UNRWA's Palestinian Refugee Permanence, 'Pay-for-Slay'

"Once again we have witnessed the nauseating spectacle of western governments -- which sanitize, fund and pump up the genocidal Palestinian Arab cause -- expressing shock and sympathy with Israel over these attacks [while continuing] to fund the Palestinian Authority despite the PA's 'pay-to-slay[' policy of rewarding the families of terrorists for every Israeli Jew they murder, and despite its never ending incitement to murder Jews and steal Israel's land."

Melanie Phillips, British journalist

 

"It's time to admit that Palestinian institutions are broken, and that they have developmentally harmed generations of Palestinian men and women, boys and girls, by whipping them into a constant froth with violently antisemitic educational and media content that celebrate 'martyrdom' attacks against Israelis."

"The Palestinian Authority provides a financial incentive for terrorism by providing pensions to the families of those who attack Israelis."

Palestinian political analyst Bassem Eid

"We will neither reduce nor prevent [payment] of allowances to the families of martyrs, prisoners and released prisoners, as some seek, and if we had only a single penny left, we would pay it to families of the martyrs and prisoners."

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas

AN ISRAELI flag hangs as a religious man ponders at the scene of a terror attack at the entrance to Jerusalem.

(photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

This is the man who presents himself on the world stage as the aggrieved partner-for-peace while denouncing Israel as a cruel occupier of Arab land that just happens to be located on ancestral Judean geography. But then such bothersomely inconsequential details are an irritant that Mahmoud Abbas is accustomed to dealing with. As he iterates and reiterates the misconceptions of history, personally giving his assurance that this land always belonged to Arabs who were, he avers, the original Palestinians

 

Even the Roman Empire got it wrong, and out of the goodness of his heart, Abbas stands prepared to correct their misimpression and he has already started, publishing maps identifying no Judean land, only a large swath labelled 'Palestine" as he lobbies the United Nations member bodies to proceed with giving its imprimatur to a unilateral announcement of the State of Palestine becoming an honoured member of the General Assembly. Or who knows...the permanent Security Council for its expertise in war and peace.

 

As for paying the martyrs and the prisoners and ex-prisoners of justifiable and honourable 'resistance' to the occupation that annoyingly keeps resisting the violence streaming at it from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, nothing, ever, will deter their handsome emoluments for a job well done. Recently the human rights group Palestinian Media Watch revealed that recently-released prisoners Karim and Maher Younig each collected close to $100,000 for their murder of Avraham Bromberg, a corporal in the Israel Defence Forces.

Where does an incipient 'nation' given refugee status in perpetuity by the United Nations' UNRWA get the funding to award such munificent sums to its terrorists from? An Arab-administered area so penurious that the international community through the United Nations, United States, European Union and other Western countries feel obligated to fund its civil infrastructure to enable the Palestinian Authority (Fatah/PLO) and Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza to operate?

It has long been documented that the PA schedules rewards for the terrorists it incites into the martyrdom death cult, from childhood onward through school curricula to social media programs to identify Jews as their enemy, to teach the vulnerable young of their duty as Palestinians to 'resist' the 'occupation' of apartheid Israel -- with its two million Palestinian citizens, along with Christian, Druze, Baha'i, Bedouin citizens --  creating in them a passion for martyrdom.

The PA has a per capita GDP of about $3,500, and an unemployment rate of 25 percent. Many Palestinians find employment and a working wage through jobs offered them in Israel where they can earn more than working in the West Bank or Gaza, if they can find jobs there.  Without outside funding for civic services, for hospitals, schools and social programs, there would never be finances available to pay for the PA's well-institutionalized 'pay-for-slay'.

 

That funding arrives through the generosity of the United States, its largest funder which provides hundreds of millions to the PA and Hamas through UNRWA. Canada too is a large contributor to the extended programs that effectively pay salaries to terrorists or to their families should they die in the line of duty to kill Israeli Jews. The countries that gasp in horror at the atrocities committed in Jerusalem against Jews are those very countries that fund the actions of the murderers.

 

In the very week, scant days afterward, of the slaughter of 7 Jews after Friday prayer at a synagogue  and the wounding of many others, the U.S. Secretary of State on a Middle East visit to Israel and the West Bank handed an additional $50 million over to the PA, over and above the $300 million recently given UNRWA. Funding that was revoked by Canada's former Prime Minister Stephen Harper and by former U.S. President Donald Trump in acknowledgment of UNRWA's role in transferring funds used to fund murder.

 

Funding that was speedily restored by their successors, U.S. President Joe Biden, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Both of whom give no thought whatever to what it is they are actually funding.

The family of Mohammed Tarayreh, who stabbed to death a 13-year-old Israeli girl in her bed, is now eligible for a monthly stipend from the Palestinian “Martyrs’ Fund.”
(AP Photo)

The Heroism of Palestinian Martyrs

"...An evening of spoken word, music and food to celebrate the artistic and cultural contributions of Palestinians in the diaspora and showcase the winners of the Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Scholarship in this years [sic] anthology, entitled We feel a country in our bones."
"[The event and scholarship is meant] to provide a space for Palestinians in the diaspora to reflect on their Palestinian identities, positionality and relationships to Palestine. In honour of the works and vision of the heroic novelist, Ghassan Kanafani, the scholarship aims to focus on Palestinian history, our past, present and future struggles, and our multi-faceted identities."
"We reiterate a truth that Ghassan Kanafani held in his life’s work and legacy: art and culture are critical vehicles for resistance."
"[The PYM is] a transnational, independent, grassroots movement of young Palestinians in Palestine and exiled worldwide as a result of the ongoing Zionist colonization and occupation of our homeland."
Palestinian Youth Movement, Toronto chapter 

The logo of the Palestinian Youth Movement

For Palestinians, "resistance" is codeword for violence. The target is Israel and Jewish Israelis. They are viewed by Palestinians -- by the Palestinian Authority which has assiduously groomed the Palestinian population to regard Israel as an 'occupying power' -- as Occupiers of Palestinian land. Originally the nomenclature of 'Palestinian' reflected the Jewish population that lived within their heritage geography of "Palestine". 

