Al-Madain. Today, another one opens up every day, such as Crazy Water, Aqua Park, and Al-Bustan. Most of them are owned by members, or associates, of Hamas. In addition, the Hamas municipalities [also] charge high fees, in Gaza terms, for the use of public beaches.

The whole thing is here.

28-Jul-10: Is Gaza a huge prison camp? And does that explain the terror emanating from there?

David Frankfurter's blog addresses these questions, and in case you're out of patience (or bamboozled by the deeply disturbing statements made in Turkey yesterday by the new prime minister of the UK) the answers are no and no. Please read the whole piece.

26-Jul-10: Two Samarian incidents

Two small reminders of the enduring nature of this ongoing war, and what it means to confront terrorists.

This past Friday, as reported in Haaretz, a reserves unit of the IDF, patrolling near Nablus in an area controlled by the PA, encountered burning tires on the road. Experience of many such situations says look around, check who is in the area and take precautions. And indeed, figures were spotted hiding by the roadside. The soldiers quickly flanked and caught the group of men off guard and found they were equipped with handguns and fire bombs. After Shin Bet questioning they acknowledged their plan was/is to ambush passing Israelis and attack them with pistol fire and fire bombs.

The same day: a different incident and a separate report (APF this time). IDF soldiers are said to have fired on a Palestinian Arab acting supiciously inside the confines of the community of Barkan. The man was unarmed (it appears after the fact) and probably "only" trying to steal. Sadly, as happens in warfare conducted according to the rules of terror, the men with the guns and the men who only want to steal don't have flashing signs on their t-shirts announcing the difference. In a Jordanian account of the incident, there were two Palestinian Arab men, one of whom evidently was armed and who managed to flee after both men were warned to stop by the IDF but ignored the warning.

In the Barkan incident, Ghassan Khatib, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, said in an official statement that the dead man "was only suspected" of having a weapon on him, and he denounced what he called the Israeli army's "current practice of shoot now and ask questions later."

His advice to Israel in the case of the burning tires ambush the same day near Nablus was not recorded.

25-Jul-10: Rockets incoming, upgrading

Four rockets and two mortar shells fired into Israel - that was the total for one day, Saturday (yesterday), all of them fired from Gaza. The last of them, a rocket fired in the general direction of Nahal Oz tonight, appears (according to YNet) to have been manufactured by professionals, and probably imported into the Gaza Strip. The rocket had a diameter of 115 millimeters. Haaretz is quoting police sources saying they are investigating whether this is an example of a new kind of rocket available to the jihadist forces, capable of greater precision and likely originating in Iran.

UPDATE Monday 26-Jul-10
The Israel Air Force struck three targets in the Gaza Strip Sunday night [says YNet] including an arms factory in the northern Strip and two smuggling tunnels in the south. The military reported that precise hits were identified and all jets returned safely to their bases. There were no reports of injuries on the Palestinian side. The IDF Spokesperson's Unit said the assault came in response to the rockets and mortar shells fired at Israel over the weekend... "The IDF will not tolerate any attempt to harm citizens of the State of Israel or IDF soldiers and will continue to work determinedly and forcefully against any element operating terror against the State of Israel," the IDF statement said. "The IDF holds the Hamas terror organization solely responsible for the occurrences in the Gaza Strip and for maintaining calm there."

23-Jul-10: We heal their children, they murder us

An Israeli man who was three months away from marrying his fiancee was murdered by terrorists in mid June. We reported on it here:

Credit for the ambush and murder was claimed Monday evening by the Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the terror group that answers to Palestinian Authority prime minister Fayyad's boss, Mahmoud Abbas. Maan, a Fatah-connected news service, says the underlying cause was a need to exact retribution for the shooting deaths of nine Turkish nationals aboard an aid ship bound for Gaza. A competing claim was put in (according to the Jerusalem Post) by an unknown group calling itself, absurdly, the Flotilla Martyrs. They released a statement saying they refuse to recognize any cease-fire and they vow to continue their attacks. [As if there has ever been peace during this ongoing war.]

