25-Mar-19: On justice and decency for American victims of terrorism: When US indignation leads to a troubling comparison

Yilmaz [Image Source]

What follows might at first not seem a relevant contribution to our battle for the extradition to Washington DC of our child's killer. But in a surprising and little-noted way, that is just what it is.

In early February, we became aware for the first time of a terrorism case involving a Turk by the name of Adem Yilmaz. (He's actually quite peripheral to our purpose in this post.)

Yilmaz was indicted by the United States in 2015 on a variety of charges tied to terrorism activity. This included his alleged role in a human bomb attack in Afghanistan that took the lives of two American soldiers. Eleven other people were injured.

From the Associated Press report, we learned that the case against Yilmaz had been kept under seal - unpublicized, a secret - for some years right up until early February 2019. During those years, he was serving time in a German prison. He was convicted by a court in Dusseldorf in 2010 which

sentenced Yilmaz to 11 years in prison for trying to mount what the German judge reportedly called a "second September 11." [VOA] 

The American charges related to Yilmaz being part of a foiled 2007 plot to attack American citizens and facilities in Germany including the U.S. Air Force's Ramstein base. In order to bring him to justice, the American authorities needed to wait till he completed that German prison term.

This Yilmaz story caught our eye.

Why? Because of the parallels with Ahlam Tamimi who, though not held in custody, lived free and unencumbered in Jordan for five and a half years before the US Department of Justice unsealed criminal charges against her that had been issued in 2012.

Yilmaz behind bullet proof glass inside the courtroom
of the district court in Duesseldorf,
western Germany [Image Source]

Those Tamimi charges relate to her role in the devastating bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem in 2001. We described that process in a post ten days ago ["14-Mar-19: Two years after Federal charges are unsealed, Ahlam Tamimi remains free. How is this happening?"]

But what happened after the charges against the Turkish jihadist were unsealed is simply stunning.

Within a few days of being formally asked by the US to extradite Yilmaz who was "still deemed dangerous by German authorities", the Germans - according to another AP report - decided instead to put him on a plane to his native Turkey.

He was briefly held by anti-terrorism authorities at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport. And then he was simply let loose. He's now free [source].

How very not surprising.

The reaction from the United States, however, is the real point. A February 25, 2019 report quotes Robert Palladino, deputy spokesman for the State Department, telling a press briefing that the US has been in talks with Ankara about Yılmaz:

"Yılmaz is a convicted terrorist; he's charged with serious crimes by the United States... The United States will never relent in its efforts to bring Yılmaz to justice.”

Bravo!

AP again:

Deputy U.S. Secretary of State John Sullivan immediately called a meeting with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who was in Washington to take part in meetings of the coalition fighting against the Islamic State group, to express American displeasure. "We are gravely disappointed by Germany's decision to deport a dangerous terrorist — Adem Yilmaz — to Turkey, rather than to extradite him to the United States to face justice for his complicity in the murder of two American servicemen," acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said in a statement later Wednesday after the two diplomats had met.

Gravely disappointed is a fine start.

And then this:

"Adem Yilmaz is responsible for the deaths of U.S. servicemembers," U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell said in a tweet on Thursday. "This failure to extradite him to the United States violates the terms and spirit of our Extradition Treaty."

Yes, it does.

And seeing those words there both uplifts us and depresses us. If only we had heard something even remotely like them in the Tamimi case.

Indeed, several disturbing Tamimi/Jordan-related questions suggested themselves to us as we thought through what had just happened. For instance why has the US evidently accepted Jordan's abrogation of its treaty obligations with vastly more understanding and grace and far less indignation than in the Germany/Turkey case? 

What wouldn't we give to hear a robust declaration from the State Department to its Jordanian counterparts calling them out on Jordan's dereliction of the responsibility to extradite Tamimi to the US; on flouting their treaty obligations; on undermining the rule of law.

Ahlam Tamimi

Then we learned that the Anti-Defamation League in Washington was thinking similar thoughts.

On March 12, 2019, the ADL'S CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt wrote a public letter to the US Attorney General William P. Barr highlighting some of the parallels between the Yilmaz and Tamimi cases.

And, to our rising optimism, he asked for an official public response. (The emphasis in the quotes that follow is ours.)

Greenblatt noted that

Ms. Tamimi’s case is almost identical in many respects to the Yilmaz case on which the Justice Department recently spoke out. As you may know, Tamimi is on the list of America’s Most Wanted Terrorists because of her role in a 2001 suicide bombing at a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem by the U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization Hamas that killed 15 people, including two American civilians.

One of those killed American civilians, as most regular readers of this blog will know, is our daughter Malki whose life ended when she was just 15.

That attack also injured over 100 others, including four Americans, one of whom remains in a permanent vegetative state since that attack over 17 years ago. Tamimi was indicted in 2013 by the U.S. Department of Justice for precisely this reason after Israel reluctantly released her under duress as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap. Like Yilmaz, Tamimi is a dangerous terrorist who has been enjoying legal impunity in a U.S. ally (Jordan) that since March 2017 has refused to honor its treaty to extradite her to the United States, even though the State Department lists that treaty as still in force on its website. Jordan has previously extradited terrorism suspects to the United States under this treaty. In the meantime, Tamimi has bragged (on camera) about her role in killing Jewish children and makes repeated public appearances as a celebrity and role model, including on Jordanian television, seated beside Jordanian politicians, and at the country’s main trade union office.

We were thrilled by how the ADL letter then set about framing the issue:

This is a vital matter of justice and decency for American victims of terrorism, and for ensuring that America does not apply a double-standard in pursuing justice when the victims are American Jews or other American citizens visiting the Jewish State. 

As the criminal charges the U.S. Department of Justice has filed against Tamimi illustrate, American law clearly grants our government the right – and the obligation – to pursue and prosecute terrorists who murder American citizens abroad, and yet not a single terrorist who has killed an American in Israel or the disputed territories has ever been successfully tried by the U.S. government, and almost none have even been indicted by the U.S. government. 

This case is a welcome exception in that the Department of Justice has taken vigorous steps to bring this terrorist to American justice, but the government of Jordan is thwarting the Department of Justice efforts. (To be best of our knowledge, there is no indication that the State Department has acted as vigorously as the Justice Department to ensure that Jordan complies with America’s extradition request.)

