Thursday, March 22, 2012
Elder of ZiyonBut it would mean a lot more if they and other Arabs would show the least bit of regret for the many times Arab terrorists deliberately targeted Jewish schools themselves.
1970:
The Avivim school bus massacre was a terrorist attack on an Israeli school bus on May 8, 1970 in which 12 Israeli civilians were killed, nine of them children, and 25 were wounded. Two bazooka shells were fired at the bus. Early in the morning, the bus departed from Avivim heading with its passengers to two local schools. This route had been scouted by the militants, believed to have infiltrated from Lebanon, and an ambush was set up. As the bus passed by, ten minutes after leaving Avivim, it was attacked by heavy gunfire from both sides of the road. The driver was amongst those hit in the initial barrage,[3] as were the two other adults on board. The three were killed as the bus crashed into an embankment as the attackers continued firing into the vehicle.
1974:
The first target of the Kiryat Shmona massacre was a school, which was luckily closed for Passover. The terrorists went for plan B, killing 18 people at a nearby building.
The Ma'alot massacre was a terrorist attack which included a two-day hostage-taking of 115 people which ended in the deaths of over 25 hostages. It began when three armed Palestinian terrorists of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine[2] entered Israel from Lebanon. Soon afterwards they attacked a van, killing two Israeli Arab women and entered an apartment building in the town of Ma'alot, where they killed a couple and their four-year-old son.[3] From there, they headed for the Netiv Meir elementary school, where they took more than 115 people (including 105 children) hostage on 15 May 1974, in Ma'alot. The hostage-takers soon issued demands for the release of 23 Palestinian militants from Israeli prisons, or else they would kill the students. On the second day of the standoff, a unit of the Golani Brigade stormed the building. During the takeover, the hostage-takers killed the children with grenades and automatic weapons. Ultimately, 25 hostages, including 22 children, were killed and 68 more were injured.
1997:
The Island of Peace massacre was a mass murder attack that occurred at the Island of Peace site in Naharayim on March 13, 1997 in which a Jordanian soldier opened fire at a large group of Israeli schoolgirls from the AMIT Fuerst School in Beit Shemesh who were on a class field trip, killing seven of them and injuring six others. (Jordan's King Hussein did apologize for this massacre, begging for forgiveness in person from the victims' families. This is in stark contrast with all the Palestinian Arab attacks listed here.)
2002:
The Yeshivat Beit Yisrael massacre was a suicide bombing which occurred on 2 March 2002 at the entrance of the ultra-Orthodox Yeshiva "Beit Yisrael" located in downtown Jerusalem. Eleven Israeli civilians were killed in the attack, including two infants and three children. Fatah claimed responsibility.
May 28: Three high school students were killed and two others wounded in a school in Itamar when a Palestinian gunman opened fire, before he was shot dead by a security guard. Fatah claimed responsibility.
5 students were killed and 23 people were injured, four seriously, when a Palestinian gunman penetrated a highschool that combines religious studies and military training in the Gush Katif settlement of Atzmona on March 7. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
2008:
The Mercaz HaRav massacre, also called the Mercaz HaRav shooting, was an attack that occurred on 6 March 2008, in which a lone Palestinian gunman shot multiple students at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, a religious school in Jerusalem, Israel, after which the gunman himself was shot dead. Eight students and the perpetrator were killed. Eleven more were wounded, five of them placed in serious to critical condition. The massacre was praised by Hamas and, according to a subsequent poll, was supported by 84 percent of the Palestinian population.
Two terrorists entered the Mekor Hayim High School Yeshiva in Kfar Etzion, south of Jerusalem, and stabbed two students. The terrorists were killed by two of the counselors in the room. The Izaddin al-Kassam's Martyrs Brigades, the Hamas military wing, claimed responsibility for the attack.
2011:
The Hamas school bus attack was a 7 April 2011 incident in which Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired a Kornet laser-guided anti-tank missile over the border at an Israeli school bus. Hamas militants claimed responsibility. The missile hit the bus after all but one of the children had been dropped off at the kibbutz where they lived, and the bus had traveled just 50 metres beyond its that last stop there.[6] The only remaining passenger, a 16-year-old boy named Daniel Viflic, was critically injured with shrapnel wounds to the head and died from his injuries on 17 April.
And I am not even counting other attacks deliberately aimed at children (such as the Bat Mitzvah suicide bomb, the Misgav Am hostage crisis, or the attack on an ice cream shop in Petah Tikva) nor the many rockets that "happened" to hit schools (a 4 year old was killed in a 2004 Qassam attack that hit near a nursery.) Nor the attacks on colleges and yeshivas that hosted students over 18 like the 2002 Hebrew University massacre or the 1929 Hebron riots, both of which included many American student victims.
So, to Fayyad and other Palestinian Arab leaders who condemned a man targeting children at a Jewish school - let's hear you apologize for these incidents. Only then can anyone believe that your condemnations now are anything more than window dressing.