We now know who killed Yehoshua Sofer. The details are here: "Israel Treats Palestinian Cancer Patient, Father Goes on Terror Rampage".

Short version: Once again, it turns out to have been Hamas. One of the leaders of the terror cell had the privilege, just two weeks before carrying out the murder, of having his six-year-old child hospitalized in the world-famous Hadassah Medical Center here in Jerusalem. There she had a cancerous tumor removed from her eye - the family was not asked to pay for the medical procedure. It was funded by an Israeli benevolent organization. The child's life was immeasurably benefited by Israeli kindness, Israeli medicine, Israeli technology and Israeli philanthropy. Her father, a barbarian/jihadist driven by hatred, and repaid the way he knew best, the way his culture and society prepared him.

Anyone wanting to understand this ongoing war and about Hamas, about the murder, about the events before it and about the fundamental differences between the victims of terror and terror's practitioners can learn a lot from what happened here. For years, as a family that has unfortunately spent a very great amount of time in Jerusalem's pediatric hospital wards, we have suggested to outsiders wanting to get some real insight to pick a hospital, any hospital, anywhere in Israel, and walk into the pediatric ward. We urge them to watch to see how many Palestinian Arab and other Arab patients are treated there, and how. We tell them they may find this is all they need in order to understand this ongoing war.

At Shuki Sofer's funeral, his inconsolable fiancee said this:

"My heart is exploding darling. You don't know. It cannot contain this much pain. Who will tell me he loves me more than he loves himself? I didn't say it enough. I love you and I always will."

23-Jul-10: Whom does The Guardian guard? And why?

Occasionally, the active role taken by reporters, editors and newspapers in soft-pedaling the terrorism that afflicts so many lives in this area (and specifically the lives of my wife and children and me) is so outrageous that you need to take a slow breath and start thinking about what to do about it. The British newspaper The Guardian provides a case in point today.

Though she's said to be based in Jerusalem where we live, we don't claim to know Harriet Sherwood. Hers is the name on this scandalous piece of agenda-pushing. She may be a nice and balanced individual with a commitment to objective reporting. Or she might be someone with strong political views that animate the reporting she writes in the pages of this influential paper. Let's look.

Start with the headline, which a Guardian sub-editor presumably contributed. Notice the word militant, which is British journalistic code for terrorist, is in quotation marks. Why? We already know many politically-motivated news channels malevolently propagate the notion that the Israelis kill innocents and cover this up by claiming they were terrorists. Is that what happened here? No, it's not. The terrorist group called Islamic Jihad claimed this dead man as one of theirs. A Maan Palestinian newsagency report today (it's here) reports that Islamic Jihad said he died while performing a "Jihadist mission". We should believe them.

The only doubt about whether the dead man was a terrorist is in the minds of The Guardian's people. That is not how news should be reported.

The article gives this context:

Following the three-week war in Gaza in 2008-9, the Israelis established a 300m-wide "buffer zone" on Palestinian land abutting the hi-tech security fence that marks the border. The aim was to prevent militants from firing rockets into Israel or launching attacks on military posts. Palestinians were warned that anyone entering the buffer zone would be shot dead. The zone has swallowed 30% of Gaza's arable agricultural land, and many farmers have been forced to abandon their crops.

A 300m wide no-go strip, and that's 30% of Gaza's arable land. Meaning Gaza's arable land is a strip one kilometer wide. Really? Does The Guardian send its fact-checkers home when reporting on the 'desperation' and 'misery' behind Palestinian Arab lines? Has it reported on this week's opening of a luxurious shopping mall in Gaza? [Clue: no.]

A little more context:

Rocket fire from Gaza into Israel has dramatically fallen since the 2008-9 war, although there are still sporadic attacks by militant groups other than Hamas. 

