Not very woman friendly

Not very woman friendly

The Palestinian Authority honors the wrong folks

Sometimes, I just don’t get Palestinian Arab society.

As the world was celebrating International Women’s Day, the Palestinian Authority took a different track.

In the words of the day’s organizers, “we can actively choose to challenge stereotypes, fight bias, broaden perceptions, improve situations and celebrate women's achievements.”  Not so the PA.

Instead of honoring and celebrating the role women play, the PA marked International Women’s Day by praising and honoring terrorists who murdered women.

Official PA Television, which had been continuously broadcasting Coronavirus news, paused on International Women’s Day to devote some attention to an apparently more important topic. The broadcast began with an interview with Um Nasser Abu Hmeid.  If the name doesn’t ring a bell, she’s the mother of five terrorists who are serving life in prison for multiple murders. The interviewer praised them as heroes and their mother spoke about how proud she was of them.

One is Muhammed Abu Hmeid. On December 14, 1990, he and a fellow-terrorist burst into a factory in Jaffa. Using long knives, they murdered Ms. Iris Asraf, a 22 year-old clerk, and two male employees.

I will spare you the horrific details of what the “hero” Muhammed did to Ms. Asraf; I will note only what the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported at the time: “The body of one victim reportedly was sliced into quarters. Another was nearly decapitated, and the a third was disemboweled.”

After the glowing interview with the murderers’ mother, photographs of Arab women terrorists filled the screen. The narrator described their “heroic” deeds and hailed them as “martyrs.” (Thanks to Palestinian Media Watch for these translations.) The fact that many of their victims were women did not diminish their status as the PA’s heroes of International Women’s Day.

There was Leila Khaled, who twice hijacked airplanes on which there were many women passengers. There was Fatima Barnawi, who planted a bomb in a Jerusalem movie theater which many women were attending.

Most of all, there was Dalal Mughrabi. She occupies a special place in the hearts of the PA regime and the Palestinian Arab public. The PA has named numerous girls’ schools, public squares, and sports tournaments after her.

What did Mughrabi do that so endears her to Palestinian Arabs?

On March 9, 1978, she led a squad of Arab terrorists who set out from Lebanon towards Israel, in several small boats. They were members of Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization. At the time, Yasir Arafat was chairman of the PLO and Fatah, and Mahmoud Abbas was his second in command. Today, Abbas is chairman of the PLO, Fatah, and the Palestinian Authority.

The Mughrabi gang’s first victim was a woman.

When Dalal Mughrabi and her fellow-terrorists landed on a northern Israeli beach, they happened to encounter Gail Rubin, an American Jewish nature photographer, who was taking photos of rare birds. Her work had been exhibited at the Jewish Museum in New York City and other prominent venues. She was also a niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-Connecticut).

One of the terrorists, Hussain Fayadh, later explained to the Lebanese Television station Al-Manar what happened: "Sister Dalal al-Mughrabi had a conversation with the American journalist. Before killing her, Dalal asked: 'How did you enter Palestine?' [Rubin] answered: 'They gave me a visa.' Dalal said: 'Did you get your visa from me, or from Israel? I have the right to this land. Why didn't you come to me?' Then Dalal opened fire on her."

As Gail laying dying on the beach, Mughrabi and her fellow-terrorists walked to the nearby Coastal Road. An Israeli bus approached. They hijacked it. And they murdered 37 passengers. Eleven of their victims were girls or women.

Tali Aharonovitch. Naomi Elichai. Galit Ankwa. Mathilda Askenazy-Daniel. Rina Bushkenitch. Liat Gal-On. Naama Hadani. Rebecca Hohman. Malka Leibovitch-Weiss. Tziona Lozia-Cohen. Rina Sosensky. Gail Rubin. That is who should be remembered on International Women’s Day.

Instead, the PA turned the occasion into a veritable International Anti-Women’s Day. Where were all the protests from feminist groups who claim to care about women’s rights? Where was the outcry from the all the self-described progressives and peace activists? Do women’s lives mean so little to them?

This post and others like it can be viewed at Times of Israel

45 years later, aliyah to Israel

We sure picked a great time to make aliyah - now

Coming on aliyah is always a [worthwhile] hurdle, but you have to be an idealist to come on Aliyah during the time of Covid-19. 

