Meir Indor

Lt.-Col. (ret.) Meir Indor is CEO of Almagor Terror Victims Association. In his extended career of public service, he has worked as a journalist, founded the Libi Fund, Sar-El, Habaita, among many other initiatives, and continues to lend his support to other pressing causes of the day.

A Prize for Murder

Embarrassingly, the terrorist was permitted to go free.

The Jewish Press

2013-05-12

Source

Jamal Tirawi

Imagine that a man has kidnapped a girl at gunpoint. He is promised that if he frees her, he will be absolved of all guilt and permitted to go back home. Do you really think that such a person would be let off the hook just because of that promise?

Jamal Tirawi is a senior Fatah and Tanzim operative from Shechem (Nablus). He is the one who dispatched suicide terrorist Muhanan Ibrahim Salahat to My Coffee Shop in Tel Aviv in the spring of 2002. The attack resulted in the murder of Rachel Cherki and the wounding of another thirty victims. Yet the Military Court of Appeals at Camp Ofer decided this week to free Tirawi and annul the sentence of thirty years’ imprisonment he had received. The explanation given: Israel once indicated that it was removing hundreds of terrorists from its list of wanted criminals on the condition that they not engage in terrorist activities, and Israel is required to fulfill this promise. There is nothing of greater importance, reasoned the judges, than that the state fulfill its promises.

With this, the court adopted the position of Avigdor Feldman, the attorney who had defended the murderer. Feldman made no bones about the crimes committed by his client—he simply found a way around them. Meanwhile, the IDF Advocate General, representatives of the ISA, and the first panel of judges to hear the case asserted that the terrorist had returned to terrorism, thus violating the condition on which he had been removed from the list in the first place.

Embarrassingly, the terrorist was permitted to go free.

The victims of his crime were not even notified of his appeal. The very night after he was exonerated, the authorities brought Tirawi to the Balata neighborhood of Shechem and released him. He received an adoring welcome from thousands of young people, some carrying weapons. The message was clear: someone who murders Jews will regain his freedom sooner or later.

Where was IDF Northern Command head General Nitzan Alon when all this happened? Part of his job is to approve rulings by the military courts under his command. Why didn’t he, or else the chief of staff, suspend the ruling so that the terrorists’ victims could file their own appeal and petition the Supreme Court to annul the ruling?

According to the legal advice obtained by Almagor from retired judges, including judges who worked in military law, the appeals court’s ruling was nothing short of scandalous. Aside from the fact that the court simply ignored the terrorist’s return to terrorism, the judges were interfering in an inherently political matter. A state has the right to announce a political or military course of action with regard to another country or entity, and then change course. This is outside of a court’s ambit. The Supreme Court has said precisely this in dozens of cases filed by Almagor and others against the release of terrorists. What is more, the Israeli policy was never issued publicly or officially, and it was part of an understanding reached with the PA, not the wanted criminals themselves.

Nevertheless, for the time being, the terrorist is home and the family of the woman he murdered is again in mourning.

Asleep at the Wheel

This week, on 9 May, Rabbi Moshe Levinger received the Moskowitz Prize for Zionism.

In 1967, Rabbi Levinger took responsibility. He led the public to settle Hevron, and from there proceeded to the remainder of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). It was not the state that did this. The settlement enterprise grew from the grassroots: it was the public that pushed and recruited the political echelon and the state.

The war on terrorism equally must not be left to military men and politicians.

Here are a few examples of successful campaigns against terrorism. Granted, whatever success is attained is scant comfort for the bereaved families, but as far as the murderers’ potential next victims are concerned, the difference is between life and death. The same goes for the many soldiers who endangered their lives to arrest and imprison the terrorists, and were spared from doing so again.

Michael Palmer, whose son Asher was murdered with his own son in a rock-throwing attack near Halhul, came from America to be present at the trial of those who had murdered his loved ones. He retained a lawyer and, along with a group of friends, attended every session held by the court. The judge, a man who had decided in the past that those who throw rocks do not necessarily do so out of intent to murder, determined this time that rocks are lethal weapons. Those who threw the rocks received life sentences.

Had the father not been present at the court, it is more than likely that a plea deal would have crept up over the course of the trial. By virtue of their constant presence, Palmer and his friends brought about an outright conviction. The murderers of his son and grandson were put away for life.

