Social media sites like Facebook have enabled features for people to post whether they are safe when a particular crisis hits. It is meant as a quick tool to alert friends and families in real-time that one has escaped tragedy.
When war strikes Israel – especially on a holiday – Jews around the world await the pain of loss.
The popular Palestinian Arab political-terrorist group Hamas launched a massive attack against Israel while Jews celebrated the end of their holidays celebrating the Torah. This year, the two-day religious observance of Shemini Azeret/ Simchat Torah in the diaspora outside of Israel, coincided with the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Hamas deployed thousands of missiles and militants into Israel to mark the day in a new war.
As horrible news leaked into synagogues about the war in Israel over the holiday, many Orthodox Jews had to wait until Sunday night to learn about the status of friends and family inside the Jewish holy land, as they do not use any electronic devices over the holiday.
A friend’s son serving in the army killed.
A friend’s cousin taken hostage.
A friend’s best friend killed.
A friend’s child’s roommate killed.
Each frantic call and review of social media was one of trauma.
There are few Jews in the world. While there are 8 billion people who are at most six degrees of separation from any other person, the 15 million Jews are at most two degrees of separation for one another. When hundreds of Jews are murdered, everyone is touched. Everyone mourns.
The Hamas website, which operated openly for years proclaiming its war against the Jewish State, was blocked as it posted videos of its grisly operation killing and kidnapping civilians. Its effort to let Jews know that they are never safe was viewed as too cruel to be given air at this time.
Palestinians pose with the Palestinian flag on an Israeli tank that was destroyed in an attack launched by Hamas on October 7. Behind the tank, the fence separating Gaza from Israel can be seen as destroyed, allowing more inflitrations. Photo: Hani Alsahaer/Anadolu Agency)
But information slowly dribbles in. And it continues to be horrific.
In addition to the over 700 dead are over 100 who have been taken captive, spread throughout the terrorist enclave of Gaza. Children as young as three. Wheelchair-bound Holocaust survivors.
The scale of the loss of life is difficult to comprehend. The number of hostages taken means that the current dangerous situation will be present for a long time.
There is no hashtag for Jews to mark themselves safe, nor an emoji to relay the deep pain at the loss of life and trauma felt for friends trapped at the center of evil.
As Jews around the world wait for bad news, they assess the actions each can take to seize the day from the implacable foe.
ACTION ITEM
Write White House “Support Israel. Cut all funding to Palestinians immediately.”
Tor Wennesland, the Arab puppet who works under the title United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, gave his highly biased remarks to the UN Security Council on September 27. It showcased his protection of the increasingly dangerous Palestinian terrorist society.
During the reporting period June 15 to September 19, Palestinian Arabs in the “West Bank” killed ten Israelis, while Israeli “settlers” in the region killed two Palestinians. The whopping FIVE TIMES more murders by Arabs did not seem to register, as Wennesland voiced “I am disturbed by the high levels of settler-related violence,” but never specifically called out the more frequent and lethal Arab violence.
As alarming, for the seventh time this year, Palestinians in the West Bank launched rockets at Israelis, with the latest one towards the Israeli town of Ram On located near the 1949 Armistice Lines. Wennesland grossly minimized the attack saying Palestinians “attempted and failed to launch an improvised rocket”, making the grotesque attempt at mass murder sound like a harmless childish prank.
The rocket attacks were launched by yet another new Palestinian terror group called al-Ayyash, joining the Lion’s Den and Jenin Battalion which formed over the past two years. The number of guns and advanced weaponry now being deployed by the various terrorist groups is making 2023 the most deadly year for Israelis in several years.
Still, the UN did not condemn Palestinian actions nor call for a crack down on incitement and terror. Instead, it asked countries for donations to send to these same Palestinians, and urged for evictions of all Jewish civilians from their homes in the West Bank.
It’s working.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said “the sharp rise in violence by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinians is also deeply alarming,” but didn’t similarly call out the greater number of Palestinian Arab murderers. She then added that the United States supports the antisemitic policies and desires of the Palestinian Authority to ban Jews from living in the “West Bank” and from praying at their holiest location on the Jewish Temple Mount. For good measure, she added that the U.S. is “pleased to announce nearly $73 million in additional contributions to UNRWA.”
