11-Sep-19: Looking back into the dark

The oldest of our daughters holds the youngest. Malki ז"ל adored
Haya, her brain-damaged and blind little sister.

The Malki Foundation, which was created under the worst of all conceivable situations exactly eighteen years ago to the day, is more than just a charity for those of us who started it.

It's a living memorial to the life of a greatly-loved child who was murdered when, being Jewish and living in the capital city of the Jewish state, she was in a pizzeria with her best friend precisely when a human bomb planted by a deeply-bigoted agent of the Hamas terrorist organization - a woman of 21 called Ahlam Tamimi - walked in with an undetected explosives-and-nails-filled guitar case and pressed a detonator.

The precious lives lost in the carnage that followed are gone forever. Their memories remain among those who loved them.

Malki's memory is honored by work that goes on every day in a modest Jerusalem office from where meaningful, constructive, supportive activities enable families from every part of Israeli society to do things for their child with special needs that otherwise would very likely not happen.

It's a cause we're very, very proud to be connected with.

Unlike this blog and some of the things we do, the Malki Foundation's work has absolutely no political dimension. It's one hundred per cent about helping people based on their need; nothing else.

A letter received by Arnold Roth last week makes the point in a charming way:

You probably won't remember me - that's okay :). But we traded a couple emails a couple years ago when Ahed Tamimi was arrested. I got offended by something you posted online etc. It was a cordial exchange - we even hoped to tag up in Jerusalem but I haven't made it back there yet - but we strongly disagreed with each other. And we probably still do.
However, I have often thought of this incident and honestly, I think my reaction was wrong. I was never a big donor to the Malki Foundation (I'm not wealthy, just a working stiff) but I realize I should have never stopped giving because of that reason. You do good work with those in need of that type of care. So, I want to apologize to you. We can disagree on politics but a good work is a good work.
I actually tried to make a small donation a couple weeks ago but I guess your site is being revamped. I'll give it another go next month. Still not wealthy so donations will be small but hey, it all counts, right? I hope you will accept my apology. Keep up the good work.

When we conceived of the Malki Foundation, sitting on the floor of our home in Jerusalem late at night after all the friends and strangers who had filled our apartment had left on one of the seven days of mourning, our heads were filled with the horror of what hatred can do to people.

It seemed to us that the world had reached one of its lowest points.

Then, on the morning that the registration papers for the new charity - Keren Malki, Hebrew for Malki Foundation - were issued by Israel's registrar of not-for-profits, a more optimistic sense emerged: with this new creation, a legal entity with a mission, we're going to do some good things for people who need more good in their lives.

Then a few hours later the sky fell again. The date was September 11, 2001, nine-eleven.

In very large measure, our conviction is the world, its leaders, many of its most thoughtful people, haven't come close to grasping what terrorism is, what it does to lives, to society, to the values that enable us to live together. What we ought to be doing is, at best, imperfectly understood and perhaps a lot worse than that.

One thing though is clear to us from our experience: that responding to the chaos and deep pain by helping others has value, not just in what it does for others but for how it helps to heal and improve us.

27-Feb-18: On Australia's ABC and being unbalanced

If you have spent time living in Australia, as we did before moving our family to Israel thirty years ago, you know of the pleasures and disappointments that the ABC is capable of delivering:

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia's national broadcaster, funded by the Australian Federal Government but specifically independent of Government and politics in the Commonwealth. The ABC plays a leading role in journalistic independence and is fundamental in the history of broadcasting in Australia, its model based on – but not restricted to – the BBC in the United Kingdom... In recent times, the Corporation provides television, radio, online and mobile services throughout metropolitan and regional Australia, as well as overseas through Australia Plus and Radio Australia... [Wikipedia]

Its annual funding from the Australian government had already easily exceeded a billion Australian dollars in the 2016 budget year and it has kept rising since then. A serious operation on any view.

We posted a pained analysis last week of the coverage the ABC gave to the violent and aggressive Tamimi clan and especially to Ahed Tamimi, the 17 year-old rising star of the Tamimi collective's robust "in your face" anti-Israel political activism ["21-Feb-18: News industry activism, its tendentious outcomes and the Tamimis"]. If you haven't already read it, please do before reading on. We feel we raised serious points worthy of rational discussion and consideration. But we have been ignored by the ABC and by Sophie McNeill, its correspondent. Being ignored is nothing new for us. And ignoring critics is hardly out of the ordinary in that particular organization.

It now occurs to us that our past experiences with the ABC are depressingly consistent with the latest chapter.

A decade and a half ago, we documented what we experienced ["ABC Producer: "It will be difficult to proceed without appearing unbalanced...""] and published it on the Malki Foundation website since it bore directly on the foundation's work in Australia. That report is now unfortunately hard to access (stuck inside the archived edition of the website). So now and via this blog of ours, we want to revisit what happened and the issues it threw up.

NOTE: Most of the text that follows is lifted verbatim from the archived 2003 report, with some light editing we have just done to reflect the passage of the years. Here goes.

In August 2001, the then-head of the ABC's Middle East bureau, Tim Palmer, emailed me [Arnold Roth]. This was just a few days after Malki's murder. He invited me to join him for a press interview in Jerusalem. I immediately agreed. For reasons described below, that interview never took place. 

Baby carriages everywhere: The scene outside the Sbarro pizzeria in
central Jerusalem in the first hour after the massive 2001 bomb explosion.
The body of our murdered 15 year old daughter was likely inside
the devastated shell of the building when this news photo was snapped.

In fact Palmer and I did not meet then or, despite efforts on my part but not his, ever. A little after our conversation, he was posted to the ABC's Jakarta bureau and after that, I think, took up a senior ABC management position in Australia. I have not kept up with his career during the past decade and don't know where he is now or what he does. 

Fast forward. A day or two before I was due to travel back to Melbourne in August 2003 to visit my mother (who has since passed away), the ABC contacted me again from Australia. They had learned I was coming and I was invited to be an on-air guest on their widely-heard Radio National breakfast program to speak. The subject was the work of Keren Malki, the charitable foundation my wife and I had created in September 2001 to honour the life of Malki and to do good in her name for families coping with the challenges of a seriously disabled child, as we ourselves do. This early morning interview was set to take place just a few hours after my scheduled arrival from Israel. 

Late on the night before the program, just as I reached my mother's home from Melbourne airport, a phone message and an email were waiting for me. The key part, sent to me by a radio producer at the ABC, was this:

"Given the coverage we gave on today's programme to the latest explosion in Jerusalem - my executive producer and I agree that we will have to cancel. This morning we devoted considerable time to representatives from both Jewish and Palestinian organisations, and always seek to put both views forward.  Although your foundation is working to benefit both Israeli and Palestinian families, it will nevertheless be difficult to proceed without appearing unbalanced."

The quote is verbatim; I added the bolding.

