
Those who dismissed the Arab claim of
responsibility for the Ariel Purim bombing of March 20, 2008 and
opted instead to perpetuate a wild conspiracy theory that,
“rabbis in Israel are attempting to engage in a serious cover-up
of the true situation”, should
look
again at the original report and timing of the explosion.
FIRST REPORTS: reactions from the police and Arab
terrorists:
At 5:40pm on the day of the blast both
Haaretz and
Jerusalem Post headline stories were still claiming that,
“Police reportedly believe the blast was caused by some sort of
firecracker used during Purim celebrations. “ and that
“the explosion was caused either by
illegal Purim firecrackers or a malicious Purim gift
basket.” (JPost)
But
Ma’an News Agency out of Bethlehem had issued an earlier
5:27pm report with Fatah’s al Aqsa Brigades claiming to have
detonated
“a
new kind of explosive device” in a parcel sent to the Ariel
settlement near Nablus.
There was a motive too, with the terrorists stating,
“that the
explosion came in retaliation for the assassination of Hizbullah's
military leader Imad Mughniyya and the ongoing Israeli atrocities
against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
“
Indeed, if you compare the headlines within days of the bombing you
will find repercussions of the mid-February Mughniyah assassination
and vows of revenge still making headlines - with the Ariel bombing
sharing the same news pages:
Haaretz, March 23, 2008:
Headline:
Shi'ite mourners
hail Mughniyah as martyr at Beirut gravesite
More headlines: 04:22
Loving Jesus,
fearing the neighbors in Ariel
Plastic explosives – a Jewish thing?
In addition to the burying the strong possibility of an Arab terror
connection – which police never ruled out as a possibility, a
number of reports surfaced in the international press in June which
claimed that the Ortiz
“family initially suspected Palestinians…
But police immediately told him the bomb was more sophisticated
than those made by Palestinians since it contained plastic
explosives.---
USA Today June 22, 2008
So far, police have failed to make any arrests in the Ortiz
bombing. But whoever assembled the bomb knew what he was doing and
had access to plastic explosives---
Time Magazine June
6, 2008
According to Myers [messianic attorney Calev Myers], Israeli
investigators believe the bomb was not of Arab terrorist origin,
because it had a sophistication and composition that suggested
otherwise. It may have been the act of a zealous ultra-Orthodox
individual, rather than an Arab terrorist organization.
----
The MJAA Restoration Report covering the late June 2008
conference
Hold Everything! Arabs do plastic, too
Remember that Immediately after the explosion the Arab press
claimed new explosives – while the Israeli police were still
playing with firecracker theories. And if police
“immediately
told him [Ortiz] the bomb was more sophisticated than those made by
Palestinians since it contained plastic explosives”, then why
did Ortiz wait until June to say anything? Why not say something
before the court-ordered gag was imposed the day after the
bombing?
And with all due respect (and I don’t have much) for messianic
attorney extraordinaire, Calev Myers of the
Jerusalem Insititute
of Justice (sic!). The use of plastic explosives by Arabs may
not be the weapon of choice but they sure do have access to
them:
Plastic explosives were on board the Karin A ship (originating from
Iran), Plastics were used in the
Mahane Yehuda 2002 terror
attack, the terror attack on
Mike’s Place in 2003, and the
Ashdod attack of 2004.
In 2006 Eleven people - seven of whom are active in the IDF Druze
Battalion were indicted for allegedly stealing weapons – including
plastic explosives - from an army base in the Western Galilee. And
extensive reports have been written on arms smuggling from Israeli
army weapons depots via the criminal world to Palestinian terror
groups.
Camera lenses and lies?
Several reports on the explosion made mention that,
“due to
concerns about the family's security, cameras were installed at the
[Ortiz] apartment.” This was usually attributed to concerns the
family had over counter-missionary flyers – with pictures of
missionaries residing in Ariel - which had been distributed
“warning residents that the people portrayed were engaged in
missionary activities directed at the town's Jews.”
The cameras allegedly play a major role in the investigation - with
the Ortiz family claiming that the police have footage of the
assailant, but have done nothing. Various evangelical groups are
implying that powerful rabbis, and religious Knesset members are
involved in some type of cover-up (usually it involves a conspiracy
theory linking three unrelated incidents together - the explosion
in Ariel, vandalism to a Jerusalem church, and the collection and
incineration of missionary materials in Or Yehuda).
Ilana Dayan’s investigative program,
Uvda ,ran a 30
minute show – bereft of facts - where we were treated to some high
school basketball footage, hospital footage, prayer footage, and a
lot of footage of surveillance cameras (the actual cameras - not
what they surveyed on the day of the incident).
Yet,
"the Ortiz family is asking itself,
how can there be no arrests, in light of the very clear
evidence held by police?"
But those close to family, who were at the hospital and members of
the Ortiz messianic congregation, shared information in blog
postings shortly after the explosion. One such posting reads,
"The guy who left the bomb was caught on a security camera but
unfortunately the sun was shining towards it so the picture is not
clear. " . Others reported that the guy who dropped off the
package was photographed in uniform but had a hat on and his head
was down, and therefore he could not be identified.
It’s hard to believe that the fancy surveillance system at the
modest Ortiz apartment was set-up to keep watch on a few
counter-missionary volunteers from
Yad L’achim or other such
organizations.
What’s more likely is that Ortiz - who had been violently assaulted
,was issued death threats from Arabs, and was told to lay low by
the US Embassy, had those cameras installed because he was running
clandestine operations, where he would secretly extract Palestinian
Christians from the PA territories and transplant them in Ariel or
find refuge for them elsewhere in conjunction with the
Religious
Freedom Coalition of Washington D.C.
Ariel under the direction of Ron Nachman, and in cooperation with
Pastor David Ortiz, was officially recognized by the RFC as
“a
center for Christian evangelism among Palestinians”. However,
holding that title was both lucrative and dangerous
One almost gets the feeling that a discovery of Arab terror in this
case would greatly disappoint the evangelical and messianic
community, as it would throw a wrench into the evangelizing
enterprise, and expose a very real and dangerous by-product of the
Israel-evangelical relationship.
Next segment:
The Ariel Money Trail
Previous segments:
Anti-Semitism,
a Blood Libel, or Gross Opportunism?
Who
Really Threatened Pastor Ortiz?
UPDATE:
an arrest has been made
You need to be a member of Jewish Israel to add comments!
Join Jewish Israel