The letter goes on to pose some sharp and very welcome questions:

As such, I have several questions for you that go to the heart of whether America is equally committed to ensuring justice for these victims of terrorist acts, including:

First, has the U.S. government sought a review of the Jordanian Court of Cassation’s March 2017 decision to invalidate America’s 1995 extradition treaty with Jordan on narrow, technical grounds, rendering it void from the day it was signed until today, and denying the extradition to the United States of Ahlam al-Tamimi, an admitted mass murderer whose victims include three U.S. citizens?

Second, does the U.S. government agree that this Jordanian decision runs counter to the reality that Jordan has extradited at least three Jordanian citizens to the United States, where they were prosecuted and imprisoned for serious crimes? And that these extraditions related to the deaths of fewer American citizens than the number of killings of U.S. citizens for which Tamimi has been charged?

Third, will the U.S. government clarify to its Jordanian ally its extreme dissatisfaction at the highest levels regarding how this action has resulted in Tamimi evading justice while developing a celebrity persona and a career as a media commentator, as a figure of significant influence in Jordan advocating terrorist attacks and as a person actively encouraging Jordanians and Arabic-speakers outside Jordan (via a television program she broadcast globally from Amman between 2012 and 2016) to provide material support to terrorist organizations?

Fourth, does the U.S. government see the Jordanian court ruling, Jordan’s subsequent refusal to do anything to ratify the extradition treaty to overcome that ruling, and its refusal to extradite Tamimi outside of the framework of that treaty as an unacceptable dereliction of a strategic ally’s responsibility to uphold its legal obligations and the rule of law, as well as a stain on Jordan’s record as a generally staunch partner in the fight against terrorism and extremism?

And fifth, what does the U.S. government intend to do to ensure that Tamimi does not continue to enjoy her legal impunity and public profile in Jordan in the same manner that Adem Yilmaz will likely be able to do as a result of Germany’s refusal to extradite him to the United States, which, as you noted, helped him “deliberately... escape justice”?

As far as we know, the ADL has not yet heard back from the DOJ. We will be watching.

And hoping.

01-May-18: Again, Shalit Deal 'graduates' are behind a major but thwarted Arab-on-Israeli terror attack

How close, warm and mutually supportive are relations between Turkey
and the terrorists of Hamas. Anyone's guess, really. [Source]

For those who adopt the somewhat conventional - but woefully inaccurate - view that the "moderate" Abbas/Fatah/PA regime controls the Palestinian Territories apart from Hamas-dominated Gaza, today's news might cause some confusion.

Three Palestinian Arabs from East Jerusalem were formally charged by prosecutors this morning (Tuesday) in the Jerusalem District Court with acting on behalf of the Hamas terrorist movement in plotting a shooting attack against Israelis.

The indictment reported in Times of Israel this afternoon names Naseem Hamada (who described himself to his interrogators as the group's leader), Izz al-Din Atun and Obeida Amira. Reports say all three are known to Israeli security before today for their ties to terrorist activities.

All three of today's arrestees are from the Sur Baher neighborhood of Jerusalem. They are charged with contact with a foreign agent, membership in a terrorist organization and conspiring to carry out a terror attack. (There's a fourth suspect, identified in the news report as A. A.; prosecutors have not yet reached a decision as to whether to file charges against him.)

The arrests came after Israel Police and Shin Bet became aware of the plan to open fire on IDF service personnel at a bus stop outside Oranit, an Israeli community close to Rosh Ha'ayin. A town of about 9,000 residents, it straddles the 1948 ceasefire line - the so-called Kav Hayarok or Green Line. It's located about 30 kilometers (say, 20 miles) from Israel's business center, Tel Aviv.

It emerged from the interrogation, as well, that 

Atun and Amira traveled to Turkey last year to visit Hamas figures Mahmoud Atun and Musa Azari [sic], who were exiled under the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange, and received thousands of dollars to help fund the attack.

The name "Musa Azari" might be a mistake. We suspect it should have been Musa al-Akari about whom we posted this

In a conversation with Ynet, the terrorist's 16-year-old son, Hamza, said he looked up to his father's acts. "I'm proud of my father. I'm not sad that he died a martyr." The police agreed for the family to bury al-Akari at midnight in the presence of up to 35 people... The terrorist's brother is Musa al-Akari, a prisoner released in the Shalit deal and deported to Turkey. He was a member of the Hamas cell that murdered border police officer Nissim Toledano in 1992. Al-Akari, 38, a father of five from the Shuafat refugee camp, arrived at the Light Rail station in the afternoon and ran over anyone who crossed his path. He was shot to death by a border police team that was on site after he exited the vehicle and attempted to attack passersby. Hamas has taken responsibility for the attack. [Ynet. November 5, 2014]

The Atun brothers of Sur Baher have a long and deep history of terrorist activity. 

1. In addition to Izz al-Din Atun indicted today, there are 
2. Munir Marwat Atun and his brother the well-named Jihad Atun who were both arrested for being members of another terrorist/shooter cell seven years ago ["Shin Bet Nabbed Five Members of Hamas-linked Terror Cell in Jerusalem", Haaretz, April 8, 2011]. 
3. A fourth brother, Mahmoud Atun was serving a life sentence in 2011 for murdering three Israelis, including (as noted above) Border Police Sgt.-Maj. Nissim Toledano, 29, in December 1992. After being incomprehensibly freed by Israel in the catastrophic Shalit Deal of October 2011, he's now one of the Hamas king-pins who freely orchestrate murderous attacks on Israelis from their Turkish safe haven.

Click here for the February 12, 2018 Haaretz report

We have focused some attention on the lethal Turkey/Hamas axis over the past six years but it generally gets far too little reporting. Here's some background reading - a small selection from a long list:

• 1-Jan-12: Terror attack statistics climbed sharply in December - no wonder this man is smiling so broadly
• 27-Nov-14: Hamas terrorist ring is busted; Israel says the handlers operate from Turkey; Qatar is involved
• 29-Nov-14: Is Turkey providing cover for Hamas terror?
• 25-Feb-15: Talking Turkey on terror
• 11-Dec-15: The price of the Shalit Deal and the countries that help it keep rising
• 03-Aug-17: Two Shalit Deal beneficiaries are at the heart of a just-busted Hamas terror-financing operation

There's some background about that violent Jerusalem neighborhood of Sur Baher here: "1-Dec-13: Living with stone-age neighbors".