The ABC's message left me astonished and perplexed. Balance, whatever view you take of how to achieve it, cannot mean - I felt - what this ABC producer interpreted it to mean.

About her mention of "the latest explosion": this referred to a ghastly Arab-on-Israeli terrorist massacre on a city bus in Jerusalem the previous night. It happened just as two of my daughters and I were stepping out of our Jerusalem home to drive to Tel Aviv airport at the start of our Australian visit. The neighbourhood where the bomb attack was carried out is close to where we live.

This New York Times report filed right afterwards says 18 were killed but eventually it turned out to be 24, with about 130 seriously injured. The dead included 8 children. Two of them were babies of 3 months and 11 months. One of the adult dead was a young mother in the eighth month of her pregnancy. From experience, we know Arab-on-Israeli terrorists usually have a strong sense of whom they want to kill and what sort of impact they hope for. Given the location, this attack was aimed at Haredi mothers, children and infants.

Piers Akerman, then as now an influential and widely-read and respected newspaper columnist whom I did not know until this visit and had never met previously, took up the issue in his weekly newspaper column a few days later.

Aunty trips up on its balancing act  

Piers Akerman | The Daily Telegraph, Sydney | August 25, 2003 | [Originally posted at this non-current location] | FIFTEEN-year-old Australian-born Malki Roth was murdered by a suicidal bomber as she sat among her girlfriends in a Jerusalem pizzeria two years ago. PIERS AKERMAN writes.

Her killer, Izzadin Al-Masri, 23, a member of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, came from a middle-class Palestinian family with investments in Jenin and Nablus.
He'd been hinting for about a month that he planned to become an Islamic "martyr".
Young Palestinians are encouraged to hate Jews and to believe they are destined to martyrdom (with a complete suite of virgins, in the case of the young boys) from their earliest childhood by the Palestinian authorities. 

Al-Masri's father, Shaheel, was subsequently quoted expressing pride in his son's suicide and at his son's slaughter of 14 Israelis. 

Arnold Roth, the father of the murdered teenager expressed his outrage at the barbarism in The Washington Post. This prompted the ABC's then-Middle East bureau chief Tim Palmer, to ask him for an interview.

Mr Roth said he would "have no objection at all to speaking with you on the record, and if it can help get out the story of how sad Malki's loss is, then I would like to do it".

But in a response which reveals either an appalling absence of any moral compass on the part of the ABC's senior staffer, or a total lack of any understanding of the conflict, Palmer said he intended to bracket Mr Roth with an interview with the murderer's proud father.

Can it be that this is what ABC boss Russell Balding has in mind when he babbles about "balance" at the national broadcaster?

Does it believe there can be some "balance", some symmetry, some moral equivalence in presenting the father of a murdered teenager who spent her school holidays providing care for severely handicapped children and the father of a young man who believed it was his religious purpose to murder innocent people? 

Palmer promised to get back to Mr Roth but did not.

Last week, Mr Roth, who has set up the Malki Foundation to raise funds to assist families with severely retarded children in memory of his daughter's passion, arrived in Melbourne from Israel to find a message from an ABC radio producer, who had earlier asked him to be a guest on a morning program.

The note said: "I'm writing to let you know that unfortunately we are going to have to cancel arrangements to interview you Friday morning on our programme.

"Given the coverage we gave on today's programme to the latest explosion in Jerusalem, my executive producer and I agree that we will have to cancel.

"This morning we devoted considerable time to representatives from both Jewish and Palestinian organisations, and always seek to put both views forward.

"Although your foundation is working to benefit both Israeli and Palestinian families, it will nevertheless be difficult to proceed without appearing unbalanced.

"My apologies and best wishes for your trip."

How a discussion with Mr Roth about the Malki Foundation - which places no religious or racial qualifications on those it helps - affects the ABC's "balance" is bewildering. The second family it assisted was in fact a Jordanian Palestinian.

Could it be that the ABC searched for an equivalent Palestinian charitable organisation but drew a blank? Perhaps it could ask Federal Labor's pro-Palestinian lobbyists Leo McLeay and Julia Irwin to point them to an Arab organisation as even-handed in its approach as the memorial to the murdered Australian Australian volunteer child care worker?

It might produce a program explaining that Israeli children are taught peace education while the Palestinian Authority's approved curriculum and Palestinian television teaches hate and prepares young people for "martyrdom". Or would such a program also fail the ABC's nonsensical idea of "balance"?

Mr Roth says the Malki Foundation is his retaliation at those who killed his daughter.
"These people, Hamas, radiate hate," he said. "We cannot out-hate them but we can help Palestinian Arabs and show them that their strategy of hate has failed. If they choke on our aid, so be it.

"They are non-entities, when they murder they will be forgotten, but my daughter will live in the memories of those we help."

In the warped ABC culture, however, Malki Roth will be forever marked as the equivalent of murderous "martyr" Izzadin Al-Masri - all in the interests of "balance".

Battle lines were quickly drawn. Responding later that week, the ABC's managing director (equivalent to its CEO) at the time, Russell Balding, published a letter in the same newspaper. A longer version of it was then posted on the ABC's own website (the following text is from there):

Thursday 28 August  2003 | Letter by the Managing Director to the Daily Telegraph 

Dear Editor 

Usually, it hardly seems worth the effort to respond to Mr Akerman's predictable criticisms of the ABC. It is better to trust in the readership of The Daily Telegraph to decipher his unique form of prejudice. Unfortunately, Mr Akerman's latest exercise in poor taste, ("Aunty trips up on its balancing act," August 26), demands a considered response. The article criticises the award winning ABC Journalist, Tim Palmer, for attempting to construct a story featuring the father of a suicide bomb victim (Malki Roth) and the father of the perpetrator (Izzadin Al-Masri). The Daily Telegraph did precisely this when it published two stories on the same page featuring the respective fathers on August 11, 2001. The attack occurred in Israel two years ago and Mr Palmer covered it extensively, including reporting on the reaction of other relatives of the victims. 

According to Mr Akerman, the ABC has no right to feature both fathers in a story, and such an approach reveals an appalling absence of any moral compass on the part of the ABC's senior staffer. Not only was Mr Arnold Roth told about the other interview - he was given the opportunity to reject having his words broadcast in a manner unacceptable to him. This was done as a courtesy and out of respect for a grieving father. The article's conclusion then drew a startling analogy: in the warped ABC culture, however, Malki Roth will be forever marked as the equivalent of murderous martyr Izzadin Al-Masri. 

This is a disgraceful and thoroughly unjustifiable slur on the ABC and Tim Palmer. The ABC never tried to argue there was a moral equivalence between the death of Malki Roth and the murder by Izzadin Al-Masri. In the end, Tim Palmer decided not to proceed with the story and Mr Roth was not interviewed. The fact that Mr Akerman acknowledges this and still continues with his theory of ABC moral turpitude compounds the overall offence of his article. 