The Arabs that gradually migrated, mostly from Jordan and Egypt, into Palestine co-opted the signature designation of a people whom conquest had divested of their heritage, for themselves, denying that Palestine was ever Jewish, that Judaic religious, social and cultural historical heritage ever existed. The fantasy that Arab Palestinians were the rightful residents and owners of the land of Palestine (ancient Judea) and Jews were interlopers whose purpose was to defraud and to deprive Arab Palestinians of their heritage reflects a deliberate fallacy presented as truth.

Palestinian Arabs adamantly refused to accept a divided geography offered them in 1947 as it was to the Jewish population, by the United Nations' Partition Plan. Jews exuberantly celebrated and accepted, Palestinian Arabs mourned the loss of 'their' land and refused to accept the portion allotted them. The surrounding Arab countries, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq launched a joint offensive against Israel's fledgling military and history was again made in their defeat.

There would be no military 'occupation' of the West Bank and Gaza were it not for the ongoing deadly confrontations between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews and the Israeli military. The bloody carnage that resulted from constant deadly attacks launched by Palestinian 'martyrs' who became 'heroes' of the 'resistance', lionized for their exploits which generations of PA propaganda devices had produced, was only reduced when Israel build a separating wall to protect Israelis from the Palestinian Arab menace.

Ghassan Kanafani (left) with a member of the Japanese Red Army, who carried out the 1972 Lod Airport Massacre

The Palestinian Youth Movement had arranged a rental hall in Toronto for July 13, to launch a 'spoken word, music and food party "to celebrate the artistic and cultural contributions of Palestinians in the diaspora", according to promotional material. Winners of an annual scholarship contest were to be showcased at the event. An online anthology entitled We Feel a Country in Our Bones had been published from the scholarship contest. And the winner of the Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Scholarship was to be feted.

All this to take place at Trinity-St.Paul's United Church in Toronto. Toronto's B'nai Brith appealed to the board of directors of the church to cancel the event's taking place in their auspices, condemning it as "the open glorification of terrorists and murderers". The simple fact being that the memorialized Ghassan Kanafani aside from being a Palestinian writer of note, was also a founding member of the PLFP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], acted as their propagandist and was involved in a terrorist attack in Israel.

"We will not tolerate the open glorification of terrorists and murderers, particularly in a place of worship. Churches should be places of peace, not places where violence and/or terror are glorified", B'nai Brith Canada wrote in a letter to the Church. Moreover, the PLFP has been designated a terrorist group by Public Safety Canada. Ghassan Kanafani was involved in the Lod airport massacre in Israel in 1972, where 26 civilians were killed, a Canadian among them, with 80 other people injured.

B'nai Brith set about contacting its followers as a Jewish advocacy group, through a public petition online inviting Canadians to sign a letter condemning the event -- celebrating the conclusion of the writing contest, open to Palestinians in Canada and the United States -- succeeding in assembling a representative number of signatures supporting the drive to have the event cancelled on the church premises. Which resulted in the PYM's booking of the facilities at the church being cancelled.

"Hundreds of groups rent rooms at [the church] for one-time events over the course of a year. This request was handled as per our processes for such bookings."
"I'm not sure why the Palestinian Youth Movement contacted us The event was initially determined to be in line with the congregation's foci of the arts and peacemaking in the Middle East."
"However, Trinity-St.Paul's and the United Church of Canada condemn violence. The board cancelled the booking when it was clear that hosting it would be inconsistent with church policy."
Colin Phillips, vice-chairman, Board of Directors, Trinity-St.Paul's United Church

We can take an educated guess without cerebral strain, why the PYM contacted the church and contracted with it to host that special event honouring a Palestinian hero of the resistance. The United Church, after all, is fully supportive of the BDS movement and would be very well aware of the role of Palestinian groups like the PYM in persuading Canadian churches, academics and others to view Israel as an occupying power intent on terrorizing Palestinians, penalizing them for challenging Israel's right to exist.

The United Church of Canada would be appalled if any entity, individual or group, challenged its right to divine worship in its churches. Canada, after all, is a free country, one whose Charter of Rights enshrines the concept of full equality of all and the freedom to worship as one wishes. Unlike Israel where a sovereign nation whose most sacred historical site of ancient Judaism is off limits to Jews wishing to worship there, because the Muslim Waqf administered by Jordan will not permit Jews to desecrate a site that Islam conquered, with Jewish prayer.

"We are relieved that the church eventually came to the correct decision, to help prevent the shameful glorification of a terrorist."
"That being said, this story is not over. We will continue to investigate how a  youth scholarship named after a notorious terrorist is permitted to function in Canada and the United States, and take all possible steps to thwart it."
Michael Mostyn, chief executive officer, B'nai Brith Canada

Trinity-St. Paul's United Church in downtown Toronto.   Google Street View

Entering Paradise

"Mr. Ftouhi believed he had found a 'solution' to his financial and emotional predicament: Become a martyr for Allah and earn a place in Paradise for him and his family as his reward."
"Mr. Ftouhi believed he needed to be killed as a 'soldier of Allah' by a uniformed enemy of Muslims in order to solve his problems of debt, to enter Paradise, and to end his life."
"He did not believe Allah would accept that an armed Canadian officer was an enemy of Muslims, but he believed an armed United States government official would be acceptable to Allah, given his perceived view of U.S. involvement in the Middle East."
"His plan was never to become an indiscriminate killer, attempting to create a mass casualty situation, nor was he trying to be a member of any radical Islamic group."
"Mr. Ftouhi most certainly believed he would have been killed on June 21, 2017, and when he wasn't killed, he was very upset."
Ftouhi defence attorneys Michigan court filing

Amor Ftouhi of Montreal conducting surveillance at Bishop International Airport in Flint, Michigan the day before his planned terrorist attack.

