Israel should not release more Palestinian terrorists

SHOULD ISRAEL RELEASE MORE TERRORISTS?

Read on-line here.

By Stephen M. Flatow

Every time there's a public discussion about whether Israel should release more imprisoned Palestinian terrorists, my heart skips a beat. My daughter Alisa was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in 1995. Two of the killers have been in an Israeli prison since 1995, serving life sentences. I always worry that they will be among the ones released.  So yes, it's personal.

But it's also much more than that.

It's not just about my daughter's killers; it's about dozens of other Israeli and American families whose loved ones also were victimized by Palestinian terrorists. It's about the future Israeli victims, if the released terrorists return to their violent ways, as so many of them do.  It's about what's best for Israel's national security. And, of course, it's about what's best for America, too.

Last year, Israel agreed to release more than 100 terrorists, some of them convicted murderers, in stages, as a gesture of "good faith" to the Palestinians. It was a measure of Israel's desperation for peace, and of the Obama administration's not-so-subtle threats to publicly blame Israel if the peace process derails. So to keep that process going, the Israelis took what everyone agrees is a serious security risk.

Now the Palestinian Authority (PA) is demanding that Israel release yet another batch of terrorists--even though the PA is threatening to walk away from the peace negotiations in the weeks to come.

Sadly, the Palestinian leadership never responds to such gestures with any gestures of its own, any steps that would show their desire for peace. Instead, the released killers are welcomed as heroes, with public celebrations, marching bands, and speeches from PA leaders heaping praise on the murderers. When Palestinians embrace terrorists, it tends to convince Israelis that the Palestinians still, well, embrace terrorism.

In a separate "good will" gesture, the Israelis recently gave the PA the bodies of five terrorists, two of whom were involved in suicide bombings that left 16 Israelis dead and more than 80 wounded. Here is how a reporter on PA Television described the two dead bombers at the March 12 funeral in Nablus: "The skies of Nablus adorn themselves with the stars who loved the soil of the homeland, in which they will lie forever having returned to it as Martyrs (Shahids)."

Imagine the uproar if after the funeral of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, a reporter for a mainstream American television station, declared: "The skies of Oklahoma City adorn themselves with this star who loved the soil of the homeland, in which he will lie forever having returned to it as a Martyr."

PA Television then interviewed the brother of suicide bomber Imad Zubeidi, who said "This is not mourning, but a wedding of Martyrdom--we are very proud that our brother gave of himself for Palestine."  And the sister of the other bomber, Maher Hbeishah, said, "He would always pray, 'Allah, make us live happily and die as Martyrs'--praise be to Allah, he achieved it."

This is the culture of glorifying mass murder that the Palestinian Authority has created. If Israel releases 26 more terrorists, as the PA is demanding, that will mean 26 more celebrations, 26 more parades, and 26 more relatives on television, telling millions of Palestinian and other Arab viewers how wonderful it is to carry out suicide bombings.

You don't have to be a prime minister or a seasoned diplomat or a four-star general to understand that setting more killers free just doesn't make any sense.

It won't increase the chances for peace. It will just give the Palestinian another prime-time opportunity to glorify mass murderers.

It won't help our ally, Israel. It will be just another one-sided concession for which Israel will get nothing in return--and will whet the appetite of Israel's enemies to keep demanding more and more.

It will send a message to the Palestinians that they don't need to change their ways. They can keep on encouraging terrorism, they can keep promoting a culture of violence--and the Obama administration will keep on pushing to give them a sovereign state, even though we know that it will be a terrorist state. That won't be good for Israel, for America, or for peace.

Iran sick puppies love to show bombing

You cannot make up this stuff.  The Iranians do it for you.

Here is a video showing bombings of Tel Aviv, Israel and American sites.



Heaven help us.

Boycott and Israel, an open letter to Emma Thompson

An open letter to Emma Thompson, actress and boycotter of Israel
By Stephen M. Flatow/JNS.org

Dear Ms. Thompson,

 

The Jan. 27 passing of Pete Seeger got me thinking about you. That may seem a little surprising; there’s no obvious connection between a banjo-strumming American folk singer and a British Oscar-winning actress. So let me explain.

The obituaries for Mr. Seeger noted that in the 1930s and 1940s, he had been a supporter of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. But in 1993, Seeger publicly apologized for, as he put it, “following the party line so slavishly, for not seeing that Stalin was a supremely cruel misleader.”