Malki Roth's father, Arnold Roth, was interviewed by the ABC's 7.30 Report on August 21. He spoke of his foundation to help Arab and Israeli disabled children. Also on the program were Khaled Abu Awad and Robi Damelin, other parents of children killed in the Israel-Palestine conflict. They were involved in organising camps for Israeli and Palestinian children. Mr Damelin noted: "The idea is to get them to interact for four to five days and to create a friendship by the end of this, because they can go out and be ambassadors to their friends - and maybe that will start to grow from that age-group". I invite your readers to view the transcript. Does Mr Akerman detect an `absence of any moral compass' in this story? Unfortunately, I suspect he does, as he quite simply lacks the capacity for impartiality. 

Yours sincerely
Russell Balding
Managing Director, ABC

Believing that Mr. Balding's letter did not do justice to the issues, I sent a letter of my own to the Daily Telegraph. This was published on August 30, 2003 but in a highly edited version which failed to convey the points I intended to make. The full text of my letter in the form I actually wrote it now follows.

Thursday 28th August 2003
The Editor
The Daily Telegraph
Sydney 

Sir: Russell Balding, the ABC's managing director, criticizes Piers Akerman's very cogent column "Aunty trips up on its balancing act". I'm sorry to be getting drawn into an unpleasant conflict over the actions and policies of the ABC. But the mis-characterization of events in the letter demands an answer. 

Mr Balding makes no mention at all of what occurred last Friday: an interview by ABC national radio with me, to focus on the work of the Malki Foundation, was cancelled because, as the producer wrote to me "it will... be difficult to proceed without appearing unbalanced."

The Malki Foundation exists to honour the memory of my murdered daughter, born in Melbourne and murdered in Jerusalem at the age of 15. The Foundation provides equipment and therapies for families, with absolutely no regard to their race or religion, so long as they want to give their disabled children the best possible home care. It does very decent humanitarian work.

On Wednesday, this human interest story was going to be a national radio feature. The following day -- not. What changed?

Just one thing: the fact that a terror attack -- the "massacre of the children" -- took place on a bus a few minutes drive from my Jerusalem home, proudly executed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.

Thus the question of whether a human interest story about an Australian family is suitable for broadcast on the ABC has turned into a function of whether or not a terror outrage occurred in Israel that day. Was that the intention? Does "balance" have to mean this?

Mr Balding's letter describes a conversation that took place two years ago between me and one of his reporters, the "award-winning" Tim Palmer (as Mr Balding carefully describes him). In doing so, he has seriously mis-stated aspects of what happened, perhaps because he took no part in that conversation himself.

My wife and I have been determined to ensure that Malki's death two years ago never becomes a mere statistical blip. This has meant we frequently meet with, and speak to, journalists from all over the world. We talk publicly about Malki at every possible opportunity.

Thus, when Tim Palmer, the ABC's man in Jerusalem at the time, approached me for an interview after the Sbarro restaurant massacre, I agreed immediately. Then Palmer told me it would take place only if I consented to his bracketing me with the father of the murderer. He explained that this was a political story and had to be told in a political fashion with both sides being heard.

If you ask me what he meant by "bracketing", I don't know. Did he mean to put the murderer's father and me in the same room, or have us both on the same phone line? Most likely not, but I don't know. We never got to the part where he explained it to me, because I told him right away I could never give a hand to his attempt at false comparisons and bogus moral equivalence. And if you wonder what the other side of the murder of a fifteen year-old could possibly be, then you can join the club. I'm simply baffled by this way of looking at things.

The ABC's MD says his organization "never tried to argue there was a moral equivalence between the death of Malki Roth and the murder". But Tim Palmer himself said in one of his emails that he dropped the interview with the murderer's father because he "was unable to present the counterpoint". To many people, the notion that there is a counterpoint to the murder of a child will be grotesque. It greatly hurt my wife and me.
Mr Balding's letter says that whatever the ABC did, the Daily Telegraph did the same or worse, and seems to imply this is good for the ABC's case. But I have carefully read the Telegraph's report of my daughter's murder [The actual August 2001 page is posted here - AR] and it is perfectly clear to me that Mr Balding's assertion on this point is wrong. The Telegraph's treatment of the story is fair and reasonable. The ABC's treatment of me was not. 

Finally, I'm puzzled that Mr Balding's letter does not seem to address the question of whether or not Palmer and the ABC acted properly towards me. I think it is inappropriate to raise matters of this kind in a newspaper, so I am preparing a brief for Mr Balding which will include copies of all the emails passing between Palmer and me over the past two years. I will be asking him to inform himself about the judgement and approach of the journalist he seeks to defend. His answer will be very important to me.

Arnold Roth
Jerusalem

I didn't hear from Mr Balding after the letter was published - not in 2003 and not in all the years since then. And I found it hard to follow up with a brief for him, so I let the matter drop.

One of the ABC's several regional headquarters [Image Source]

Piers Akerman then provided his own commentary on Balding's letter in another Telegraph column published the following week:

It's someone else's ABC ignoring facts
Piers Akerman | The Daily Telegraph, Sydney | September 2, 2003 | [Archived here]

ABC boss Russell Balding is in serious need of a reality check. His response to my column last Tuesday was full of argument but light on facts, as Arnold Roth, the father of murdered Australian schoolgirl Malki Roth, lucidly demonstrated in his letter published in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday. 

The bean counter's tasteless attack and threadbare defence clearly illustrated how profoundly the public broadcaster has lost its moral compass.

Unfortunately, such brainless bluster from the top appears to be in keeping with much of the ABC's warped culture of denial. Take the numerous complaints made about a Radio National broadcast just over a year ago in which reporter Peter Cave unequivocally asserted a massacre had taken place in Jenin in April, 2002.

The issue is of importance to Australian audiences as some Australian Muslims still believe that Israeli troops participated in the fictitious massacre, just as they choose to believe the US was behind the attacks on the World Trade Centre, despite Osama bin Laden's jubilant claim of responsibility, and that the US is a colonising power.

The ABC refuses to correct the record despite the fact that there have been two investigations, one by Human Rights Watch and the other by the UN, which have failed to support the claim.

The Human Rights Watch report, based on interviews with people present during the Jenin fighting, is straightforward. It states it "found no evidence to sustain claims of massacres or large-scale extrajudicial executions by the IDF [Israeli Defence Force] in Jenin refugee camp".

The UN report, compiled without a visit to Jenin, typically does not rule decisively either way. It appears to draw heavily on the Human Rights Watch report but does allow that an allegation by a Palestinian Authority official that some 500 people had been killed "has not been substantiated in the light of the evidence that has emerged".

Not good enough for the ABC, however, which remains the sole Western media outlet to maintain its curious but inflammatory view that a massacre took place.

