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<p>A senior Israeli official said yesterday that the Hamas leadership had not authorized the bloody Aug. 19 suicide bombing that blew apart a fragile cease-fire.</p> <p>Gideon Meir, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, also said Israel was receiving intelligence from within the top ranks of Hamas.</p>

Found via the Little Green Footballs blog: I don't know if anything since Sept 11 has enraged and disgusted me more than this - a website out of Bridgeview (promoting "Islamic ideals and images") in full throated ululation over the dead 'Zionist' babies in Jerusalem.... Link Here As a Chicagoan, this leaves me utterly gobsmacked. I'm not suggesting anything, but please respond in any creative, interesting ways you feel necessary.

You may remember the Chicago-based Islamic website Soundvision.com which hosted messages celebrating and applauding the suicide bombing in Israel last week, such as these highlighted by Daniel Pipes: ************************************************************************** SoundVision.com Visitors Applaud Jerusalem Suicide Bombing. The murder of 18 bus-riding Israelis by a militant Islamic terrorist on August 19 met with the expected joy in the Palestinian and Lebanese street ("Several hundred young men poured into the streets of a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon on Tuesday and handed out sweets to celebrate a suicide bomb attack on a Jerusalem bus," reads one account). More noteworthy is the public, English-language...

NABLUS, West Bank (AP) -- Israeli undercover troops snatched two wounded Palestinian gunmen from their West Bank hospital beds in a pre-dawn raid Tuesday, the latest Israeli military operation in the wake of a deadly bus bombing a week ago. The troops knocked on the door of the intensive care unit, imposed a curfew on the patients and doctors and carried the two men -- members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militant group loosely affiliated with Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction -- out of the ward and into military ambulances, a doctor, who spoke on condition on anonymity, said....

Attacks Reveal the Nature of Terrorism, Bush says By Jim GaramoneAmerican Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Aug. 25, 2003 - The terrorist attacks in Baghdad and Jerusalem will serve as an added spur in the war on terror, President Bush said during his radio address Saturday. In both cases, the terrorists struck innocents in an effort to impose Taliban- like regimes on the world. On Aug. 19, a truck bomb exploded outside the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad. The blast killed at least 20 people. "The U.N. personnel and Iraqi citizens killed in the bombings were engaged in a purely...

Last Saturday evening, along with U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky and a Chicago family, I sat at dinner with Dr. David Zangen and his wife in a busy Jerusalem restaurant. A pediatrician affiliated with the Hadassah Hospital there, Zangen took several calls from the parents of patients with childhood diabetes, counseling them on how to handle ongoing difficulties. Back in Chicago three days later, I thought of Zangen when news came of a devastating terrorist bombing on a Jerusalem bus in which 20 people had been killed and 100 wounded--many of them children. Zangen, I imagined, based on his descriptions of...

Eleven-month-old Shmuel Zargari was buried in Israel this week with only his 14-year-old brother in attendance from his immediate family. His parents and three other siblings missed the funeral, having been grievously wounded by Shmuel's murderer, a 29-year-old Muslim cleric named Raed Abdel-Hamid Mesk, who believed Allah would invite him to paradise for self-detonating a Jerusalem bus packed with the Zargaris and other young families. Mesk's ultimate destination is debatable, but the number of people he murdered on Tuesday is not. Twenty Jews died in the wreckage, among them five Americans; scores more, including some 40 children, face recovery from...

Last week's brutal suicide bombings in Baghdad and Jerusalem have once again illustrated dramatically the international community's failure, thus far at least, to understand the magnitude and implications of the terrorist threat to the survival of civilization itself. Last week's brutal suicide bombings in Baghdad and Jerusalem have once again illustrated dramatically the international community's failure, thus far at least, to understand the magnitude and implications of the terrorist threat to the survival of civilization itself. Even the United States and Israel have for decades tended to regard terrorism as a mere tactical nuisance or irritant rather than as a...

Eleven-month-old Shmuel Zargari was buried in Israel this week with only his 14-year-old brother in attendance from his immediate family. His parents and three other siblings missed the funeral, having been grievously wounded by Shmuel's murderer, a 29-year-old Muslim cleric named Raed Abdel-Hamid Mesk, who believed Allah would invite him to paradise for self-detonating a Jerusalem bus packed with the Zargaris and other young families. Mesk's ultimate destination is debatable, but the number of people he murdered on Tuesday is not. Twenty Jews died in the wreckage, among them five Americans; scores more, including some 40 children, face recovery from...

