Naa, not really.

In the weeks following the arrest, the family still held hope that the Shin Bet had made a mistake: “We want to believe that everything will turn out to be a mistake, that the Shin Bet is trying to create the impression that they arrested the man responsible for all those crimes just to get others to talk, but we don’t know anything,” Rivka’s sister, Dassi Krief, told Ynet.

Teitel’s wife, said the family, has faith that the situation will resolve itself. “She can’t afford to think that there can be truth to this,” said a relative. “Otherwise she’ll just fall apart. She has to stand by him even in this difficult time.”

Rivka was accompanied by several neighbors when she first attended her husband’s arraignments, but as the case began to unfold, she began attending the hearings on her own.

Now, as the case became public knowledge, the family seems angry and embittered. They feel as if they were all deceived, said Dassi. “It’s very hard. We were all so happy that she married such a good man, and he turned out to be a lunatic. How are we supposed to handle that?

“(…) I think it’s better that we know, but that is what hurt her the most – learning that she has been living a lie. Just last week she told me that she felt cheated and then I realized she knew. She understood.”

Moshe Avitan, Rivka’s brother-in-law, said the family feels exploited: “This man married her while hiding a can of worms. He knew what he was. He started a family without giving his children a second thought.

“This is very hard for us but be can’t ignore this… We’ve already decided to cut all ties with him and his family.”

Rivka, he added, “Is in a complete state of shock. He is a psychopath who was leading a double life… She wants to talk to him and she has plenty to say.

The same goes for his Jewish neighbors.

Meanwhile, the Shvut Rahel community, where Ya’acov resides with his own family, and where police found a cache of weapons near his home, issued a statement Sunday expressing its revulsion to the actions attributed to him.

The community expressed hope that the security establishment would uncover the truth, but also “prays that the suspicions against Ya’acov Teitel will be found to be untrue, and so long as he was not proven guilty we believe in his innocence.”

Not to mention other members of the so-called “settler” communities demonized by all and sundry.

“Acts of the kind allegedly committed by Yaakov Teitel are grave, prohibited and unacceptable. The security forces should be congratulated for discovering him,” Danny Dayan, chairman of the Yesha Council of settlements, said Sunday.

“Any person of conscience in Israel must rise up in indignation against such acts, as well as against any despicable attempt to use them to gain political capital by blaming an entire community that is not connected – and is in fact vehemently opposed – to such actions,” Dayan added.

Ne’emanei Torah Va’Avodah, a liberal religious-Zionist movement, said that it “condemns any kind of violence. There is no justification for these heinous acts in the Torah, which espouses kindness and peace. However, we ask that people avoid pointing fingers and casting blame on an entire community because of the acts of one person.”

Reader homework exercise: compare these reactions to those of the palestinians.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

5:55PM: Some good old fashioned incitement from the palestinian Ma’an News, which use a picture of an Israeli girl praying to illustrate a story on “Jewish terrorists.” [click on image to enlarge]

3:35PM: Quote of the day:

“If you say that this is a Palestinian land, can you mention to me one Palestinian ruler, king, or government that ruled the land? Can you tell me the boundaries of that land? There was never a Palestinian state. Never ever in history was there a Palestinian state. It will be another twist of history that Israel – the Jews – will create the Palestinian state, not Arabs, not anyone else. We will create a Palestinian state.”

- Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon speaking at the London School of Economics last week

3:30PM: From the Department of Crafty Jews:

Israel’s Mossad espionage agency used Trojan Horse programs to gather intelligence about a nuclear facility in Syria the Israel Defense Forces destroyed in 2007, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported Monday.

According to the magazine, Mossad agents in London planted the malware on the computer of a Syrian official who was staying in the British capital; he was at a hotel in the upscale neighborhood of Kensington at the time.

The program copied the details of Syria’s illicit nuclear program and sent them directly to the Mossad agents’ computers, the report said.

3:26PM: Here is former Egyptian Chief of Staff Sa’ad al-Din al-Shazli in an interview with an almost comatose Al Jazeera reporter, in which he says that there will definitely be more Arab-Israeli wars – not because of some supposed Israeli “occupation” of palestinian lands but “based on our belief in G-d, the Koran, and the Prophet Muhammad.”