A rational national broadcaster would recognise its serious error and atone and any examination of the record and the investigators' reports would indicate that the ABC has a clear responsibility to correct Cave's report.

But those who have asked for a correction have been treated very shabbily indeed.

When ABC listener Ralph Zwier sought a review of Cave's explicit report, he was told that the Independent Complaints Review Panel (ICRP) would first see whether it would accept the complaint. It did not.

In a patronising response, ICRP convenor Ted Thomas tartly told Mr Zwier: "You and I surely cannot be certain how all Western media dealt with the story."

He then went on to split hairs over whether the ABC's charter meant it was required to be a "mainstream" or a "specialist" broadcaster and dismissed the charter's requirement for balance and impartiality with the thought that "it does not require them to be unquestioning..." 

Mr Zwier then asked if the "independent" panel would clarify the criteria on which it determined whether to review complaints. He was told that it's up to the convenor of the ICRP - that is, it's arbitrary.

Under the ABC's risible complaints procedure, either the managing director or the convenor of its ridiculously titled panel call the shots if they are of the opinion that a complaint "alleges a sufficiently serious case of bias, lack of balance or unfair treatment to warrant independent review; or is a matter of public notoriety which warrants such a review". 

While some Muslims in this country continue to claim a massacre took place in Jenin, despite all the proven facts, and use this assertion to reinforce their ridiculous claims about a global conspiracy against their religion, it is obvious the matter is serious.
That it is a matter of public notoriety goes without saying. 

Mr Zwier is now considering whether to take his complaint to the Australian Broadcasting Authority, the next link in the chain. 

It is to be hoped that he will pursue this option - and forward copies of all his correspondence to Communications Minister Richard Alston, Senator George Brandis and Opposition leader Simon Crean. 

The ABC's refusal to correct the record and apologise about the Jenin claim indicates "our" ABC belongs to Yasser Arafat's propaganda unit.

In wrapping up the 2003 version of this article, I noted that Palmer of the ABC, who sought to bracket me with the father of my child's murderer,

emailed me several times in the two years after Malki's murder, most recently on the day Akerman's first column appeared. I was puzzled and very bothered by some of the things he wrote and did. When a politically charged issue has to be covered, there's room for debate about whether and how the media achieve a balanced presentation of the competing versions of the facts and opinions. In the case of the ABC's coverage of my daughter's murder and of the work of the foundation we set up in her memory, I feel that the failures and mistakes of ABC management and staff are plain and clear. They call, it seems to me, for lessons to be learned and changes to be implemented. I intend to do what I can to advance that process.

From an APC brochure

Several months after this 2003 report above was published, Palmer filed a complaint against Piers Akerman with the Australian Press Council.

Crikey, a widely-read independent online source of analysis about Australia's media industries, gave it coverage [archived here]. In October 2004, the APC, which had rejected my [Arnold Roth's] written request to make a submission so that my obviously highly relevant position would be heard, ruled against Akerman and in favour of Palmer and the ABC. The text of the decision is reported in the Sydney Daily Telegraph [PDF here] which appealed. Its appeal was rejected.

The Australian Jewish News reported on November 4, 2004 [PDF here] about the outcome. Here's the part where they quote me:

Roth, who now lives in Jerusalem, has not been a party to the proceedings, but wrote an open letter to the ABC last year complaining of how it covered Malki’s murder. He told the AJN from Israel this week: “The notion that an opinion piece needs to incorporate the response of the person about whom the opinion is expressed seems to me to be very odd. Bearing in mind the complaint was made by [the ABC's Palmer] one of the most influential journalists in Australia – one who manages to get his views across at will – makes this even odder.” Roth said that of around 150 interviews he has given about Malki’s murder, Palmer was one of only two journalists who said they planned to weld the interview to an interview with the bomber’s father. “I said I will not give a hand to a bogus comparison between my views and those of the father of the murderer.” Roth said he was affronted by Palmer’s plans for the interview, regardless of what the final product might have looked like. “I don’t think that the issue of what the interview would have said ought to have been the matter that decided how the Press Council reached its decision. I think it’s a totally irrelevant question.”
In its statement, the Press Council made no comment about Akerman’s account of how, on a visit to Melbourne in 2003, Roth was asked to appear on ABC Radio to talk about Keren Malki, a foundation which he founded to raise money for Jewish and Palestinian families with disabilities, in memory of Malki’s work in this area. But, recalled Akerman, Roth was later notified that the interview would not take place because of coverage given to another Palestinian bombing and that it would be “difficult to proceed without appearing unbalanced”.

The way today's ABC Middle East correspondent and her editors and managers have been tackling the Tamimi phenomenon is very much on our minds - especially their obdurate silence in the face of criticism. We mean of course our criticism, though we have the impression they are not responding to other critics on this Tamimi issue either.

Reflecting on the same ABC's conduct of fifteen years ago, it's hard to see how the mistakes of the past have been addressed or the lessons learned. We find the similarity of mindset on display depressing and discouraging.

21-Feb-18: News industry activism, its tendentious outcomes and the Tamimis

ABC studios in Ultimo, a Sydney suburb [Image Source]

We've been busy the last few days responding to social media comments - some supportive, some critical, a lot of it disgustingly hateful - about Ahed Tamimi, a close relative and unabashed admirer of our child's murderer Ahlam Tamimi ["Ahed Tamimi and Her Family Aren't the Palestinian Saints You Want Them to Be", Haaretz].

Our Twitter account [here] has had orders of magnitude more traffic in the past week than we have seen before.

Yesterday, we saw that Sophie McNeill [background], whom we have never met and with whom we never had any conversation or email, had filed her own report on the Ahed phenomenon for Australia's ABC News. The ABC's site calls Sophie McNeill "a video-journalist based in the Middle East for the ABC". It doesn't mention that she's based in Jerusalem (or so we have been told) which is where we live.

Given the loaded nature of the issues in the ongoing Tamimi saga, it's a shabby and tendentious job of reporting and analyzing news.

Honest Reporting yesterday highlighted an outrageous problem with it - unprofessional recklessness or perhaps something much worse - that ought to have generated a fire-storm of controversy in the Australian media. But hasn't.

Here's how it starts:

On February 20, Australia’s 7.30 current affairs program on national broadcaster ABC included a ten minute segment on the Ahed Tamimi case. In the report, it appears that video footage of Tamimi has been deliberately cut mid-sentence to alter the impression that Tamimi was inciting violence – a key allegation in her trial... Not surprising given that the segment was put together by Sophie McNeill, who has a history of advocacy journalism and vilifying Israel. ["ABC’s Sophie McNeill Selectively Cuts Ahed Tamimi Video", Simon Plosker, February 20, 2018]

Ahed Tamimi speaks - but at the ABC she isn't heard: Some context

We aired our views some weeks back on the significance of what was yesterday excised from the Ahed Tamimi ABC record: see "04-Feb-18: The embarrassing violence of Ahed Tamimi and its fig-leafers". It's hard to understand anyone trying to get away with analyzing the Ahed Tamimi story without paying close attention to the violent things she actually said for the record. And that she intended to be heard since it was her mother holding the camera and urging her to unload. And who then published it.