It’s a shame that it wasn’t until 40 years after Stalin’s death that Seeger finally acknowledged the truth about his former idol. I am hoping it won’t take you 40 years to acknowledge the terrible mistake you have made in publicly urging a boycott of Israelis.

You publicly called on London’s Globe Theater to cancel its invitation to the Israeli theatre company Habima to take part in a Shakespeare Festival. You and your colleagues asserted that “by inviting Habima, the Globe is associating itself with the policies of exclusion practiced by the Israeli state.” Allowing Israelis to perform would make the festival “complicit with human rights violations,” you claimed.

 

I know a little something about human rights violations—such as the violation of my daughter Alisa’s right to live. In 1995, Palestinian Arab terrorists associated with the Islamic Jihad movement decided to practice their brand of “exclusion” by bombing the bus on which Alisa was riding. Eight innocent people were murdered, more than 50 were injured. The U.S. State Department publicly identified five of the killers. To this day, they live freely in the territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

Ms. Thompson, please understand me. I am not saying that actors should refrain from taking stands on political issues. But I am directing your attention to the fact that on so many occasions, actors and other entertainers who have injected themselves into public controversies have ultimately proven to be badly mistaken, as the case of Pete Seeger demonstrates.

Many prominent Hollywood figures took part in the 1950s McCarthyite witch-hunts. They said they were defending American culture against radicals. But they didn’t mind slandering innocent people in the process.

Harry Belafonte is a wonderful entertainer. But his support for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez was reprehensible. And his racially charged attacks on African-American Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice were vile.

Sean Penn is a talented actor. But his embrace of Saddam Hussein was disgraceful. Whatever one thinks of the Iraq war in retrospect, who can deny that the world is better off without Saddam?

When we look at the brutal dictatorship that rules Vietnam today, when we think about the countless innocents slaughtered by that regime, it is impossible not to resent Jane Fonda’s support for the Vietcong. At least the folksinger Joan Baez, who once vocally supported the North Vietnamese, eventually had the decency to repudiate them—but, once again, only after it was much too late.

That, Ms. Thompson, is what I fear will happen to you if you throw in your lot with the haters and boycotters of Israel. The radical chic that is so appealing to you today will be revealed as a horrible mistake soon enough. You will, eventually, recognize the true nature of the tyrants and terrorists of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. But how much must Israel suffer until you, like Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, finally stop romanticizing dictators?

 

Yes, there are evil regimes that deserve to be boycotted. The apartheid regime of South Africa deserved it. So do the terrorists who rule Gaza. But democratic, peaceful, egalitarian Israel does not.

Sincerely,
Stephen M. Flatow

Original January 30, 2014 post on JNS.org is here.     

 

It's all in the word

I've objected for a long while to the use of "settlements" when defining Jewish communities in the West Bank.  Why not call them "Jewish village or town."  Perhaps the founders were hearkening back to the old days when the thought of settlement was not considered evil by the world.

In any event, here's a comment from Dry Bones.

Rocks and terror; my last post of 2013 or the first for 2014

To those who follow terrorism around the world, it was, sadly, not a boring year.

Focusing on the Israel-Palestinian conundrum is enough to make your head spin. Israel has been releasing terrorists in response to the Palestinian Authority sitting down with the Israelis to negotiate the terms by which a Palestinian state in the West Bank would come into existence.

Of course, there are opposite reactions in Israel and in Palestinian communities. The Israelis view the releases as either a necessary evil or an outright mistake.  The other side views the prisoners as "heroes" worthy of a tumultuous homecoming and parades.

My column focuses on one terror weapon, rock throwing.  Pooh-poohed by some as nothing more than peaceful demonstration.  Well, rocks do kill.

Murder by stoning: Palestinian terrorists’ forgotten weapon
Posted on December 31, 2013 by JNS.org and filed under Israel, Opinion.
By Stephen M. Flatow/JNS.org

The weapons used by Palestinian terrorists against Jews are well known: suicide bombs, like the one that killed my daughter Alisa in 1995; knives, like the ones used to slaughter the Fogel family in Itamar two years ago; rifles, like the one used in the sniper shooting of the infant Shalhevet Pass in Hebron in 2001. Sometimes we forget that there is another terrorist weapon that can be lethal: the rock. This week, there were two reminders of that tragic fact.