This coming from a Muslim who looks rather secular.

1:48PM: Swedish blood libel “journalist” Donald Bostrom was booed during his panel at a media conference in Israel. But he seemed defiant and unrepentant about publishing his story.

The hoopla from Sweden spreads to Dimona. Swedish reporter Donald Bostrom, who published a report in the Aftonbladet newspaper accusing the Israel Defense Forces of stealing and trafficking in Palestinians’ organs, was received Monday with boos and shouts during a panel he partook in at a media conference held in Dimona.

The Swedish reporter said that he understands the anger and explained that his infamous article only claimed that the Palestinian families’ allegations need to be investigated. He also said that there was much misunderstanding surrounding the article. “The fact is that the families said what they said. That’s a normal article,” he said.

Interviewer Yair Lapid said, “It is a well-known phenomenon that some of the Palestinian propaganda is lies. It is the weapon of the weak.”

Lapid claimed that he was not at all certain that the Swedish reporter had any basis for the article.

Bostrom responded, “If you are as journalist, you always interview, ask questions, and get answers. Organ trafficking is a global problem.” He said that before he wrote the article, he invested a lot of time researching and spending time in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where he said he interviewed many families off of list given to him. Bostrom said that he chose to publish the story of one of the families, whom he says he interviewed for quite some time and received pictures of their son’s corpse.

Lapid shot back, “To say this without a shred of evidence, that Israel possibly harvested organs from Palestinians who disappeared, in other words, whom we kidnapped, killed, and robbed their organs, is a degrading and monstrous idea.”

In response, Bostrom said that he understands why people are angry, saying that everyone lies while at war. He said that it is difficult for reporters to distinguish between what is correct and what is a lie. “If it were just one family, fine. But there were many families. Mothers have a right to know what happened to their sons,” claimed Bostrom

Bostrom said that everyone would benefit from an investigation into the issue, saying no one had anything to lose. “If it is possible to give an answer to a Palestinian mother that nothing happened to her son, this must be done,” Bostrom asserted.

Bostrom claimed that he never said that the IDF track down Palestinians with the express purpose of harvesting organs. “This is a terrible lie,” he said.

‘Crossing the line’

Lapid concluded, “You are an anti-Semite because you are prepared to believe that there is a possibility that the government and the authorities would take part in such a monstrous thing. The only thing I can say in your favor is that you don’t know you’re an anti-Semite.”

Bostrom said in response, “If we walk in the streets of Stockholm and ask passersby about Israel, the vast majority will respond that they support its right to exist in peace. However, we also have a tradition of criticism, and we will criticize Israel though we support your country.”

Some of the people sitting in the audience did not accept the Swede’s explanations. They called the Swedish reporter a “liar,” and waved banners with “Israel is stronger than anti-Semitism” written on them.

Nor did Bostrom receive a warm welcome when he arrived the night between Saturday and Sunday at Ben Gurion Airport. Dozens of protesters from the Beitar youth movement met him there with shouts.

Incidentally, the Goldstone Report is based on the same principle: publish something based on spurious palestinian claims and then place the onus to investigate them on Israel, who is already comdemned in the court of public opinion by the very publication of the lies to begin with.

Meanwhile, what is Swedish for “Would somebody please show this poor asshole the way out of town.”

Want to learn how to shoot with top Israeli anti-terror experts? Click here for more details.

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According to the British Times, when Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently did his best David Copperfield impersonation and briefly “disappeared” – in what turned out to be a (not so) secret trip to Russia – he gave the Kremlin a list of Russian scientists that Israel believes are helping Iran develop nuclear warheads, and factual evidence.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

11:18PM: She certainly didn’t waste any time.

Israel has released a 20th Palestinian woman prisoner as promised in exchange for a short videotape proving that captured soldier Gilad Shalit is alive.

On arriving home in the Gaza Strip, former prisoner Rawda Habib urged Palestinian factions to capture more soldiers in order to exert more pressure on Israel to release Palestinians from its prisons.

Then again, it’s what you would come to expect from a prospective suicide bomber.

8:24PM: Virginia Native American leader Chief Annie Richardson has told Israeli National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau that American Indians support the State of Israel and its G-d-given right to the Land of Israel.