In another instance, the mothers of the students murdered in Naharayim by a Jordanian soldier extemporized a memorial ceremony outside the Jordanian embassy, following the publication of a letter signed by a hundred Jordanian parliamentarians calling for the release of the murderer. The mothers met with the Jordanian ambassador and extracted a promise from him as a representative of Jordan that the murderer would not be released.

That was a sterling example of civil responsibility.

Alongside acts of murder and destruction, the terrorism machine runs a sophisticated civil support system including jurists, authors, artists, journalists, and more. There needs to be a parallel civilian movement to oppose them. Otherwise, there will continue to be reprises of what happened with Samir Issawi, a terrorist who was released in the Schalit Deal. That deal was conditioned on the terrorists’ not breaking any laws: otherwise they were to return to prison to serve out their sentences. Issawi resumed illegal activities, was caught, and went on a hunger strike. A group of authors appealed to Netanyahu for him, a leftist women’s group broke into the hospital where he was located, Haaretz lent its support, and Netanyahu surrendered. The public failed to wake up and do something. Netanyahu gave instructions to make a deal with the terrorists’ lawyers allowing him to be released early, and instead of ten years, he ended up with eight months!

At Almagor, bereaved parents and terror victims give of their time to fight a civil, political, legal, and media struggle against terrorism. They view themselves as soldiers without uniforms. Their battle cry is “Al magor!” “No fear!”

You don’t have to be a victim to fight terrorism. Join us. Together we’ll put an end to the decline of our national endurance in the face of terrorism.

Meir Indor

Lt.-Col. (ret.) Meir Indor is CEO of Almagor Terror Victims Association. In his extended career of public service, he has worked as a journalist, founded the Libi Fund, Sar-El, Habaita, among many other initiatives, and continues to lend his support to other pressing causes of the day.

From the Interrogation of the Murderer of Eviatar Borovsky

Terror victims have families that expect justice to be done, just as they were promised.

The Jewish Press

2013-05-06

Source

The funeral of stabbing victim Eviatar Borovsky, April 30, 2013.

What is your name?

Salam al-Zaghal.

Tell me about yourself.

Wait, is my lawyer almost here?

No, and you’re not going to see him for a few days yet either. Now—three years in jail wasn’t enough for you?

It’s not so bad there. We get 1,600 shekels every month from the Palestinian Authority to buy stuff at the canteen. Also a salary. We watch TV. Get family visits. Play with sports equipment the Red Cross brings. Great food. We’re treated as prisoners of war.

I tried throwing rocks to kill, I didn’t manage, I got just three years. I got out of jail, went back to killing, and this time I did it.

But now you’ll serve much longer.

Give me a break. Do you actually believe that? Either Hamas will get another soldier, or Abbas will put me on a list of prisoners he demands be freed. And if not this time, then next time around.

We at the ISA would oppose any such move.

Look, are you for real, or did you come to laugh at me while I’m lying in the hospital? You opposed the Schalit Deal too. We won.

Everyone’s learned the lesson. It won’t happen again.

I think you should take a look at Haaretz, boss. You remember Samir Issawi, the prisoner who went on a hunger strike? One of the ones who were freed in the Schalit Deal? He went back to the “resistance.” Because of pressure from you at the ISA and Almagor at the Supreme Court, a condition was attached to the release, that if there would be any sort of minor violation, a prisoner would go back and serve his whole sentence—in his case, ten years.

So what? He went on a hunger strike. Your journalists stuck up for him, and Netanyahu decided to free him in another eight months. You didn’t see the letter they wrote for him in Haaretz? They were practically fawning over him.

Maybe I’ll go on my own hunger strike …

Cut out the political lectures. I want to know who’s behind you.

The whole Palestinian people. The radio stations—

No, no. Who sent you?

Listen to the radio! Look at the schools’ syllabuses praising the shuhada (martyrs)!

You people don’t even listen to Abbas and Jibril Rajoub! They hold us up as national heroes. They’re the ones who sent me.

Let’s talk about what happened at the time of the attack.