That poor man. Upset that his carefully thought-out and nurtured plan to enter Paradise as a man of faith and good deeds came to nought. Imprisoned, instead of sanctified. Life can be so very unfair when you are a good Muslim, seeking only to follow Islam's precepts and instructions to its faithful.
He is yet another poor misunderstood man who happens to be Muslim in a society that chooses not to fully comprehend the nobility of Islam.

"Tell my children that I love them all; they must be proud of their father, who is fighting the infidel criminals."
"I am not like the other Muslims, who are all talk and no action, who have held on to earthly matters, and stayed away from jihad."
Amor Ftouhi's letter to his wife

"Mr. Ftouhi’s struggle to find employment was not unique to him. He was among many Muslims in Canada [Quebec especially] experiencing discrimination and Islamophobia."
"[Mr. Ftouhi is not an ideological extremist; he felt hopeless as a result of being] wholly unprepared for the challenges he would face both as a first-generation immigrant and as a Muslim in a predominantly Christian city."
Ftouhi defence lawyers' brief to court

Evidence photo showing stabbing injuries to airport police officer Jeff Neville.

Tunisia, an Arab Muslim country said to be among the most religiously tolerant, traditionally as close to Western civilizational values as any such country could be, underwent the first of the Arab Spring events when a humble fruit-seller rebelled against the unfairness of life, unable to afford a requisite street vendor license, torching himself as a hopeless martyr to fate, perhaps hoping like Mr. Ftouhi, to ascend to Paradise and a better afterlife... Mr. Ftouhi emigrated from Tunisia in 2007, arriving in Montreal, later sending for his wife and children to join him.


He worked at a number of "menial jobs", as described by his defence attorneys, which is to say as a school custodian and at pumping gas; necessary occupations and a start. But it seems he kept losing jobs and became a welfare recipient. All because of Canadian intolerance, as his lawyers would have it, in studiously unreligious Montreal. He despaired, they said at being unable to adequately support his wife and children. He was in debt and thought up a scheme where he could achieve immortality as a more-than-willing martyr in Sharia code and at the same time provide for his family.

The divine would look after his needs and a life insurance policy would tend to the living needs of his family. He would not make his move in Canada as it appeared he reasoned that Allah did not regard Canada as sufficiently alienated against Islam. Instead he would travel to the United States where he would stand a better chance at Paradise and achieve his destined afterlife. It is well known that America is the Great Satan after all, the 'enemy' of the One True Religion of Peace.

According to American investigators, Ftouhi's intention -- after his attempts to buy a gun at a gun show failed, leaving him with the alternate option of buying a large knife -- was to attack an American policeman with the intention of having the police respond by killing him. His chances of being killed by an American police officer was greater, in his imagination, than by a Canadian policeman. Perhaps he had absorbed the prevailing legend that Canadians are inherently 'nice'?

He had driven into the U.S. legally at Champlain, New York and five days later arrived in Flint, Michigan. Why Flint? Why do birds fly? According to the investigators it was Ftouhi's intention then to stab Lt.Jeff Neville, and that is just what he did. And then to take the policeman's gun and use it to shoot people there at Flint Bishop Airport. The opportunity eluded him. Witnesses describe Ftouhi yelling "Allahu akbar" as he attacked Mr. Neville who fortunately survived the attack.

Convicted in November on charges in the June 2017 attack, including committing an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries, the man could receive a life sentence. His attorneys have asked for a 25 year sentence to be served in solitary confinement. To ensure he has no opportunity to proselytize?  Is that even conceivable: ...25 years in solitary confinement? On the other hand, perhaps a Medieval mindset deserves a Medieval sentence.

Amor Ftouhi with his family

Terrorism as a Well-Remunerated Profession

Palestinian Authority’s Direct Expenditure in Support of Terrorists and Their Families as Percent of Total Budget and Foreign Aid   Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

	2013	2014	2015	2016
1. Salaries to imprisoned and released terrorists	423.8 million shekels	442.8 million shekels	481.3 million shekels	488.4 million shekels (530.5 million shekels total incl. administrative costs.)
	$111,516,570	$116,528,150	$126,662,890	$128,518,896
2. Salaries to “martyrs” families	603.6 million shekels	618.6 million shekels	620.4 million shekels	663.6 million shekels
	$158,843,940	$162,807,890	$163,268,940	$174,630,296
Total salaries to support terror (Lines 1+2)	1,027.4 million shekels	1,061.4 million shekels	1,101.7 million shekels	1,152.0 million shekels
	$270,360,520	$279,336,050	$289,931,840	$303,149,193
Percentage of budget and of foreign aid	7% of total budget	7% of total budget	7% of total budget	6.9% of total budget
	20% of foreign aid	24% of foreign aid	14.8% of foreign aid	29.6% of foreign aid
Total PA budget	14.387 billion shekels	14.771 billion shekels	15.673 billion shekels	16.577 billion shekels
	$3.786 billion	$3.887 billion	$4.124 billion	$4.362 billion
Total Foreign Aid	4.915 billion shekels (of which 4.532 billion current budget and 384 development)	4.402 billion shekels (of which 3.676 billion current budget and 726 million development)	7.410 billion shekels (of which 3.120 billion current budget and 4.290 billion development)	3.881 billion shekels (of which 2.925 current budget and 956 million development)
	$1.29 billion	$1.15 billion	$1.95 billion	$1.02 billion
Money Transfer from the PA to the PLO	267,922 million shekels	294.5 million shekels	775.319 million shekels	873.2 million shekels
	$70,505,789	$77,500,000	$204,031,315	$229,785,520

It has been a half-century that the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority have routinely issued beneficent salaries as awards for the commission of terrorist acts against Israelis, or as they are more commonly referred to in this context, as "Zionists", reflecting an organized and deliberate normalization within Palestinian society of acts of deadly violence against Jews.