“We believe that G-d has given you this land and we want you to fight for it,” Richardson told Landau. She presented him with a traditional Native American headdress and a bow and arrow, as “a token of the affection of the Native American nations for Israel.”

Richardson asserted that her organization, which represents dozens of Native American nations in North America, is fully behind Israel. The minister thanked the Native American chief and presented her with a collection of ancient Judean coins.

3:18PM: Israeli police have closed the Temple Mount for fear of Arab riots.

In response, the Arabs have rioted.  Who saw that coming?

The Jerusalem Police on Sunday morning closed the Temple Mount to visitors and Muslim worshippers for fear of riots. According to the police, the holy site was shut down following calls in east Jerusalem to “come protect the Mount.” Senior Fatah member Hatem Abdel Kader (appropriate name – ed) was detained for questioning.

Shortly after the Mount was closed, some 150 Arabs began hurling empty bottles at police forces in the Old City. The rioters were dispersed to the Wadi Joz neighborhood, where they continued to hurl stones. Two police officers were lightly injured by stones, and three rioters were arrested.

Meanwhile, how is this for respecting the religion of others?

Dozens of worshippers arrived at the al-Aqsa Mosque. The mosque’s manager, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, called on the Arab and Muslim nations and on international organizations on Sunday morning to “curb the extreme right-wing government which has failed to restrain the radical groups dreaming of placing an imaginary cornerstone for their imaginary temple.

That is coming from the mosque’s manager (as an aside, do you think he wears one of those these?) Imagine if the Muslims were still in control of the Old City as they were pre-1967.

Meanwhile, the palestinian Ma’an News agency is treating the riots like acne – they are just clashes that “erupted.”

12:00PM: Israel reportedly knows exactly where Gilad Shalit is being held, but is not willing to storm the place for fear of risking Gilad’s life.

In a separate story, Asharq al-Awsat quoted a senior Israeli defense official as saying that Israel knows exactly where Shalit is being held captive, and that the location is under constant Israeli surveillance.

According to the report, the official said that if Israel so desired it could take the risk and storm the place, but the fear that Shalit might get hurt is preventing Israel from launching such an operation.

Hamas is aware of the fact that Israel knows where Shalit is held, the paper reported, and has consequently surrounded the location with explosives. Hamas has also issued a directive to kill Shalit if an Israeli attack is sensed, the paper said.

The paper said these remarks were made during an informal discussion surrounding the prisoner exchange talks.

Asharq al-Awsat further reported that one of the individuals present in the discussion said “Since we knew exactly where the secret Iranian nuclear reactor was before any Western intelligence body, and we knew about the Syrian reactor, is it logical that we wouldn’t know where Shalit is?”

7:24AM: On Friday, I posted the recently released video of Gilad Shalit. Unfortunately, it was apparently taken down.

Here’s Take Two, this time with English captions.

Busy day for Gaza coast guard: Giant turtle, 30 kids rescued

I hope the turtle fared better than this one.

Israeli forces seize five West Bankers

Which begs the question: were they on a picnic at the time?

And we didn’t exactly kill her. Although Ma’an typically lays the blame with us.

A 52-year-old Palestinian woman died of a heart attack on Sunday when she discovered that none of her three imprisoned sons was to be released by Israel in Monday’s prisoner release, her husband said.

Rebheyeh Saleh Al-Qanni, known as “Umm Mazen,” was from the village of Kafr Qalil, near the northern West Bank city of Nablus. She was 52.

Her husband, known as Abu Mazen, said that Al-Qanni had travelled to Jordan last week due to failing health. Umm Mazen suffered from diabetes.

Four of her six children are currently in Israeli prisons, and she had hoped that at least one would be released as a part of Israel’s unilateral gesture to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

At least they admit it is unilateral gesture. Because we sure as hell have not been getting anything in return.

Her son Samer is serving out a 40-year sentence. Another, Hazem Mu’ayed, is serving 25 years. The third, Buraq is sentenced to 15.

With sentences like that, you can bet that the Mazen boys have quite a bit of blood on their hands – and the desire for more.

Journalists lamented the balkanization of Palestinian media at a symposium in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Sunday.

