A terrorist shatters all the stereotypes about terrorists

Before this latest horrible attack and the name of its dead victim—Eliyahu Kay, a 26-year-old immigrant from South Africa —fade from the news, let us at least learn one important lesson.

At first, it might seem as though Sunday’s attack in Jerusalem’s Old City was just another typical act of Palestinian Arab terrorism—an attacker with a submachine gun opened fire on a street not far from the Western Wall, murdering one Jewish passerby and wounding four others. We’ve heard that kind of horrible news a thousand times before. I’ve lived it.

Chabad.org

But when you look closely, it turns out that there is a lot to learn from this “typical” episode, because everything about it contradicts what the “experts” are always telling us about Arab terrorists and the evil deeds that they perpetrate.

The self-appointed experts say the “profile” of an Arab terrorist is an unemployed, single young man. But Sunday’s killer, Fadi Abu Shkhaydem, was none of those things.

The sociologists and think tank fellows who claim to know everything tell us that terrorists strike because “they have nothing to lose.” They supposedly have “personal problems” or “financial hardships.” They don’t have to worry about leaving behind widows or orphans. Well, this terrorist had everything to lose—but that didn’t stop him.

Shkhaydem was 42, not 22. He wasn’t an unstable, misguided youngster. He was a family man. He had a wife. He had five children. He simply didn’t care about making his wife a widow or leaving his children without a father. Murdering Jews was more important to him than the lives of his own loved ones.

In addition to the submachine gun, Shkhaydem was carrying a knife. Presumably, he wanted to be able to kill more Jews after his ammunition ran out.

Shkhaydem and his family lived in the northeastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat. Classified as a “refugee camp,” Shuafat is adjacent to two Jewish neighborhoods, Pisgat Ze’ev and French Hill. Its residents take the same light rail line as the residents of those cities. In other words, the Shkhaydems had plenty of opportunities for peaceful interaction with Israeli Jews.

The international news media often tell us that terrorists are merely “responding” to some “expansion” by Jewish settlers. They can’t trot out that excuse in this case. The Shkhaydems were living in Jerusalem. They were not being harmed in any way by Jewish “settlers.” Nobody was taking their land or threatening their livelihood.

The Shkhaydems hold Israeli identity cards and have the status of permanent residents of Jerusalem. They enjoy the same rights as Jewish Jerusalemites, including medical care and voting in municipal elections. (The only thing they can’t do is vote in general elections, since they are not Israeli citizens.) Nobody is oppressing them.

Shkhaydem was not some uneducated street thug. He has been described in news reports as “an Islamic scholar.” He was a well-known preacher in Jerusalem mosques, including the al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount. He was a teacher at the Rashidiya Secondary School, in Jerusalem which is in the municipial school system, but teaches the PA curriculum. He was “working on his PhD,” according to Shibli Sweiti, the terrorist’s uncle.

The schools in the Shkhaydems’ Shuafat neighborhood are run by the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA. That’s a concession that the Israeli authorities have made, in the hope of fostering a peaceful atmosphere. That hasn’t worked out too well. UNRWA schools are notorious for using curricula that defame Jews and glorify terrorism. No doubt Fadi Abu Shkhaydem was pleased that his children are being educated there.

According to Israeli news reports, Shkhaydem’s friends and colleagues praised him as a “Mourabit,” or “defender of the faith” because of his frequent participation in rallies to prevent Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and to evict Jews from the Shimon HaTzadik / Sheikh Jarrah neighborhoods.

There’s a similar logic at work in those protests and in this week’s terrorist attack. One day, Shkhaydem is shouting about the need to keep Jews off the Temple Mount and out of the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood; the next day, he picks up a machine gun to try to put that message into practice, in blood. Jewish blood.

I wonder what J Street, B’Tselem, Americans for Peace Now, and all the others who have been demanding the expulsion of Jews from Shimon HaTzadik/Sheikh Jarrah will have to say about Shkhaydem putting their slogans into practice.

So far they haven’t said anything. They’re obviously hoping that the whole episode will quickly retreat from the headlines before anybody starts asking them any embarrassing questions.

