Targeting Children

"Palestinian militant groups are unlikely to follow the Russian militants' lead and take schoolchildren hostage because it could detract from their aim to be seen as 'resistance fighters, not terrorists,' Rashwan said.

"The Quran admonishes the followers of Islam that not even the children of infidels should be killed. The Palestinian militant group Hamas contends its policy is not to target children, although it justifies attacks on civilians to avenge Israeli army attacks on ordinary citizens.

" 'We are freedom fighters, not gangs,' a senior Hamas official in Gaza told the AP. 'Women and children are not a target for Hamas. They have never been a target and they will never be our main target despite the daily killing of our women and children by Israel in cold blood.'

"Abu Mahmoud, a spokesman for the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank, said the group was 'shocked by what we see on television' about the Russian school standoff.

" 'We would never agree to such a thing,' he said. 'We never did such a thing and never would. When there is an explosion and children are killed, we are sorry for this because this was a mistake, not on purpose.' "

Not on purpose?? How did an editor let this pass without any counterpoint from the reporter or anyone else? Why were these last 5 paragraphs included at all when their message of Palestinian concern for Israeli children is utter nonsense?

The last five paragraphs were likely written by Ibrahim Barzak, reporting from Gaza City. He included a similar whitewash for Palestinian terrorists in a previous article. The rest of the Sept 3rd article, likely written by the other reporters, was informative.

Palestinian terrorists deliberately target children

Palestinian terrorists have deliberately targeted children in numerous attacks, recently and in years past. The children were not accidental victims, but were intentionally shot or bombed. For example:

*March 5, 2003, Palestinian terrorists chose to bomb Bus 37 in Haifa shortly after school let out. The bus is on a school route and 9 schoolchildren were among the 17 killed in that attack. Dozens of children were wounded.

*December 3, 2004, Palestinian terrorists planned to blow up schoolchildren at the Ort Alon High School in Yokneam, the sister city of St. Louis. Thankfully, due to Israeli intelligence sources and the security fence, the Israelis were able to catch the bombers before they reached the school.

*On May 2, 2004, terrorists ambushed the car of Tali Hatuel, who was 9 months pregnant, and shot her and her four young daughters, aged 2, 7, 9 and 11. It was daylight and the terrorists obviously knew they were killing four small children because they shot them all at point blank range.

Suicide terrorists see exactly who they are going to kill before they detonate themselves. If they didn't want to kill children, they could walk out of their chosen restaurants, buses and teen discos, and choose a different target when they saw that many children were present.

* June 1, 2001, a Palestinian terrorist chose to detonate himself among a long line of teenagers , their youth clearly visible to him, at the Dolphinarium disco in Tel Aviv. 11 teenagers under the age of 18 were among the dead.

*Mar 2, 2002 - Outside of a Jerusalem synagogue, a terrorist detonated a bomb next to a group of mainly women standing outside with their young children, several in baby carriages . The victims: Shlomo Nehmad (40), his wife Gafnit (32), and their daughters Shiraz (7) and Liran (3); Avraham Eliahu Nehmad, (7), Shaul Nehmad (15); Lidor Ilan (12) and his sister Oriah (18 months); Tzofia Ya'arit Eliyahu (23) and her son Ya'akov Avraham (7 months); and Avi Hazan, (37). The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade took responsibility for the attack.

* Aug 19, 2003 - Twenty-three people were killed, including 7 children when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated himself on a No. 2 Egged bus in Jerusalem's Shmuel Hanavi neighborhood. The bus was filled with children. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. The child victims: Shmuel Taubenfeld, 3 months, of New Square, New York; Shmuel Zargari, 11 months; Tehilla Nathanson, 3; Issachar Reinitz, 9; Avraham Bar-Or, 12; Binyamin Bergman, 15; Elisheva Meshulami, 16.

November 20, 2000, terrorists attacked a bus carrying children from Kfar Darom to school in Gush Katif. 5 children were injured, many of whom had limbs blown off.

On Mar 26, 2001, a Palestinian sniper took aim at 10 month old Shalhevet Pass, who was sitting in her stroller. She was fatally shot in the head. This was hardly an "accident." She was the target, even though her father was standing right beside her.

Nov. 10, 2002, Revital Ohayon, 34, and her two sons, Matan, 5, and Noam, 4, were shot to death by an Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terrorist who broke into their home at Kibbutz Metzer.

