Lessons to be Learned

It has become almost ritual – immediately after the Jewish Sabbath or a Jewish holiday, turn on the radio and hear news of yet another terrorist attack. The victims include three generations of one family and four members of another family. A 14-month old baby, a four-year old and a nine-year old were among the murdered.

This is plastered all over the news, not to mention the blogosphere. I may live here in Israel, but I cannot add anything in the way of information about the attack and Israel’s response. What I want to do is extrapolate the key lessons to be learned from this horrendous crime.

1. The separation fence is desparately needed

The woman suicide murderer entered Haifa in an “area in which the separation fence has not yet been completed”

2. Women are increasingly being used to perpetrate these crimes. The IDF therefore has to continue its comprehensive checks of all palestinians entering Israel, regardless of sex.

The IDF has this to say about the phenomenom of women terrorists:

As of the beginning of the current armed conflict, Israeli Security Forces exposed the phenomenon of using women for terrorist purposes, such as perpetrating suicide attacks. Israeli Security Forces are aware of up to twenty cases, in which women were involved in hostile sabotage activity against Israeli targets. The terrorist organizations perpetrating the attacks wanted to exploit the advantages of operating and dispatching females to perpetrate terrorist attacks, primarily within the green line. This is under the assumption that a female is though of as soft, gentle and innocent and therefore will arouse less suspicion than a man. In the cases in which females were involved, the terrorists were aware of their need for camouflage in a way which would help them blend in on the Israeli ‘street’. The female terrorists attempted to westernize their appearance, among other things clothing that is not too conservative such as short skirts and modern haircuts.

In most of the aforementioned cases, the women were from the two ends of Palestinian society that do not answer to the excepted image of the average female Palestinian. Among these females are both professional and common young women lacking education and a profession. However, in each and every case these women had a large amount of “personal baggage”.

The integration of females in terrorist activity can be divided into different levels, the peak being the female suicide bomber phenomenon. In addition, females have acted as facilitators in both the planning and perpetration of terrorist attacks.

Furthermore, there are females who attempted to perpetrate suicide attacks, however their efforts were thwarted before they had a chance to actualize their plans. It should be noted that the current phenomenon of involving Palestinian women in terrorist activity is a repetition of “Palestinian history”. A prominent example is Atef Eleyan, a senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad activist who planned to perpetrate a suicide attack using a car bomb in Jerusalem in 1987. Atef was incarcerated in Israel for ten years and was released in 1997. Another prominent example would be Leila Khaled, a senior PFLP activist, who was involved in the hijacking of an Israeli plane in 1969.

We already know that they do not distinguish between soldier and civilian, man and woman, elderly person and child. But it is now obvious that they do not always distinguish between Jew and Arab either.

4. We mustn’t wait any longer regarding Afatrat.

We must capture Afatrat and put him on trial. Then we will have the opportunity to remind the world of all of his crimes against humanity, including:

– His approving and financing of palestinian terrorism
– The massacre of 11 Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics
– The murder of US and Belgian diplomats
– The murder of wheelchair-bound Jew Leon Klinghoffer

I just hope that our government draws the appropriate lessons from this. With the US elections next year, now is the time to hit the palestinians hard. The US government must be cogniscent of the elections, and the all-important Jewish vote. I would assume that this would mute their reaction to a large Israeli retaliation.