Stuff I Didn’t Wanna Think About

I was planning on a completely different blog today, but real life has gotten in the way.

My cousin Perdie asked if I would write about the anniversary of the Sbarro bombing in Jerusalem. If you don't remember the Sbarro bombing that took place on August 9th, 2001, this is the short version:

The Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing, also called the Sbarro massacre, was a Palestinian terrorist attack on a pizzeria in downtown Jerusalem, on 9 August 2001, in which 15 civilians were killed, including 7 children and a pregnant woman, and 130 wounded. 

The pregnant woman, Judith Greenbaum, was American. From the larger Wiki article:

They arrived just before 2:00 pm, when the restaurant was filled with customers, "dozens of women, children and babies", and pedestrian traffic outside was at its peak. Tamimi departed before Al-Masri, thought to be carrying a rigged guitar case or wearing an explosive belt weighing 5 to 10 kilograms, containing explosives, nails, nuts and bolts, detonated his bomb.          

(You can read the full account here.)

In the end, 15 were dead, one, Chana Nachenberg, an American, was left in a vegetative state that persisted for over 20 years, and 130 were injured. Seven of the dead were children. The homicide bomber also died. 

The woman who planned the bombing, Ahlam Tamimi was freed in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange and now lives in Jordan. Because she orchestrated the murder of 2 US citizens, Malki Roth and Judith Greenbaum in the bombing, she remains on the FBI Most Wanted List; attempts to extradite her have failed. She loves to talk about the fantastic success of the Sbarro bombing. In an interview on Al-Aqsa TV on 12 July 2012 (as translated by MEMRI,) she said:

Afterwards, when I took the bus, the Palestinians around Damascus Gate [in Jerusalem] were all smiling. You could sense that everybody was happy. When I got on the bus, nobody knew that it was me who had led [the suicide bomber to the target]... I was feeling quite strange, because I had left [the bomber] 'Izz Al-Din behind, but inside the bus, they were all congratulating one another. They didn't even know one another, yet they were exchanging greetings...While I was sitting on the bus, the driver turned on the radio. But first, let me tell you about the gradual rise in the number of casualties. While I was on the bus and everybody was congratulating one another...

She went on to say: 

I admit that I was a bit disappointed, because I had hoped for a larger toll. Yet when they said "three dead," I said: 'Allah be praised'...Two minutes later, they said on the radio that the number had increased to five. I wanted to hide my smile, but I just couldn't. Allah be praised, it was great. As the number of dead kept increasing, the passengers were applauding.

Dozens of women, children, and babies. This woman targeted women, children, and babies.

At the time, both Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombing. 

For the past few days, Israel has been targeting Gaza with air attacks. Operation Breaking Dawn is targeting the leadership of Islamic Jihad. In return, there is retaliation from inside Gaza. During one of those rocket barrages, one misfired and took out a civilian camp. 

This is radar tracking of the barrage of rockets fired by the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization in Gaza last night.

As per the IDF:

This shows the site where the rocket landed—a place where Palestinian civilians, including children, were killed by a misfired rocket. 

If you read the time stamps, and look at the firing patterns, you can see Palestinian targeting went right over their own people. This is the risk you take when you use your population as human shields. I get that no military operation is perfect and civilian casualties happen, but firing missiles over refugee and housing camps is a recipe for disaster and cannot be laid at the foot of the enemy.

The intrinsic, inherent evil of doing that also points to the depravity of homicide bombers attacking women and children in restaurants. Is no life sacred? Not even the lives of your own people?

In her own words, Tamimi proudly tells the world that murdering women and children is an acceptable action. One can stretch that to include the women and children of Gaza who are to be sacrificed on the altar of their own military hubris. Palestinian missile misfiring is not exactly an unknown event, given the rudimentary composition of their weaponry. 

In 2021, the summary of a BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 2,081, June 27, 2021 stated:

Much of the coverage and commentary surrounding the fighting in May between Hamas and Israel has focused on numbers, especially the much larger number of Palestinians than Israelis killed. The number of deaths is actually very low for such an intense conflict, a testament to Israel’s Iron Dome and civil defense systems, and its use of precision weapons and warnings aimed at minimizing Palestinian civilian deaths. Of course, Hamas aims to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible, but its rockets place both Israelis and Palestinians in peril, because many of those rockets—in this case 680—misfire and explode inside Gaza. The death and destruction caused is, of course, usually blamed on Israel. The question addressed here is how many Palestinians are likely to have been killed by these errant Palestinian rockets in May. The estimate arrived at is 91, amounting to 36% of the alleged Palestinian death toll. 

[BESA, the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University, is a non-partisan, independent think tank devoted to stability issues surrounding Israel and the Middle East.] 

It's very popular to accuse Israel of war crimes. It's equally popular to publish photos of victims who are either posing or the photo is demonstrated to be from someplace else entirely. Blame is always convenient for the haters. You know the UN et al is gonna try to pin this latest missile launch on Israel. 

But demand a bragging terrorist face up to crimes against humanity? Ha. Tamimi's case for extradition began on July 15, 2013 when the DoJ filed criminal charges against her for "conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against US nationals outside the US resulting in death." The Jordanian courts ruled she could not be extradited because the Jordanian Parliament had not yet ratified the extradition treaty.

When American citizens are languishing in foreign jails, why waste time on this? When the Ukraine is being bombed daily with less than surgical strikes, why pay much attention to Operation Breaking Dawn? And why should we be surprised or perturbed at the blame-game name-calling?

Let me tell you why: because if we don't care, we are inhuman. If we stop caring about justice, we are inhuman. If we stop caring about all citizens in Israel and in Palestine, we are inhuman. If we stand around saying "meh" at the name calling, we have lost all shred of decency. 

I have my doubts Tamami will ever be extradited, just as I doubt anyone associated with the execution of Adnan Khashoggi will ever be extradited.  But to stop caring is not an option. The act of not caring about Brittney Griner and other Americans in Russian jails is to give Russia tacit permission to keep snatching American citizens on trumped up charges. 

We cannot stop caring about Ukraine, nor can we stop caring about Palestinian missiles trained on Israeli civilian targets. The perpetrators must never be given tacit permission to continue bombing civilian populations and silence IS consent.

And shrugging our collective shoulders at the blame-game name-calling political poison ads from both sides allows it to continue. It is NOT okay. And more than ever, it's tacit permission to continue the screed.

The WP’s Tip o’ the Week

Do not give in to despair.

Be like the Ukrainians....fight, fight, fight!