22-Oct-17: The mass-murdering savage, an FBI fugitive, sends her apologies

Happy "pioneers of Jerusalem" in Istanbul yesterday. The
jihadist savage Tamimi is missing from the photo - the explanation
is below in her own words [Image Source]

An Arabic-language report on a government-controlled Kuwaiti news site informs us that a conference under the headline "Fourth Pioneers of Jerusalem Forum" took place in Istanbul, Turkey, this weekend. (If there was Turkish media coverage, we haven't found it yet.)

This caught our eye because one of the speakers was our daughter's murderer, the on-the-run savage Ahlam Tamimi, now relatively well-known as the youngest fugitive Most Wanted Terrorist on the FBI's list . She currently lives in Jordan (the place she was born and raised) and is the subject of an unsatisfied extradition request by the United States government.

Tamimi interviewed in Kuwait's Al-Rai TV studio in July 2012,
gloating over dead Jewish children and how she killed them

As we have written before, the circumstances in which Jordan chooses not to comply with its 1995 treaty obligations make clear to us and to experts we have consulted that Tamimi is being afforded special protection by the monarch of Jordan, King Abdullah II.

[See the background at "23-Mar-17: Looking for justice in Jordan, Jerusalem and Washington"]

The Kuwaiti report, published by an arm of Kuwait's Ministry of Information, says this of the female jihadist (machine-translated from the original Arabic which explains the jerkiness):

Released prisoner Ahlam al-Tamimi said in a recorded speech that she was unable to attend the forum because she was listed on the wanted list of the International Police (Interpol), that Palestinian women played the main and most important role during the popular uprisings, viewing many of the old and modern jihadist roles of women. Al-Tamimi called on Arab women to break the silence and support Palestinian women by organizing weekly demonstrations and supporting their steadfastness in various ways. Women's organizations and human rights organizations also demanded that Palestinian women in general and women prisoners in particular be allowed to take their rights... The International Women's Coalition for Jerusalem and Palestine [evidently the organizer of the event] was founded in 2014 on the sidelines of a forum for pioneers in the Islamic world to support the steadfastness of Palestinian women and expose the Zionist violations that are being inflicted on Al-Aqsa Mosque in addition to activating projects and activities aimed at supporting Jerusalem and Palestine in all countries and resisting normalization with the occupation in all its forms.

The Arabic version of the FBI Tamimi
Wanted poster [Online original here]

Machine translations often have problems with expressions that possess special and distinct meanings in their original languages. When the Kuwaiti editors put words like "steadfast", "pioneers" and "take their rights" into the mouth of a self-confessed and boastful murderer of fifteen innocent people, most of them children, it's entirely possible that in Arabic she was saying things far more blood-curdling and hate-filled than the bland English that comes out at the end.

The Kuwaiti site does have an English-language edition. But for reasons only its editors and the commissars to whom they report know, the Tamimi quote and the report of those happy pioneers in Turkey are an Arabic-language exclusive. They go unreported in the English-language edition. (The editors and government officials evidently know what their markets want.)

We already knew that in Kuwait, they admire Tamimi and the murders she engineered: she was an honored and highly publicized visitor there, including being interviewed at length on one of their television stations, first in July 2012 (on Iqraa TV - transcript here and reported by us here) and then again in March 2014.

As for Tamimi's mention of Interpol, here's what we think she means:

Jordan's absolute ruler

So long as she stays within the borders of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, she's safe. That's provided King Abdullah II, the ruler of the kingdom who single-handedly appoints every last one of its judges and exercises total control over its lawmakers by dissolving the country's parliament roughly once every fifteen months (that's according to the US Congressional Research Service), keeps blocking US extradition efforts. As long as he does, and keeps ignoring the plain language of a 1995 extradition treaty his father signed with the Clinton administration 22 years ago, the boastful murderer will be safe.

But the minute she gets on a plane to travel - and she has done lots of travel since her freedom was extorted by Hamas in the Shalit Deal of 2011 - then she is at risk of being taken into custody.

That's the result of an arrest order announced in March 2017 ["14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and extradition is sought"] and made by a Federal judge four years earlier in Washington DC. In Istanbul, Turkey, she's a steadfast pioneer. In Amman, Jordan, she's a national hero and symbol of the resistance.

In Washington, and via the eyes of the US Justice Department and the FBI, she's one of its most wanted fugitives.

15-Sep-17: Women, children, parliamentarians, editors and terror

Busy members of the Palestinian Legislative Council [the image is
from 2007 - Source]

The Palestinian Arab terrorist enterprise occasionally drops its guard and allows some of its semi-concealed lethal malevolence to be exposed to the light of day.

Here's an extract from a media report of a heavily-promoted publicity release issued yesterday (Thursday) by several NGOs that agitate for the rights of Palestinian Arab prisoners:

Throughout the month of August, Israeli forces arrested 522 Palestinians, including 130 children, according to a Palestinian human rights organization reported on Thursday. The scores of minors, as well as 16 women, were arrested across the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem, a report jointly issued by the Palestinian Prisoners Club, Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights, the Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association (Addameer) and the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs (CDA) said. Since the beginning of 2017, nearly 3,800 Palestinians have been arrested and 6,400 Palestinian prisoners are currently being held in Israeli jails. This number includes MPs, women and children. [Daily Sabah, published in Turkey, September 14, 2017]

(Wikipedia says Daily Sabah - the word means morning - is regarded as a propaganda outlet for Turkey's media-tough government and Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). In March 2017, after investigating complaints that the paper had an editorial agenda of "spreading hate", the president of the European Parliament banned its distribution there.)

Video grab from a Pal Arab source

The focus of the report and the message of its promoters in obviously concerned with arousing outrage at the notion that barbaric Israelis would consider imprisoning children, women and (gasp) members of parliament.

Do they want readers to know the background? Evidently not.