There's nothing especially new in angry allegations of bias concerning Ms McNeill. Honest Reporting, among others, raised what seem to us to be serious and valid concerns when she first got the job: see "Should ABC News Have Given Advocacy Journalist the Keys to its Jerusalem Bureau?". The concerns are highlighted by a look at Section 4 of the ABC's own Code of Practice:

The ABC has a statutory duty to ensure that the gathering and presentation of news and information is impartial according to the recognised standards of objective journalism.

The Honest Reporting analysis goes on to say that Ms McNeill's reporting

does not show a clear record of separating her media career from her activism. And there is little doubt that her activism continues and influences her reporting in terms of how she frames stories, particularly about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Like her ABC Jerusalem bureau predecessors, Sophie McNeill could have done - but didn't ever do - a report that ties the conflict, the controversies, the human dimension of events here in Israel with her home market of Australia by doing a story on the Malki Foundation.

As many who read our blog know, we created the foundation in 2001 in the weeks after the murder of our Melbourne-born daughter Malki. It does wonderful, non-sectarian work and positively impacts on people's lives. More than that, it's worth pointing out that there is zero political dimension to its activity. In fact, people familiar with it have often commented that the Malki Foundation is exemplary in the way it provides benefits to a needy segment of the population in Israel without any regard for the political views, religion or ethnicity of the beneficiaries - of whom there are many thousands (roughly one-third are Arabs).

Ms McNeill was invited to interview us founders at a charity benefit hosted by the then-ambassador of Australia to Israel in his official Herzliya residence in the summer of 2015. We were told at the time that she had accepted. But she failed to show up on the night and the interview never happened. Nor did she ever try after that (or before) to contact us. Her privilege, of course.

Now her time here is drawing to a close. An Australian Jewish News report in December said

ABC’S controversial Israel correspondent Sophie McNeill is set to move back to Australia to join Four Corners next year. McNeil has been the focus of several complaints from Jewish communal leaders, and politicians, since she became the ABC’s Middle East correspondent in 2015.

Yesterday, for what we therefore assume will be the first and last time, Ms McNeill included a reference to our murdered daughter in one of her reports - the one on Ahed Tamimi who joyously danced at the wedding of her adored cousin, Malki's killer.

Concerning our daughter, here verbatim is the little that Ms McNeill and the ABC said about our Malki yesterday:

Israeli activists have long accused the Tamimi's of condoning violence, pointing to a cousin of Ms Tamimi's father, who was jailed 17 years ago for aiding a suicide bomber who killed 15 Israeli civilians in 2001 — including a 15-year-old who held Australian citizenship.

Just one sentence. Our comments:

1. Condoning violence? No, that's what the ABC arguably does. Critics of the Tamimi clan say the Tamimis do violence and incite more violence and worse ["Advocates for Terror: Why Ahed Tamimi and Her Family are No Heroes", Tablet, January 5, 2018, for instance]. It goes way beyond condoning.
2. Is it really only "Israeli activists" who see the reckless, dangerous and bigoted violence of Ahlam Tamimi and her uncles, aunts, cousins and extended clan? The FBI added Ahlam Tamimi to its Most Wanted Terrorists list in March 2017 and described her as "armed and dangerous". She faces Federal charges. The US State Department announced a $5 million reward for her apprehension and conviction three weeks ago. See also what we recounted in our recent article: "04-Feb-18: The embarrassing violence of Ahed Tamimi and its fig-leafers"
3. "Pointing to a cousin of Ms Tamimi's father" is a disingenuous way of avoiding the notably tight-knit nature of the Tamimi clan. In an interview, Manal Tamimi (Bassem Tamimi's sister-in-law and aunt of Ahed) here described the Tamimi reality: "Almost 600 residents. Most of us are Tamimis, one big family". It's a key point in understanding how the Nabi Saleh villagers operate. We drilled into this in our widely-read article: "17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns". There's further little-known background in these posts of ours: "29-Aug-15: Revisiting a Palestinian Arab village and its monsters"; "01-Sep-15: A tale of two villages: one devoted to non-violence, another that actually exists"; and "19-Dec-17: Uncovering some of Nabi Saleh's hideous buried secrets"
4. "For aiding a suicide bomber" is just as disingenuous. Ahlam Tamimi masterminded the August 2001 Sbarro pizzeria massacre. 15 people were immediately murdered; 130 or more were left badly injured and maimed; a sixteenth victim, a young mother when this happened, lies unconscious to this day and her then-two-year old daughter has been raised motherless. This was Ahlam Tamimi's second Arab-on-Israeli terror attack that month on behalf of Hamas, whose first-ever female terrorist she was. It earned her a criminal conviction from a notably furious judicial bench and an Israeli prison sentence of 16 life terms (in the end she served just 8 years). Some aid! It also turned her into a global, pan-Arab celebrity.
5. "Including a 15-year-old who held Australian citizenship". That's factual enough. But with all Ms McNeill's fawning attention to the details of the Tamimis and especially 17 year old Ahed, it might have been appropriate for the reporter to state Malki Roth's name, that she too was a girl, and that she not only "held Australian citizenship" but was Melbourne-born with an extended family who are based in Melbourne. Small and insignificant points in some people's eyes, we know. But the absence of any attempt to humanize and connect to the murder of an Australian girl strikes us as cold, deliberate and agenda-driven. Consider also when Sophie McNeill last addressed Malki's tragic murder during the several years of her Jerusalem posting. Hint: never.
6. On an ongoing basis, we want to engage the government of Australia to help us get the Sbarro bomber Ahlam Tamimi extradited from Jordan to the United States. She's wanted there, as we noted above, to face serious Federal charges and Australia has unusually good relations with the Hashemite Kingdom. Jordan is tight-lipped about its refusal to comply with its extradition obligation which arises under a signed and valid treaty (according to the US State Department). Parts of the Australian media gave this some appropriate attention during 2017: see "Help bring Malki’s murderer to justice, Mr Turnbull" and "Dad’s plea for justice as killer of Aussie girl spreads message of hate". But not Sophie McNeill, the only Australian reporter stationed in the city where we live. And not Australia's ABC. Busy, most likely.

We're not totally unrealistic. We realize that few people have the intensity of concern that we do about Malki's life and her murder. And that there might be very little interest in the story among the Australian news-consuming public. Those aren't our concerns. The pursuit of justice, never a quick process, continues to keep us focused and active, but has always gotten less media attention than we would have liked.  