If the UN’s vision of a peace process absolves Arabs of crimes against humanity while endorsing the ethnic cleansing of half a million Jews from their biblical homeland, the entire global body is clearly morally defective. It should be stripped of all funding and shuttered outright, not just its specialized projects for Palestinians.
The Holocaust-denying Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas took center stage at the United Nations General Assembly on September 21, 2023. As in years past, he stood by the “martyrs” who kill Israeli Jews.
I pay tribute to our righteous martyrs, our brave prisoners, and our heroic injured people
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas before the UNGA September 21, 2023
Who are these “righteous martyrs” that Abbas extolls?
Mohammad Nasser Tra’ayra, 17. Mohammad broke into the home of Israeli-American Hallel Yaffa Ariel, aged 13, and stabbed her to death while she slept. The popular political-terrorist Hamas which controls 58% of the Palestinian parliament, praised the murder of the Jewish youth, calling it “heroic.” Mohammed had posted on Facebook before the attack that he wanted to become a “martyr.” His mother praised her son as a martyr for Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and encouraged others to follow in his footsteps. His uncle, Rajeh Tarayreh, told The Associated Press that the family was hosting a celebration that’s a tradition for every “martyr” killed by Israel — including accepting visitors offering congratulations. Mohammed’s family now gets a $350 a month stipend as payment for his matrydom.
Hallel Yaffa Ariel, aged 13, murdered while she slept by a Palestinian “martyr”
I salute our glorious martyrs and our courageous prisoners in Israeli jails.
Hassan Qatanani, 35. Hassan and his partner in crime, Muaath Masri, shot up a car carrying some British-Israeli women and killed them: Lucy Dee, 48, and two of her daughters Maia Dee (20) and Rina Dee (15). The Israeli Defense Forces subsequently tracked Hassan and his evil band and killed them in a firefight. Hassan’s mother spoke on Palestinian TV and said “He loved martyrdom. He would say to me, day and night, ‘Mom, I want to be martyred.’ He would kiss my hand and say: ‘Pray to Allah that I will be martyred‘… Praise be to Allah for granting him what he wanted… [We] cannot accept what the Jews did to us. We should fight them with our children, with our money, with our families, with our fingernails. We should devour the Jews with our teeth… The Jews are our enemy from beginning to end.” Thousands of Palestinians took part in the funeral of the three murderers.
Lucy Dee and her daughters murdered while they were driving on vacation, by a Palestinian “martyr”
Diaa Hamarsheh, 26. Diaa went into Bnei Brak armed with an M-16 assault rifle and shot and killed five people. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of PA President Abbas’s political party, Fatah, claimed responsibility. His aunt said “We are sad that he is gone and not with us anymore, but at the same time, we are happy that he is a martyr. What he did is not something that anyone is capable of doing. Not everyone possesses this kind of courage.” The Quds News Network posted on its Facebook page about “Palestinian martyr Diaa Hamarsheh.”
Aunt of Diaa Hamarsheh, a “martyr” who went to Tel Aviv with an M-16 to kill as many Jews as possible
All glory to the righteous martyrs of the Palestinian people who enlightened the path of freedom and independence with their pure blood.
Nasser Abu Hmeid. In 2002, Nasser, the right-hand man to arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti, was convicted of murdering seven Israelis — Eliyahu Cohen, Binyamin and Talia Kahane, Gad Rejwan, Yosef Habi, Eli Dahan and Salim Barakat — in a number of terror attacks during the Second Intifada that he either personally carried out or directed from afar. He was also convicted of 12 counts of attempted murder and a number of other security-related charges. He had also previously been found guilty of murdering five Palestinians who collaborated with Israel in 1990 but was released a few years later as part of the Oslo Accords. PA President Abbas glorified Nasser at the United Nations in 2022 saying that they teach Palestinian children that “the heroic prisoner Nasser Abu Hmaid and his companions that dawn is coming, and it is time for their chains to be broken. Greetings from me and our entire people to all our heroic martyrs and families. I salute from this podium Nasser’s mother, the mother of prisoners and martyrs.”