Att'y Stephen M. Flatow

Stephen Flatow is a New Jersey attorney, vice president of the Religious Zionists of America and the father of Alisa Flatow, murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists in 1995 on a study trip to Israel when the bus she was on exploded on her way to the beach in Gush Katif. Her organs were donated to save others.

More from the author ►

It was the spring of 1960, I was 11 years old and living in Middle Village, Queens. My parents gave me a couple of dollars and told me to go to the movies for the afternoon because they had “to go to the closing on our new home.”  So, I walked up the hill on 75th Street to the Arion Theatre on Metropolitan Avenue.  You could do a lot of things with two bucks in those days, so I paid my 35 cents admission and bought some nosh.

The movie playing that day was “On the Beach.”  It starred the always stoic Gregory Peck, the sultry Ava Gardner, a still dapper Fred Astaire, and a new actor, Anthony Perkins.

On the Beach is set in 1964.  It’s a tale of the aftermath of nuclear war.  Spoiler alert – everyone   dies in the end.  Peck is a US submarine captain whose ship and crew made it through the war and is now in Australia.  The nuclear fallout cloud has spread around the world and Australia is the last remaining place on the planet where people are alive.  But they know the cloud is coming, the government is handing out cyanide pills, and it’s just a matter of time before the end comes. 

In 1960 New York City and many other major American cities were surrounded by the Nike missile system that was designed to shoot down high-flying bombers and we were still having air raid drills at PS 87.  A hallway alarm would go off, and we would get under our desks, direct our rears towards the classroom’s large windows and bend towards the floor with our hands folded behind our necks.

At the end of the movie, we are shown an Australian street scene where a sign warning of the end flaps in the breeze and discarded newspapers and trash swirl through the air. It was all very real to me.  And the specter of 1964 being five years away, kept me up for more than a few nights.

And here I am, 60 years later, sitting with my wife in Jerusalem in the midst of the Covid-19 outbreak.  It’s our aliyah trip.

Rosalyn and I talked about making aliyah in the mid-1970s, Alisa had been born, and the subject just popped into our heads.  But I fretted about moving to Israel as a new American lawyer, not knowing the language, and worrying about how I’d put food on the table.  So, we put it out of our minds.

Please continue to the full article on Arutz Sheva, Israel National News

Wrong, Sen. Warren - creating a PA state is not 'official US policy'

Stephen M. Flatow: Wrong, Sen. Warren - creating a PA state is not 'official US policy'

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren has to get her facts straight when it comes to creating a state out of the Palestinian Authority.

My latest column on Arutz Sheva deals with Senator Elizabeth Warren's belief that the so-called "two state solution" is official US government policy.

Here's the column:

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren has raised eyebrows with her not-so-subtle threat to withhold U.S. aid from Israel in order to extract Israeli concessions. But there was another disturbing element to Warren’s statement that is being overlooked.

“It is the official policy of the United States of America to support a two-state solution, and if Israel is moving in the opposite direction, then everything is on the table,” Warren said at an Iowa campaign event this past week, in response to a question about whether she would use aid to pressure Israel.

“Official U.S. policy”?  Not even close.

It is not the policy of the Trump administration to support creating a Palestinian Arab state. In fact, administration officials have specifically said that their forthcoming proposal for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement does not include a Palestinian state.

The London Guardian reported on September 5:  “Although little is known for certain about the Kushner-Greenblatt plan, Trump officials have made it clear it will not commit to supporting the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel…” Other media outlets have reported likewise.

But it didn’t start with President Trump.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower didn’t call for creating a Palestinian state. Neither did Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, or George H.W. Bush. 

In addition, neither Bill Clinton nor Jimmy Carter ever publicly called for a Palestinian state while they were president. Palestinian statehood was not “official U.S. policy” during their administrations.

The first U.S. president to publicly call for a Palestinian state was George W. Bush. That was in 2002. But, significantly, Bush conditioned it on the Palestinians electing a new leadership, and permanently abandoning terrorism. Needless to say, the Palestinians never met those conditions. 

The first—and still only—sitting American president to call for creating a Palestinian state without preconditions was Barack Obama.

There are good reasons why Palestinian statehood has been “official U.S. policy” during only one administration in the past sixty-plus years:

—The Palestinian Arabs have a long record of fomenting regional instability, including an armed conflict with King Hussein of Jordan and a civil war in Lebanon. It’s only a matter of time before a Palestinian state would stir up turmoil and mayhem throughout the region. How would regional chaos be good for America?