Sporadic? The dictionary definition is "recurring in scattered and irregular or unpredictable instances". An official talley [it's here] reports all the terrorist attacks emanating from (among others) the Gazan nest of vipers and says this about the month of June 2010 alone:

The Gaza Strip – 34 attacks (as opposed to 32 last month): 13 rocket launchings, 9 mortar shell launchings, 7 light arms shootings, 2 AT launchings, and 3 explosive devices attacks.

An attack a day, day after day, at least for the past two months. (March was worse.) Daily attacks - is that sporadic? If not, and it's not, what could Harriet Sherwood and the editors of The Guardian be thinking when they write that we're down to "sporadic" attacks? And if they are sporadic, does this somehow mean incoming rocket attacks - barely reported in the pages of The Guardian, by the way - need to be tolerated or perhaps overlooked by Israelis? Does it mean the terrorists who tell you in their own words they're on a jihad mission should be invited in and perhaps interviewed so we can understand their inner freedom fighter?

Getting these critically important issues about terrorism wrong, which is what The Guardian and so many other guardians (of the barbarians) do daily, is an essential part of the onslaught by the terrorists. Shame on The Guardian and its staff.

UPDATE Friday 23-Jul-10 at 15:20: And here is how the BBC treats the same set of facts. Note the entirely-neutral character imparted to the story via the headline. Neutral, that is, unless you're in the cross-hairs of the terrorists. The British are, though they pretend not to know it. We are and we're very, very aware of it. The question is: do the editors of the BBC know the dead man was a terrorist on a terrorist mission, when did they know it, and why is this not worthy of being in the headline?

20-Jul-10: Protecting the lives of ordinary people... who happen to be Arabs

It's not often that the plans of exquisitely-armed terror groups can be anticipated and potentially even overturned. But that possibility has arisen in our neighbourhood and those who stand to benefit the most are our Arab neighbours.

In a thought-provoking essay carried in today's Wall Street Journal, Dr. Stephen P. Cohen of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development (which set up the first secret official negotiations between Israel and the PLO involving Arafat and Peres back in the nineties) argues that the life-threatening actions of one of the world's major terrorist organizations can be thwarted - if only the states in the area choose to do so.
His article is called "Preventing the Next Lebanon", and Cohen makes some cogent observations about the past and present Lebanons:

Israel recently embarked on an extraordinary form of deterrence against the possibility of a second Hizbullah war. Instead of engaging in a pre-emptive military strike, the Israeli military launched a public relations offensive. It publicized highly detailed intelligence maps and aerial photographs depicting exactly where Hizbullah constructs and maintains missile and rocket caches, as well as command centers. These maps show that Hizbullah's bases are located in villages in southern Lebanon near the Israeli border, in very close proximity to schools and hospitals. Its weapons are aimed at Israeli cities and civilian targets. If these missiles were to be launched, Israel would be required to defend its population by destroying the missile emplacements and depots. Because of its deliberate placement of these weapons, Hizbullah is condemning Shiite villages to destruction. Israel is offering the governments of Syria, Lebanon and their Arab supporters, as well as world policy-makers, an opportunity to protect Arab lives instead of blaming Israel after the fact for what can be prevented.

The whole article is here (needs WSJ subscription).

Just how serious is the Hizbullah threat to Israelis? The terrorists on our northern border have the ability (see Jerusalem Post analysis) to fire some 800 rockets into Israel on each day of the next war... and possibly many more than that, given that they have 40,000 rockets in their arsenal, deployed in some 160 villages scattered throughout southern Lebanon.

How this looks in just one of those villages is graphically depicted in an IDF video, recently declassified and now available for anyone who wants to comprehend:




This video is part of a file of evidence handed by Israeli diplomats to diplomats from several countries, and to the new Spanish commander of UNIFIL, Maj.-Gen. Alberto Asarta Cuevas.

A terrorist organization equipped with 40,000 missiles cannot be stopped, period.