If we had a single penny left, we would spend it on the families of the martyrs and the prisoners, and only then on the rest of the people…. We consider the martyrs and the prisoners to be stars in the sky of the Palestinian people and struggle. They have top priority in everything.
Khalil Jabarin, 17. Khalil stabbed and killed Israeli-American Ari Fuld who was talking on his phone outside of a store. PA Prisoner Affairs’ Commission spokesman Hassan Abd Rabbo confirmed that the Jabarin family was “eligible to receive a monthly salary of $390” under the PA’s Pay-to-Slay scheme. On September 18, 2023, a lawyer for the Fuld family said that “the Palestinian Authority doubled the monthly salary it pays the terrorist murderer of Ari Fuld, [of blessed memory], from $522 to $1,044.”
A few months earlier, on July 18, 2023, fifty members of the U.S. Congress signed a bi-partisan letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken to push the Palestinian Authority to stop paying terrorists a bounty for killing Israeli Jews. The letter noted that “For some Palestinians, terrorism literally pays. As you know, the Palestinian Authority has for decades provided financial compensation and other benefits to families of terrorists jailed in Israeli prisons and “martyrs” killed while carrying out attacks against Israelis. These payments cost the PA more than $300 million annually, at 8% of its budget.”
PA will not stop the transfer of funds…. President Abbas made it clear that the Palestinian Authority will not stop funding the families of our martyrs, even if we are down to the last penny.
Arafat Irafaiya, 29. Arafat raped and killed Ori Ansbacher, 19, in the Ein Yael forest in the outskirts of Jerusalem. He said “I entered Israel with a knife because I wanted to become a martyr and murder a Jew, I met the girl by chance.”
Ori Ansbacher, 19, killed by a Palestinian man who wanted to become a “martyr” by killing a Jew
Every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure, every martyr will reach paradise, and every injured person will be rewarded by God.
Bashar Masalha, 22. Bashar went on a stabbing spree against tourists walking near the beach at the Jaffa port, killing American Taylor Force who was on vacation. Official Palestinian Authority TV called him a “martyr” eleven times during his funeral. A reporter explained that his funeral was a “large national wedding befitting of Martyrs.”
these terrorists are not, in fact, lone rangers, they are not lone wolves acting from their independent hatred. Instead, these terrorists are the product of the programming done by the PA’s perverted culture that glorifies the willingness to die or to spend time in prison in pursuit of killing or maiming Israelis. The PA programmed this hate. These financial rewards are the main way they accomplish this.
Palestinian Arabs are at the vanguard of antisemitism and terrorism against Jews, so programmed and prodded by their leadership. These same evil leaders are then afforded the global stage to ask the world to join them in their mission.
The only question is whether it’s the Palestinians or the United Nations which is more morally corrupt.
The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutteres is concerned when armed parties might use lethal force. He has frequently urged that ‘utmost restraint’ be exercised by two warring parties like Lebanon and Israel (2021), and when a government confronts unarmed civilians, such as Iran confronting demonstrators (2022) and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan (2021).
In only one situation has the UNSG urged ‘utmost restraint’ when fighting terrorists: Israel fighting Palestinian Arab terrorism, as he did after an Arab terrorist killed seven Jews outside of a synagogue on a Sabbath in Jerusalem (2023).
Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue (photo: FirstOneThrough)
The Palestinian leadership expressed outrage and asked the UN to intervene. U.S. members of Congress Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) said that “more guns lead to more deaths,” with Bowman adding that he would urge the United States to restrict military aid to Israel if armed guards located at synagogues resulted in any Arab deaths over the Jewish holy days.
Josh Earnest, spokesperson for former President Obama noted that Jews in Jerusalem “provoke tensions“, while The New York Times referred to those Jews as “right-wing settlers.” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas decried the entire situation of Israel trying to “Judaize” Jerusalem with “Talmudic rituals.”
Meanwhile, though Israel limited access for Jews to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem during Islamic holidays even when it overlapped with Jewish holidays, the Jewish State has not announced any restrictions on Arab movement in Jerusalem during the Jewish holiday season which have no Islamic holidays. Amnesty International declared Israel to be an ‘apartheid‘ regime privileging Jews anyway.