Those committing terrorism have been weaned on it through their early childhood forward by way of school curricula, television, plays and public celebrations of terrorist carnage. Parents additionally teach their children that they are obliged to hate Jews. Palestinian attackers of Israelis are lionized as warriors in a conflict against a mortal enemy. Palestinians at a vulnerable age are taught to regard Jews as threats to their own existence, and encouraged to think of themselves as future martyrs dedicated to the cause of liberating 'Palestine' from Israeli oppression.

The historical and ongoing acts of violent carnage have perpetuated a situation where Israel must defend itself against suicide attacks that can and do take place anywhere and everywhere, taking the lives of innocent Israeli men, women and children, sometimes singly, sometimes in ghastly, mass carnage, all of which the Palestinians view as justified. They have by so doing placed themselves under military occupation as the only way Israel is able to defend its population. And when Palestinians are killed in the act of killing, the Palestinian Authority decries Israeli brutality.

Former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat set up the Society for the Care of the Families of Martyrs in 1965, initiating payments in an official capacity to those Palestinians who engaged in terrorism in recognition of their courage, daring and dedication to 'resisting' the establishment of the State of Israel. Financial recognition of deeds of carnage was meant to legitimize those acts as recognized, sponsored and issues of Palestinian pride, going to the perpetrators of violence, to Palestinians imprisoned by Israel for terrorism and their exultant families.

The family of Mohammed Tarayreh, who stabbed to death a 13-year-old Israeli girl in her bed, is now eligible for a monthly stipend from the Palestinian “Martyrs’ Fund.”   (AP Photo)

These are families who take pride in what their sons and daughters have accomplished in killing and maiming Jews, feeling those acts completely justified and marking their perpetrators out as heroes dedicated to the Palestinian cause of destroying the presence of a Jewish state in the Middle East, enabling in the process Palestinians to claim the geography as their own sovereign territory. That Jews have lived in that heritage geography since time immemorial is denied strenuously, the myth of Palestinian stewardship of land that was always theirs re-writing history and reality.

Social assistance payments and financial bonuses went out to over 20,000 Palestinian families by 1978, reflecting the purpose of the Palestine Mujahidin and Martyrs Fund, renamed Society for the Care of the Families of Martyrs. The responsibility for administering the fund is now with the Palestinian Authority, funnelled through the National Palestinian Fund in tandem with the Institute for Care for the Families of Martyrs, Palestinians being very fond of formalizing their vision of 'resistance'.

The coordination of these payments to the benefit of prisoners, convicts that have been released, and those that have died has long since been formally installed in Palestinian law which specifically sets out the provision that the PA is obligated to give prisoners a monthly allowance lasting the entire incarceration period, along with salaries and the offers of job placements within the PA once they are released from prison.

The Palestinian minimum wage averages $397 monthly, in figures released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, with close to 40 percent of employees working in the private sector earning less than the minimum wage. In 2015, according to that same statistical source, close to 20 percent of West Bank employees earned an average of $292 a month, working for private interests. Contrast that with the $3,120 lavished monthly by the Palestinian government on a 19-year-old Palestinian by the name of Omar al-Abed.

Whose mother has declared her pride in her son for entering a home in the West Bank settlement of Halamish to kill a grandfather seated at the dinner table along with his two adult children, ages 70, 46, and 36 during a family celebration. This is all in the budget of the Palestinian Authority which has also in its 2017 budget release promised to pledge an increase to the tune of 13 percent for the salaries of imprisoned and released terrorists bringing that area of the budget up to $154.4-million.

Separately, funding allocated to the families of the "martyrs" against Zionism will be $192-million.

The total expenditure for the Palestinian Authority projected for the year 2017 to Palestinian martyrs will be approximately $345 million, representing almost half of all foreign aid the Palestinian government is expected to receive for 2017. International aid is helpfully funding payouts of appreciation to Palestinians engaged in violent terrorism against Israelis.

Moreover the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has been shown to have direct ties to Hamas recognized as a terrorist organization not only by countries in the West, the very countries that donate to the international aid reaching the Palestinian Authority and Hamas by way of the PA, but by some Arab countries as well.

Offensively sordid to human dignity by any measure.

St.Petersburg's Sacrifice

"From the genetic evidence and the surveillance cameras there is reason to believe that the person behind the terrorist act in the train carriage was the same one who left a bag with an explosive device at the Ploshchad Vosstaniya station."
"It has been ascertained that an explosive device could have been detonated by a man, fragments of whose body were found in the third carriage of the train."
"The man has been identified but his identity will not be disclosed for now in the interests of the investigation."
Russia's state investigative committee authorities

"I just followed the procedure. You will know that this isn't the first terrorist act that we've had, there've been explosions before, so smart people came up with smart procedures."
"And these procedures say that in this situation I had to take the train to the nearest station. This is what I did. The train kept moving. There was a bang and lots of dust, but the train kept on moving."
Train driver Alexander Kaverin

"The explosion went off between stations. There was a thundering clap, followed by a strong smell and smoke. We all moved to the opposite end of the wagon, people jammed together and two women passed out. This all was happening while the train was still moving, it didn't stop."
"Everyone got out at Technologichesky Institute station. There, we saw that the neighbouring wagon was shattered, the windows blown out, no light, blood."
Polina, St.Petersburg student

Suspect Akbarzhon Jalilov. 5th Channel Russia/via Reuters

It was a gory scene, with St.Petersburg television featuring footage of a corpse, said to be the perpetrator of the massive blast in the metro filled to bursting with workday commuters. Comments were that the dead man with his close-cropped beard bore a resemblance to closed circuit footage of a beanie-hat wearing young man, with a fur-lined hooded jacket, considered the perpetrator of the explosion, clearly a terrorist suicide bombing. Committed by a young man who moved from Kyrgyszstan to Russia in 2012.