I saw that your bus stops are total chaos so much of the time. You have soldiers there, but they stand off on the side, and they don’t give us any problems getting to the hitchhiking stations. There haven’t been roadblocks in ages. If there were a red line around the station saying we can’t go past, then granted, the soldiers would notice I’d gone over there. But there isn’t any.

I bought a big knife. I stood there with a bunch of laborers, walked around as if going to the hitchhiking station, went over to my target, and stabbed him a few times. Simple as can be.

But didn’t he have a pistol? Weren’t there armed soldiers?

Yeah, but the Zionists don’t walk around with their guns ready—even the settlers. They’re bashful. I love it. Obviously if I saw settlers with guns drawn every day, I wouldn’t think about coming near them.

Nah, I wasn’t afraid I’d get killed. The soldiers weren’t going to shoot to kill as long as I was done killing. It’s such a game. You put your hands up, you go to the slammer.

But what did you get out of it? You killed a man with five children.

We got plenty out of it. Today Netanyahu said that the solution is two states for two peoples. Why do you think he said that? Because of the armed struggle.

* * *

The members of the Bat Ayin underground, the only Jewish terrorist group serving time in prison, received sentences of 13 to 15 years. For Palestinians, attempted murder carries a sentence of eight years or less. We discovered this factoid when we obtained lists of prisoners who stand to be released: the most recent ones received eight years or less for unsuccessful gunfire. For rock throwing they receive two to three years. One military judge saw fit to determine that since rocks do not always hit their target, it is fallacious to assume that those who throw them intend to murder. The message is simple: First kill a Jew. Then we’ll figure out your intent based on the results.

We investigated the 120 prisoners Mahmoud Abbas is demanding Israel release because they are “long-time prisoners,” “old,” or “sick,” and it turns out that nearly all of them are serving life sentences (or two, or three … or 17). Almagor (The Jewish Terror Victims Association) now has in its possession the names of all those terrorists, as well as descriptions of what they did, and is waiting for a brave journalist who is prepared to expose this information to the public through the media, the bulk of which is under the thumb of Jibril Rajoub, the lead Palestinian propagandist on this issue.

Here are a few of the terrorists’ names: Mustafa Kalib Asrar, murderer of Tzvi Klein of Ofra. Abu Harabish Salam Saliman Mahmoud, murderer of David de la Roza and the Weiss family. Issa Mousa Issa Mahmoud, murderer of Nissim Toledano. Abd a-Rabba Namer Jibril Issa, murderer of Revital Sari and Ron Levi.

The murder victims have families that expect justice to be done, just as they were promised. They expect that justice will not cancelled due to pressures that are not germane, with a wink that yes, we promised at the graveside that our long arm would catch them, but we didn’t promise they would serve out their sentences …

Originally published at Makor Rishon.
Translated from Hebrew by David B. Greenberg.
The above does not represent an actual interrogation transcript.

Adiv Sterman

Fatah: Tapuah Junction Stabber ‘a Hero’

Organization’s Facebook page congratulates Salam As’ad Zaghal, who murdered Evyatar Borowsky, a 31-year-old father of five

The Times of Israel

2013-04-30

Source

Israeli security forces inspect the site of a terror attack, at a bus stop at the Tapuah Junction in the northern West Bank. April 30, 2013 (photo credit: Flash90)

Fatah party representatives praised as a hero a Palestinian attacker who stabbed an Israeli to death at a West Bank junction on Tuesday.

The organization posted pictures from the scene of the attack on its official Facebook page, accompanying each image with a caption boasting of the stabber’s “success.” Officials also expressed hope that he would be quickly released from prison.

“The settler who was killed today at al-Za’atara south of Nablus by the released prisoner hero Salam As’ad Zaghal from the city of Tulkarem,” read a caption beneath a picture of Evyatar Borowsky, a 31-year-old father of five who was stabbed to death by Zaghal earlier Tuesday at Tapuah junction.

Another photograph on the group’s Facebook page showed a portrait of Zaghal with an illustration of an AK-47 rifle beneath his head. “Peace be with you the day of your birth, on the day of your imprisonment and on the day of your freedom,” the caption wished the terrorist.

Zaghal was released from Israeli prison last month after serving a three-year term for throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, as well as other criminal offenses. Israeli security officials estimated that Zaghal’s attack may have been carried out in order to establish his credentials as a loyal Palestinian, after his brother was tried by a Palestinian Authority court Monday for allegedly collaborating with Israel.