But before this latest horrible attack is forgotten, and the name of its dead victim—Eliyahu Kay, a 26-year-old immigrant from South Africa —fades from the news, let us at least learn this one important lesson:

The main cause of terrorism is ideology, not poverty. That may be hard for some Americans to comprehend because it’s so different from our own experience. Most Americans are not ideological. American culture doesn’t accept political violence. The American government doesn’t promote the use of violence. And the religions that most Americans embrace do not espouse violence.

But, as everyone knows, the Middle East is not the Middle West.

Stephen M. Flatow

This column first appeared at https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/317340

 Stop taking pictures of terrorists!

Why exactly are the barbaric Israelis, with their violent cameras, taking so many pictures of Arabs? Can you guess?
 

My recent column on Israel National News.   

Israel’s critics have a new rallying cry: Stop taking pictures of terrorists! They don’t word it quite that way, of course. They wrap it in slogans about “big tech” and “privacy rights.” But at the end of the day, the message is the same—they don’t want Israel to keep track of Arab terrorists and their supporters.

 The Washington Post and the New York Times delivered this message with a journalistic one-two punch on November 9, each publishing a major feature story about how Israel is intrusive, sneaky and underhanded.

Security Cameras           iStock

The Post headlined its front page story “Israel Targets Palestinians with Cameras, Facial Tracking.” The word “target” was obviously intended to conjure up images of violence. They want readers to think of Israelis as sharpshooters with their rifles aimed at the backs of innocent Arabs.

 Why exactly are the barbaric Israelis, with their violent cameras, taking so many pictures of Arabs? It takes a patient and discerning reader of the Post to figure that out. One has to fist wade through paragraph after paragraph that Post correspondent Elizabeth Dwoskin has loaded with ominous terms like “secrecy,” “broad surveillance,” and “invasion of privacy.” The reader is thoroughly confused and frightened before he or she can even figure out why the Israelis are doing what they are accused of doing.

 What the Israelis are doing is secretly taking photographs of potential terrorists. Good! I’m delighted that they are using modern technology to engage in surveillance that will preempt massacres.

 Terrorists do not deserve privacy.

 I’m delighted that they are using modern technology to engage in surveillance that will preempt massacres.

 Elizabeth Dwoskin and the Washington Post evidently want Israel to feel guilty and stop taking the pictures. But Israel has nothing to feel guilty about. When the Palestinian Arabs stop trying to burn and stone Jews to death nearly every single day, the Israelis won’t need to take pictures of the would-be murderers.

 Over at the New York Times, that same day, a headline read, “Palestinians Targeted by Israeli Firm’s Spyware, Experts Say.” There’s that “target” word again, helping to create the impression that terrorists and aspiring terrorists are the victims.

 The Times actually managed to be even more slippery than the Post, because the Times article was not about the State of Israel or the government of Israel, but rather a private Israeli software company. How can you blame all of Israel for one company’s transactions? By portraying the Israeli government as a “backer” of the company, because the government has issued licenses and used some of the products.

 The product that seems to worry the Times the most is software that can access private telephones. The Israeli authorities used it to get into the phones of Palestinian Arab groups that it recently outlawed for supporting the terrorists of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

 Well, once again, I say: Good! That’s how Israel finds out which Arabs are legitimate political activists, and which of them are funneling their European grants to PFLP terrorists.

 The Israelis had two choices regarding the six groups that it outlawed for helping the PFLP. Their first choice was to put privacy rights above the right to life. In other words, allow the groups to keep giving money to the PFLP, let the PFLP use the funds to buy guns and axes, and then mourn when PFLP terrorists make use of the guns and axes—like when PFLP members shot and hacked to death those four worshippers in a Jerusalem synagogue in 2014.

 The Israelis’ second choice was to preempt such slaughter by outlawing the six groups and thus disrupting the flow of funds to the killers. I’m glad the Israelis chose that option.

 The story won’t end soon, however, because we all know how this little game works. First, the articles are published. Next, groups like J Street and Americans for Peace Now will declare how concerned they are by the “chilling effect” of Israel’s latest misbehavior. That will be followed by an “investigation” by some United Nations panel or “human rights” organization.

 In a few months, the investigators will release a “report” confirming what the accusers claimed before there was any investigation. J Street will then announce that the report “deserves serious consideration.” The Washington Post and the New York Times will publish articles about the report, quoting some Jewish former State Department official expressing grave concern. And so it will go, until the next inevitable round.