• Members of Parliament? Goodness, how do those busy MPs manage to tear themselves away from the daily gruel of parliamentary law-making and oversight for the benefit of those who elected them? Terrorism can be so time-consuming. But they do! We may never know how since the Palestinian Authority parliament has been inactive for more than decade after being formed in 1996. (For some valuable insight from an Arab perspective, see "How Palestine's parliament is squandering millions of dollars", Ahmad Melhem - Al Monitor, February 10, 2016). An announcement was made this past December ["Palestinian parliament to hold first session in a decade"] that those overworked, publicly-funded officials were going to take part in the Palestinian Legislative Council's "first session in a decade". As far as we know, it never happened. It has been more than a decade since its last session. MP's salaries, of course, continue to be paid. None of this, obviously, is mentioned in the Daily Sabah article.
• Women prisoners? As people who pay more than the usual degree of attention to Palestinian Arab terror, it's evident to us that some of the most vicious sociopaths to have been detained and accommodated inside Israel's security prisons are females. Can't think of a more egregious example than the woman - aged only 21 when she embarked on a life of homicide and terror - who murdered our daughter Malki and the other fourteen humans whose lives were stolen in the bombing attack on Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria. Ahlam Tamimi, who now lives in total freedom in Amman, Jordan, with her husband and toddler son, masterminded that massacre and has never stopped boasting publicly about it. It's propelled her to the status of celebrity jihadist and a figure of wide Jordanian admiration. If and when the FBI eventually catches up with her (she features on its Most Wanted Terrorists list), will those Turkish editors try again to arouse anguish at the way woman terrorists are treated? And what do they say about women victims like our Malki, who was murdered at the age of 15?
• Child prisoners? The active incitement to kill and be killed that emanates from the highest echelons of the Palestinian Arab power pyramid has long been channeled in the specific direction of children [Palestinian Media Watch offers an exhaustive and ongoing overview.] And if we're already addressing this most shameful of inexcusable offences by the rich and manipulative geriatrics who run the Palestinian Authority, let's clarify that very young children, even toddlers, are a major target of the PA propaganda machine: see for instance "On PA televison, young kids incite to violence against Israelis", Times of Israel, February 1, 2017. Daily Sabah could have focused, but didn't, on the unique enabling role in this disgrace that's taken by one man: PA president-for-life Mahmoud Abbas ["Abbas: ‘We Welcome Every Drop of Blood Spilled in Jerusalem’", Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2015]

The pain of the imprisonment of MPs, women and children falls much more heavily on the Palestinian Arab side than on ours. But then so does the responsibility for trivializing the awful deeds that create a society-wide culture of terrorism. Do the editors at Daily Sabah understand the small enabling role they play in that? Are they bothered?

04-Aug-17: The complex terror bombing plot in Sydney has roots in ISIS, maybe Saudi Arabia and most worryingly Turkey

Etihad flight over Sydney [Image Source]

An Associated Press analysis of an elaborate and potentially devastating terror plot to bring down an aircraft and its passengers in Australia raises some disturbing concerns - mainly by not focusing on them.

The syndicated report ["Australia police: Men tried to get bomb on Sydney plane", Kristen Gelineau | Associated Press | August 3, 2017] describes a scheme to hide an explosive device on an Etihad Airways flight (the airline is based in Abu Dhabi) out of Sydney in July. The Australian authorities got their first inkling about the plot and the plotters through a tip from unspecified foreign intelligence agencies on July 26, 2017. The suspects were arrested in Sydney on July 29.

The Australian Federal Police said in a media conference today (Friday) that Islamic State played a central role. They described how four men were arrested in a series of raids in Sydney last weekend. The relationships that tie them together have been described vaguely in numerous media reports over the past week:

Four men are being held at the Sydney police station under special terrorism powers after being arrested during counter-terror raids on Saturday night. The ABC has been told the group allegedly planned to conceal the bomb in a kitchen meat grinder before smuggling it onto a plane. A senior police source told the ABC that Khaled and Mahmoud Khayat were among those being held. The two other men, Khaled and Abdul Merhi, are believed to be related, but it is unclear how. ["Sydney terror raids: Police scour raided homes for third day over alleged plane terror plot", ABC Australia, August 1, 2017]

And

The government has so far declined to reveal any further details of the plane threat... All it will say is that the four - believed to be two fathers and their sons - planned to use a "non-traditional" device and had "an Islamist, extremist terrorist motivation." ["Four arrested over alleged plot to bring down aircraft", SBS News Australia, July 31, 2017]

In today's account:

Khaled Khayat, 49, and Mahmoud Khayat, 32, have been charged with two counts of planning a terrorist act. A third man remains in custody, while a fourth was released without charge. Khaled Khayat's brother has not been charged in connection with the plot, because police believe he had no idea the bag contained explosives... They were refused bail and the case was adjourned until Nov. 14. Police have not detailed the men's relationship... One of the men, a 49-year-old from Sydney, brought the device to Sydney airport on July 15 in a piece of luggage that he had asked his brother to take with him on the flight — without telling the brother that the bag contained explosives, Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Michael Phelan told reporters. But for reasons still unclear, the bag never got past the check-in counter. Instead, Phelan said, the man left the airport with the bag, and his brother continued onto the flight without it... [Associated Press | August 3, 2017] 

A little more detail:

Phelan said police still don't know precisely why the bag containing the explosives never made it past the check-in counter. Some theories are that it was too heavy, or that Khaled Khayat simply chickened out... [Associated Press | August 3, 2017]

Reuters today focuses on that grotesque twist - that one brother attempted to send his allegedly-unwitting brother to his death:

Police allege that one of the two men charged late on Thursday had been introduced to Islamic State by his brother, who they said was a senior member of the group in Syria.
Communication between the accused man and Islamic State began around April, police said. Under the instruction of the unidentified Islamic State commander, the men built a "fully functioning IED" (improvised explosive device). One of the brothers was unaware that he was carrying a bomb, disguised as a commercial meat mincer, in his luggage, and tried to check it in at the airport, police said. ["Islamic State behind Australians' foiled Etihad meat-mincer bomb plot: police", Reuters, August 4, 2017]

Now the bombshell:

The components for the device, including what Phelan described as a "military-grade explosive," were sent by a senior Islamic State member to the men in Sydney via air cargo from Turkey. An Islamic State commander then instructed the two men who have been charged on how to assemble the device, which police have since recovered, Phelan said. [Associated Press | August 3, 2017] 

No one knows at this stage how the military-grade explosives got from
Turkey to Australia [Image Source] 

Which airline out of Turkey? Which airport? How, if at all, was the incoming consignment checked when it reached Sydney? What do the Turkish authorities say about it?