The UN’s Gutteres issued a statement in time for the holidays telling Israel to “exercise restraint and use only proportional force and the duty to minimize damage and injury and respect and preserve human life,” when confronting potential jihadi terrorists at synagogues. That includes only fighting Arab assailants with knives and meat cleavers if those are the weapons the terrorists choose.
The Israeli government opted to quote former Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin over the global concern and threats over Israel defending Jews praying in synagogues during the holidays: “A Jew must learn to defend himself. He must forever be prepared for whenever threat looms…. The world may not necessarily like the fighting Jew, but the world will have to take account of him.”
The failure to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict is because the local Arabs refuse to accept the presence of Jews and believe that the Jewish State will eventually disappear. With such orientation, there is virtually no Palestinian interest in peace talks, and popular support is around “resistance” by “any means necessary” to rid the land of Jews.
Meaning, to kill them, or enough of them to make the rest scared enough to leave.
For those interested in resolving the conflict, Palestinian society must be instilled with basic truths:
Jews are indigenous to the holy land
Two Jewish Temples stood in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount
The land of Israel is, and always has been, central to Judaism
Jews are not going to leave; this is their homeland
These truths do not negate (or should not) negate a Palestinian narrative that they are also native to the land and have lived there for generations. However, it replaces the extremist vitriol prevalent among Palestinian leadership, radical imams, college professors (like Columbia University’s Joseph Massad) and the B.D.S. movement which are built on the foundation of antisemitism in advancing anti-Zionism.
In addition to reiterating these facts, governments and the United Nations need to take clear steps to advance peace:
Unequivocally support the Jewish State in fighting terror
Unequivocally condemn the recruiting, training, arming and using children as terrorists
Clearly label Hamas as not only an Islamic militant group but a designated terrorist group, no different than the Taliban, ISIL and Boko Haram
Palestine will be unwelcome to speak at the United Nations unless it ceases funding and inciting terrorist activities
Support Jews peacefully accessing and praying at their holiest site on the Temple Mount, a fundamental human right (reject the “status quo”)
Repeal UN Security Council Resolution 2334 which made it illegal for Jews – and only Jews – to live throughout their homeland
As long as the UN continues to waffle – and contradict – these moral points, Palestinians will continue to reject coexistence and pursue terrorism against Jews. The local Arabs believe that Hamas’s terrorism got Israel to leave Gaza in 2005, and the next generation of terrorists will ultimately chase Jews from their promised land.
The world is exacerbating Palestinian terrorism and destroying any path towards peace because it fails to address the root cause of the conflict which is Palestinians’ refusal to coexist with Jews. The flawed traditional bias of pressuring the more powerful party (Israel) and absolving the weaker (Palestinian Arabs) is exactly the opposite of what is required to form an enduring peace in the Middle East.
US Ambassador to the United Nations lambasts “settlement activity.”
What happened: Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US Ambassador to the United Nations replied to remarks made by Tor Wennesland, UN’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, at the UN Security Council on August 21, 2023. After condemning all acts of violence, whether committed by “Palestinian militants, or extremist Israeli settlers”, she added:
“we urge all parties to take proactive measures to counter all forms of violence and incitement to violence, and refrain from actions that inflame tensions including settlement activity, evictions, the demolition of Palestinian homes, terrorism, incitement of violence, and payments to the families of terrorists.”
The Message: The United States has taken the position that Jews living east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49) (commonly called “settlers”) is so upsetting to Arabs that it is on the same level as Palestinians killing Jewish civilians.
It suggests that the US position is that Israeli “actions that inflame tensions,” which could be normal non-violent activity such as Jews visiting the Jewish Temple Mount during normal visiting hours, is equivalent to Palestinians inciting violence and the Arab government paying for the murder.
Scene after Palestinian Arab killed Israeli father and son at a car wash in the West Bank, August 2023
The Danger: There is no moral equivalence between terrorism and… anything. By equating the payment, incitement and actual murder of people with anything, is a tacit blessing to engage in every kind of preventative activity – including violence – to stop such actions from taking place. In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it greenlights Palestinian jihadists to attack Jews sleeping in their beds, visiting a car wash or praying in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Email UN Mission to UN: “There is no equivalence between Arab terror and Jews upsetting Palestinians with their presence.”