Originally from the village of Osh in Kyrgyszstan's Fergana Valley, close to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, populated in the majority by ethnic Uzbeks. The area has a reputation of being a hotbed of Islamist radicalism. It is acknowledged to be a source of recruits for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, with hundreds of radicalized Uzbeks having relocated to Syria and Iraq for the purpose of Islamist jihad as devoted ISIL members.


Mr. Jalilov, whom former neighbours in Osh, describe as a nice young man who was not too immersed in fundamentalist Islam, evidently made his decision to make his suicidal martyrdom mark closer to home, in Russia, rather than abroad. But of course, if he is eventually linked to ISIL, this type of thing is precisely what ISIL-linked jihadists who have remained where they are, are incited to do; wreak havoc wherever they happen to be among the non-believers.

A still image of the suspect walking at St. Petersburg's metro station Reuters

He was wildly successful in his mission to martyrdom and notoriety. Although said to have planted two explosive devices, with one discovered and neutralized before it could produce the hell-on-Earth that the successfully exploded one did, the young recruit to martyrdom succeeded in killing 14 innocent Russian civilians and wounding another 50 people. It was rescue workers who described a scene out of 'hell' as the train rolled out of the tunnel into the following station disgorging bloodied passengers.

Body parts strewn about among the wounded in the explosives-twisted target carriage, it was clear that the damage to life and limb would have been even more horrendous had the train driver not followed instructions and kept driving from the midway point between stations where the blast had occurred, until he reached the next station, where rescuers were prepared to do what they could for those still living, desperately requiring medical aid for their injuries.

The survivors who had roused themselves in hope of giving aid to the severely injured will have their own psychical wounds to haunt them, for the remainder of their lives. One survivor sent a text message to a friend: "There was an explosion on the track, a guy left his briefcase on the train car, exited the car, and moved to another train car. Just one car." Within the bag, a small home-made bomb with explosives packed with metal nuts and bolts for maximum damage to vulnerable human bodies.

"It's not yet clear what caused this, so it's premature to speak about it. The investigation will establish that. We will look at all possibilities -- technical, criminal, or terrorist", initially cautioned Vladimir Putin. Perhaps dimly hoping investigators would conclude that a 'technical' fault had caused the carnage, even 'criminal', but if it was confirmed to represent a terrorist attack, it would also reflect chickens coming home to roost; avenging Islamic State or even Sunni opponents of Bashar al-Assad, rewarding Russia for involvement in bombing Syrian rebel-held areas.

The second, unexploded bomb in the guise of a fire extinguisher found at the Ploshchad Vosstanaya metro station serving the mainline railway station connecting St.Petersburg with Moscow, contained a kilogram of TNT equivalent; had it detonated successfully the outcome would have been even more dire than the atrocity that did succeed. Search warrants were issued by Russia's senior security agency, for two people, since it was believed that each of the devices were planted by individual suspects.

Much has yet to be revealed to determine the extent of involvement of others aside from the identified man who came from a nice, normal family in a fertile area of a neighbouring country of religious devotion.

Children Groomed To Be Terrorists

"The teen whose arrest was announced on Tuesday hails from the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza and was arrested last month attempting to cross the border fence into Israel."
"He belonged to the northern division of the Kassam Brigades, Hamas's military wing. According to the Shin Bet, the suspect said during his interrogation that he was trained to infiltrate, enter structures and place explosive devices in keeping with Hamas's strategy of ensuring that the next round of fighting will take place in Israeli territory."
"The suspect divulged information on the structure of Hamas tunnels intended to be used by the group's elite tunnel unit in times of emergency and the location of tunnels in Gaza, the Shin Bet stated."
"He also allegedly told his interrogators about Hamas's efforts to keep their tunnel-digging activities secret, such as  avoiding leaving the tunnels in their dirt-covered 'work clothes', and covering up any signs that they had been in a tunnel."
"The suspect took part in placing explosive devices in tunnels to prevent IDF soldiers from entering them and even stored explosives at his home, the Shin Bet said."
Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2016 

"Nobody doubts what she did. If she was an Israeli child, it would be impossible under Israeli law to sentence a child this young for an actual jail term."
"They don't see a small girl. They think of them as terrorists".
Sarit Michaeli, Israeli human rights group B'tselem

Dima al-Wawi, 12, was comforted by her mother, Sabha al-Wawi, at a checkpoint near the West Bank town of Tulkarm on Sunday after her release from an Israeli prison for trying to stab a security guard. Credit Majdi Mohammed/Associated Press

There is a problem here, a huge social, humanitarian and threat problem that seems difficult-to-impossible to adequately address. Islamist terrorist groups have no qualms whatever sacrificing children to their greater mission of Islamic conquest. That conquest can only be achieved according to the fanatically fundamentalist Islamists, by destroying those who stand in their way to success. In the Middle East there is no national-societal group more visibly resistant to that conquest than  the State of Israel.