Turkish Airlines, for the record, carried more passengers to and from Tel Aviv than any other foreign airline serving Tel Aviv back in 2015 when relations between the two countries were frigid. It's a two-way street. At the time, one of Turkish Airlines senior managers said: "The number of flights to Tel Aviv is the greatest on Turkish Airlines network of global routes. It's a profitable route, and it's very important for us to continue promoting it...." Relations are (a little) warmer now between Israel and Turkey since diplomatic relations were restored last summer; we flew with them last year to and from Istanbul and enjoyed the experience.

But as the Australians will now be realizing, it hardly matters whether bilateral relations are warm or cool when you're at risk of terrorists from outside your own country.

The allegation that the Islamic State was able to ship explosives to Australia undetected was troubling, Phelan acknowledged. "All the security agencies and those responsible for security of cargo and so on have put in place extra measures since that time," Phelan said. "It is a concern that it got through, yes, it's hard to deny that."
Justice Minister Michael Keenan said the immigration minister had ordered extra security of air cargo. "You would appreciate it is a very big job to screen, and Australia is a very open economy — there is an enormous number of packages moving both inward and outward on any given day," Keenan told reporters. "But we've taken measures to improve screening." [Associated Press | August 3, 2017] 

The plot then morphed:

After the July 15 bid failed, the men changed tactics and were in the early stages of devising a chemical dispersion device, which they hoped could release highly toxic hydrogen sulfide, Phelan said. No specific targets had been chosen, though an Islamic State member overseas had given the men suggestions about where such devices could be placed, such as crowded areas or on public transport.

Public transport? An Uber car? A train? A jumbo jet? The Manly to Sydney ferry?

In cool, calm Australia, the island continent where air travel is an economic essential, there's genuine and well-founded concern that this deeply disturbing plot

signifies a change in tactics for the Islamic State — from the uncomplicated and bloody attacks we've seen recently to complex, mass casualty attacks against hardened targets... While Australian authorities haven't confirmed the type of explosive police allege Khaled Khayat and his conspirators tried to smuggle onboard the Etihad flight, it is likely it was the same explosive repeatedly used by Al Qaeda in a series of bomb plots targeting the US —PETN (pentaerythritol tetranitrate). PETN is valued by terrorists because it is hard to detect and has a relatively high yield for its size: about 100 grams can reportedly destroy a car. It's also the explosive of choice for Al Qaeda's most prolific and effective bombmaker, Saudi Arabian citizen Ibrahim al-Asiri. Al-Asiri is a member of Al Qaeda's Yemen-based cell, known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and remains one of the most dangerous men in the world. He is responsible for creating the bombs used in most of Al Qaeda's post-9/11 plots against the US, including 'shoe bomber' Richard Reid in 2001, 'underpants bomber' Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in 2009, and a plot involving two bombs smuggled on separate cargo planes bound for the US in 2010. Al-Asiri remains free despite a decade-long manhunt. ["Sydney terror plot: Why police and government concern shouldn't be dismissed as hyperbole", ABC Australia News, August 4, 2017]

If there ever were, it's clear today that there are no safe corners.

03-Aug-17: Two Shalit Deal beneficiaries are at the heart of a just-busted Hamas terror-financing operation

Shalit Deal terrorists being sent to their ill-gotten freedom, October 2011

How much damage did Israel do to itself by engaging with the terrorist thugs of Hamas in the 2011 Gilad Shalit transaction?

Whatever the answer, the toll is not static. It continues to grow and it includes innocent people murdered by terrorists who had murdered before they were released in the Shalit Deal and then murdered again once they were freed.

As we have said and written on numerous occasions since the catastrophic transaction was put together, we will regret the Shalit Deal for generations.

Here's today's update.

Israel announced that its Shin Bet security service  discovered and unraveled what Times of Israel describes as

a complex Hamas money laundering operation that brought nearly three quarters of a million shekels into the terrorist group’s coffers... Through this plot, which began in early 2016, the group managed to transfer approximately $200,000 (NIS 720,000) into its Hebron offices from Turkey, with help from Gaza, in order to fund terrorist activities... In light of Israeli sanctions on the group, Hamas cannot freely move money in and out of the country. 

Five members of Hamas, all of them residing in Judea and Samaria in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, have been arrested. Two other suspects living in Turkey and the Gaza Strip are wanted but still, as far as we know, free.

The names we know include two men whose ability to engage in the funding of jihadist terror was handed to them as a gift when they were freed by Israel in that notorious 2011 deal with Hamas.

• The head of the operation is said to be Muhammad Maher Bader. Described as "a senior member of Hamas in Hebron", he is also "a member of the Palestinian parliament" which has not sat for many years. He has been in Israeli custody since June.
• Muasseb Hashalmon, also of Hebron, is under arrest and described as a money courier who brought cash to Hamas from Turkey.
• The same for Taha Uthman, also of Hebron.
• Another resident of Hebron named as Umar Qimri worked with a Hamas agent based in Gaza to conjure up the deals that were meant to disguise the cash transfers. 
• Yet another resident of Hebron, Yusri Hashalmon, did the same.

The Hamas agent in Gaza is named by Times of Israel as Majd Jaaba who is also originally from Hebron. He has been a Gazan resident since being released to there in the Shalit Deal.

Times of Israel says the Hamas agent at the Turkish end of this scheme is Haron Nasser al-Din, who is also originally from Hebron and like Jaaba got out of prison in the Shalit Deal.

Few in the news media, even in Israel, have closely followed or reported on what the murdering terrorists let loose in the Shalit Deal have done since October 2011. That's why there are unlikely to be reports on who these Shalit winners are and what got them into prison in the first place.

The man called Majd Jaaba is, we believe, prisoner number 996825550. In the Shalit papers, his name is given as Majid Muhammad Yunes al-Jaaba. Born in Hebron in 1970, he had been arrested on April 16, 1995 and charged with multiple offences including intentional homicide. He was found guilty and sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment. As it turned out, he served nothing like that sentence and was released after a mere sixteen years. Now he's back to doing more terror directed at innocent Israelis. To clarify, he was not arrested - he's living free under the Gazan Hamas regime.

The Hamas terrorist holding down the Turkish end of the complex trail is identified in the Shalit papers as Harun Mansur Ya'aqub Nasser al-Din, prisoner number 904273463. He too was born in 1970 and lived in Hebron. On December 15, 1992, he was convicted in an Israeli court of murder, possession of explosives and other related offences and sentenced to life imprisonment. He walked free after less than 19 years, and like his colleague al-Jaaba, is back to his passion for terrorism directed at Israelis. Like al-Jaaba, he is free as a bird, living in Turkey.