Martyrs are a core part of the Palestinian Arab psyche which goes to the heart of the ceaseless violence in the region. It may soon go global.
Martyrs as Palestinian “compass”
The Palestinian “martyrs” are held as the morale direction and highest aspiration of Palestinian “resistance” movement for “liberation” of all of the land of Israel.
The Palestinian Youth Movement says that “Our martyrs and prisoners remain our compass,” as it urged the Democratic Socialists of America to join them on their crusade for the destruction of the Jewish State.
Palestinian Media Watch translated the text of a Fatah run summer camp for children saying “They [the Martyrs] are moons, they are stars, they are the elite, and they are the ones who sacrificed their lives. They were and will remain in our memories and in the memory of their children and their grandchildren.”
Martyrs are Palestinian “heroes”
Dalal Mughrabi was a woman who killed 37 people including 12 children. The Palestinian Authority (PA) named public squares and elementary schools after her. She is a featured celebrity in Palestinian society. School children call her the “bride of Jaffa” to this day. Fatah, the political party of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, posted on its Facebook page about Dalal’s terrorist operation and referred to her as a “martyr” four times.
In 2020, the Student Union Council at Palestine Polytechnic University gifted the school with a gate named after Salah Khalaf, the leader of the Black September terror organization who planned the Munich Olympics massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes were murdered in 1972. According to the Israeli watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch, there are four Palestinian schools named after Salah Khalaf. The PA said he “will always be [our] compass” … “whose death as Martyrs the Fatah Movement and the revolution presented the most spectacular aspects of pride, glory, and loyalty.”
New York City, April 2022
Martyrs are compensated
The Palestinian Authority pays “martyrs,” prisoners and their families according to a schedule of how long they sit in Israeli jails. The more severe the crime, the longer the sentence and larger payments to the martyr’s family. The PA pays these funds to “anyone incarcerated in the occupation’s prisons for his participation in the struggle against the occupation,” which could include Palestinians or Israelis, as long as they do not belong to Hamas. In this way, the PA tries to foment terrorism inside of Israel and take a more commanding role in the terror than its political rival Hamas.
Martyrs are absolved of any crime as “resisting occupation”
The Palestinian Arabs view all of the land “from the River to the Sea” as Arab land, and the State of Israel as a “painful settlement.” They believe that all Arabs in the region are under “occupation” and that they have a right to “resist” by any and all means, including violence. Such are the opinions in Al Jazeera, TRT World and Middle East Eye to name a few.
In summary, Palestinian propaganda states that all of Israel is illegal and violent reaction to that occupation – against civilians and military – is legal and legitimate. It celebrates those who have died fighting against the presence of Jews and encourages its youth to participate in the jihad to rid the land of Jews.
Going global
The BDS movement parrots this Palestinian propaganda. In response to the Democratic Socialists of America calling all Jewish Israelis fair target for attack on June 28, 2023, Rep. Ritchie Torres tweeted “Denying Israelis the status of civilians means declaring them fair game for violence and terror. If a naked justification of terror against Israel is not a sign of a demonic double standard against the Jewish State, I am not sure what would be.”
On July 30, 2023, Abbas spoke in Egypt about taking his war globally. As translated by PMW: “We also will submit lawsuits against the US and Britain for their responsibility for the Balfour Promise and its implementation through the British Mandate for Palestine… One of our most important weapons today is disseminating our Palestinian narrative, which confirms the Palestinian people’s existence on its historical homeland and its consecutive presence on this land for thousands of years. The authentic Palestinian narrative is currently gaining acceptance and sympathy worldwide.Our success in imposing our national narrative on human consciousness is in itself debunking the false Zionist and Israeli claims and narratives, which have strived and still strive to harm the image of our people and its legitimate struggle to restore its national rights.”
The Palestinian Authority is pushing its antisemitic deadly narrative beyond the Middle East that all Zionists are fair game for violent attack. The calls to “Globalize the Intifada,” the BDS’s “Mapping Project” which identifies Jewish institutions, and CAIR’s labeling of Jews as “enemies” are dead canaries in the coal mine. The PA is looking for money – perhaps from the $6 billion that the United States just handed the Islamic Republic of Iran – to expand its Martyrs Fund for anyone who attacks Zionists around the world. Civilized people everywhere must shut down the fictional narrative and the organizations which promote the terror.