So what is the government of the country that is the target of all that hatred to do? The answer is clear: you do something really devastating, because you have absolutely no choice. The terrorists and their arsenals, with the full knowledge and complicity of the authorities in Beirut, are implanted deeply among civilian settlements in Lebanese territory. Any response by Israel to a rain of incoming rockets will exact Lebanese vast numbers of lives and bring massive destruction - arguably the response of which the jihadists dream. And the rockets will keep coming. Israelis will not tolerate being at Ground Zero of Nassrallah's plans. So Israel will do what its technology allows it to do.

Better our neighbours should comprehend this before the Hizbollah doomsday scenario evolves beyond the point of no return.

16-Jul-10: Experts: Time Square Bomber Acted Alone. Reality: They Wish

Petraeus: Faisal Shahzad Acted Alone

Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, said in a statement Friday to The Associated Press that alleged bomber Faisal Shahzad was inspired by militants in Pakistan but didn't necessarily have direct contact with them. [Associated Press and Huffington Post]

Faisal Shahzad acted alone, says UN envoy Hussain Haroon

Faisal Shahzad, the main accused of the failed car bombing in New York City’s Times Square, is a “misguided soul” who acted alone, Pakistani Ambassador to the UN Hussain Haroon said on Tuesday. The ambassador made these remarks while giving an interview to CBS Television. [Pakistan Daily News]

Times Square car bomb: authorities believe Faisal Shahzad acted alone

A law enforcement official said that authorities don't believe there are any other US suspects in the plot and that several arrests in Pakistan in the past two days were not related. [Telegraph UK]

Times Square bomb plotter Faisal Shahzad seems to be 'lone wolf' with no terror contacts: Petraeus

Faisal Shahzad apparently was "a lone wolf" who never had direct contact with militants in his homeland of Pakistan, Gen. David Petraeus told The Associated Press. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, said there was no indication that Shahzad worked with others in concocting the terror attack or the homemade bomb. [NY Daily News]

Lone wolf? Acting alone? Not so much.

Here's a video he produced in the lead up to his jihadist assault on Times Square, New York City.



The Al Arabiya news network released the video in the past week. In it, the failed murderer speaks of his lust for  revenge. And when he appeared in front of U.S. District Judge Miriam Cedarbaum on 22nd June, he made fairly plain what he set out to do, why and in whose company, according to this AP report:

"One has to understand where I'm coming from," he said in an unusual departure from tightly scripted guilty pleas, with his defense attorney and prosecutors sitting in silence in federal court in Manhattan. "I consider myself ... a Muslim soldier... I am part of the answer to the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people. And, on behalf of that, I'm avenging the attack."

You can understand why it's comforting for US officials, diplomats and UN bureaucrats to think of the Shahzad's of this world as lone wolves, acting alone, inspired by some personal, private spark. Or at least to pretend publicly that they're thinking that way.

Sadly, crucially, terrorism is not like that. It attracts hordes of would-be jihadists. It takes planning and resources. It's driven by hatred. And it's not going away. On the contrary.

16-Jul-10: Gazan rocket lands on Gazans (again)

Unreported, other than in the margins of Israeli (only) news channels, yet another Gazan jihadist rocket intended to destroy something, anything, Jewish, fell short last night, Thursday, and crashed into an anonymous part of the Gaza Strip, according to YNet. This Israeli source says it landed in the vicinity of the El Bureij refugee camp, located in central Gaza.

The litany of self-inflicted misery of the Gazans, exemplified by Tuesday's prominent New York Times piece "Trapped by Gaza Blockade, Locked in Despair", somehow never extends to referring to the Hamas rockets that land on Gazan homes. They're a routine aspect of life in the jihadosphere, another unreported dimension of this ongoing war, and further evidence - if we needed it - that the very last thing occupying the minds of the terrorists is the well-being of their own people.

As another instance (among many, many others):

Unidentified assailants riding a motorcycle threw a hand grenade into a YMCA building in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, a local human rights group reported... Shrapnel from the grenade spread over a playground connected to the central Gaza City facility... Police have opened an investigation into the attack... The same building has come under attack before... in February 2008 in which unknown persons detonated explosives in the building's library."

