July 6, 2004

Just before midnight on June 1, 2001, a Palestinian suicide bomber strolled into a crowd of youngsters queued up outside Tel Aviv’s hottest nightclub, the Dolphinarium, located on the seafront promenade about a mile north of the ancient port of Joppa. The terrorist then blew himself up killing 21 kids; the youngest victims (four of them) were 15 years old, the oldest was 25. The Nelimov family, recent immigrants from Russia, lost two daughters: Yulia age 16 and her older sister Yelena who was 18. The Dolphin nightclub attack was only one of 1,798 terrorist incidents in Israel perpetrated that year by groups associated with Yasir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.

In 2002 and 2003 Palestinian terrorists undertook 1,776 and 1,742 attacks respectively with 504 recorded through June 1 of this year. Terrorists use three basic methods: suicide car bombs, individual suicide bombers detonating explosive belts, and suicide hit squads firing automatic pistols and tossing grenades. The total number of attacks comes to 5,280 over the past four years, resulting in more than 700 Israelis killed along with innocent Palestinians and others caught in the crossfire.

In the last week of June 2004, the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. (PCUSA), an ultra-liberal remnant of a once great Protestant denomination, meeting in its annual General Assembly in Richmond, Virginia, passed Overture 04-32 submitted by the Presbytery of St. Augustine. This overture condemns Israel for acting in response to the 5,280 or more terrorist attacks unleashed by Arafat’s murderous cronies. The overture cites Israel for its “occupation” of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan heights, areas before the 1967 War manned by the armies of Jordan, Egypt and Syria whose presence constantly threatened Israel. Among the PCUSA’s political pronouncements, the radical religious left’s equivalent of speaking in tongues, is an overture that condemns Israel for killing “several thousands of Palestinians” in response to “hundreds” of Israelis killed by suicide bombers.

While no substantiation is offered for the “several thousands” of Palestinians purportedly killed by Israelis, the fact is that on 5,280 occasions over the past four years terrorists operating from the West Bank, Gaza and the Bekka Valley have carried out attacks on Israel killing hundreds of innocent people.

Israel’s response has been to target terrorist leaders and to erect a barrier through East Jerusalem to prevent suicide bombers from infiltrating at will. Fact is, targeting killings (dubbed “assassinations” by liberal Presbyterians) work. There have been no suicide bombings in Israel in the last four months.  As for targeted killings, due to Israeli initiatives, the hunters are now the hunted.