But the Sophie McNeill phenomenon goes well beyond our private feelings. The ABC is one of Australia's most influential and significant national institutions. You don't have to be, to use Ms McNeill's inappropriate term, an Israeli activist to be outraged at the soft-pedaling she does on those who see value and even redemption in Palestinian Arab terrorism as the Tamimi clan do. 

She's entitled to her private ideological agenda - that goes without saying. But ABC management ought to be open enough and genuinely committed enough to the values of world-class journalism to know when to step in and object to brazen crusading, distortion and obvious manipulation of the news record. That's just outrageous.

In this latest case, they weren't and they aren't ready to act as far as we can tell and there are many losers as a result. And yes, of course we would have been glad to put these views to their Jerusalem correspondent if she had ever made contact.

UPDATE February 27, 2018: We decided to put up a post that revisits an unpleasant chain of experiences we had with the ABC back in the period immediately after our daughter's murder in a Hamas attack, and then again a couple of years later. See "27-Feb-18: On Australia's ABC and being unbalanced"

21-Nov-17: Mass-murdering Charles Manson and mass-murdering Ahlam Tamimi: Who's more monstrous?

Remorseless murdering psychopathic thug. And Charles Manson.

Charles Manson died on Sunday in California. The BBC report of his death says he was

the notorious cult leader who directed his followers to commit a string of brutal murders, and who became a symbol of the dark side of 1960s counterculture... In 1969, his followers, known as the Manson Family, killed nine people. Among the victims of the killing spree was heavily pregnant Hollywood actress Sharon Tate, wife of Roman Polanski. One of Manson's young followers, Susan Atkins, stabbed Tate to death and scrawled "PIG" on the home's front door with the actress's blood. Four other people at Tate's home were brutally stabbed to death. The next day, a wealthy couple in Los Angeles, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, were also killed by the clan. The killings became known collectively as the Tate-LaBianca murders.

He was a monster on a mission. At his June 1970 trial in a Santa Monica, California, courtroom, the prosecution said Manson wanted the killings to spark a race war he called “Helter Skelter”. Manson was convinced the lyrics of a song of that name on the Beatles’ “White Album” contained coded messages describing that war.

Although Manson was not personally present at the scene of the killings, he was convicted of murder for directing his followers, and sentenced to death. After the California Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that the death penalty was unconstitutional, this was commuted to life with the possibility of parole . But he spent the next 45 years of his life behind bars. He was denied parole no fewer than 22 times, the last time in 2012. [Source: CBS News]

Manson's conviction arose from the murders of nine people. By  comparison, our daughter's murderer was convicted in an Israeli court - after confessing to all the charges - of the murder of fifteen people. (A sixteenth person, a young mother, has been comatose from the moment of the Sbarro pizzeria explosion more than 16 years ago until today.) Tamimi has said for the record that she wished the toll were higher.

Like Manson, Ahlam Tamimi is a woman with a mission. But unlike Manson, she never needed to ask for parole which, in any event, the court which tried and sentenced her strongly recommended should be perpetually refused. But she walked free anyway, thanks to the catastrophic Gilad Shalit Deal of 2011 ["19-Oct-11: Haaretz: Shalit prisoner swap marks 'colossal failure' for mother of Israeli bombing victim"]. And did we mention that she is regarded as a national hero throughout the Arab world? And had her own TV program to propagate her values throughout the Arabic-speaking world from January 2012 until September 2016? (The program continues but she is no longer its presenter.)

Living free as a bird in Amman, Jordan, where she was born and where her family lives, she has happily (very happily) boasted of the central role she took in the planning and execution of the Sbarro pizzeria massacre. She has spoken of the pride she felt when fleeing the scene of the massacre that awful day, in the company of exultant fellow Arabs who were elated by the fresh news of a massacre in the center of Jerusalem. She has said on camera that she wished she could have told them it was she who did it.

She presented the evening news a few hours later on a Palestinian Arab television station in Ramallah called Istiklal, opening naturally enough with big news of a "resistance" activity in "Occupied Jerusalem" and the many dead Jews, especially the many dead Jewish children. How that evil creature's heart must have soared.

 Charles Manson sticks his tongue out at
photographers as he appears in a Santa Monica
courtroom in California, June 25, 1970
[Image Source]

Also unlike Manson, she had no need of Beatles' lyrics. As she explained here ["08-Oct-17: Why kill religious Jewish children? Because, says Hamas celebrity-jihadist, this is a religious struggle"], her religious faith was all the motivation she needed to murder Jews. She is a devout Muslim.

Because she was an actress, the most memorable of Manson's victims was Sharon Tate. Her being pregnant injected an especially painful note of poignancy to the coldness of her tormentors' zealotry. One of Tamimi's victims, an American woman pregnant with her first child (and herself the only child of her parents) was not in movies. Few will remember her name or the striking goodness of her life. The memory of Shoshana Yehudit Heyman Greenbaum is honored by her many devoted high school students and friends, and by the work of Partners in Kindness.

Connecting unfathomable evil to good deeds is a classic Jewish response. The life of our daughter Malki - another of Tamimi's victims - is honored by The Malki Foundation. If you have not heard of it and want to know what it does, please have a look at The Malki Foundation Blog.

Ahlam Tamimi, confessed murderer, might die in a US jail. But some challenging things would have to happen first. US Federal criminal charges against her were unveiled in March 2017. That same day, her name was added to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list and her face appeared on English and Arabic editions of an FBI "wanted" poster in which she is described, accurately we believe, as armed and dangerous. But meanwhile she is free as a bird, living with her husband and child in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, less than 90 minutes drive from Jerusalem where she achieved her fame. The Jordanian authorities have told the US that even though there has been a signed and fully-in-effect Extradition Treaty between the two countries since 1995, they now say it was invalid from day one and they refuse to extradite her.

In the Arabic text, Tamimi and her family express fealty and
thanks to the Jordanian power structure

Tamimi and her connections have expressed effusive thanks and praise [here] to the Jordanian judiciary. In Arabic (we use machine translation) they appreciate the intervention which allows Ahlam Tamimi "to live safe and secure under the banner of Hashemite under the leadership of His Majesty King Abdullah II Ibn Al Hussein" instead of being flown out, handcuffed, to the US. The Arabic article in which they say this (there is no English language article reporting their words) is accompanied by the portrait over on the right, showing Tamimi with a Jordanian flag, her fingers flashing V for Victory, and a smile on her face.

Keeping their gratitude in mind, note that Jordan's king exercises vast powers:

"Jordanian governments last no more than 15 months before they are dissolved by royal decree. This seems to be done in order to bolster the king's reform credentials and to distribute patronage among a wide range of elites. The king also appoints all judges and is commander of the armed forces." ["Jordan Background and US Relations", Congressional Research Service, Updated to November 14, 2017]

Talk of Jordan being a constitutional monarchy ignores reality. It's a closely-held family business.

Notwithstanding Jordan's argument, several felons have been extradited by the Jordanians to the US since it came into effect and are in US prison cells today.