Countries around the world have taken different approaches towards sexual prostitution. Some believe that the practice exploits women and ban the practice, while other states feel that people should be entitled to bodily freedom and manage personal affairs in a manner of their choosing.
There is one government that stands apart from all the others:
That allows parents to profit from their children’s bodies
Where the government is the john paying the parents for offering up their children’s bodies
Whose children are trained and armed to slaughter innocent people, often resulting in the child’s own death
That heinous government is the Palestinian Authority (PA), which pays a lifetime of rewards to the families of young terrorists who murder Jews.
The PA has a special mercenary prostitution budget for its “Martyrs’ Fund,” now $300 million per year, or 8% of its annual budget. Disgusted by the practice, a bipartisan group of members of Congress asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken for an update on whether the PA will halt the payments in June. In 2018, PA President Mahmoud Abbas said he would spend the “last penny” of its money for the terrorist fund, spitting in the face of basic human dignity. In 2021, Prime Minister Shtayyeh repeated Abbas’ vow.
Meanwhile, the parents of the young terrorists couldn’t be happier with the death of Jews, the glorification of their dead children in Palestinian society and the lifetime of income that the carnage yields. One terrorist mother pimp said after hearing of the death of one of her children, “By Allah, if all my children and grandchildren are martyred for the sake of Allah, it will make me happy.”
Palestinian society is systemically and deeply deformed as evidenced by Arab terrorists’ mothers pimping their children to commit violent jihad, funded by the global sponsors of the Palestinian Authority.
James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute was invited to speak to the United Nations Security Council on June 27, 2023 about the “situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question”, to make a case against Israel and defend Palestinian Arabs. The UNSC did not invite a comparable person to make the case against the Palestinian Authority and defend Israel, yet another demonstration of the entrenched bias against the Jewish State.
Zogby was given the floor for some time when he said the following:
“Given that traumatic nightmare visited upon millions of Palestinians for the past 56 years, is it any wonder that a recent poll shows a majority of Palestinians rejecting moderate leadership, despairing of peaceful change and now favouring armed struggle? That tragic deformity in Palestinian political culture is the result of the continued brutality of the occupation. It is also important to see the impact the harshness the occupation is having on the Arab world. While polls we conducted four years ago found a large majority in most Arab countries favouring exploring peace with Israel, saying that it might temper Israel’s behaviour and stop the violence, more recent polling suggests the hope has decidedly diminished.”
Zogby lies that Palestinian Arabs have changed their views and rejected moderate leadership and turned to violently fighting Israel in several regards.
“Moderate leadership”
The Palestinian Authority president is Mahmoud Abbas.
He wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial
He actively pays and prioritizes the payment of monies to terrorists who kill Israelis
He jails Arabs who sell homes to Jews
He has demanded a new country to be devoid of Jews
He’s viewed as wildly corrupt by Palestinians
He’s refused to hold elections, as he knows he would get trounced, so has remained in power since 2005, 18 years on, even though he was elected to a four year term
The Palestinian parliament is controlled by Hamas, with 58% of the seats since 2006.
It is a U.S. foreign terrorist organization, and many other countries consider it a terrorist group
It has the most antisemitic founding charter of any ever written in the world – including Nazi Germany – blending a mix of the forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion (from which it quotes) and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf
It has fired tens of thousands of rockets into Israel
It is committed to the destruction of the Jewish State
It is devoted to covering the entire region with Islamic religious law
In what world do the Palestinians have a “moderate leadership?” Palestinians elected and are governed by corrupt, antisemitic, genocidal jihadists.
Palestinians elected and are governed by corrupt, antisemitic, genocidal jihadists.
Palestinians have always preferred violence to peace.