One of the terrorists released by the Israeli government this week was Taktuk Ibrahim, who was serving a sentence of life imprisonment for his participation in the murder of a 24 year-old reserve soldier, Binyamin Meisner. In February 1989, Ibrahim and several fellow terrorists lured Meisner into an ally in Nablus, where they ambushed him and stoned him to death. Binyamin and his family had immigrated to Israel from Argentina. They lived in the town of Kiryat Tivon, where Binyamin was the star of the local water polo team.

By coincidence, on the same day that Meisner’s killer went free, an Israeli military court convicted one of the participants in the 2011 murder-by-stoning of Asher Palmer and his 11-month-old son, Yonatan. Ali Sa’ada and his friend Waal al-Arjeh, a member of the Palestinian Authority security forces, carried out the attack in September 2011. Three fellow terrorists helped with the planning. They decided to throw rocks from a moving car at an Israeli car traveling in the opposite direction, because the combined speed of the vehicles would significantly increase the damage they could do.

Their target, Asher Palmer, an American citizen, was driving on Highway 60, not far from his home in Kiryat Arba. Yonatan was strapped in a baby seat in the back. They were on their way to meet Asher’s pregnant wife when the terrorists struck. The rocks smashed through the front windshield, hitting Asher directly in the head and causing the car to crash, killing both father and son. A Palestinian passerby, Shehada Shatat, witnessed the attack. Instead of calling for medical assistance, he stole Asher's wallet and gun, and fled the scene.

At least 11 other Israelis have been murdered by Palestinian rock-throwers. In 1983, Esther Ohana, 20, was on her way to her wedding rehearsal when the car in which she was riding was attacked by rocks, near Hebron. One struck Esther in the head, killing her.  In 1990, a 4-year-old Arab boy was killed when he was hit in the head by a rock thrown by Palestinians who mistakenly thought the car in which he was riding was an Israeli auto. Eleven year-old Chava Wechsberg was a passenger in car traveling in the Gush Etzion region in 1993, when Arab rock-throwers attacked, causing the car to crash; Chava was killed.

Many other Israelis have suffered severe injuries from Palestinian rocks. In fact, not long before Binyamin Meisner was stoned to death in that Nablus alley, another young soldier, 20 year-old Dan Cohen, was permanently paralyzed after being struck in the head and neck by rock-throwers on the very same street.

Most Americans have no trouble recognizing the lethal danger of rock-throwing. Recall the case of three drunken teenagers who threw rocks at cars on the Capital Beltway in Washington, D.C., in 1990. Thirty drivers or passengers were wounded, including a girl who suffered irreversible brain damage. The attackers were convicted of “assault with intent to murder” and each sentenced to 40 years in prison. An editorial in the Washington Post at the time correctly asked, “What’s the difference between assault with a deadly weapon—a shooting—and assault with rocks that hit cars at potentially lethal speeds?”

There is no difference, of course, to any reasonable person. But there’s a very big difference to New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman and some of his colleagues.  In an April 2012 column, Friedman endorsed what he called “nonviolent resistance by Palestinians”—and then listed boycotts, hunger strikes, and rock-throwing as examples of such “resistance.”

A New York Times Sunday magazine cover story in March 2013 glorified the Arab village of Nabi Saleh as a center of “unarmed resistance.” Amidst his cheerleading for brave young Arab “demonstrators” confronting cruel Israeli soldiers, author Ben Ehrenreich mentioned, in passing that “unarmed” activity includes throwing rocks or, as he put it, “throwing stones while dodging tear-gas canisters and rubber-coated bullets.” The Times’s bureau chief in Israel, Jodi Rudoren, followed in August with a page one story depicting a heroic Arab teenager who seemingly has no choice but to throw rocks at Israelis—it’s a “rite of passage,” according to Rudoren. Her article was headlined “‘My Hobby is Throwing Stones.’”

Rock-throwing is not non-violent. It’s not unarmed resistance. It’s not a “hobby,” a word which conjures up images of playing chess or collecting baseball cards. It’s attempted murder. This week’s release of Binyamin Meisner’s rock-throwing killer, and the conviction of one of the Palmers’ rock-throwing killers, is a grim reminder of that.

Stephen M. Flatow is an attorney who lives in New Jersey. His daughter, Alisa, was killed in a Palestinian suicide bombing in 1995.