The building is under Christian auspices. The news report is Palestinian. The impact is zero - it's essentially unreported meaning, for all practical purposes, it never happened.

15-Jul-10: Cutting through the disinformation: what really happened with that Turkish flotilla?

This video, produced in Israel as part of the official Israeli process of trying to understand what really happened with the Turkish flotilla incident last month, reviews the events using an animated timeline.

The official backgrounder says:

"The events leading up to and throughout the flotilla incident are recounted in the video, as presented by the team of experts led by Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland in the IDF's internal inquiry... The video [describes] the various ships in the flotilla and the courses of their attempted journey to the Gaza Strip, as well as the number and extent of Israeli response ships, aircraft, and absorption center for the ships' passengers. The video also outlines the orders given to the IDF soldiers boarding the flotilla ships, including the policy of using gradual force, and using live weapons only in life threatening scenarios."

There are plenty of people out there who will cling tight to their claims of an Israeli bloodbath and to the fantasy of the Turkish fleet being populated by peaceful idealists. This will not persuade them to think differently. But for the rest of us, it's a valuable and authentic look at the facts behind the claims.

9-Jul-10: One small life-changing event illustrates 4 things to know about how terrorism works

First the facts, based on a report by Hillel Fendel and Gil Ronen on the website of Israel National News.

The location: the entrance to the small, rural Jewish community of Ma'ale Levona, located in the southern Samarian hills, in the general vicinity of Eli, Shiloh and Ariel. About ninety families live there. It's the site of the first of the victories of the Maccabees two thousand years ago. And each year they host a colorful sheep-sheering event based on Jewish tradition.

The time: a day and a half ago, Wednesday, around noon. A young woman driving out of the town, her baby strapped safely into the back seat of the car, sees a young man by the side of the road, finger pointing outwards in the traditional hitchhiker's way, clearly looking for a ride. His head-covering (we call it a yarmulkeh) and backpack indicate he's probably a student in one of the schools for advanced Jewish learning, or yeshivot, that dot the area. The driver pulls over to offer a ride.

Only he's not a yeshiva boy. He's a Palestinian Arab with terrorism on his feverish mind. As the driver pulls over, he grabs the door of her car and opens it fiercely, spraying the surprised young woman with mace or tear-gas. She's unable to see, but she manages to stop the engine, jump out and do the thing that seems most urgent at that moment: grab for her baby in the back seat so that she can do whatever a person does to protect loved ones in the presence of a religiously-inspired jihadist.

The terrorist dives for the driver's seat and tries to start up the car but like almost every vehicle in this country, it's protected by an immobilizer and code. She has the baby in her arms, and he can't make good on his escape plan. So he cuts and runs for the hills. Police and emergency service personnel arrive. By the time they do, the "hero" has fled into the dust and rocks and villages and is unlikely to be found until he tries this again - which he almost certainly will.

(There was a similar attempt at the same place four years ago where the Arab terrorists (two of them) were armed and the targets were two ninth-grade girls waiting for a ride. That resulted in a successful arrest at a security checkpoint a few kilometers down the road.)

Some things about this report that we want to share:

1. Terrorism of this sort is almost never reported anywhere. Outside of Israel, you need to read blogs of a certain kind to know anything at all about this. Or about the many similar ongoing attacks that characterize this ongoing war. If it's never reported, then - as far as public opinion and policy makers go - it never happened. That's lesson number one.

2. A young mother in a car is a prime target, a perfect fit for a Palestinian Arab terrorist. Just like fuel depots, munitions factories and missile emplacements are, only mothers are much, much easier to hit and less well defended and the others on the list actually never are the targets. Woman plus child is precisely the kind of target for which they train. Young mothers, in this ongoing war, are never the collateral damage, or in the wrong place at the wrong time. They are the targets. And if there is a baby in the picture, that's (literally) a bonus. Lesson number two.

