An Act Of Evil Beyond Words (Pakistan Today - Tues, June 18 Jerusalem Bus Bombing)

JERUSALEM: A Palestinian detonated nail-studded explosives on a Jerusalem bus crowded with high school students and office workers Tuesday, killing himself and 19 passengers in the city's deadliest suicide attack in six years. Fifty-five people were wounded. The blast tore through the bus just before 8 a.m., sending bodies flying through windows and peeling off the roof and sides. Rescue workers later lined up the dead on a sidewalk and covered them with black plastic bags. "Where is my sister? Where is my sister?" a woman screamed at volunteers collecting remains.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack in an official statement broadcast on the militant movement's television station. It said that the bomber was Muhammad Haza el-Rol, a 22-year-old student at al-Najah University in the West Bank city of Nablus, and that he came from the Jenin area. He had apparently disappeared about three days ago. His father told Reuters from his home in the al-Fara refugee camp, near Nablus, that he was "very happy" to hear that his son was the bomber.

Shalom Sabag was driving in front of the red-and-white Egged commuter bus that had been plying its route through southern Jerusalem to the city's central bus station during the morning rush hour. "I stopped the car and ran to the bus. I was the first person to get on the bus and take people off," Sabag told Reuters. "The bodies were piled up near the door of the bus on the right side. He didn't wait to blow up - he blew up straight away. I took off the bodies of two girls and a man.

Ruth Elmaliach, a teacher at a high school near the scene of the explosion, said she was in her car, waiting for the light to change at the junction, when the explosion went off. "I'm sure our students were on the bus. I saw how the bus blew up... The bus is always packed at this hour...now we're checking to see if all the students have arrived but I'm afraid some of them have not," Elmaliach told Israel Radio. Shlomi Calderon, a witness to the bombing, told Army Radio, "the bus left the stop and as soon as it entered traffic there was a very large explosion and all the parts [of the bus] flew everywhere. There was complete shock in the area. It was horrible, horrible. All of the bus' parts flew everywhere in a radius of 150 meters."

Hamas identified the assailant as Mohammed al-Ghoul, from the Al Faraa refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus. A Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, said Hamas was ready to stop attacks if Israel withdraws from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "We don't have the power to liberate all of Palestine (with such attacks)," Rantisi said. Hamas leaders in the past have said their main goal is Israel's destruction. The bombing came on the eve of U.S. President George W. Bush's much-anticipated address on the Middle East conflict, in which he is widely expected to lay out a framework on how to create an independent Palestinian state with a constitution and a unified security force.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, visibly angry, rushed to the scene and vowed to fight Palestinian terror groups, then convened security chiefs for emergency consultations. Sharon held Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat responsible for continued attacks. Tuesday's explosion went off as the bus waited at a crowded intersection in southern Jerusalem. Shlomi Kalderon, 32, had just dropped his children off at kindergarten and was two cars behind the bus at the time of the blast. "All the pieces went flying up into the air," Kalderon said from a Jerusalem hospital where he was being treated for whistling in his ears. "People from the cars behind me came running up to the bus and started pulling people out of the windows. They didn't save many. ... I saw a head next to me after the blast."

Michael Lasri, 15, said he saw the bomber, a slightly heavy man in a red shirt, board the bus he was riding. "I saw him for only a few seconds, from the moment he got on the bus till the moment he blew himself up," Lasri, who suffered cuts and bruises, said from a hospital bed. "I saw a lot of bodies and body parts lying around. There was a lot of mess. For the first few minutes, there was a lot of shouting, then silence." Police said 20 people, including the bomber, were killed and about 55 injured. It was the first suicide bombing in Jerusalem since April 12, and the deadliest attack in the city since Feb. 25, 1996, when 26 people were killed in a bus explosion. Jerusalem has been hardest hit by the current wave of Palestinian suicide attacks.

Sharon made an unusual visit to the scene 90 minutes after the blast. He inspected the wreckage and then walked slowly past the row of bodies on the sidewalk. "This terrible thing that we see is a continuation of Palestinian terrorism, and against that terrorism we have to fight and struggle and that is what we will do," Sharon said, without saying what sort of response might be expected. Earlier this week, Israel began constructing a fence that is to keep out suicide bombers. The fence is to run largely along the so-called Green Line, Israel's frontier before it captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war. However, construction of the first stretch, to run along one-third of the Green Line, is not expected to be completed for nine months.

In the Al Faraa refugee camp, relatives of the bomber expressed both grief and pride. Al-Ghoul's 65-year-old father, Haza, wept on the shoulder of his brother, saying "He's a martyr. We have only to ask our God to be merciful with him." Haza al-Ghoul said his son was in his first semester of a master's program at the Islamic Studies college of An Najah University in nearby Nablus.

This paper, which IIRC is based in California, is run by a Pakistani, Tashbih Sayyed, who is one of the genuine moderate Muslims. Note that there is no mincing of words and no tolerance of the barbaric nihilism of Palestinian terrorism. I would like to see more ordinary American papers use the terms "evil," "homicide bomber" and "nail-studded".

Find archived articles by Sayyed here.

other than the article title and the factual style of reporting, I wouldnt say that this is massive condemnation of the Palestinian actions. But, in comparison, it certainly would mark him for retribution from Palestinian supporters for its straightforward approach.

Despite, being a bit late as news goes, considering the source....

I'll give it a
BUMP

I am shocked...and highly impressed...that a muslin would be willing to call those actions by the homicide bombers as homicide instead of trying to justify their actions with endless diction!

Kudos to the editor and the writer for having the temerity and integrity to print factual truth without one iota of spin or 'justification of terrorism.' I only wish more people would call a spade a spade instead of a big spoon!

I fear that this decent man may be killed by terrorists.

Here are some other American Muslims who gotta fatwa on 'em:

How CAIR Put My Life in Peril by Khalid Durán

Defender of the Faith [Portrait of anti-Islamist Khaled Abou El Fadl]

Books by Fazlur Rahman at Amazon.com
Rahman, I believe, is dead, but from old age so far as I know.

There are a few out there,
(snip)The danger is that radical groups could become the official representatives of Muslim immigrants in the West. Let us review the situation in the United States.
Sheikh Kabbani, of the Islamic Supreme Council of America and a disciple of Nazim ‘Adil al-Qubrusi, declared at the US State Department:

"We would like to advise our government, our congressmen, that there is something big going on and people do not understand it. You have many mosques around the United States.... So the most dangerous things are going on in these mosques that have self appointed leaders throughout the United States. The extremist ideology makes them very active. "We can say that they took over 80 percent of the mosques in the United States….This means that the ideology of extremism has been spread to 80 percent of the Muslim population, mostly the youth and the new generation."

Sheikh Kabbani is trying to show Westerners the reality behind the deceptive facade. The great majority of all mosques in democratic countries–not only in North America, but in most of western Europe as well–are controlled by extremists.

Note this is from 1999 speech he gave to the State Dept.

My original comments were in response to comment 1 that implied this was some great condemnation of the Palestinians....unless you call the facts comdemnation....

But, regardless, I appreciate that this is from Pakistani source, and rather unusual...and welcome.

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