May 9, 2001 - Yossi Ish-Ran, 14, and Kobi Mandell, 14 , both of Tekoa, were savagely beaten to death with stones in a cave about 200 meters from the small community south of Jerusalem where they lived.

The attacks mentioned above are just a few of the many many recent Palestinian terrorist attacks that took place even though the presence of children was clearly known to the terrorists.

In years past, children were also targeted. For example:

* May 22, 1970 - Avivim, Israel
Palestinian terrorists attack schoolbus , killing 12 (9 of whom were children), and wounding 24.

May 15, 1974 - Maalot, Israel
PFLP terrorists held children hostage in a Ma'alot school . Of the 27 Israelis murdered, 21 were children. 78 were wounded .

Israelis do not have policy of targeting noncombatants

The AP article also stated that the Israeli army "attacks...ordinary citizens."

"...Hamas contends its policy is not to target children, although it justifies attacks on civilians to avenge Israeli army attacks on ordinary citizens."

It's not clear whether that phrase -- "Israeli army attacks on ordinary citizens" -- is a paraphrase of the Hamas statement or the reporter's own thought. Either way, in a fair, objective article, it should have been followed by a statement such as: "However, Israel denies this. Israel claims that the Israeli army targets only combatants and it deeply regrets when civilians are inadvertently harmed."

Tragically, sometimes "ordinary citizens" are hurt in Israeli military strikes, but there is no Israeli policy to deliberately do so. The terrorists and combatants hide among civilians, which is a war crime, and any harm that comes to those civilians is the fault of the terrorists, not Israel. Israel takes great pains to minimize injury to bystanders.

Palestinian terrorists do target women

The article included a statement by " a senior Hamas official in Gaza, [who] told the AP. 'Women and children are not a target for Hamas. They have never been a target and they will never be our main target despite the daily killing of our women and children by Israel in cold blood.' "

This is more unrebutted propaganda rather than factual information. Hamas is responsible for numerous bus bombings that have killed scores of women and children.

Taking into account terror attacks by Hamas and other terror organizations from Sept 27 2000 until May 1 2004, the International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism (ICT) has found that Palestinians have killed 921 Israelis, 715 (78%) of whom were noncombatants. 280 of the noncombatants killed were women. This means that 30% of the Israelis killed by Palestinians were noncombatant women. In contrast, Israel has killed 91 (3%) noncombatant Palestinian women during military strikes or security actions.

30% vs 3%. It appears that if one makes an effort, as Israel does, to target combatants, noncombatant women will only be a tiny percentage of those hurt. Hamas and the other terror organizations have obviously made few such efforts to shield noncombatant women from harm.

To see the ICT data, go to www.ict.org.il. Under Databases, click on Arab Israeli Conflict.

They are terrorists, not "resistance fighters"

"Resistance fighters" target their enemy's military -- not civilians. People who target civilians for political violence are terrorists.

It must also be remembered that this current wave of Palestinian terror began shortly after Israel offered a generous and comprehensive peace agreement to the Palestinians which would have resulted in their own state. There was no need for a single act of violence against Israel's military (and certainly not civilians) if the Palestinians' true goal were to gain a Palestinian state beside Israel (not instead of Israel). Negotiations would have successfully led to a reasonable solution for both sides.

ACTION ITEM

Please politely protest the inclusion of the final five paragraphs of the September 3rd AP article. They have no basis in fact and serve only to whitewash some of the worst perpetrators of terrorism against children. If the AP wants to publish Palestinian terrorists' propaganda, it is their journalistic duty to point out that the facts contradict the terrorists' statements.

1) Call/write the Associated Press:

info@ap.org

Call the Jerusalem Bureau, which likely helped put together the five paragraphs in question: 011-9722-538-5577 or fax a polite letter to them: 011-9722-537-6083

2) If your local paper carried the article, check to see if they included the final five paragraphs. They may have been cut entirely or partially in your paper's version. For example, the St. Louis Post Dispatch (letters@post-dispatch.com) included only the first of the final five paragraphs, while USAToday.com (editor@usatoday.com) included paragraphs 1,2, 4 and 5. CBS.com (submit comment at: http://tinyurl.com/28afr) included all five.

If your local paper published any of the five paragraphs in question, please contact them. Make sure your comments match what they published! If you don't still have the September 3rd newspaper, do a search on your local newspaper's website. You can use these keywords: chillingly brazen in singling out so-called "soft targets". Then click on article and scroll down to the bottom to see if they included any of the objectionable paragraphs.