The Palestinian Authority administered by Fatah, an political organ of the Palestine Liberation Organization, has always seen to it that Palestinian children are well indoctrinated with the message that Israel's existence is a crime against Palestinians. Through school curricula, public broadcasting, television, plays, story books, children are taught that the authentic map of the area holds Palestine, there is no legitimacy in the presence of Israel, and it will be their obligation to help destroy the state.

Hamas goes much further, in operating summer camps for young Palestinians who are taught to handle and use firearms, make explosive devices, and generally be trained as a reserve army until such time as they become suitable to join the Hamas militias whose function it is to destroy Israel. Israel cannot be destroyed without killing Jews. Members of the military, certainly, but since Jewish civilians support the state and obligatory conscription is part of the state order, all Jews are viewed as expendable to the greater Palestinian aspiration.

Nasser Shiyoukhi / AP Photo   Palestinian 12-year-old Dima al-Wawi, is greeted by relatives, after her release from an Israeli prison, at her home in Halhoul village, near the West Bank city of Hebron.

Dima al-Wawi, a twelve year old Palestinian girl from the West Bank had been arrested in her attempt to enter an Israeli settlement carrying a knife during the night-time hours. She is hardly the only one; other girls are also in Israeli custody, some stopped while attempting to attack Jews with knives. Their numbers reflect the latest surge of violence that succeeded in killing 30 Israelis in a period of seven months through those lone attacks.

Twelve-year-old Mohammad Shadeh was found on April 14 in Jerusalem's Old City with a meat cleaver and two knives handy in his school bag. Alongside a note in Arabic claiming he wanted to kill a soldier. He has been imprisoned since his arrest. Another Mohammad whose last name is Ramzi, also twelve, who lives in East Jerusalem, is under house arrest, for a similar event. These are children, viewed as children, which makes it all the more horrifying that they have been incited to these dreadful criminal acts.

Salwa Taqatqa is thirteen, and she is in the same prison that Dima al-Wawi had been kept in, until her recent release. Salwa had attempted to stab an Israeli on March 23. Salwa's mother describes her daughter as a troubled tomboy, fearful of the dark, still wetting her bed, and repeating fifth grade. Dima is said to have been hyperactive and also experiencing problems at school. She had become obsessed with the sight of Palestinian attackers she saw on Al Aqsa television.

Dima had skipped classes, stuffed a knife from the kitchen in her home under her long school shirt, then walked from her home in the village of Halhoul to the settlement nearby, Karml Tzur. There she hesitated at the entrance to the settlement in the hopes that a guard would search her and give her the opportunity to stab him. In the event, the guard merely ordered her to sit down, and she was later removed to a police station.

She was later sentenced to four and a half months in prison after she had pleaded guilty to attempted manslaughter. According to an Israeli prison spokesman she was released early as a result of "her extremely young age". On her release on April 24 a ceremony met her at the governor's office in the West Bank city of Tulkarm. She had become yet another Palestinian 'hero', dedicated to 'resisting' the 'occupation'.

Once back in Halhoul, men from Fatah raised congratulatory banners and men from Hamas released celebratory balloons. A matter of great celebration that a 12-year-old had been persuaded to hate and to act on that hatred. Dima informed a reporter that she had presented herself at the settlement to kill Jews because "I wanted to be a martyr". Her mother corrected her: "You said you wanted to be an agricultural engineer".

Dima had the last word: "Mom! I changed my mind!" Instead she became a heroine as a martyr-in-waiting.

The Nobility of Martyrdom

"Do you see all these young people around us? They’re all unemployed. Sometimes they enter Israel illegally [to seek work], but they have no work permits. I don’t have one either. I never did anything wrong. I’ve never been in jail. Nobody in my family has been in jail or done anything, but they won’t give me a work permit."
"I drive people around in this car [a stolen car repurposed as an illegal taxi, complete with yellow Israeli license plates]."
"I tell you, today they are shooting people for no reason. Anyone who has a knife gets killed. Anyone who drives a little fast near soldiers gets shot. If I could make a decent living, why would I stab anybody? For Netanyahu? For Abu Mazen? What do I care about them?"
"For us, anyone who shoots or stabs Jews is a hero. Why? Because they resisted the occupation. We don’t want violence; ultimately, we want peace. But these shahids resisted the occupation, so we consider them heroes. And again I say to you: If these people had jobs, there would be no problems at all. I knew some of them, and I know what I’m talking about."
Khaled, 32, married father of four, Sa'ir, West Bank 

Palestinian women mourn during the funeral of Raed Jaradat, 22, in the West Bank village of Sa'ir, near Hebron, Sunday, Nov 1, 2015. According to the Israeli army, Jaradat stabbed an Israeli before being shot and killed. (AP Photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi)

What he is talking about is the Hebron village that inspired a full dozen young people to sacrifice themselves as martyrs by attacking Israeli Defence Forces members with knives or anything that could be converted handily into a lethal weapon. The village has had a mini-epidemic of young people in their teens taking to attempted stabbing of Israeli soldiers, and for their willingness to become shahids, they have been shot dead by those whom they wanted to kill.

The shahada are celebrated for their courageous deeds in opposing their 'occupiers'. A country forced to 'occupy' to keep itself and its citizens as safe as possible from the violence that breeds among Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. The young man in Sa'ir is outraged that he cannot obtain a work permit to be gainfully employed in Israel. Never, evidently, asking himself why Israel should see to his employment needs and not the Palestinian Authority which governs the West Bank.

This fits neatly enough into the general thinking among Palestinians that a two-state solution is out of the question. It is a one-state solution they seek; willing enough they say, to live among Jews, but under a Palestinian state and flag and military. The prevailing attitude that Israel should simply melt into a Palestinian state and the Arabs absorb the Jewish population is one that has been promoted by stealth through generations of school textbooks with a curricula that stresses Palestinian 'rights'.

