Posted on 03/31/2002 6:02:59 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
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March 31, 2002Suicide Bombing in Northern Israel Kills 13 and Wounds 35By REUTERS AIFA, Israel (Reuters) - A Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a packed restaurant in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa Sunday, killing at least 13 people and wounding around 35, police and medics said. |
A few hours later a second suspected suicide bomber hit the West Bank Jewish settlement of Efrat, wounding at least two people, Israel radio and security sources said.
The Haifa explosion tore off the restaurant roof and spewed debris across a nearby parking lot, while the Israeli army was battling Yasser Arafat's security forces outside his West Bank offices in an attempt to halt a wave of suicide attacks.
The suicide bomb attack was the fourth in Israel since the week-long Jewish Passover holiday began Wednesday. The first three attacks, claimed by militant Palestinian factions, have killed 24 people and wounded almost 200.
The Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for the Haifa bombing in a statement issued by Hamas mosque preachers in the northern West Bank city of Jenin.
"This is retaliation for the Israeli aggression in Ramallah and other Palestinian cities," they said, mentioning the West Bank city where Arafat is trapped by an Israeli army siege.
A Hamas official in the northern West Bank city of Jenin identified the suicide bomber as Shadi Zakariya al-Toubasi, 22, a resident of the Jenin refugee camp.
Police spokesman Gil Kleiman said at least 13 people had been killed in the blast that leveled the restaurant, the Matza, near a shopping mall and gas station.
"We are talking about a suicide bomber," northern Israeli police commander Yaakov Borovsky told reporters at the scene in Israel's third largest city and biggest Mediterranean port.
Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzne told Israeli Channel 1 television: "I can't be certain at this point, but it seems to me that every person who was in that restaurant was a casualty."
At least six people were in serious condition, medics said.
ISRAEL TO FIGHT BOMBERS "RELENTLESSLY"
David Baker, a government spokesman, expressed outrage in remarks to Reuters after the blast in Haifa, Israel's biggest city after Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
"Israel's three main cities have been hit in three days. Palestinian suicide bombers have made terror attacks a daily event. Israel will fight relentlessly," he said.
"We will leave no stone unturned until we stop this campaign of terror directed against us."
The bomb hit the middle-class Neve Shaanan neighborhood of Haifa on the eastern slopes of Mount Carmel. Haifa's population of 250,000 includes a relatively large Arab community.
Witness Yehezkiel Tsair said: "The entire ceiling collapsed, the explosion was so strong the whole building shook."
Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, a senior Hamas official in the Gaza Strip, told Reuters the Haifa bombing would not be the last.
"They are besieging President Arafat and trying to kill him. We will bomb them everywhere...Sharon and Israeli leaders who ordered the war on our people and our president will bite their fingers from regret. Israelis will rue the day they were born," he said.
A settlers' spokesman in Efrat, about 15 km (nine miles) south of Jerusalem, said the bomber had come to a clinic on the edge of the settlement and blew himself up in the vicinity of a group of volunteer medics.
Israel Radio said the blast site was not far from a neighboring Palestinian village. Israeli security sources said it was not immediately known if the attacker was dead.
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Just as revealing was the reaction from the European media. In the American press, you read things like: "An observer to the bomb-blast scene described a dead young girl, perhaps 10 or 12, lying on the ground with her eyes open, looking as if she was surprised." For Europe, on the other hand, the main significance of this development was that it was "unhelpful" to the "peace process". Before I'm accused of being more upset about dead Jewish than dead Muslim kids, let me say that I take people at their own estimation: in the Palestinian Authority schools, they teach their children about the glories of martyrdom; indeed, the careers guidance counsellor appears to have little information on alternative employment prospects; at social events, the moppets are dressed up as junior jihadi, with toy detonators and play bombs. It's not that I place less value on Palestinian lives, but that Chairman Arafat and his chums in Hamas do. So does Saddam Hussein, whose government (the subject of an admiring article in this week's Spectator) gives $25,000 to the family of each Palestinian suicide bomber. So does the Arab League, which at last year's summit passed a resolution hailing the "spirit of sacrifice" of the Palestinian "martyrs" and thus licensed Wednesday's massacre. As for the "peace process", those Europeans who, just a few months ago, were urging the Americans to cease operations for Ramadan evidently feel no compunction to demand from Chairman Arafat and his dark subsidiaries any similar "bombing pause" for Passover.
In the days after September 11, we were told that Muslims had great respect for their fellow "people of the book" - ie, Jews and Christians. This ought to be so: after all, the dramatis personae of the Koran include Abraham, Moses, David, John the Baptist, Jesus and the Virgin Mary. It's one thing to believe that the Israelis are occupiers and oppressors and that the Zionist state should not exist. But no Muslim with any understanding of his shared heritage could in good conscience blow up a Passover Seder. It marks a new low in the Palestinians' descent into nihilism - though, as usual, the silence of the imams is deafening. As for the nonchalance of the Europeans, that too should not surprise us: in my experience, the Continent's Christians, practising and nominal, find the ceremonies of Jewish life faintly creepy, notwithstanding that these were also the rituals by which their own Saviour lived.
But this year, when the Christians' solar calendar and the Jews' lunar calendar have coincided and Easter and Passover fall together, it's a safe bet that George W Bush will make the connection. The first time I ever heard him speak, he spoke openly about his faith and about Christ in a way that would be unimaginable for a British politician. He will know all the details - "the baby tried to crawl away, but it died, too".......................
Before I'm accused of being more upset about dead Jewish than dead Muslim kids, let me say that I take people at their own estimation: in the Palestinian Authority schools, they teach their children about the glories of martyrdom; indeed, the careers guidance counsellor appears to have little information on alternative employment prospects; at social events, the moppets are dressed up as junior jihadi, with toy detonators and play bombs.
LOL. If the Israelis were trying to do that, he'd be enjoying his 72 virgins right now.
Yosef Bodansky, Bin Laden expert, said 2 weeks ago that BinI heard yesterday or day before that Arafat's message regarding
Laden was masterminding this new wave of attacks on Israel.
A Covenant Between the Pope and PLO Leader Yasser Arafat
"...On 15th February, 2000 at the Vatican, the Pope and the leader of the PLO terrorist organisation, Yasser Arafat, signed a covenant against the G-d and people of Israel and Jerusalem. It was a covenant between two enemies of Israel who for a long time would rather have Israel disappear from the Promised Land as soon as possible..."
Oh well, what's a virgin or two when you're in paradise.
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