How evil is done again and again when ordinary people tolerate it or - worse

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
25 June '13..

There's a wry expression that says "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog". It was the caption to a cartoon by Peter Steiner published in The New Yorker on July 5, 1993. We think it stands for the way ideas can be freely exchanged via the Internet; its anonymity and ease of access let people air the widest range of viewpoints with little fear of repurcussions: the outlandish, the offensive and everything in between and beyond.

This post is not actually about cartoons or dogs, at least not in the conventional sense, but how evil is done again and again when ordinary people tolerate it or - worse - give it their active support.

Two individuals, more than anyone else we know, inflicted brutality, pathological hatred and lethal violence on our family, leaving us devastated and in constant, enduring pain.

One is Abdullah Barghouti, a Kuwaiti holding a Jordanian passport who built and delivered a cleverly-engineered bomb disguised as a guitar case and intended to kill civilians and - by means of a thick layer of nails - to maim and disfigure the greatest possible number of people in range.

The other, Ahlam Tamimi, a Jordanian student of journalism and 21 years old, scouted suitable sites during several undercover visits and eventually picked a site - a pizza restaurant in the center of the city where we live, popular with teens - for delivering the bomb right up to its doors. She then walked the bomb there before fleeing for her own safety back to Ramallah where she was working as a television news-reader.

The explosion and killings they engineered - in short, their barbarism - are detailed in a piece we wrote, "The massacre at the Sbarro restaurant". In addition to those killed, more than 130 others suffered serious injuries.

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Will the UN's and foreign funders' role in this scandal be critiqued?

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
27 January '13..







Here's a follow-up question to our post ["24-Jan-13: Sacrificing the lives of an entire generation of adolescents on their altar of hatred, the thugs of Hamas boast of plans to create a children's army"] of three days ago. It comes from The Warped Mirror:

Among the many questions that should be raised in this context is whether the claim by AP that Hamas has been offering a military training program as “a weekly elective…in all Gaza high schools” means that UNRWA – which runs 245 schools for 225,000 students in Gaza – cooperates with Hamas in hosting or otherwise facilitating the military training of teenagers. UNWRA also has a program for donors to “adopt” a Gaza school, and recently, the German government donated 3 million Euros for the construction of two additional UNRWA schools in Gaza. No doubt these donations are well-meant, but they obviously also allow the Hamas-rulers of Gaza to avoid committing resources to the education of Gaza’s children while leaving them free to finance instead “jihad” training for teenagers...

Warped Mirror poses a crucial question. Restating it in our words, why do the many international organs that rush to condemn Israel for the harm that comes to Palestinian Arab teenagers in situations of conflict repeatedly gaze bashfully in another direction when the overt, publicized, boastful claims of Palestinian Arab leader tell us that their own society's children are mere expendable pawns in their efforts to inflict more and more terrorism on the other side (our side) in this ongoing war?

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.

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As arch terrorist prepares to visit vipers' nest, reporters see major changes in his basic principles. Or do they?

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
02 December '12..

One of the world's most prominent terrorists, Khaled Mashaal, since 2004 the "main leader" of the Hamas terror organization and the head of its political bureau since 1996, is going to make his first-ever visit [source: Washington Post] to the Gaza Strip this week.

WaPo is calling this "a sign of increasing boldness" after Hamas "held its own against an Israeli military offensive" and will be his chance to "congratulate its leaders and fighters for battling Israel" according to a senior - but "careful" - Hamas official in Gaza who "spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concern".

It's a propitious time to take a look at some of the open silliness that routinely affects media "experts" when they deal with the practitioners of child-murder.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.
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NY Times "militant" consistency regarding terrorists

LOTL..
11 October '12..

For years the New York Times, as well as other media sources, have chosen to sanitize vicious armed attacks against the Israeli public. Whether by explosives, guns, or knives, the application of the word "militants" in place of terrorists seems to be the word of choice in order not to be unduly judgmental about whatever barbaric, sorry, militant act may have been committed for example:

Also Sunday, an Israeli 16-year-old, Daniel Viflic, who was critically wounded April 7 when an antitank missile fired by Hamas militants out of Gaza hit a school bus in Israel, died of his wounds in an Israeli hospital.

And another:

The Shin Bet said in a statement that the two suspects (the Fogel muderers YH), a high school pupil and a first-year student at The Open University, were identified with a Palestinian leftist militant group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, although it was not clear whether the organization had any role in the attack.

The PFLP for the record is a group which has spent years blowing up pizza shops and restaurants of course murdering and maiming those eating there at the time.

Tuesday however, the New York Times has somewhat redeemed themselves from the accusation of this being a product of their particularly skewed view of Israel, and shown instead to be simply ... the New York Times.