"There was no visible reason why these young people chose the path that they did. I have no doubt that the story of the Al-Aksa Mosque — the PA-disseminated allegation that the holy site is in danger — as well as other videos circulating on the Internet, had an influence on many of the young people here. One video showed a young woman who had been killed and her body disrobed when it was searched and that got people very angry. The slogan ‘Defend your sister’ spread on Facebook, and that got the young people up in arms."

Ka’id Jaradat, former colonel, PA security agencies, elected mayor of Sa'ir 

Inflammatory slander is yet another specialty of the public relations arm of the Palestinian Authority which excels in producing widely-disseminated videos that purport to demonstrate the brutality of the 'occupiers' by portraying their contextualized and falsified versions of events whose purpose is to incite outrage and anger on the part of the population toward Israel and its military.

 

After having groomed Palestinian youth for martyrdom, it seems the Palestinian Authority is now mounting an effort to dissuade them from launching ongoing attacks. The grief of the community in the town of Sa'ir over the inevitable consequences of their youth embarking on these suicidal missions in obedience to what they have always been taught is expected of them, seems to have motivated the PA to urge impressionable youth to restrain these impulses toward death by 'resistance'.

Yet, the authorities in Fatah who manage the Palestinian Authority, much less Hamas in Gaza, simply are functionally incapable of either governing responsibly, and seeking a way to surrender some of their impossible demands of Israel such as 'right of return' and the refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, to the extent that they will not forego their agenda of achieving the destruction of Israel. Impressing the burden of 'duty' on young Palestinians through 'resisting the oppressor' remains irresistible.

Celebration of the 'courage' of young men and women who choose to respond to their government's urging to become martyrs persists, stimulating new attacks. In this town where the mayor describes the Palestinian Authority's dedication to dissuading youth to sacrifice their lives through ongoing knife attacks, a poster bearing the images of the three "shahids" from the January 7 attempted terror attack at the Etzion Junction celebrates their deed. 

Bearing the Fatah’s logo the poster reads: "The three martyrs from the heroic Etzion attack."

The Martyrdom Complex

"We are heartbroken to share that we've received confirmation that Kayla Jean Mueller has lost her life."
"We are so proud of the person Kayla was and the work that she did while she was here with us. She lived with purpose."
Carl and Marsha Mueller,  Arizona, United States

"Everyone, if you are receiving this letter it means I am still detained but my cellmates ... have been released."
"Please know that I am in a safe location, completely unharmed + healthy (put on weight in fact); I have been treated w/utmost respect + kindness."
Kayla Mueller, American aid worker

 Kayla Mueller (Family photo)

Kayla Mueller, as the saying goes, died doing what she loved best; proffering kindness and assistance to those whom she viewed as being in dire need of both. Perhaps the conviction of her compassion extended also to those who held her hostage in reflection of Christ's plea to his father that his transgressors should be forgiven because "they know not what they do". She found it within herself to speak kindly of her vicious wardens, bypassing their commission of atrocities. Those who slaughtered thousands of innocents had "treated her with respect".

Her parents profess to pride in their daughter's determination to bring comfort to the afflicted.

Kayla Mueller perhaps can be said to have developed such a deep well of compassion for other human beings whose fortunes in life have been existentially dismal that she sought to sacrifice her own well-being -- or thought little of her own well-being in responding to their plight - on their behalf. Her instinct to comfort and bring hope and whatever small modicum of aid to those who are victims of oppression, violence, and war whom others prey upon for their own implacable ends, led her to expose herself to danger.

In Islam, jihad, a fixed idealistic personal responsibility of the faithful, celebrates martyrdom as the ultimate sacrifice a pious, or obsessively fixated Islamist is eager to offer to prove his/her complete surrender. That martyrdom comes complete with the intention  of forcing martyrdom on others to complete the goal. This religion that seeks to spread itself like night falling upon day when the source of light is removed, uses faith and psychopathy to obliterate reason, where the passion of fulfilling one's obligation to a proselytizing, conquest-driven ideology overrides the very concept of human rights as a travesty imposed upon theocracy by the blighted 'enlightenment' of the West.

But one needn't be a psychopath to embroil oneself wholeheartedly in that martyrdom complex. Those who die in defiance of Islamist fascism, do so as martyrs to the obligation placed upon humankind as thinking, reasoning creatures, spurning a religion which is divided within itself by its precepts expressed in its sacred writings. Where on the one hand, followers are urged to regard Islam as the ultimate religion of peace, where a single death is to be regarded as a blow to all of humankind. And on the other hand, urges the killing of those who spurn Islam for another religion.

Islamism, Muslims from all points of the geographic compass who express their firm belief that Islam must reflect its founding values, find inspiration in the examples to be found in the Koran of reasons to slaughter non-Muslims, and to consider Jews their mortal enemies. Beheadings, crucifixions, immolation, are hardly forbidden after all, in Sunni Arab countries of the Middle East, and in Shiite Iran the punishment of death is meted out to apostates, to dissenters and those who oppose totalitarian regimes by methods familiar to the Koranic scriptures.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham who held  the daughter of Carl and Marsha Mueller their prisoner made the gesture of providing to them a last look at their daughter. Not quite hale and hearty as proof of their kindness to her, however. Three photographs of her face; two of their daughter in a black Muslim head coverage complete with visible facial contusions. The third photograph wrapped in a white burial shroud. Kayla, in whose given name those of her parents were meshed, no doubt meant the world to her parents. Their grief will be unassuageable.

They express pride in her commitment to humanitarian aid to others.