 Fortunately, the Israelis will ignore all this chatter. They have to ignore it because they have no choice—their lives are on the line. For Diaspora Jewish complainers, it’s all just an amusing intellectual exercise. For Israelis—of all political persuasions—it’s a matter of life and death. Literally.

 So American newspapers and UN panels and Diaspora Jewish whiners can complain all they want. At the end of the day, Israel is just not going to commit national suicide.

 Stephen M. Flatow, is an attorney and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”

 

 Sweden rethinking aid to Palestinian Authority; what about U.S.?

Terrorism, authoritarianism, and corruption are not American values. They are those of the PA, a regime that deserves no US support. 

My Israel National News column may be read on-line here.

Stephen M. Flatow, October 24 , 2021
 
Last week, the United States took a step closer to giving the Palestinian Arabs $225-million, regardless of Palestinian behavior. Also last week, Sweden said it will not go forward with its aid to the Palestinian Authority if Palestinian corruption continues.
 
How can this be?
 
In Washington, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved language giving the Palestinian Arabs $225-million, which is $40-million more than the Biden administration requested at this stage. The committee’s action follows an identical step by the House of Representatives.
 
You may wonder how such aid can forward, when the Taylor Force Act of 2018 prohibits U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority until the PA stops paying salaries and rewards to imprisoned terrorists and the families of dead terrorists.
  
American Jewish organizations need to speak out against the proposed $225-million U.S. aid package to the Palestinian Arabs.
The answer is simple—they will elude the law by routing the funds through non-governmental agencies. But that’s just sleight-of-hand. Make no mistake about it: this is American money for the PA in another form. Aid is fungible. That $225-million will mean the PA has to spend $225-million less of its own money.
 
U.S. Senator Christopher Coons said the U.S. aid “reflects America’s core values.” I beg to differ. Terrorism, authoritarianism, and corruption are not American values. They are the values of the Palestinian Authority, a regime that deserves no American support.
 
Sweden, by contrast, seems to be having second thoughts about the $49-million that it gave to the Palestinian Arabs last year. During her visit to Israel last week, Swedish foreign minister Ann Linde indicated that Sweden may be rethinking whether to continue that aid. She said that “corruption at such a level as exists in Palestine” has to end “if we are to be able to fully support” the PA.
 
Let it be noted that Sweden is far from Israel’s best friend in Europe. The Swedes have passionately supported forcing Israel back to the indefensible 1967 lines and creating a deadly Palestinian state in Israel’s back yard. Sweden also still pretends that Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem, is Israel’s capital.
 
But apparently the Swedes are concerned about how their money is spent. I wonder why some of America’s leaders do not seem to have that same level of concern. I don’t see any statements from Sen. Coons or his colleagues saying that U.S. aid to the Palestinian Arabs should be conditioned on ending corruption.
 
Another interesting contrast: the Biden administration is withholding $130-military aid from Egypt because of human rights violations there. Yet the administration and its congressional allies apparently have no problem with the PA’s torture of dissidents, suppression of media critics, or mistreatment of women. Don’t Palestinian human rights matter?
 
Three years ago, two other European countries that are not particularly known as lovers of Israel likewise offered a model for the United States to follow.
 
Belgium, which had been giving the Palestinian Arabs more than $20-million annually, announced that it “will put on hold any projects related to the construction or equipment of Palestinian schools.” That was because Palestinian Media Watch exposed that a Belgian-funded Palestinian school, the Beit Awwa Basic Girls School, changed its name to the Dalal Mughrabi Elementary School.
 
Mughrabi was the leader of the Fatah terrorist gang that landed on Israel’s shore on March 9, 1978. They murdered an American Jewish nature photographer, Gail Rubin (the niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff), then hijacked an Israeli bus and massacred 36 passengers, including 12 children. One of Mughrabi’s accomplices was later hired as a senior adviser to PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
 
Norway decided that it, too, does not want to be associated with Mughrabi. The Norwegians had contributed $10,000 to a women’s center in the PA town of Burqa. The PA named the center after mass-murderer Mughrabi. The Norwegian government demanded, and received, a full refund.
 
If these three European countries can stand up for the principle of opposing the glorification of Palestinian terrorism, shouldn’t the United States be able to do likewise?
 
American Jewish organizations need to speak out against the proposed $225-million U.S. aid package to the Palestinian Arabs. Our tax dollars should not be sent—either directly or indirectly—to corrupt, terror-promoting regimes. Belgium, Norway, and now Sweden, are setting an example that the Biden administration should follow.
 
Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”

Israel’s critics have a new slogan

Israel-critics think they’re being very clever with this one, because it actually comes from a phrase that was spoken by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. But of course, they’ve taken it out of context. 

View on line at Israel National News

Stephen M. Flatow  October 12 , 2021

Every couple of years, critics of Israel come up with a new slogan that they hope will pressure the Israelis into making more concessions to the Palestinian Authority. They’ve just trotted out their latest model: “Shrinking the conflict.”

Such slogans are usually invented to try to overcome some obstacle that’s interfering with the left’s campaign to force Israel to accept a Palestinian state in its back yard. The current obstacle is that it’s been more than seven years (!) since Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas has been willing to negotiate with Israel.

 If Abbas won’t talk, there’s no way to talk Israel into surrendering half its country. So, Israel’s leftwing critics figure they will wait him out—after all, Abbas, now in the 16 th year of his four year term of office, is 85 and facing various domestic problems. He can’t last forever. While they wait, the pressure-Israel crowd is looking for other ways to engineer Israeli concessions. Hence “shrinking the conflict.”

Naftali Bennett (Wikimedia Commons

 The Israel-critics think they’re being very clever with this one, because it actually comes from a phrase that was spoken by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. But of course, they’ve taken it out of context and tried to turn it into a weapon against him.

 The concept that Prime Minister Bennett has mentioned is that since there’s no way of ending the conflict, then all that’s possible is to “shrink” it somewhat, through small steps aimed at economic improvement for the Palestinian Arabs.

 But critics of Israel see “shrinking the conflict” differently—they see it as a new formula for building a Palestinian state, just more gradually. So, they’ve seized on the phrase and are running with it.

 In a major feature article last week, Patrick Kingsley, the Jerusalem bureau chief for the New York Times, announced that the concept of “shrinking the conflict” is “taking root in political and diplomatic discourse in Jerusalem.” Translation: the New York Times declares that it’s “taking root,” in the hope that it will then take root.

 Kingsley trotted out an “Israeli philosopher”—which presumably makes him an expert on Israel’s military and strategic needs!— who supposedly is an “unofficial adviser” to the prime minister, whatever that means. Much to the delight of the Times, this particular “unofficial adviser” wants “shrinking the conflict” to turn into what he calls “expanding Palestinian self-rule.” He thus became the featured voice in the article, which took up nearly an entire page in the Times.

 If leftwing groups were honest and called this “solution” by its real name, “the nine-miles-wide solution,” nobody would support it.

We’ve seen this kind of cheap sloganeering before. Does anybody remember “Diaspora lag”? The leftwing Israel Policy Forum came up with that one in early 1993, to describe what it claimed was the “problem” of Diaspora Jews “lagging behind” the new left-leaning Israeli government. Israel was getting ready to make major concessions to the Palestinian Arabs, and not all American Jews were falling in line quickly enough, so the Israel Policy Forum (a creation of Israel’s Labor Party) wanted to shame them by portraying them as a bunch of Neanderthals who were “lagging behind” the enlightened, progressive left.

 How about “American engagement?” J Street came up with that one. The J Streeters know they can’t get most of American Jews to support forcing Israel back to the indefensible pre-1967 armistice lines. But J Street also knows that historically, American involvement in Mideast negotiations has meant American pressure on Israel to go back to the 1967 lines. So, a few years ago, J Street started taking polls which simply asked American Jews if they favor “American engagement in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.” That sounds pretty innocent, so most of the respondents said “yes.” That’s how J Street hopes to get the trojan horse of American pressure back onto the scene.

 The left’s most successful slogan in recent memory is “two-state solution.” It actually began as “land for peace” back in the 1970s, and it had a certain vague appeal to people who didn’t think it through. But most of the Jewish public still thought that “peace for peace” made more sense.

 So, the left gradually abandoned “land for peace” and began pushing the phrase “two-state solution,” which likewise has a superficial appeal. After all, if you’ve got two peoples, why shouldn’t they each have a state? Isn’t that fair? Like all slogans, though, its weakness is that it crumbles when people ask exactly where the Palestinian Arab state should be.