3. This sort of quiet, barely-noticed, violence, and its propensity to easily become lethal, characterizes the day-to-day security dangers that confront Israelis building constructive lives in the land where their ancestors lived. Ma'ale Levona and places like it (hundreds of them) will have movies made about it at some peaceful future point. It's neither a colony nor an outpost -- not for Jews. It's been in the chronicles of the Jewish people for longer than North America has had towns and cities.

4. The presence of an educated and educating community of young, energetic working families on a rocky hilltop (see the picture) could, under the right circumstances, be to the great advantage of the Beduins and other Arabs living in the tiny impoverished villages over the horizon, and might still be. They bring resources, and take virtually nothing. But the harsh reality is that from the time Zionist Jews began re-establishing towns and communities a century ago in the barren Jewish heartland, resentment and envy have characterised the way the neighbours viewed them. There have been murderous attacks on Jewish communities in the Jewish homeland (like the one on Wednesday and the thousands before it) for more than one hundred years. And by the way, terrorism was never, and is not, an answer to occupation and is entirely disconnected from it. Occupation is an invented concept that applies well to the British in Africa, to the Americans in Okinawa, to the French and the Belgians and the Italians and the Spaniards (and the list goes on) in their various colonies. It has zero application to the Jews in Israel.

9-Jul-10: The unbearable ordinariness of terrorist threats to ordinary people

As the summer travel season gets into full swing, there's yet another reminder of the growing role of terror in the lives of ordinary people.

An official “concrete, high risk” warning of terrorist attacks directed against ordinary Israeli civilians was made some hours ago by Israel's National Security Council Counter-Terrorism Bureau. Its general advisory warns all Israelis traveling abroad to increase their customary alertness, particularly businesspersons and Israelis who previously served in public service roles. They're all targets, "at a high risk for kidnapping or murder” according to the dry government office statement.

The background is that Hizbullah is reliably reported to be seeking vengeance against Israelis for the demise of the notorious terrorist mastermind Imad Mugniyeh in 2008. In addition, the Iranian regime blames Israel for the untimely passing of one of its nuclear scientists.

Things are not altogether better for Israelis staying home for the holidays. Statistics just released for the month of June show the number of terror attacks in Israel reaching 62, about the same as the number for May (63 attacks). June's data show a decline in terror attacks in the Jerusalem area (7 in June, 14 in May), but an increase in terror originating in the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip (34 in June, 32 in May). Terror in Judea/Samaria rose to the level of 21 attacks in June (17 in May). June's Israeli victims of terrorism include a soon-to-be-married police officer killed and 2 others injured in a South Mt. Hebron area drive-by shooting; and two Border Police officers injured when attacked by a man-and-his-motor-vehicle attack in Jerusalem.

2-Jul-10: Ambivalence, befuddlement and confusion; how they empower the terrorists and their allies

 
They are the ABC of understanding terrorism and its ugly proliferation everywhere: ambivalence, befuddlement and confusion.

Under the heading "Anti-Semitic juries in the UK may start decriminalising crimes committed against Israeli interests", Robin Shepherd's blog today brings an appalling story of judicial mendacity, hypocrisy, politically-correct wrong-headedness and self-defeating British stupidity. He is the director for international affairs at the Henry Jackson Society in London, and previously Moscow Bureau Chief for The Times of London. Shepherd's key areas of expertise are transatlantic relations, American foreign policy, Middle Eastern (particularly Israeli) relations with the West, Russia, central and eastern Europe, NATO and the European Union.
He begins this important article with a quotation from eminent Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz who has spoken about Israel’s predicament in the tribunals of international law. It is analogous, Dershowitz argues, to

"the position that black people faced in the American south of the 1930s. The legal system would work fine in judging a case between a white man and another white man. A black man facing another black man may get a lesser degree of justice due to the insouciance of the system, but a reasonable degree of fairness could still be expected. Put a white man against a black man, however, and the black man never stood a chance due to the weight of the prejudices against him."