—The Palestinians have always allied themselves with the most extreme and aggressive regimes in the world, including the Soviet Union, North Korea and Iran. “Palestine” would become a proxy-state for the world’s worst rogue regimes. How would an Iranian port in Gaza be good for America?

—From the Palestinian Authority’s practices over the past 24 years, we know what kind of state they would have: Islam would be the state religion; elections would be held rarely, if ever; dissidents would be tortured and suppressed; Christians would be intimidated; women would be second-class citizens. How would creating a regime that represent the opposite of American values be good for America?

—Creating a Palestinian state would reduce America’s only real ally in the region, Israel, to just nine miles wide. Making Israel so vulnerable would not only endanger the Jewish state, but would also undermine the confidence of all of America’s allies, and call into doubt the value of America’s promises. How could that be good for America’s strategic position in the Middle East, or its reputation anywhere in the world?

In short, the establishment of a Palestinian Arab fascist dictatorship—for that is certainly what it would be—would be bad for American values, bad for American interests, and bad for America’s allies.

I understand why advocates of the Palestinian cause like to claim that a Palestinian state is longstanding U.S. policy. It makes the idea sound more legitimate. It creates an air of inevitability. But it’s a lie. Somebody needs to explain that to Senator Warren.

* * *

I am pleased to announce that my book, "A Father's Story, My Fight For Justice Against Iranian Terror," is now available on Kindle.

Terrorists as heroes. Is that a way to raise children?

Mixing sports and terrorism

The Palestinian Authority’s Karate Federation recently held a “Sisters of Dalal Mughrabi Championship for Young Women,” named for a cherished mass murderess "heroine."

You have to ask why?  I explore this phenomenon in my recent column on Arutz Sheva, Israel National News.

Here in America we often have debates about whether it’s appropriate to mix sports with politics—whether athletes should speak out on political or social controversies. But in Palestinian Arab society, there is no such debate. Sports are a major platform for glorifying and promoting terrorism against Jews.

Using sports events to glorify mass murder clearly contradicts the spirit of peaceful international sporting competition.
The Palestinian Authority’s Karate Federation recently held a “Sisters of Dalal Mughrabi Championship for Young Women.”  Normal societies name sports events after a prominent figure in that sport, or after the donors who made the event possible. Not Palestinian society; it names sports events after its most cherished heroes—those who have massacred Jews.

On March 9, 1978, Ms. Mughrabi —who was just 19 years old at the time— led a squad of 13 Fatah terrorists that landed in several small boats on Israel's shore. Another young woman, Gail Rubin, happened to be on the beachfront that morning.  

Gail, an American Jewish nature photographer, was taking photos of rare birds near the water. Gail’s work had been exhibited at the Jewish Museum in New York City and other major venues. She was the niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-Conn.).

One of the terrorists involved in the attack, Hussain Fayadh, later described to a Lebanese Television station what happened next: "Sister Dalal al-Mughrabi had a conversation with the American journalist. Before killing her, Dalal asked: 'How did you enter Palestine?' [Rubin] answered: 'They gave me a visa.' Dalal said: 'Did you get your visa from me, or from Israel? I have the right to this land. Why didn't you come to me?' Then Dalal opened fire on her."

As Gail laying dying on the beach, Mughrabi and her fellow-terrorists walked to the nearby Coastal Road. An Israeli bus approached. They hijacked it. During the ensuing mayhem, they murdered 36 passengers, 12 of them children. Mughrabi was killed by Israeli troops. Ever since, she has been lionized by the Palestinian leadership and news media as a heroine, martyr and role model—including as a role model.

The Palestinian Karate Federation belongs to an international organization known as the Asian Karate Federation, which in turn its part of the World Karate Federation. I have written to both, asking them to take action on the Palestinians’ exploitation of karate to glorify terrorism. Neither federation has responded.

Meanwhile, Palestinian chess players recently took part in the “Martyr Khalil Al-Wazir Abu Jihad Tournament of the Palestine  Northern Districts Individual Chess Tournaments.”

Khalil Al-Wazir, better known as Abu Jihad, was one of the most notorious terrorists in modern history. He was a co-founder, along with Yasir Arafat, of the terrorist Fatah movement in 1965. 

According to news reports as well as the PA’s own boasting, al-Wazir personally organized attacks in which 125 people were killed. Among the most infamous were the murder of American diplomats in Khartoum (Sudan) in 1973, and the above mentioned Coastal Road massacre led by Dalal Mughrabi.