Why don't reports of the post-prison exploits of Shalit Deal terrorists tell you what those jihadists did to be in prison in the first place?

By our calculations, based on publicly available documents and our own analysis, of the 1,027 Palestinian Arabs terrorists let loose in the Shalit Deal, 520 - meaning more than half - were in prison for murder, other forms of homicide or attempted homicide.

(The mastermind of the massacre in which our fifteen year old daughter was murdered walked free in the Shalit Deal. Though she has been on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list since March 2017, she is free as a bird under the protection of the Jordanian government which refuses to extradite her. Jordan signed an extradition treaty with the US in 1995.)

02-Jan-17: At the World Council of Churches, a stunning theology of terror

WCC's Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit [Image Source]

We have devoted a dozen or more posts to things the World Council of Churches has said or done [click here] about terror. Frankly, and with sincere respect for a value system of which we are not a part, it's been hard to say anything positive about them. Here's the latest example of why.

Yesterday, the WCC secretariat, based in Geneva, issued a statement to the media in relation to the Istanbul New Year's Eve Reina nightclub massacre. You might have noticed that credit for those brutal and cruel killings was today claimed by an Islamist terror group ["The Latest: Islamic State claims Istanbul nightclub attack", Associated Press, today].

Here's the Council's statement:

WCC condemns terrorist attack in Istanbul on innocent New Year revellers | 01 January 2017 | World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary, Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, condemns the latest terrorist attack against people in Istanbul celebrating the New Year. At least 39 people were killed and dozens more were wounded when a single gunman attacked a crowded Istanbul nightclub... "Innocent people are suffering again and again. This is an evil act. This attack is particularly shocking, in the first place because there seems to have been a clear intention deliberately to target people who were simply enjoying themselves at the New Year’ Day,” said Tveit... “In the face of this brutality, the human family, all people of faith and of good will, must stand together to recommit to respecting and caring for one another, to protecting one another, and to preventing such violence.” The WCC offers its deepest condolences to the bereaved and injured. Tveit said “God in your mercy, be with the victims and their families and those who accompany and help them.” [Online here]

Most reasonable people will agree it's right for a highly influential religious group to call on the Almighty to come down on the side of the victims. It would be incomprehensible if the Reverend Mr Tveit had taken the opposing view and called for compassion for the murdering savages of ISIS.

But wait.

We want to point out how differently the same Mr Tveit expressed himself in relation to a different collection of savages who. unlike the perpetrators of the Istanbul barbarism two days ago, have been caught and in most cases tried and convicted on terrorism charges. In relation to those savages, Mr Tveit very publicly urged the Christian faithful who seek leadership from his office to pray and to help them in practical ways and not to give any thought to the things those prisoners had done to be locked up. 

The scene outside Istanbul's Reina night-club [Image Source]

That nauseating appeal for sympathy for actual and thwarted murderers got our attention in April 2014 [here] when the WCC called for solidarity by its faithful with what it disingenuously terms 

"some 5000 Palestinian men, women and children, languishing in Israeli jails". 

For their benefit, believer-members ought

"to pray for, visit, and tend to the needs of all prisoners, no matter the reason for their detention. For Israel and Palestine, prisoners have taken on even greater significance than in the past."

Just turn those words over in your mind: "no matter the reason for their detention". It makes us wonder what kind of evil faux-theology this man amd his cohort practice. 

He and they certainly don't view themselves as a satanic cult. By their own account, they are: 

the broadest and most inclusive among the many organized expressions of the modern ecumenical movement, a movement whose goal is Christian unity.  The WCC brings together churches, denominations and church fellowships in more than 110 countries and territories throughout the world, representing over 500 million Christians and including most of the world's Orthodox churches, scores of Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist and Reformed churches, as well as many United and Independent churches. While the bulk of the WCC's founding churches were European and North American, today most member churches are in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East and the Pacific. There are now 348 member churches. For its member churches, the WCC is a unique space: one in which they can reflect, speak, act, worship and work together, challenge and support each other, share and debate with each other... [From the WCC website today]

It didn't matter to Olav Fykse Tveit, the WCC's chief executive, an educated and cultured man on a mission and a Norwegian Lutheran clergyman, that many of the Palestinian Arab prisoners for whom he intervened are convicted, self-confessed killers of innocent people. 

Mostly of innocent Jewish people, if you're already asking. 

How much did it matter that most of the rest - other than the actual killers - are unrepentant terrorists? Or that Palestinian Arab society from president Mahmoud Abbas on down embraces all of them as heroes, as we have noted with utter revulsion in this blog dozens of times over the past decade? 

The answer: not one little bit. (For other comments we made at the time, see "17-Apr-14: Christian solidarity with unrepentant murderers: where's the outrage?")

So now let's play "what if". 

What would the reaction have been yesterday in Istanbul - or in Paris or Brussels or Sydney or Nairobi - if the head of the World Council of Churches had called for 

• the freedom of the Istanbul killers to be restored; 
• the justice of the Istanbul gunmen's cause to be respected; 
• the dignity of the Istanbul shooters - with their high-powered weapons firing point-blank at innocent, unsuspecting and unarmed revellers in the night-club - to win faithful Christian people's solidarity. 

Mourners prepare to bury one of the Istanbul massacre victims [Image Source]

Freedom, justice, dignity, solidarity. Mr Tveit asked his flock two years ago to beseech all of those from Heaven so as to benefit, and deliver solace to, Palestinian Arab prisoners behind Israeli bars. (Full disclosure: Several of those convicts happen to be the murderers of our fifteen year-old daughter Malki. So yes, we do lack a certain scientific objectivity on this.) 

Would he have dared make a request like that from his Geneva pulpit for the Istanbul shooters and plotters? The answer is obvious. He can do what he did because, and only because, the victims of the Palestinian Arab terrorists are who and what they are. Do we need to be more explicit than that? We hope not.

With time, it gets clearer that this important Christian group has developed and propagates a theology of terror and of terror-victimhood that deserves unsparing critical scrutiny but doesn't - as far as we know - get it.

And in case anyone's wondering why we don't try to get the World Council of Churches to give its viewpoint - we actually did. We wrote to them several times back in 2014. As noted here, the only substantive reaction we ourselves ever got from our efforts came as a couple of polite personal notes on behalf of Mr Tveit from the WCC's then director of communication, a certain Mr. Mark Beach who no longer holds that position. 

