printMembers 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.”