If your newspaper completely edited out the final five paragraphs, be sure to write or call your paper's wire story editor to thank him/her for using good judgment in editing out unrebutted propaganda.

3) Please let CAMERA know if you made a phonecall or sent a fax or letter:
cameraletters@aol.com

The AP article appears below.

With thanks,

Lee Green
Director, National Letter-Writing Group
CAMERA
************
Sep 3, 1:53 PM EDT

[ Title varies in different newspapers ]

Extremists aiming at 'soft targets'

By WILLIAM J. KOLE
Associated Press Writer

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- In Iraq, they've sawed off people's heads in grisly executions shown on the Internet. In Israel, they've blown themselves up inside packed buses. Now, in Russia, they've turned a school into a slaughterhouse.

Extremists have become chillingly brazen in singling out so-called "soft targets" - and counterterrorism experts say they fear nothing is off-limits anymore to those intent on achieving maximum punch, publicity and paranoia.

This week's bloody school standoff in southern Russia, which culminated Friday in a commando raid and scores of civilian casualties that included children, shattered whatever might have remained of the notion that innocents are taboo terror victims.

"They're crossing thresholds - no question about it," said Jonathan Stevenson, a terrorism expert with the Washington office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Militants "are becoming much more educated in terms of what will have an effect," said Sandra Bell, director of homeland security at the Royal United Services Center, a London think tank.

Extremists in Russia's breakaway Chechnya region increasingly have adopted the tactics of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida and other Middle Eastern terrorism groups, said Rohan Gunaratna, a Singapore-based counterterrorism expert. Soft targets such as hospitals, theaters and concerts, have been a Chechen hallmark since the start of the conflict a decade ago.

"They have blown up mosques, attacked transportation infrastructure, destroyed planes and now conducted a mass hostage-taking," he said.

"These groups are copycats and imitative, not innovative. ... In terms of scale, this is unprecedented and follows the category of spectacular and theatrical attacks akin to al-Qaida."

Experts tracking terrorist cells say the trend toward soft targets is undeniable - and probably unstoppable.

In the 1970s, the Irish Republican Army pioneered the use of car bombs in Britain and Northern Ireland. A decade later, pro-Iranian Lebanese Shiite Muslim militant groups used kidnappings to maximum effect, holding dozens of foreigners in captivity for years.

In the 1990s, embassies, government buildings and crowded subways became targets.

Algerian Islamic extremists planted bombs that terrorized Paris subway commuters in 1995, killing eight people and wounding more than 200 others. That same year, a Japanese doomsday cult killed 12 people and injured thousands in a nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subways.

Terry Nichols conspired with bomber Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, killing 168 people. Three years later, al-Qaida bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 231.

Then came the spectacular Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that killed more than 2,700 people in hijacked-plane strikes against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Israel has been bloodied by scores of such attacks mounted by Palestinian suicide bombers, including a 2001 attack at a seaside disco in Tel Aviv that killed 21, mostly teenagers, and restaurant bombings that killed 29 in Netanya in 2002 and 19 in Haifa last year.

One explanation for the shift is that tactics that triggered international outrage just 20 years ago - such as the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro by Palestinian militants who killed a wheelchair-bound American tourist and tossed his body overboard - might seem relatively tame to a world stunned by the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Militants are now trying to damage their enemies any way they can, to search for soft targets such as schools and underground stations," said Dia'a Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on Islamic extremism.

But the strategy can backfire.

After IRA terrorists came under scathing Catholic condemnation for civilian carnage, they focused mainly on bombs detonated with advance warning that inflicted huge economic damage on London's financial district while killing fewer bystanders.

Palestinian militant groups are unlikely to follow that lead because it could detract from their aim to be seen as "resistance fighters, not terrorists," Rashwan said.

The Quran admonishes the followers of Islam that not even the children of infidels should be killed. The Palestinian militant group Hamas contends its policy is not to target children, although it justifies attacks on civilians to avenge Israeli army attacks on ordinary citizens.

"We are freedom fighters, not gangs," a senior Hamas official in Gaza told the AP. "Women and children are not a target for Hamas. They have never been a target and they will never be our main target despite the daily killing of our women and children by Israel in cold blood."

Abu Mahmoud, a spokesman for the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank, said the group was "shocked by what we see on television" about the Russian school standoff.

"We would never agree to such a thing," he said. "We never did such a thing and never would. When there is an explosion and children are killed, we are sorry for this because this was a mistake, not on purpose."
---

AP writers Beth Gardiner in London, Paul Garwood in Cairo and Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City contributed to this story.