Karate and chess are not the only sports through which the Palestinian Authority glorifies mass murderers. The Ansar Al-Quds soccer club, near Jerusalem, holds an Abu Jihad Tournament. So do the Palestinian Judo Association, the Palestinian Table-Tennis Association, and the Palestinian Boxing Association. 

The international federations to which these Palestinian sports associations belong have an obligation to act. Using sports events to glorify mass murder clearly contradicts the spirit of peaceful international sporting competition. Silence in the face of these Palestinian outrages will imply acceptance of such behavior.

The question of naming sports events after terrorists is not just a matter of symbolism. Young people are influenced by what they see and hear around them. When a society presents Dalal Mughrabi and Abu Jihad as heroes, then young Palestinians will aspire to duplicate their murderous deeds. How can there be any hope for peace if young Palestinians are raised to view massacring Jews as their goal in life?

***

I am pleased to say that my book A Father's Story: My Fight For Justice Against Iranian Terror is now available on Kindle.

Child abuse at summer camp

Summer camp where war is taught.

Child abuse under a different name

In this column at jns.org I look at the summer camps being run by Hamas in Gaza and a sing-along in Turkey.  The affect on children will, in the long run, not be good.  In fact, it's child abuse.

Summer camp, a time for fun?

Many parents of my age remember striving to be able to send their children to summer camp. Now, as grandparents, we see our own children doing the same. I believed then, as I do now, that summer camp is a time when children make new friendships—many of which last into their adult years—grow emotionally and learn what we call “people skills.”

Somewhere in the boxes that accumulated over the years in our basement are videotapes of our five children at summer camp. We see our kids in various activities—playing baseball and basketball, jumping into the pool, holding the rabbits in the “nature shack,” and, the mother of all activities, “color war.”

Color war is a good kind of war; it’s bloodless, unless you bang your nose during a hotly contested rebound under a basketball hoop, and perhaps the most fun part of it is watching your child sing his or her heart out in the song competition. In the end, one team won, the other lost, and the war came to an end. You hope your child comes away with the lesson that competition requires teamwork, and that, in turn, builds character.

Videos have now emerged of children at summer camp practicing for war of a different sort. For instance, from Turkey there’s a video that has gone viral of a teacher prompting a group of young girls in a camp setting by shouting the word yahudiye—Turkish for “to the Jew,” which results in the children responding by raising their fists and shouting “death.”

The video is seemingly so disturbing within Turkey that a member of its parliament has demanded an explanation from the government as to how this could have happened.

Perhaps more chilling than the Turkish episode are the video scenes coming out of Gaza’s summer camps. No basketball contests or visits to the nature shack. No, instead we are treated to young boys going through military training, running obstacle courses and crawling under barbed wire with what appears to be live fire overhead. We are also shown images of these “campers” field-stripping rifles while blindfolded. This is done in all armies to simulate nighttime fighting conditions.

Perhaps we should be numb to this by now as we’ve been watching, thanks to the folks at MEMRI and Palestinian Media Watch, two decades’ worth of children’s shows on official Palestinian Authority television of children pledging to seek martyrdom when they are older as they “liberate” Palestine.

But we’re not numb, and the images coming out of Gaza are too disturbing to be cast aside as nothing more than daily Palestinian efforts to undermine Israel.

What are to make of all this?

First, let’s call this phenomenon of young children and teens being used for the purpose of instilling them with Jew-hatred and preparing them for death in war what it is: child abuse.

If you look up the definition of child abuse, you’ll see a thread running through the term as defined the United Nations, the United States and children’s aid organizations around the world. But they all boil down to this as succinctly stated by ChildHelp on its website:

“Child abuse is when a parent or caregiver, whether through action or failing to act, causes injury, death, emotional harm or risk of serious harm to a child. There are many forms of child maltreatment, including neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, exploitation and emotional abuse.”

Second, nothing good is going to come from this. Is Hamas planning to turn these teens into a child army as we’ve seen in Africa with gruesome results? Is Hamas planning to destroy a whole generation of young men in the way that Iran did during the eight years long Iran-Iraq war, when 95,000 Iranian child soldiers were made casualties, mostly between the ages of 16 and 17, and many younger than that?

I don’t have the answers to those questions, and I’d also like to know the answer to the question I have been asking for almost 25 years:

Where are the Palestinian parents who love their children and want to keep them out of harm’s way?

Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney in New Jersey, 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,” available at Devon Square Press.