Friends of Evyatar Borowsky were shocked by the news of his death. “He was a talented man who always laughed about everything,” Oshri Maimon, the director of the Erel theater group of which Borowsky was a member, told Ynet Tuesday. “He had quite a personality.”

“I remember Evyatar was always welcoming, always with a smile,” Borowski’s high school rabbi, Nesiel Ben-Tov, told Ynet. “He was a student with lots of good traits and love for others. He never did anything problematic.”

Following the deadly attack, the Israeli Almagor Terror Victims Association called on Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to restate Israel’s defense policy in the West Bank and issue explicit orders to open fire on rock-throwing Palestinians.

“Central Command is responding to a wholesale ‘intifada’ by the Palestinians with the tools of low-intensity warfare,” Almagor CEO Meir Indor stated. “The terrorist was able to get to and murder Evyatar Borovski at an Egged bus stop solely because of soldiers’ orders to ‘go easy’ on rock throwers and let them move around freely.”

Later Tuesday, local media and human rights groups reported that retaliatory acts by settlers from Yitzhar, where Borowsky lived, and Tapuah followed the lethal stabbing. Rabbis for Human Rights, an Israeli watchdog, reported that settlers attacked and moderately injured a Palestinian farmer near the village of Furiq and uprooted some 100 olive trees near the village of Qaryut.

Six settlers were arrested in connection with the violence.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Mujahideen movement, an Islamist offshoot of Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Brigades, congratulated the perpetrator of Tuesday’s fatal stabbing attack.

“We welcome any act of resistance against this corrupt enemy,” said the movement’s spokesman, Abu-Omar, in a statement published on the movement’s website.

The stabbing, the statement continued, is a “natural response to the occupation’s aggression and its continuous attacks on all things Palestinian in the West Bank.”

Nadav Shragai; Gideon Allon

Rightists Alarmed by Palestinian Demand for Release of Terrorists

Palestinians said to be demanding release of 120 imprisoned terrorists, many with blood on their hands, as a condition for renewing peace negotiations • Habayit Hayehudi MK Orit Struck claims U.S. is exerting heavy pressure on Israel to release them.

Israel Hayom

2013-04-23

Source

The aftermath of a terrorist attack in Jerusalem [illustrative] (Photo credit: Reuters)

Israeli rightists say the Palestinians have demanded the release of 120 imprisoned terrorists, many with blood on their hands, as a condition for renewing peace negotiations with Israel.

The terrorists were involved in attacks before the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.

Habayit Hayehudi MK Orit Struck has submitted a parliamentary query on the matter, in which she claimed the U.S. government is exerting heavy pressure on the Israeli government to release these terrorists.

On Monday, Almagor, a terror victims’ association led by Meir Indor, published a list of the terrorists supposedly under consideration for release. The list includes a terrorist who firebombed a bus in the Jericho area in 1988, killing Rachel Weiss, her three children and an Israeli soldier who tried to save them. Another terrorist on the list was responsible for a Jerusalem bus bombing in 1986.

Indor told Israel Hayom on Monday that the Palestinians conditioning the resumption of the peace talks on the release of murderers revealed their true intentions. He noted that many terrorists released in the past later returned to terror activities, and said he feared this would happen again.

PA Demanding the Release of 120 Terrorists Prior to Resumption of Talks

Yeshiva World News

2013-04-23

Source

Once again the PA (Palestinian Authority) is seeking to exact a price from Israel, a prerequisite to the resumption of diplomatic talks. PA officials are demanding the release of 120 terrorists imprisoned by Israel, including some with “blood on their hands” from their acts of murder, terrorists serving life sentences.

MK (Bayit Yehudi) Orit Struk in her Knesset query posits the United States is applying pressure on Israel to approve the prisoner release. The Almagor terror victims association on Monday 12 Iyar 5773 released the names of the 120 slated for release.

That list includes the terrorist who hurled the firebomb at a bus near Yericho which led to the deaths of Rochel Weiss and her three children as well as an IDF soldier HY”D. Also appearing on the list is the terrorist who in 1986 placed a bomb on an 18 bus that murdered six people HY”D and left others injured and maimed.

While Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has stated repeatedly Israel is willing to return to the negotiating table immediately, without preconditions, he has made so-called good-will gestures of this nature in the past.

Bayit Yehudi Opposed to Good Will Prisoner Release

Yeshiva World News

2013-04-17

Source

With diplomatic talks between Israel and the PA (Palestinian Authority) expected to resume in the near future, officials in the Bayit Yehudi party are already signaling that oppose an additional good will prisoner release by Israel as is being sought by the United States and the PA. According to a Maariv report quoting party officials, it makes no difference if the terrorists slated for release “have blood on their hands or not.”

During a remembrance ceremony held by the Almagor terror victims association Deputy Minister of Religious Services (Bayit Yehudi) Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan stated “Israel must not release terrorists.”

“Soldiers are placed in danger towards making certain the elderly; children and other innocent persons are not harmed while the terrorists are willing to strike out against the elderly, women and children without mercy.”

Ben-Dahan made a reference to Adele Biton, who was critically injured in a rock-throwing attack, calling upon Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu not to release terrorists regardless of their having or not having blood on their hands. The deputy minister explained that those who do not have blood on their hands planned to strike out but were apprehended in time, adding his party will oppose any such prisoner release. He added “during a period of negotiations there are negotiations and nothing else, including a good will prisoner release.”

Maariv adds that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has rejected the Washington Plan again when it was recently presented by visiting US Secretary of State Johan Kerry. That plan calls for an international force headed by the USA stationed in PA areas. Israel fears the force will be incapable of preventing arms from being smuggled from Jordan into the PA state. Netanyahu speaks of an interim period of no less than forty years in which the IDF will maintain its position along the Jordanian border and Israel will not rely on an international force. One official is quoted by Maariv as adding the weapons smuggled in by Hamas may also be used against the PA in Ramallah and therefore the Israeli presence along the border is to the PA’s advantage too.

“Proudly Keep Terrorists in Prison Forever”

Israel National News

2013-04-15

Source

Deputy Religious Affairs Minister Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan spoke at the memorial ceremony of the Almagor organization for Terror Victims, “IDF soldiers risk their lives to avoid harming innocent Arabs, while terrorist target innocent Israelis. We call to the PM to never make any more PA gestures like releasing terrorists. In only a few hours you will all behold the glory of the state of Israel our precious friends and relatives fought for, as we celebrate our independence. The sacrifice was not in vain.”

Roi Kais

Jordanian Parliament Demands Release of Naharayim Shooter

110 Parliament members sign petition demanding release of soldier who killed seven Israeli schoolgirls in 1997; ‘He’s a hero,’ says former justice minister; victims’ parents say will fight against release

Ynet

2013-04-12

Source

An overwhelming 110 members of the Jordanian House of Representatives signed a petition demanding a pardon for a Jordanian soldier who shot and killed seven Israeli schoolgirls in 1997.

Ahmad Musa Mustafa Daqamseh shot the girls during a school fieldtrip in Naharayim, near the Israel-Jordan border, and is currently serving a life sentence.

“Along with the other six families, we intend to fight this,” said Shlomo Bedayev, father of Shiri, one of the victims. “I want people to put themselves in my place and ask themselves if they’d be willing to come to terms with the release of a murderer who killed one of their family members.”

“I don’t go a second of forgetting what happened,” he added. “Every time I see the girls’ pictures I cry; I’ve never shed a tear in my life. He must stay in jail for the rest of his life.”

Yedioth Aharonoth front page after the shooting (Photo: Yedioth Ahronoth archives)

Nurit Fatihi, who lost her daughter Sivan, said: “I expected him to rot in jail, but I can’t count on the Jordanian court and authorities to promote justice. We turned to governmental sources in the past, but it didn’t really help.”

The parents intend to fight together. “We’ll meet – all the parents – and see how we fight this,” Nurit added. “Just like I will never see my daughter again, he doesn’t deserve to see his family. Every one of the girls would have a family and children by now.”

Referring to the proximity of the Memorial Day, Miri Meiri, mother of Yeela noted that “This time of year only makes the pain harder to bear. Maybe they’re doing it now on purpose.”

“Seven girls were murdered; he should serve seven life sentences. I hope the government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will know what to do with this. It’s been 16 years, but the pain just keeps getting worse.”

