Members of Hamas and Abbas’ terrorist militia are duking it out on the streets of Gaza. The latest casualty of these contemptible criminal gangs is the Jordanian ambassador’s driver—he was killed in an exchange. DEBKAfile reports that at least eight others died in the street fights: “The feuding sides also engaged in sniping, kidnapping and planting bomb devices at the homes of rivals.”

Mainstream Media, which in every other instance adheres to the “if it bleeds it leads” axiom, has been unsurprisingly silent on the perpetual civil war in the Palestinian territories. To read the BBC’s dispatches, you’d think that the chaos is 1) recent 2) part of the rough-and-tumble of a fledgling democracy—the warring gangsters they call “security forces”; the urban warfare these ruffians wage nothing but the odd, boisterous “clash.”

The submerged story is the story of Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence—it “saturates the territories,” writes Stephanie Gutmann. Do read her outstanding book, “The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy.” For a second opinion consult Fred Reed. (Incidentally, Reed describes his column about the press’s scandalous coverage of Israel as “A Nonconforming View.” For once a writer who doesn’t fob off the manufactured, mob consensus on all things Israel as gritty, independent thinking.)

According to Gutmann, Khaled Abu Toameh of the Jerusalem Post is one of the few reporters who has not capitulated to the PA’s campaign of intimidation against anyone who tells the truth about what goes on in that hell on earth:

“The dead formed an endless daily procession in his stories. They were members of feuding Arab tribes, rival factions and warring families. They were wives deemed immodest, girlfriends deemed treacherous, daughters deemed disobedient, and always, always there were those executed in gruesome ways for having collaborated, in some loosely defined way, with Israel.”

I can confirm this blood-drenched reality. I grew up not far from what is called the Triangle: Tira, Tulkarem, and Jenin. My stepfather was a dedicated Israeli government doctor who worked in these villages. One of the activities he undertook (but didn’t have to) was to surgically stitch up the hymens of young girls so as to prevent their barbaric mothers and fathers from slaying them. He was always very sad when his secret patchwork failed to convince the clan, and the girl was found the next day with the customary axe in her spine. Sometimes a virgin was slaughtered if she didn’t bleed “sufficiently” on her wedding night. As the chief medical man in the region, my stepfather was at the interface of this “violence-saturated society.”

I suspect Joseph Farah is right; Israel is a lost cause. It is now a thoroughly left-liberal, post-Zionist society, bereft of a sense of the goodness of its history and institutions. Its secondary and tertiary schools have adopted the evil Palestinian and radical Left propaganda as Bible from Sinai.
In many ways, Israel is not unlike Britain, which forfeited the Whig interpretation of history in favor of a negative view of the nation’s past and liberal institutions. Or the United States: it too has come to reduce its founding to a narrative of the oppressed and the excluded.
Israelis now accept that they must expiate for—rather than celebrate—the “miraculous revival of an old people in a spirit of humanism and freedom, on a barren piece of land,” to quote Walter Laquer.
I was overcome with similar sentiments to Joseph Farah’s after recently reestablishing contact with “girls” I grew up with in Israel. The one, a pedagogue, tells me sans shame that her daughter refuses to study Hebrew in high school (apparently she is accorded such an option.). The girl also refuses to be identified as a Jew in her identity document. She confuses a show of hatred for her culture—language and religion—with a sign of sophistication and individualism, not realizing that hers is the herd’s position. These days deracinated liberalism is the norm—it takes courage to be a proud Jew. The girl comes from a fine family of pioneers.
Another friend, a single woman with a doctorate in math, also from an admirable family, is a rank leftist, who berates Bibi (Netanyahu) for having freed up the Israeli economy considerably during his tenure, and for retaliating against Palestinian barbarism. Turn the other cheek is her motto.
What worries is not so much the policy of this or the other Israeli administration. I expect little from politicians. Given the views my friends express, I worry, as Joseph Farah does, that the “people—themselves fail to discern right from wrong.”

Another little-mentioned fact has to do with the Israeli security fence—it is the reason there haven’t been any attacks for so long. The wall that separates Israeli from Palestinian territory—and makes liberals, libertarians and plain, old bigots like Bob Novak shriek like stuck pigs—has cut by over 80 percent the number of Israelis maimed and murdered by suicide bombers.

This barrier is not a political border—it can be dismantled. But lives taken by terrorism cannot be reconstituted. Still, mention any security fence intended to prevent undesired or undesirable human acts, and the Kumbaya Crowd launches into maudlin impersonations of the sainted Ronald Reagan, RIP: “… tear down this wall.”

The complete column, “The Wails Over The Wall,” is here.

The cameras don’t often linger at the site of a suicide bombing in Israel. Most reporters prefer the “territories,” where they can set up shop and await a staged stone-throwing. The Palestinian Authority is the journalist’s one-stop shop for all the fake David vs. Goliath images his heart desires. Simple metaphors for simple, bigoted minds, which is the stuff he traffics in. The Associated Press, ABC, or the Canadian CBC prefer to peddle this phony illusion.

CNN is careful to count the terrorist among the dead. If you tune into that network, take care to subtract one or two (depending on the trash implicated) to arrive at the number of human beings who died.

The latest scene of carnage was “a falafel restaurant in a gritty, working-class section of Tel Aviv,” as The New York Times reported. It was carried out by Islamic Jihad, which hasn’t yet been invited to join the Palestinian government, but enjoys Hamas’ firm support.

The blast killed nine people and wounded 60. There’s something else the networks rarely mention: the injuries caused by these demonic devices. As I have written:

the task facing Israeli medics has become a routine. Surgeons must slice open the victims of these fiendish devices, picking from the flesh and burrowing in the bone for embedded shards of shrapnel, ball bearings and nails. The rat poison is a diabolic touch, intended to intensify internal bleeding. If they survive, victims are left maimed and wracked by life-long disfigurement and pain.

Another little-mentioned fact has to do with the Israeli barrier; it is the reason there haven’t been attacks for so long. The wall that makes liberals, libertarians, and plain old bigots like Bob Novak shriek like stuck pigs has cut by 80 percent the deaths by suicide bombers in Israel proper.

What has changed since the Hamas hit men usurped Mahmoud Abbas’ al Aqsa Brigades in the gangland that is the Palestinian Authority? Not much:

Hamas applauded the attack, calling the April 17 bombing “a legitimate response to Israeli ‘aggression'”; Abbas applauded the attack, stating that “these kinds of attacks harm the Palestinian interest, and we as an authority and government must move to stop it.”

Contrary to MSM prattle, the blast has not exposed a rift among Palestinian leaders; it has exposed a difference in style. Abbas and his goons are of the Arafat school of Taqiyya: they lie in order to make The Community and the Quran look good. Hamasniks don’t beat around the bush. They expect to be loved just the way they are.