 That’s because “two-state solution” in practice means that Israel will be pushed back to the indefensible nine-miles-wide lines at its mid-section. That would enable an Arab tank column to cut the country in two in a matter of minutes. If leftwing groups were honest and called this “solution” by its real name, “the nine-miles-wide solution,” nobody would support it.

 The same is true for the new “shrinking the conflict” slogan that the New York Times is now promoting. When people realize that it’s just another cover for trying to wring risky, one-sided concessions out of Israel, it will fade into obscurity alongside the various other propaganda lines that have come and gone over the years. Which is exactly where it belongs.

 Stephen M. Flatow, is an attorney and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”

They tried to burn Jews alive. Again.

My Israel National News column posted on October 1, 2021.

I wouldn’t have imagined that 76 years after the Holocaust ended, I would be writing these words but here we go again. Last week, anti-Semites tried to burn Jews alive. And the world looked away.

Joseph's Tomb (Flash 90)

Several hundred Jewish worshippers were on their way to hold peaceful, legal religious services on the holiday of Sukkot, at the tomb of the biblical patriarch Joseph, located in the city of Shechem. The city, better known by its Roman name, Nablus, had a sizeable Jewish community until Palestinian Arab rioters drove them out in the 1930s. Today’s generation of Palestinian Arab terrorists ambushed last week’s worshippers. The Palestinian Authority, which governs the city, did nothing to intervene.

The attackers hurled “homemade explosives”—that is, Molotov cocktails—at the buses of worshippers, hoping to set them on fire. If not for the heroic actions of Israeli soldiers, the buses would have turned into rolling infernos, and hundreds of Jews would have been burned alive. That was the terrorists’ intention. Yet the world looked away.

You know what the international response would have been if the victims had thrown those firebombs right back at their attackers.

I checked the major newspapers and news websites in the days following the attack. Aside from the Israeli and Jewish media, I could not find a word about it. World leaders were not interested. “Human rights” organizations were busy elsewhere. The major news media outlets shut their eyes. They all looked away.

The moral outrage of an attempted massacre of Jews should have been sufficient to rouse the international community. But let’s put the moral considerations aside for a moment and just consider the legal implications.

The protection of Jewish worshippers is enshrined in the Oslo II agreement. The Palestinian Authority signed it. The PA has an obligation to abide by its terms. Israel fulfilled its side of the Oslo accords, by withdrawing from 40% of Judea-Samaria and allowing the PA to set up a de-facto state in that area. In return, the PA is required to fulfill its side of the deal, including the provisions applying to protection of Jewish worshippers.

You can find the relevant obligation in Annex I, Article V, Section 2, paragraph (b), under “Jewish Holy Sites.” It concerns Jewish religious sites that are located in PA-governed territory. And Appendix IV specifically lists “Joseph's Tomb (Nablus)” as one of those sites.

The agreement states that “the protection of these sites, as well as of persons visiting them, will be under the responsibility of the Palestinian Police.” The PA must “ensure free, unimpeded and secure access” to the site, and “ensure the peaceful use of such site, to prevent any potential instances of disorder and to respond to any incident.”

Since the PA has one of the largest per-capita security forces in the world, it would not have had any trouble preventing would-be murderers from attacking Jews at the site. That is, if the PA wanted to prevent them. But it doesn’t. In fact, the PA, through its anti-Jewish incitement in its mosques, media and schools, encourages Palestinian Arabs to aspire to kill Jews. Hence last week’s attempt to burn Jews alive.

You know what the international response would have been if the victims had thrown those firebombs right back at their attackers. The United Nations Security Council would have met in emergency session. The Biden administration would have expressed “grave concern at this escalation” and shouted louder for a “two-state solution.” Newspapers around the world would have reported “settlers attacking Palestinians.”

But there was no way to blame the Jews. So, the world looked away.

“They Looked Away” happens to be the title of a searing 2001 documentary by the historian-filmmaker Stuart Erdheim. Narrated by Mike Wallace, it chronicles how the Allies knew what was happening in Auschwitz yet refused to bomb the railway tracks that led into the camp, or the gas chambers and crematoria.

I am not comparing last week’s assault to the Holocaust. I am merely pointing out how once again, the world is indifferent when Jews are under attack. How long will it be before another filmmaker records how world leaders, in our own generation, looked away as anti-Semites tried to burn Jews alive?

 

This column may be viewed on line here.

Stephen M. Flatow, October 01, 2021