In an email from Geneva to us dated June 5, 2014, this Mr Beach addressed - in a not-too-helpful way - the questions and the sharply critical comments we directed over and again at his boss. Now please note, as we asked him to, that we were writing not only as members of a concerned public but as parents of a beautiful child of 15, murdered by the very thugs for whose dignity the Christians of the WCC had been asked to pray. 

Probably not that moved by our letters, Mr Beach informed us that:

"Yes, I believe we would have nothing further to say."

And indeed we never did hear from him again. The background is here ["6-Jun-14: Fear and loathing at the World Council of Churches"]. 

To be clear about this: we don't expect Mr Tviet or the World Council of Churches insiders to change their spots. 

But we're baffled by how ordinary religion- and morality-minded Christians who see the rank hypocrisy and genteel bigotry of the WCC leadership don't demand that the WCC leadership be kicked down the stairs of their exceedingly well-appointed Swiss headquarters and out into the street.

Call us perplexed.

P.S. As happened in 2014, the managing clique at World Council of Churches has remained silent and egregiously unresponsive to the criticisms aired here and elsewhere. So... interested members of WCC-affliated churches - there are millions of you out there - are invited to make contact with us [thisongoingwar (at) gmail (dot) com] so we can confidentially share some plans for expanding this protest of WCC malevolence.

UPDATE January 8, 2017: We found it important to add some observations in the wake of a gruesome and cruel Palestinian Arab terror attack. See "08-Jan-17: Where the World Council of Churches stands as Israelis are rammed to death"

12-Oct-16: Fake passports and Iranians again

Welcome back to everyone who has been engaged in the rituals and introspection of Yom Kipur which ended at sundown today (Wednesday).

Israel's Channel 2 News reported tonight that Italian authorities notified their Israeli counterparts on the deportation from Italy of three Iranians who were caught with evidently-forged Israeli passports. In reporting this, Times of Israel says un-named security officials

are looking into possible connections between the three and attempts to carry out terror attacks against Israelis throughout the world.

We wrote about an earlier incident ["20-Sep-14: Iran is not commenting but Kenya may have just thwarted another Iranian terror attack"] in which two Iranians were arrested in Nairobi attempting to enter Kenya using fake Israeli passports. Our post refers to other incidents involving Iranians and false passports, sometimes Israeli, sometimes not. Worth noting who employs them and the general sense of foreboding in the air.

Why would a blog like ours, with a sharp focus on terror, be writing about Italians, Iranians and passports? Perhaps it would be a good idea to click on that 2014 link.

25-Jul-16: German tentacles: An explosion in a wine bar and deepening concern about 'asylum seekers'

A bag outside the wine bar in Ansbach gets inspected  by
security - long after the explosion [Image Source]

Germans, no matter where on the political spectrum their views fit, must be wondering where the next violent headlines in their country are going to come from.

This morning (Monday), the country is waking up to what seems to be a terror attack on a drinking spot in the town of Ansbach, the capital of the administrative region of Middle Franconia in the German state of Bavaria and home to about 40,000. It happens also to be where the United States 12th Combat Aviation Brigade ("Wings of Victory”) has its base.

An open-air music festival was being held in the town, but was immediately canceled by local authorities. Thousands of patrons were evacuated by police in the wake of the assault. German radio speaks this morning of 12 people injured, three of them seriously. The human bomb is dead.

The Interior Minister of Bavaria, Joachim Herrmann, is willing to go on the record with his private speculation about the character of this explosion:

"My personal opinion is that, unfortunately I think, it is very obvious that there has been a real Islamist suicide attack here," Herrmann said early Monday. ["Bavaria bomb blast", RT, July 25, 2016]

The perpetrator is described as a "failed asylum seeker from Syria" [BBC, which in accordance with its guidelines calls this "an attack" but not "terror"] whose "asylum application was rejected last year for reasons that we don't know right at this minute" [Al Jazeera]. He is said by Reuters to have been "carrying a backpack filled with explosives and metal parts that would have been sufficient to kill more people", If they're right, we think the metal parts part of the account might be something of a give-away.

We think it's fair to wonder as well what sort of security was in place at that popular music festival where the man was denied entry for lack of a ticket but where, as it appears, no one checked what must have been a heavy bag on his back to see what use that might be to him. (Israel, this clearly wasn't.)

He won't be answering questions in his current situation. But the trail he left behind during a two year sojourn in Germany (including two attempts to take his own life and getting psychiatric help) en route to his final explosion places him firmly within that million to two million group of recent "asylum"-seeking "refugees" whose presence is reshaping not only Germany but all of Europe. To anyone watching, the influx is much less reported now than a year ago, but continues in full force: about 50,000 undocumented migrants entered Italy from Africa in May 2016 alone [source].

An effort, involving the payment of many millions of Euros to Turkey, was made four months ago but whatever expectations that created have now evaporated:

Under the notorious bargain struck with Ankara on March 18, all those who arrive on the Greek islands were meant to be detained, brought before an asylum tribunal and returned to Turkey in under a week. When the deal was struck, many warned it had pushed international laws governing asylum to their limit. Now, the Greek officials charged with interviewing and approving deportation seem to agree. Aid agencies protested that it violated international law by designating Turkey a “safe third country” for asylum seekers – a controversial premise given Turkey’s record of human rights abuses, reports that it has forcefully deported refugees to the countries they fled, and its only partial ratification of the Geneva Conventions. ["Tension rises among asylum seekers as EU deportation plan falters", Independent UK, March 2016]

Events in Turkey of the past ten days guarantee that efforts to designate it a "safe country" are on ice until further notice.