A panel titled “The Role of Journalism in Enhancing Civil Society” was held on Sunday at the Shepherd Hotel in Bethlehem. The panel was organized by the Peace Alliance Foundation.

The Director of the Peace Alliance Foundation, Nidal Fuqaha, opened the panel by asserting the important, but dangerous role journalism currently serves in Palestine. He argued that impartiality and professionalism are the way to approach the current crisis.

Ma’an’s Chief Editor, Nasser Lahham also addressed the panel, recommending that Palestinian media employ journalists with diverse affiliations.

“As long as Hamas media employs only Hamas-affiliated journalists, Fatah media employs only Fatah-affiliated journalists, and communist factions’ media employ only communist journalists, the inevitable outcome will be partial journalism far from the professionalism and impartiality that should be strived for,” Lahham explained.

He added that most Palestinian media outlets failed during the inter-Palestinian fighting because each reported according to its affiliation and factional attitudes. Thus, he advised that from now on, we should focus on professionalism rather than political affiliation in our reporting.

Lahham gave an example of Ma’an News Agency which employs journalists with different political affiliations in order to create balance and diversity. In its four years of existence, Ma’an has achieved the highest degree of impartiality, he added.

Which isn’t saying much.

On Tuesday 11 November Palestinians commemorated the death of their first leader: Abu Ammar, Al-Ra’is (the president) and in the end Al-Khityar (the old man), former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Not to forget Abu Al-Shityar (the dirty old man), Abu Nimr (the tiger), and Abu Garyglitter (the pedophile).

At his best Arafat was a Palestinian hero and leader of the cause; he was a symbol of unity, pride and the power of the ideal. Arafat was a comfort for whoever had known him as much as he was a symbol of comfort for all his people.

The man embodied much of what it meant to be Palestinian.

Given he was an arch terrorist, this is a rather telling statement.

Somehow, at the same time he was a refugee, he was a Jerusalemite, a Gazan, a West Banker and an exiled Palestinian who had felt deeply all of his torments.

Not to mention an Egyptian.

Al-Ra’is was a man that loved his people who died before he was able to achieve their dream.

Being the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel.

Arafat knew he was dying when doctors diagnosed him first with the flu and then with a terminal immune-deficiency disease, said political writer and analyst Yahya Rabah.

Hmm, a terminal immune deficiency disease…

“He never told anyone how he felt,” said Rabah. Throughout his illness doctors piled him with advice which Arafat saw as a sort of lamentation, since he knew he was dying, Rabah, who was also a friend to Arafat, recalled.

Despite his determined and often stoic appearance Arafat was open about his affection for friends and comrades Abu Iyad (chief of the Palestinian Intelligence Agency) and Abu Jihad (founder of Fatah and military leader).

“When those two men were beside me I slept with comfort on my pillow, but since the day I lost them I felt explosives inside that pillow whenever I tried to sleep,” he was said to have lamented.

Probably to be taken literally.

Arafat was a man with a sweet tooth; he drank only tea and not coffee, and rather enjoyed Nabulsi Kanafeh.

I haven’t heard of him before.

Friends remember him slicing the sticky sweets with his hands and passing squares out to those around him.

Arafat also loved the simple company of children. Some of his happiest times, recall friends, were drinking tea and playing with his daughter and the children of his close friends.

So I’ve heard.

He would watch Mickey Mouse cartoons with them and laugh from the bottom of his chest.

Or should that be Farfur?

He also enjoyed the higher arts, would listen to the reverberating songs of Umm Kalthoum, and enjoyed deep friendships with Arab poets, writers and actors like Adel Imam, Yousef Sha’ban and Madiha Yousri.

On the day devoted to his memory, the celebration of his successes and the mourning of his failures, Palestinians gathered in groups to hear speeches, songs and stories bringing back into life the stories of the once great man.

The world is indeed a better place without this murderer.

Jewish settlers beat up Palestinian boy near Hebron

Bilal Daana was attacked by a group of settlers near the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba near Hebron. They beat him up and threw stones at him, the Palestinian medics said.

The boy was taken by Israeli soldiers to a checkpoint at the entrance to Hebron from where he was transferred to the local Al-Ahli hospital.