Several days after the 1997 shooting, the late Jordanian King Hussein arrived in Israel for an unprecedented consolatory visit and together with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with the bereaved families.

Jordanian king visits wounded in hospital (Photo: Yedioth Aharonoth archives)

“Your daughter is like my own. Your pain is mine,” the monarch said to one of the families as he knelt in their living room.

He later visited one girl who was wounded in the attack in the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. “I’m very sorry for what happened,” the king told her, and gave her a gift – a hamsa.

Following the shooting, the soldier’s testimony to his interrogators was released by Yedioth Ahronoth. “I don’t know what happened to me,” he said.

“I lost control and acted.” The shooter, who claimed his actions were not prompted by anyone but himself, was sentenced to life in prison.

Hussein Mjali, Jordan’s former justice minister, previously referred to the imprisoned soldier as a “hero,” and added that “if a Jew killed Arabs they would have built a monument in his honor.”

Chairman of the Almagor Terror Victims Association Meir Indor stressed that “The Israeli government and the Knesset must exhibit determination regarding his pardoning, and must do so before Memorial Day as a moral obligation.

Meir Indor

Meir Indor is a lieutenant-colonel (ret.) in the IDF and head of the Almagor Terror Victims Association.

Op-Ed

License to Murder: It’s Not Just Amira Hass

Amira Hass turned traitor long ago, and her case is one for the legal authorities. But is Hass the only journalist in the service of the “popular intifada”? What about the other news media—are they doing their job?

Israel National News

2013-04-09

Source

The Palestinian Authority is the official body behind the recent “intifada” of rocks and Molotov cocktails, and Haaretz journalist Amira Hass has long been the Palestinians’ unofficial spokeswoman. When she wrote an article legitimizing rock throwing, she was doing her part in the PA’s effort to stretch a defensive umbrella over the young brutes lobbing rocks and incendiary bombs.

They are the ones who mortally wounded baby Adelle Biton. They are the ones who seriously injured musician Itzik Kalah’s wife, Tziyona, four months ago near Beitar Ilit. Both events occured in the so-called settlements blocs: the Palestinians do not discriminate.

The Central Command of the IDF won’t admit it, but a rash of so many terrorist attacks at the same time and with such scope is impossible unless it is centrally organized. The PA, meanwhile, is not in the least embarrassed by what it dubs a “popular intifada.”

The terrorist organizers don’t only deploy terrorists. They also deploy collaborators and lawyers, as well as sympathetic media coverage from within the civilian population under attack (in accordance with the doctrines of terrorism first developed in the Soviet Union).

I don’t have any intention of taking on Amira Hass. She turned traitor long ago, and her case is one for the legal authorities. But is Hass the only journalist in the service of the “popular intifada”? What about the other news media—are they doing their job? Or are they also collaborating, by keeping silent?

Helplessness

Most of the media do not report most rock-throwing attacks. I encountered this reality in the past when my wife and I were nearly lynched on our way home from visiting my parents’ graves on the Mount of Olives. Only a few of the media reported on the injury to my head, even though pictures were provided to them on a silver platter. No journalist except Arutz Sheva came to interview me about what I had experienced, about the feeling of helplessness that comes with the inability to protect one’s wife.

There was my wife’s angle too. She was the one at the wheel. Aside from the fear and the terror, the trembling and the tears that gripped her, the post-traumatic symptoms, she was left with a sense of betrayal. My wife is a nurse, and she has occasion to provide treatment to residents of the Arab neighborhood where we were attacked, while virtually all the teachers from the little terrorists’ school stood outside watching as their students set upon us. Fittingly or not, the principal brought his daughter to be treated by my wife just one week later.

Then there is my daughter the journalist, who hurried to the scene only to discover that this was the same school about which she had published a number of complimentary news items.

And I have to make mention of the two times when I personally rescued Arabs who found themselves in the midst of angry crowds gathered for funerals of terror victims. Yet none of the Palestinians in the dozens of vehicles around us on the Mount of Olives made a move to save us.

What we have here is a perfect scoop by any measure. But almost nothing was published.

