Would-be mass murderer feted by gullible West

An unrepentant would-be mass murderer — funded and feted by the West.

The story below is not her story. It is OUR story – the story of the ostensibly well-run, sophisticated, modern Western world.

Once upon a time, about 20 years ago, Shifa Al-‎Qudsi set merrily out to become a suicide bomber and mass murderer. Shifa was a divorced mother of a 6 year old and a professional Palestinian by vocation. So was her brother, who also became a would-be suicide bomber. Shifa’s plan was to masquerade as a pregnant woman. She’d strap a 30 pound (!) bomb to her midsection –under her “‎maternity” dress, and then detonate the bomb in the seaside city of Netanya, Israel. Israeli intelligence and security forces, armed with decades of bitter experience, discovered Shifa’s fiendish plan in the nick of time. Shifa was arrested hours before she was to slaughter herself and many others.

Shifa served prison time but was eventually released. She then landed a job following another prevalent Palestinian profession – “peace activism”, working for a “peace” organization called Combatants for Peace.

This organization assured journalists worldwide that its members had “laid down their weapons” and were now working toward “ending all forms of violence” and “building a peaceful future”. Top-ranking Western journalists were pathetically grateful to hear this and took the group very seriously indeed — at face value. The New York Times gushed that Shifa now “embraces only peaceful methods”. The Washington Times, Euronews.com and others enthused that Shifa Al-‎Qudsi – once a homicide bomber – was now “calling for peace”.

Shifa and her fellow Combatants landed lots of money. The oracle (New York Times and its likeminded affiliates and satellites) had spoken, and everyone was happy to take their word for it. Combatants became the ecstatic recipients of a generous flow of cash from the New Israel Fund. This was – is — a mainstream albeit ultra-liberal Jewish charity, recognized by Western governments worldwide.

Unfortunately, Shifa Al-Qudsi recently spilled the beans. Filmed for national Israeli television, Shifa was caught on camera reminiscing about her mass murder plans 2 decades later. Beaming exuberantly, Shifa happily recalled – in 2020 — how she had felt “like a bride on her wedding day” as she prepared to commit mass murder. As one horrified Israeli viewer ‎tweeted, she looked and sounded, now, in 2020, as though she’d be only too happy to commit mass murder again.

And then what happened? That is the main question.

This is the part where everyone is supposed to put two and two together.

Palestinian Media Watch, a real peace organization, distributed Shifa’s horrifying interview, in English, to its subscribers in the Western world. But not every charity and media organization understands the importance of becoming a PMW subscriber. That’s why Mattot Arim, an Israeli NGO working toward peace-for-peace, decided to play safe. We wrote directly to the New York Times, Washington Times and euronews.com to call their attention to the 2020 interview by the openly unrepentant combatant.

And then what happened?

The New York Times, Washington Times and euronews.com did not respond, despite reminders. You can still see un-updated articles about Shifa on some of their websites.

The sole response from the media world was from Honest Reporting, a highly regarded media watchdog. But Honest, like Israeli NGOs such as ours, can only urge media organizations to pull their socks up. The media organizations have to agree. They are the ones who have to take action. We’re waiting.

Our NGO also wrote to registered New Israel Fund charities in many Western countries. In the United States, we wrote to New Israel Fund offices in New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Florida, Philadelphia and Seattle. In Europe, we wrote to NIF in Great Britain, Switzerland, Germany and Austria. We also contacted NIF Australia and NIF Canada. Of all these charities – 15 offices in all – only one responded: NIF Canada. New Israel Fund of Canada, registered as a charity, was responsible enough to reassure us they do not fund the “Combatants”, thus “are in full compliance with Canadian law”. The culprit – whichever New Israel Fund branch it is that does fund the “combatants” – remains unrepentant. Or unaware – there is nothing about this in their daily, top-ranking newspaper, after all. Only pesky Jews from Israel, clamoring to tell them something they’d rather not know about. This has happened in modern Jewish history before.