Shepherd points out that analogies with America in the 1930s are no longer necessary. Britain and its legal system are producing events that, on their own, embody the bigotry against Israel that has become thoroughly embedded in contemporary British society. "Juries have begun to acquit criminals merely if they can show that they acted against Israeli interests," he points out. "No other defence is necessary... "

Here's some evidence:

It transpired in a case involving five defendants who had broken into the EDO MBM owned arms factory in January 2009 at the time of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. The five admitted breaking into the factory — which was exporting military equipment at the time to Israel — and causing £180,000 ($275,000) worth of damage. Despite actually admitting to an offence that would usually carry a substantial jail sentence, the jury acquitted them, accepting their defence that although they had committed a crime they were doing so in order to prevent the greater offence of Israeli “war crimes”. The Judge in the case, George Bathurst-Norman, was quite explicit in his summing up for the jury in encouraging them to employ their political prejudices against Israel in their decision:
“You may well think that hell on earth would not be an understatement of what the Gazans suffered in that time,” the Guardian quoted him as saying. As the Guardian goes on to say: “The judge highlighted the testimony by Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, that “all democratic paths had been exhausted” before the activists embarked on their action... Bigotry (says Shepherd) does not merely cause pain and suffering to its victims, it degrades its perpetrators from within. The rule of law itself is now under threat in Great Britain, and judges and juries are applauding as it goes."

We agree with Shepherd when he sadly observes that "the hysterical campaign against the state of Israel is not merely resulting in gross injustice against the Middle East’s only western-style democracy, it is undermining western-style democracy at home."

All democratic paths had been exhausted: now there's a powerful justification for violence, vandalism and wanton destruction of someone else's property. Especially when it's a parliamentarian articulating it.

The brilliant Melanie Phillips captures the sense of this with characteristic punch:

Let’s get our heads round this, folks: an English judge in an English court of law effectively directed a jury to acquit people of criminally smashing up a factory, because he chose to believe Hamas propaganda about the suffering of people in Gaza during a war about which he presumably has no knowledge whatever apart from what he has read or seen in the media – a war, moreover, launched solely to prevent Gazans from aggressively firing rockets into Israel in order to murder its civilians, but during the course of which Israel went to heroic lengths to avoid hurting Gazan civilians who were being put in harm’s way by Hamas, the real cause of their 'hell on earth'. 

Elder of Ziyon points out that there is something precious about the "war is hell" judicial reasoning here:

It is possible that war is not hell when Angola purchases 30 million Pounds worth of armored vehicles from the UK. It is possible that war is not hell when the UK sends 180 tons of arms to genocidal Sudan. It is possible that war is not hell when BAE alone sells 43 billion Pounds worth of arms contracts since 2005 to Saudi Arabia, which is currently fighting in Yemen and enforcing a strangling blockade through which no food or medicine is permitted to pass. It is possible that war is not hell when the UK sells weapons to Iraq, or when UK planes bomb Iraqi cities. It is possible that war is not hell when the UK sells weapons to Pakistan, and when Pakistan sought to acquire nuclear weapons (see below). It is possible that war is not hell when the UK sells weapons to Sri Lanka (thousands of Tamil civilians indiscriminately slaughtered by the Sri Lankan armed forces...)

Hell? That's reserved for when Israelis defend themselves from armed-to-the-teeth terrorists.

Relative to the decision itself and the apathy with which British society greeted it, it's a matter of minor significance, but ler's have a glance at this judge. George Bathurst-Norman jailed a man for 3 months in 2003 for decapitating a statue of Margaret Thatcher. In that decision (thanks again to Elder of Ziyon):

... the judge said that although many people sympathized with the man, smashing up property deserved a custodial sentence. In 2001, he handed down a "remarkably lenient" sentence to  Abu Bakr Siddiqui, one of the procurement agents of the A.Q. Khan nuclear tech smuggling network, facilitating Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and the nuclear weapons programs of such rogue states including North Korea and Iran.

Of course, one hypocritical and agenda-driven judge does not mean the British judicial hierarchy is under threat. But wilful silence on the part of politicians, pundits and human rights activists? Now that's a danger that ought to bekeeping our British friends awake at nights.