Rejected the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan and opted to enlist the surrounding Arab states to destroy Israel
Attempted to destroy Israel again in 1967
Attempted to destroy Israel again during the holiest day in Judaism, Yom Kippur, in 1973
After Israel handed several cities to the Palestinian Authority and tried to make peace as part of the Oslo Accords, Palestinians opted to embark on a multi-year wave of horrific terrorism from 2000 to 2004, which only abated after Israel erected a security barrier and with the death of Yasser Arafat
After Israel withdrew from Gaza, Palestinians let the enclave be governed by the political-terrorist group Hamas which has launched repeated wars from the area
Gazans have always preferred violence to peace in every poll since 2001 (see chart below), while the sentiment of West Bank Arabs has changed over time.
Data from PCPSR polls shows the majority of Gazans always in favor of killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel, and West Bank Arabs generally moving away from such sentiment from 2008 to 2014 and again from 2017 to 2021.
That does not represent a society “despairing of peaceful change” but of a barbaric cult.
The 2011 Massacre of the Fogel Family in Itamar
It was briefly satisfying to hear a leading Arab voice acknowledge at the United Nations that there is a current “deformity in Palestinian political culture” but unfortunately the toxicity goes well beyond politics and a moment in time.
Robert Bowers came to a Pittsburgh synagogue armed with an AR-15 and other weapons to kill as many Jews as possible. After killing 11, he told police that “all these Jews need to die.” This week, he was sentenced to the death penalty for his crimes.
Ahlam al-Tamimi found a restaurant in central Jerusalem bustling with young Jewish families. She dropped off her comrade at the scene who blew up the store, killing 15 people including a pregnant woman and 7 children. Three US nationals were among those injured and killed in the attack. Today, she walks freely in Jordan.
When Tamimi was interviewed about her role on the bombing on Palestinian al Aqsa TV in July 2012 she recounted the events after she left the carnage:
“Afterwards, when I took the bus, the Palestinians around Damascus Gate [in Jerusalem] were all smiling. You could sense that everybody was happy. When I got on the bus, nobody knew that it was me who had led [the suicide bomber to the target]. I was feeling quite strange, because I had left [the bomber] ‘Izz Al-Din behind, but inside the bus, they were all congratulating one another. They didn’t even know one another, yet they were exchanging greetings…While I was sitting on the bus, the driver turned on the radio. But first, let me tell you about the gradual rise in the number of casualties. While I was on the bus and everybody was congratulating one another.”
After hearing an initial report that “three people were killed” in the bombing, Tamimi stated:
“I admit that I was a bit disappointed, because I had hoped for a larger toll. Yet when they said “three dead”, I said: ‘Allah be praised’…Two minutes later, they said on the radio that the number had increased to five. I wanted to hide my smile, but I just couldn’t. Allah be praised, it was great. As the number of dead kept increasing, the passengers were applauding.”
In another interview on Jordanian Ammon News website she said “I do not regret what happened. Absolutely not. This is the path. I dedicated myself to Jihad for the sake of Allah, and Allah granted me success. You know how many casualties there were [in the 2001 attack on the Sbarro pizzeria]. This was made possible by Allah. Do you want me to denounce what I did? That’s out of the question. I would do it again today, and in the same manner.”
With Al Jazeera, Tamimi offered that “from a Palestinian, as well as international law perspective, it is perfectly legitimate to resist the Israeli occupation,” grotesquely twisting the basic notion of ‘resistance’ as the gleeful slaughter of innocent families, a refrain used by many Palestinian Arab extremists.
The Palestinian Authority also seems to agree, praising her on television.
Americans are disgusted.
Yael Lampert, slated to become the United States’ Ambassador to Jordan, said during her May 4, 2023 confirmation hearing (1:08:00) that “I will do everything in my power to ensure that Ahlam al-Tamimi faces justice in the US for her horrific crimes.”
In light of potential upcoming pressure from the United States, it is rumored that “Jordan is planning to transport Ahlam Tamimi either into its border with Egypt or Iraq, where from Tamimi will be secretly escorted to Iran or Qatar. Another source said, a high-powered team of Hamas is coordinating this matter.”
The gleeful thirst for Jewish blood was met with a solemn death penalty verdict in the United States but applause and smiles in the Jordanian-Palestinian Arab community. Which represents your values?
ACTION ITEM
Email Secretary of State Antony Blinken at secretary@state.gov “Pressure Jordan to extradite Ahlam al-Tamimi for her participation in the murder and injury of over 100 innocent civilians including many children.”
First One Through 