So when did the mainstream media report on what was happening in the area? Just one day after I was wounded, when City of David head David Be’eri lightly injured an Arab youth who was throwing rocks at his car as he drove through the area. The footage taken by the photographers who had been invited to film the Palestinian ambush, showing the youth being injured by Be’eri’s car, was broadcast repatedly.

Why does this matter so much to me? Because even aside from the media’s rightful function of delegitimizing terrorism with cold weapons, coverage makes a difference. A big difference. In a country where the media are so powerful that they dictate how many resources go to a given criminal investigation, reports carry a lot of weight. When rocks were thrown at an Arab woman last month in Jerusalem, media pressure brought out a slew of investigative teams, and all those who had been involved were quickly arrested. The powers that be made it crystal clear that the law is supreme, and it is enforced … the problem being that it is enforced selectively.

Here is a different angle on the same issue: in the absence of media reports to the contrary, Barack Obama could sell the PA to the Israeli public as a an entity with which it is possible to make peace.

Restraint Is Power?

Due to the lack of media coverage, warped orders are issued every day for dealing with the dozens of cases in which Israelis are ambushed with rocks and Molotov cocktails. In the current reality, shifts of reservists and enlisted soldiers on security duty in Judea and Samaria are competing to see who can manage to do the job without casualties … on the Palestinian side. The senior commanders brag about the prowess with which apply the doctrines of low-intensity warfare. The platoons are praised in debriefings for operating wisely. The line “restraint is also a kind of power” (first uttered by Arik Sharon, while visiting wounded terror victims) has become a military mantra.

Despite all the bad experience with restraint as defense policy, we are going in that direction yet again. The combination of the media’s indifference to the wounding of Jews and senior IDF officers’ instructions to exercise restraint in the face of Palestinian terrorism is interpreted by those organizing the attacks as a blank check to keep them coming.

Once it was small groups of terrorists with their faces covered who threw rocks at IDF forces. Now it is in the open, often with masses of attackers, who know that nothing will happen to them as long as no Israeli is dead yet by the end of the event. This is a fact. How many of the people who participate in these rock-throwing demonstrations have been arrested, after being photographed and filmed while there? The IDF could go into their towns at night and collect them by the hundred. But in practice very, very few are apprehended.

The Palestinians take advantage of this. Intelligently, craftily, they put youths and minors to work on the rock-throwing front, knowing that they are protected by Israeli and foreign NGO’s—as well as the Israeli media, which rush to the scene the moment an investigator strays from his orders while trying to extract vital information or a confession. Welcome to the paradise of Palestinian terrorism.

All together, this is the route to the legitimization of terrorism. It starts with Amira Hass, and it ends with the killing of the Palmer father and son by a well-aimed rock thrown from a moving vehicle.

For Hass, this is a legitimate deed. For me it is a legitimate reason to put her in jail under the Prevention of Terror Ordinance for encouraging and collaborating with acts of terrorism.

Gil Ronen

Almagor: Don’t Be Fooled by Applause for Obama

Israel National News

2013-03-21

Source

Almagor head Meir Indor (Yoni Kempinski)

The Almagor Terror Victims Association criticized U.S. President Barack Obama for his remarks at the Jerusalem Convention Center Thursday.

In his speech, Obama urged his audience to ignore the risks of concessions to the Palestinian Authority.

Unfortunately, the Israeli terror victims who paid the price of these risks in the past were not present. Almagor issued a request to the US Embassy to allow terror victims to attend, but the embassy rejected this request, preferring to handpick a receptive audience.

Almagor CEO Lt.-Col. (ret.) Meir Indor said: “Don’t be fooled by the applause: the Israeli public doesn’t buy Obama’s rhetoric.

“Had Israel’s terror victims been in the audience, we would have reminded Obama that the risks he wants us to ignore cost us dead Israelis. Mahmoud Abbas, to whom he wants Israel to make concessions, is the head of the same PA that launched a terror war on Israel in 2000, murdering more than 1,400 innocent Israelis.

“We would have reminded Obama how many people the PA has murdered with weapons given to it by Israel and the US. We would have reminded him of the endless incitement to hatred and genocide that streams out of Mahmoud Abbas’ media.

“Unfortunately, Obama refuses to learn from Israel’s experience. He preferred to select an easy crowd to listen to a speech full of the same snake oil that has already blown up so many lives.”