What we know at this point about the events of last night:

An explosion in the southern German city of Ansbach was a suicide attack, according to the region's interior minister. The bomber died in the blast. A device was exploded by a 27-year-old Syrian national outside a music festival. He had been denied entry into the event due to the lack of a ticket, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said during a news conference early Monday. Twelve people were injured. The man, who has not yet been named, stood around the festival entrance for a short period before he blew himself up. The music festival and surrounding area were evacuated. Authorities said the bomber had previously applied for asylum in Germany but had had his application rejected. He was also known to police in Ansbach for previous offenses. German media outlets reported that he had previously attempted suicide. Herrmann said his backpack contained screws and nails, an apparent attempt to inflict further damage. Officially this attack is not confirmed as terrorism, he said, but there are strong indications it may be. ["Suicide bomb rocks Ansbach, Germany", CNN, July 25, 2016]

A January 2016 Bloomberg report quotes the premier of Bavaria, Horst Seehofer, expressing vigorous rejection of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy toward "refugees":

“You have to face the fact that the confusion surrounding the stream of refugees is being exploited to commit crimes,” Seehofer told reporters at Wildbad Kreuth in the Bavarian Alps. “I’m sticking with my demand for a change of refugee policy in all its facets in 2016.” ["Germany Saw 1.1 Million Migrants in 2015 as Debate Intensifies", Bloomberg, January 6, 2016]

It would be surprising to know that the debate he invokes is not growing more intensified this morning. Germans are probably not the only Europeans wondering how many other recently-admitted "asylum seeking" men from places where explosions, stabbings and shootings are rather more common than in Europe are currently getting psychiatric treatment to fight suicidal urges.

Also yesterday, a Syrian "refugee" of 21 - another "asylum-seeker" said to have been "known to the police and... charged in the past with assault" [WSJ] was arrested in the southwestern city of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart after hacking to death a pregnant woman and wounding two people with a machete. He had "arrived in Germany by himself about 18 months ago" [AFP]. The Wall Street Journal notes that "More than 300,000 Syrians have applied for asylum in Germany since January 2015". It doesn't say how many of them are known to the police, or what the police know in general. (Or how sure any of the authorities are that this or that arrival is actually a Syrian.)

Add that and the wine bar bombing to these acts of terror on German soil in the past five days:

• 24-Jul-16: In Germany, a gunman with Iranian citizenship kills 9
• 19-Jul-16: Tentacles in Germany: Again, a train, an axe, a religious war-cry, innocent victims and a search for motives

We're with the Europeans. There is much to fear.

29-Jun-16: Footnotes to the Istanbul human-bomb horror

From ABC NEWS television coverage [here]

It's striking to read, on the morning after an awful massacre carried out by terrorists in one of the world's dozen busiest airports, that the first instinct of the politicians is to reach for a fig-leaf. And to be clear, it's surely not a uniquely-Turkish phenomenon.

What do we know now? According to Associated Press this morning

Suicide attackers killed dozens and wounded more than 140 at Istanbul's busy Ataturk Airport, as Turkish officials blamed Tuesday's massacre at the international terminal on three suspected Islamic State group militants. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said 36 were dead as well as the three suicide bombers. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said 147 were wounded. Another senior government official told The Associated Press the death toll could climb much higher...
Yildirim said the attackers arrived at the airport in a taxi and blew themselves up after opening fire... Another Turkish official said two of the attackers detonated explosives at the entrance of the international arrivals terminal after police fired at them, while the third blew himself up in the parking lot. The official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government regulations, cited interior ministry information and said that none of the attackers managed to get past security checks at the terminal's entrance. Turkish airports have security checks at both the entrance of terminal buildings and then later before entry to departure gates...
Yildirim said there was no security lapse at the airport, but added the fact the attackers were carrying weapons "increased the severity" of the attack.

A BBC report today (archived here) points out that

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said early signs suggested the so-called Islamic State was behind the attack... Ataturk airport was long seen as a vulnerable target, our Turkey correspondent adds, reporting from a plane stuck on the tarmac in Istanbul. There are X-ray scanners at the entrance to the terminal but security checks for cars are limited.

Children run out of the airport terminal to safety
[Image Source]

BBC also points out that a US state department travel warning for Turkey, originally published in March and updated just this past Monday

urges US citizens to "exercise heightened vigilance and caution when visiting public access areas, especially those heavily frequented by tourists."

Our hearts go out to the Turks (where one of our children acquired some first-rate professional training at an Istanbul university a few years back), especially to those hurt last night, and to the families of those who tragically will not be coming home. The process ahead of them, adjusting to life after being the targets of a terrorist attack, is not simple and comfort is likely to come only in the far-distant future, if ever.

To recap on the basis of the brief, but authoritative, reports above:

1. Notwithstanding the horrific loss of life, "no security lapse" happened. 
2. Very fortunately, none of the attackers managed to get past security checks at the terminal's entrance. That must have been a great relief, says nobody.
3. Leaving aside the quality of the airport security arrangements, Ataturk airport security's checking of cars is "limited". (When the US very properly call for "heightened vigilance" by tourists, are we meant to know which airports adequately check incoming vehicles? How?)
4. In some way that is somehow significant, the killers arrived by taxi. Are vigilant travelers expected to avoid airports that allow taxis to pull up at the terminal? (Does anyone have a list?)
5. The attackers carried weapons and that "increased the severity". That might even be a reasonable observation until you start to ponder whether the authorities have an actual plan for preventing such weapons-borne atrocities in the future. 
6. The terrorists carried bombs. We wish the news reports had said they were bombs - human bombs. That is what each of the three known attackers was. It's what they ought to be called.

Note that neither AP nor BBC mention "terror" or "jihad" even once, in accordance with addled editorial policies that contribute nothing to ordinary people's comprehension of the issue and, in our opinion, add to the likelihood of yet more lethal political decision-making in the future.

No report anywhere (at least none we have seen) calls the Istanbul attackers what they actually are: "human bombs". This is a mistake because whatever brought them to Ataturk last night, this was about murder; suicide was never their goal. That's true even if the nature of the ideology likely motivating them made them indifferent to the outcome so far as it affected their own well-being and lives.

Last night's horror was based not on the self-destructive motivations that characterize suicide but by a profound, overwhelming hatred, identifiable in many places inside and outside Turkey at this very moment. It stems as well from a theologically-inspired sense of massively-lethal religious mission - something that is being inculcated into millions of people's heads at this minute, right under our noses.

UPDATE June 29, 2016 at 3:30 pm: The toll keeps rising...

"At least 41 people were killed, 130 injured Tuesday in a triple suicide bombing and gun attack at Istanbul's main Atatürk airport, in the latest deadly strike to rock Turkey's most-populated city, which had many similarities with the deadly attacks carried out in Brussels in March. Flights partially resumed in the airport on Wednesday morning, while many of the schedule flights were cancelled or delayed. Reports have said that one Ukrainian and one Iranian national was among those who were killed by the terrorist attack in the airport. Among the 37 identified victims were 10 foreign nationals and three dual citizens..." [Daily Sabah (Istanbul), today]