[Image Source: Video grab]

An important legal article, "Pressure on Jordan: Refusal to extradite mastermind of deadly 2001 Sbarro suicide bombing in Jerusalem contravenes international law and agreements", published last month in the National Security Law Brief argues that the Jordanian claims are "without merit", concluding that

the United States should not give up on attempting to extradite Al-Tamimi... Jordan should reconsider its position and permit extradition in the case of Al-Tamimi for the safety of Jordanians, and citizens of other nations that may be subject to another attack by Al-Tamimi. Thwarting extradition not only violates the principle of comity, but it also perpetuates the international danger presented by Al-Tamimi.

Meanwhile Jordan's king, Abdullah II, has made two triumphant visits to Washington so far this year, one in January, one in March. President Trump visited him in Jordan in May, and they met again in New York in September when the president praised him for "fighting terrorism of all kinds in the region". If anyone in the White House is aware in even the smallest way of our efforts to get Tamimi extradited, or of the duplicitous way Jordan is thumbing its nose at its treaty obligations with the US over her extradition, they are keeping it very close to their chests.

They need to know that the things Tamimi, the fugitive from US justice, stands for are no less monstrous than those of Manson and his "family". But far more dangerous than Manson since she's alive and free, incredibly influential on a scale that non-Arabic speakers cannot grasp, and protected by powerful friends.

---

[This post, like a number of others before it, has been translated to Polish ("Masowy morderca Charles Manson i masowa morderczyni Ahlam Tamimi: kto jest większym potworem?") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.]

08-Aug-17: For our friends in and near Jerusalem

Malki and Michal HY"D became the closest of friends
as little girls and neighbors and are buried side-by-side
in Jerusalem

The annual Aliyah La-Kever (going up to the gravesides) and Azkara (memorial service) in memory of the lives of our daughter Malka Chana Roth and her friend Michal Raziel, may their memories be a blessing, will take place at the Har Tamir cemetery in Jerusalem on Thursday evening, August 10, 2017 (Yud-Het Av, according to the Hebrew calendar, since the actual anniversary falls on Shabbat this year) at 5:30 pm.

The girls, aged 15 and 16, were the closest of friends and neighbours in life. Buried side by side, they were victims of a Hamas attack on a Jerusalem pizzeria 16 years ago that sought, and succeeded, according to the engineer of the massacre, to murder as many Jewish children as possible.

As in previous years, free bus transport will be available to and from the ceremony, leaving the Ramot Alef neighborhood in Jerusalem half an hour before the ceremony, returning afterwards to the same place. For driving and bus directions and for details, please email us and we will be happy to give details.

Donations in memory of the murdered girls will be greatly appreciated. We especially recommend the Malki Foundation as a worthy target of your charitable support.

23-Mar-17: Looking for justice in Jordan, Jerusalem and Washington

The article below originally appeared on the website of Times of Israel yesterday.

Father of Jerusalem bombing victim vows to keep pushing for terrorist’s extradition

After Jordan’s top court denies American request to arrest Ahlam al-Tamimi, who helped carry out 2001 Sbarro attack, Arnold Roth says he’ll take fight to court of public opinion
DOV LIEBER | Times of Israel | March 22, 2017, 1:27 pm  

Nearly 16 years ago, Arnold Roth lost his daughter Malki in a suicide bombing at a Sbarro pizza shop in central Jerusalem. Now he’s saying he won’t give up his fight to make sure a female terrorist who helped plan and carry out the attack sees justice.

Roth’s daughter was among 15 people killed in the August 9, 2001, bombing, and one of two American fatalities. On Monday, Jordan’s top court upheld an order refusing an American extradition order for Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, who was convicted over the bombing in an Israeli court but has been living free in Jordan the last several years.

Roth is vowing to continue to push for Tamimi to be shipped off to the US to be punished over the bombing, which also injured 122 people, including several Americans, when it ripped through the shop in the midst of the Second Intifada.

According to the US Justice Department, which recently unsealed the extradition order, Tamimi helped plan the bombing, including choosing the location for maximum casualties, and brought the suicide bomber to the restaurant.

Roth expressed great doubt over whether the Jordanian ruling was legitimate, rather than just a political cover-up.

“I’m skeptical based on years of seeing the way formal decisions are taken and announced in the Arab world,” Roth said.

Jordan’s top court ruled Tamimi couldn’t be handed over to the US because a 1995 extradition agreement between the two countries was never ratified by the Jordanian parliament.

“Perhaps there is a constitutional prohibition against extradition. But they have had more than two decades to figure that out,” said Roth, who is a practicing lawyer.

He added, however, that “looking back at news reports of 1995, when the extradition agreement was made, no one raised the issue of any constitutional barrier.”

“I want clearer heads than mine to look at this. For instance, the American authorities in Jordan,” he said.

US authorities did not react to the Jordanian ruling, and a Justice Department official declined to comment. However Roth, who says he has begun talking to US lawmakers about continuing to push for the extradition, said he understood the Americans had been caught off guard by Amman’s refusal.

“People are outraged and a lot of them are Americans. We’ve had a real outpouring of support and anger from people who have observed that Jordan gets a terrific media image in the US,” he said.

Now that Jordan has refused to allow Tamimi’s extradition, he said, “the next step has to do with helping the Jordanians understand the disgrace they’ve brought upon themselves by the unconscionable approach to this. And that involves talking to Congress, which I’ve started to move on, and alerting American public opinion.”

“It’s clear to us there is no one to talk to on the Jordanian side. It’s all about carrots and sticks,” he said.

“What they have done now is enough to be the fly in the ointment. It spoils the image. We will find ways, with friends, to help people come to fuller understanding in the role that Jordan plays,” he said.

Because Tamimi is considered a hero in Jordan, Roth asserted, “no politician will take the risk of handing her off to the Americans. They will come up with any excuses they need.”

“In a country where the king changes the government as often I as change shirts, it’s hard to take seriously the claim that the constitution prevents this or that,” he added.

There was no immediate comment from Jordanian officials.

In 2003, Tamimi pleaded guilty in an Israeli court to multiple counts of murder and was sentenced to 16 terms of life in prison, but was released and returned to Jordan in 2011 as part of the deal to free IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, for whom Israel exchanged 1,027 prisoners.

In March, Tamimi was charged by the US with “conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against US nationals outside the US, resulting in death.” She was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security Mary McCord called Tamimi “an unrepentant terrorist who admitted to her role in a deadly terrorist bombing that injured and killed numerous innocent victims.”

Roth, originally from Australia, and his wife Frimet Roth, who is from New York (and has blogged for The Times of Israel), have lived in Israel since 1988. After their daughter’s murder, they became active in seeking justice over the bombing and founded Keren Malki, or Malki Foundation, named for their daughter, which raises money for special-needs children.