26 people injured in Jerusalem suicide bombing still in area hospitals, 6 of whom in serious condition

The death toll from Tuesday s Jerusalem bus bombing rose to 21 Saturday, after 70-year-old Rachel Weiss succumbed to her serious wounds and died in the hospital. At least six of the fatalities in the attack were children. The Hamas bombing was the most lethal attack in Jerusalem since the outbreak of violence 35 months ago. Many viewed the attack as a barbaric atrocity on Jews and not as an act of nationalism against Israel. Many of those murdered were ultra-Orthodox Jews who do not believe in a Jewish state or in Zionism. Even worse, it was not as if...

United Nations: Israel's ambassador to the United Nations said Thursday that intelligence reports show the truck used in the deadly bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad came from Syria. However, Ambassador Dan Gillerman said he had no evidence linking Syria directly to Tuesday's attack, which killed more than 20 people and injured more than 100. "All I'm saying is that intelligence reports and reports we've seen and heard in the media indicate the truck that blew up the compound in Baghdad came from Damascus," the Syrian capital, Gillerman told reporters. Syria's deputy U.N. ambassador said there was no information that...

The Associated Press JERUSALEM Aug. 23 — Israel and the Palestinians stood before a new spiral of violence Saturday after Israel ordered the killing of Islamic militants already vowing bloody revenge for the death of a top Hamas official in an Israeli air strike.Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the targeted killing of Hamas leaders after a suicide bomber killed 20 people on a Jerusalem bus Tuesday, casting fresh doubt over a U.S.-backed peace plan that calls for Palestinian authorities to clamp down on the militants. The decision to kill leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad was made in...

According to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the seven-week ceasefire with Israel is over because an Israeli helicopter attacked and killed the terrorist leader who plotted the recent suicide bus-bombing that killed 20 Jews. By most criteria, the vaunted "road map" that was supposed to lead to Mideast peace, is now a goat trail. If that. And a goat trail littered with land mines. What does it take to convince the optimists, wishful thinkers, peace-at-any-pricers that run the U.S. state department, that "peace" cannot be imposed on those who don't want it. Think about that. To Palestinian militants, the "road map"...

[New York Times, August 22, 2003, Pg. 1] "Hamas and Islamic Jihad have abandoned their declared cease-fire with Israel, following an attack by Israelis that killed a top Hamas political leader on a busy street in Gaza..."

(IsraelNN.com) Tens of thousands of PA Gaza residents are taking part in the funeral for senior Hamas terrorist Ismail Shanab. Shanab was killed in an IDF offensive in Gaza on Thursday.

[Note: The following is intended as creative commentary only. The author was not a direct victim of the August 19, 2003, Jerusalem bus bombing.] Dear Prime Minister Sharon, We had just left the Kotel, Mr. Prime Minister; my infant child lay sleeping peacefully in my arms. And suddenly, Mr. Prime Minister, my child is no more. The vermin you are continuing to bargain with, struck in the dark. The screaming and crying, the blood, shattered limbs and burning flesh… Hell can not be worse, or so I thought. But what can be worse, Mr. Sharon, than losing a child? Lower...

The National Forensic Institute had by Thursday morning identified 19 of the 20 fatalities in Tuesday's suicide bombing in central Jerusalem. Five of the victims were American citizens, the US embassy in Tel Aviv announced Wednesday night. Two days after the devastating Jerusalem bus bombing, thirty-three people remained hospitalized Thursday, including nine people in serious condition, hospital officials said. The wounded include seven children who sustained head and lung injuries, and an 18-month-old girl who lost an eye in the blast. A Palestinian suicide bomber disguised as an Orthodox Jew boarded a packed Jerusalem bus in central Jerusalem and blew...

Raed Abdel-Hamed Masq, 30, was a family man and a passionate Muslim with a flair for the pulpit. His suicide attack killed 20 others. Hebron, West Bank – By the time Raed Abdel-Hamed Masq was 16, he had memorized the Koran, chapter and verse. Religion consumed him, and he wanted it to consume others as well. As an adult, he preached in local mosques his hard-line version of what the Koran meant: Establish a pure Islamic state; end the plague of Israeli occupation; avenge the deaths of martyrs. On Tuesday, Masq's interpretation of Islam led the 30-year-old father of two...

For Yechiel Taubenfeld, the ringing phone in the family's Rockland County home brought the news no son ever expects. The 18-year-old listened numbly late Tuesday as family friend Assemblyman Ryan Karben (D-Rockland) told him his 43-year-old mother Goldie and baby brother were among the 18 victims of the Jerusalem bus bombing. "So it's over?" the son asked in disbelief. "It looks that way," Karben replied. "We don't understand why God does what he does," said Yechiel Taubenfeld. "We just have to accept it." A cloud of mourning hung over the Hasidic village of New Square, N.Y., yesterday where Goldie Taubenfeld...