The incident was the latest in a surge of settler attacks on Palestinians, peace activists and Israeli soldiers since the authorities dismantled a settlement outpost near Hebron last month.

In other words, the headline and last paragraph convey what is essentially an allegation by palestinian medics as fact.

Interestingly enough, not all of the palestinian media outlets are reporting this incident, including Ramattan News and WAFA.

Meanwhile, here is how the palestinian Ma’an News reports it:

Israeli settlers wounded six-year-old Palestinian Bilal Da’na from Hebron after pelting the young boy with stones near the illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, Palestinian sources in Hebron said.

Notice the difference between this version and the AFP version?

In the AFP version, the palestinian medics claimed that the “settlers” “beat him up and threw stones at him,” whereas the Ma’an version mentions only “pelting..with stones.” Which is it? Surely if the “settlers” had really beat up the child, the palestinian media would have mentioned this.

Sounds to me like the palestinian medics elaborated for the sake of the international media. And the international media were more than willing to report their version as fact.

Time may tell whether or not this palestinian boy was indeed injured by Jewish residents of Kiryat Arba. What is clear, though, is once again, the mainstream media are not reporting fairly or accurately.

Journalist working on police success story has car vandalized near Ramallah police station

Unidentified vandals smashed the windshields of Ma’an’s Ramallah correspondent Muhammad Al-Lahham in the central West Bank while he was preparing a report on the Palestinian police units in the city.

According to Al-Lahham, he parked his car near Ramallah Park and left the area with another journalist in order to prepare a report about the success of the Ramallah police. When he returned one hour later, the windshield of his car was smashed and the car door open. He also reported that personal items were stolen from the car.

Here’s what went down:

A young Arab man murdered a civilian and injured a police officer in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood on Thursday morning.

The 86-year-old citizen was critically injured and evacuated to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in the capital, where he died of his wounds. The police officer, 32, sustained light to moderate wounds and was evacuated to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital.

The terrorist sustained moderate to serious wounds in his stomach after being shot by the injured policeman. He was also taken to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital.

According to an initial report, the incident began when two police officers detained the young Arab man for a security check, but he pulled out a knife and stabbed one of them. The injured policeman pulled out his gun, shot and injured the terrorist, who fled the scene with the knife in his hand.

The assailant went on to stab the civilian, before being captured by another citizen and a municpal inspector.

Yoav Mizrahi, the citizen who captured the terrorist, recounted the incident. “I arrived with my car and saw an Arab man on the street fighting with the policeman. I stopped the car, when suddenly the guy pulled out a knife and began stabbing the policeman, who tried to defend himself. I ran and called out to him…

“The officer fell down, got up and fired at the fleeing terrorist before collapsing on the ground. While escaping, the Arab stabbed an elderly man walking across from him and that man collapsed.

“The terrorist continued running, and I ran after him and yelled at him to stop in Arabic. About 150 meters later I caught him from behind, dropped him to the ground and held on to him together with an inspector until the security forces arrived.”

The palestinians are predictably reporting this attack in their “unique” way.

• IMEMC reports today’s victim as the terrorist, who they say was killed after “allegedly” killing an “Israeli settler.” They also fabricate the words of an Israeli witness, who they claim said he saw the palestinian “accidently hit an elderly man causing him to fall on the ground.”
• Ma’an News also tries to turn the palestinians into the victims with their report under the headline Israeli forces invade Tuqu, threaten to demolish house of man involved in fatal Gilo stabbing. They are also reporting the victim as being only 60 years of age.
• Palestine News Network does the same thing, focusing on the IDF reprisals. They also make no mention of the elderly man being killed, claiming instead that “an Israeli settler and police officer..were moderately injured.”
• Ramattan makes it sound like a quarrel gone wrong, reporting “the Arab citizen quarreled with the guards of the settlements then they fought.” They also make it sound like the victim was somehow wounded as he passed by, rather than deliberately stabbed.

Updates to follow.

Updates (Israel time)

6:08PM: Honest Reporting have some examples of media bias in the reports of the attack from the usual suspects BBC, Reuters and AFP.

6:25PM: The victim has been identified as 86-year-old Jerusalem resident Abraham Ozeri.