Roth said he and Frimet are the only people who lost someone in the Sbarro bombing to pursue Tamimi, circulating a petition against the prisoner swap in 2011 and approaching the US Justice Department in the middle of 2012.

Roth also expressed “puzzlement” over the way the indictment of Tamimi has been handled by the US authorities.

“We’re puzzled, my wife and I, by the way in which the indictment was in the hands of the prosecutors for four years. We are wondering why the US is not being more forthright in putting the blame where it belongs, which is in the hands of the Jordanian authorities,” he said.

Hamas, the Gaza-based terror group that Tamimi was a member of, argued that the US has no right to extradite her because she was already freed by Israel in a prisoner exchange.

Roth challenged this argument, saying Tamimi was not absolved of her crime, but that her sentence, along with the other 1,026 prisoners released in the Shalit deal, was commuted, meaning that her sentenced was shortened “for pragmatic reasons.”

“But the commutations were made with conditions. In simple terms, it had to do with not going back to terrorism. And there is no question that Tamimi has breached those conditions,” said Roth.

Tamimi had hosted a weekly television show broadcast on Hamas’s satellite station, in which she continued to support terrorist attacks.

In September 2016, Tamimi suddenly stopped hosting the show.

Roth speculated that Tamimi was tipped off about the US indictment by someone in the Jordanian government, and so she quit her show to make herself “less high-profile.”

“For the first time since our daughter was murdered, we are surrounded by people want to help,” said Roth.

---
Dov Lieber is The Times of Israel's Arab affairs correspondent. Eric Cortellessa contributed to this report.

23-Oct-16: Vengeance is ours, say these Israeli Jews

A new cafe opens on Jerusalem's Hagai Street [Image Source]

A year ago, a murderous Arab-on-Israeli terrorist attack in Jerusalem's Old City took the lives of two young Jewish men:

The two died of their wounds shortly after being stabbed in Jerusalem’s Old City by a Palestinian terrorist. Banita’s wife was in serious condition and their two-year-old baby was lightly wounded. She was taken to Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem and was undergoing surgery. The toddler was taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center for treatment where he remained in stable condition. Lavi, a Jerusalem resident, leaves behind a wife and seven children. A rabbi at the Old City’s Ateret Cohanim yeshiva who lived nearby, he had rushed to the scene when he heard screaming in the street. ["2 killed in Jerusalem attack named as Nehemia Lavi, Aharon Banita", Times of Israel, October 3, 2015]

A year has gone by - twelve months filled with who-knows-what weighty challenges, unthinkable difficulties and corrosive, unfathomable, endless pain for the parents and families the two murdered Jews left behind.

In the conventional way of thinking about such matters, the minds of those irretrievably damaged family members are undoubtedly filled with thoughts of vengeance, of bloodshed and of evening the score.

That, at least, is how some ostensibly well-informed people view those of us who have been at the receiving end of Arab-on-Israeli savagery. As one prominent Jewish leader in the United States wrote publicly just a few weeks ago, in supporting a local fund-raising activity of Parents Circle Families Forum, a terror victim group about whose activities we have written critically several times, Israeli victims of Arab terror are entitled to

their natural right to revenge, after losing the most precious thing...

We wrote to that leader and told her that her comment was sharply at odds with what we have experienced:

We know many other Israelis who are bereaved through acts of hideous Arab-on-Israeli terror [and] don't believe we have met even one of whom we could say they are pursuing "their natural right to revenge"

The widow and orphaned children of Rabbi Nehemia Lavi Z"L
celebrated Purim earlier this year [Image Source: Ynet]

Is it possible to identify a pattern in the way Israeli victims - those who themselves survived acts of Arab-on-Israeli savagery and the families and loved ones of whose lives they were part - react? 

We think it is. And we have plenty of anecdotal evidence to back that up. 

Here, from today's Israel National News, is an instance that describes how an informal group of Israeli Jewish youngsters, living in Jerusalem's Old City -

have dedicated a coffee kiosk for guards and security forces on duty in the location where, one year ago, an Arab terrorist murdered Rabbi Nehemia Lavi and Aharon Benita. The dedication was held last night... Every week, the youths held birthday celebrations for Border Police, and would pass out coffee, cakes, and other snacks to the security forces stationed around the Old City. Recently, the youths decided to intensify the initiative, and raised 50,000 shekels to renovate a store, located right at the scene of last year’s murders, that would become a coffee kiosk for the benefit of security forces. Michael Benita, the father of murder victim Aharon, came to the dedication event for the coffee kiosk, and expressed his excitement at the initiative: “The efforts of the youth are not something to be taken for granted, the establishment of this corner is not to be taken for granted. I am happy that, in this fashion, they are memorializing Rabbi Nehemia and Aharon.” Hadar Katzover, one of the youths of the Old City who contributed to the effort, shared her impressions: “We worked very hard on this. This is our way of continuing [the legacy of] Rabbi Nehemia Lavi, and this is our way of dealing with what happened. Where they cut life short, we will add goodness!". She invited "the entire public" to come to celebrations following the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah on Monday night at 9:00 PM on Hagai Street, adding: "Come and strengthen residents of the Old City.” The daughter of Rabbi Lavi cut the ceremonial initiation ribbon, while the brother of Aharon Benita fixed a mezuzah to the doorpost.["Where they cut life short, we will add goodness", Israel National News, October 23, 2016]

The sister of murdered Aaron Banita Z"L farewells him prior to the funeral
[Image Source]

Being really blunt about this, and speaking as parents of a child whose murder at the hands of Hamas terrorists led to the creation of a charity that does highly effective work, reading and writing about this Old City cafe and the acts of chesed on the part of those who created it makes us just about burst with pride and admiration.

Is this the only way to deal with life after everything is turned upside down by barbarism, bigotry and hatred?

No, there are certainly other ways. 

This way, for instance:

As the Jerusalem Post reports, the Palestinian Authority controlled by Mahmoud Abbas has just decided to honor Muhannad Halabi by naming a street after him. Halabi is the 19-year-old murderer of two Jews killed close to the Old City's Lion's Gate on October 3, 2015 in a stabbing and shooting "operation" that took the lives of Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi and Aharon Benita and seriously injured Benita’s wife, Adele, and their two-year-old son. The assailant was shot dead by police at the scene. Palestinian Media Watch reported several days ago that the Palestinian Bar Association has already grotesquely bestowed an honorary law degree on the deceased stabber/shooter/attacker. Now the municipality of Surda/Abu Qash, in the suburbs of Ramallah, will name a street for him "to emphasize the national role played by Palestinian municipalities." Can a society ever be rehabilitated from pathologies as deep and all-pervasive as theirs? ["28-Oct-15: The Pal Arab passion for knife attacks isn't just for social media: they sincerely mean to kill"]

The barbarians (and those who stand with them) have their ways and their values. And we have ours.