Given the circumstances in which Kayla Mueller delivered her compassionate aid to refugees in their desperate to survive against all odds, in a geography where life is casually and brutally taken, she cannot have been totally unaware of the danger she placed herself in by exposing herself as a figure of mercy in an atmosphere and a landscape where mercy is an unacknowledged quality, and the appearance of Westerners a goad to Islamist rage.

Kayla Mueller was then, a martyr to her belief in the common humanity of all of us. She set aside her own fears, if she had any, for the greater burden of presenting herself as a beacon of light in a landscape of darkness. The light was destined to be dimmed by the greater power of the hatred that people steeped in an ancient liturgy of searing hatred and blame preparing the faithful to separate themselves from those damned by their unwillingness to surrender to a religion that urges peace and conflict in the same breath.

Peace is found in death, the death that the faithful of fanatical Islam are all too ready to deliver.

Op-Ed: Kayla Mueller and Westerners Dying in the Middle East

There is a long and senseless history of Westerners giving their lives to the chaotic Middle East.

Published: Sunday, February 15, 2015 8:35 AM

Prof. Phyllis Chesler

The writer, a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum and recipient...

► More from this writer

For centuries, Westerners have been lured by the "mysterious" East. Fortune hunters, explorers, adventurers, businessmen, diplomats, journalists, artists, missionaries, and humanitarian aid workers have all fled the confines of the West for lives of drama and danger.

 

The tragic Kayla Mueller wrote on her blog: "This is really my life's work, to go where there is suffering. I suppose, like us all, I'm learning how to deal with the suffering of the world inside myself…to deal with my own pain and most importantly to still have the ability to be proactive."
Lawrence of Arabia and his mentor Gertrude Bell found greater personal freedom for themselves, as well as adventure, in what became Iraq and the Kingdom of Jordan. Life back home was cold, wet, and dreary; they became figures of significance and respect in sunny Middle East.

Flaubert toured the brothels of Egypt. The extraordinary and much-maligned Western "Orientalist" painters (David Roberts, Ernst Koerner, Elizabet Jerichau-Baumann, Jean Discart, Charles Robertson, etc.) have lovingly preserved the 19th century Arab and Muslim world. Many of their paintings now belong to the Mohamed Shafik Gabr Foundation, where they are highly valued.

The Western artists and the early 18th and 19th century female travelers (Lady Hester Stanhope, Lady Wortley Montagu, Isabel Burton, Jane Digby El Mezrab, Harriet Martineau, Isabelle Eberhardt, etc.) had no desire to change the East; while they may have been corseted, they were not shut up in harems, and they relished the lush and exotic life travel afford them.

But some Westerners have wanted to "uplift the natives," either by converting them to Christianity or by ministering to their medical and educational needs.

Like Kayla Mueller, many Americans have felt both obligated and entitled to help others—an ideal many hold dear. The question is: Why travel to Iranian backed Assad- and ISIS-controlled Syria now? Yes, the plight of the persecuted Christians and Kurds and Yazidis, especially in Iraq, cries out for rescue, as does that of all civilian refugees in the region.

The White House has a lot to be guilty about regarding its military strategy—but why would young and tender civilians think that their becoming ministering angels can really make enough of difference?

What is it that led journalist Daniel Pearl (2002), businessman Nicholas Berg (2004), aid worker Gayle Williams (2008), aid worker David Haines (2014), aid worker Alan Henning (2014), journalist James Foley (2014), aid worker Peter Kassig, (2014), journalist Steven Sotloff (2014), businessman Haruna Yukawa (2015), journalist Kenji Goto (2015), and aid worker Kayla Mueller (2015) to believe that they could travel safely in Muslim war zones—especially today?

Rudyard Kipling, in The Man Who Would Be King, describes what happened to his two fictional characters who traveled to Afghanistan in search of treasure. One was crucified, the other driven mad. These things happen there to anyone without the proper letters of introduction and entourage. Routinely, if they are lucky, foreigners merely contract malaria, dysentery, hepatitis, and other life-long ailments; otherwise, they are held for ransom, shut up in a polygamous harem, tortured, and beheaded.

Kayla Mueller supported the radical left International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which immediately sought to capitalize on her murder by canonizing her politically. To some, such politics is viewed as a form of righteous resistance. It is not viewed as a politically correct conformist position, which it certainly is – or, in the worst cases, as an example of a Westerner making common cause with totalitarian Islamism, anti-Americanism, and genocidal anti-Semitism.

My colleague Joel Pollak wrote a sane, sad, soulful and rather mild piece about Mueller. He wondered whether she could have been "misled, tragically, about Islamic 'resistance.'" He inherited a bit of a backlash. Those who share Mueller's beliefs and/or who view her death as somehow sacred were offended. Lee Kaplan wrote a stronger article in the same vein.

Their anger is misplaced. It should be focused on the barbarians who held Mueller captive and then murdered her—not on a journalist who has every right to raise any question under the sun.

This scenario also evokes memories of the death of American Rachel Corrie, also at the hands of the ISM movement, which exploited her naivete and then used her accidental death as propaganda fodder. The ISM accused an Israeli military bulldozer driver—who could not even see her—of killing her on purpose. Corrie also became a sacred victim and the reason for countless columns, demonstrations, a "wrongful death" lawsuit (which her family lost), and a one-sided propaganda play.

May Kayla Mueller rest in peace. May her family know comfort and solace. May the families of all the Western aid workers and journalists find some peace. May Western civilians stay out of the line of fire for now.

May the West finally name radical Islam, Islamism, Islamic terrorism, Islamic totalitarianism as the enemy we are fighting—and then proceed to vanquish both its ideas and soldiers and thus, bring peace and stability to a world in chaos and misery.