9^th June 2016
by Alex Ryvchin
(Ori­gin­ally published in “The Daily Telegraph”)
It was the night of 1 June 2001. Scores of teenagers queued outside the Dol­phin­ari­um nightclub on the long stretch of road running along the Medi­ter­ranean Sea from the old north of Tel Aviv down to the historic port of Jaffa. After the homely Friday night Sabbath dinners had concluded, the young­sters had set aside the sac­ra­ment­al wine for something more potent and headed for one of the city’s most popular night­spots.
Saeed Hotari, a 22 year old observant Muslim from the West Bank looked out of place. He paced alongside the queuing young­sters, dressed as an Orthodox Jew among the secular late-night revellers, while beating a drum dis­cord­antly. “Something’s going to happen,” he was heard to remark. Strapped to his body was an explosive charge. Loaded into the drum were hundreds of screws and ball bearings.
“I was about to enter, and suddenly I looked in the direction of the blast and saw people thrown backward,” a witness recalled. “I saw parts of a brain, things I have never seen before. It was terrible.”
Just before 11:30pm, Hotari detonated the bomb. In a mere moment, the scene was trans­formed from what could easily have been mistaken for the Gold Coast on a Saturday night into a rendering from Dante’s Inferno. Pools of blood, bodies literally ripped into pieces, survivors stag­ger­ing amid the smoke and carnage in a deathly daze. 25 people were murdered that night, the majority of them teenage girls.
The terrorist’s father, Hassan said he wished that he had 20 more sons to die while slaughter­ing Israeli kids.
Palestini­an factions prac­tic­ally tripped over one another to claim respons­ib­il­ity for the dev­ast­a­tion. Even­tu­ally it was revealed that the attack had been planned by Husam Badran, a Hamas commander in the West Bank. He was quickly captured by Israeli security forces before being released a few years later in a prisoner exchange with the Palestini­ans, com­pound­ing the torment of the victims and their families.
And now on the evening of Wednesday, 8 June 2016, two Palestini­an cousins from the Hebron area in the West Bank travel to the heart of Tel Aviv, dressed in sharp dark suits, crisp white shirts and skinny ties, perfect Tel Aviv business-chic. They sit down in a Max Brenner coffee shop in the popular Sarona shopping complex. Then they produce firearms and start shooting into the crowd. At least 4 people are shot dead, several more fight for their lives including an infant girl.
A spokesman for Hamas, eerily bearing the same name as the architect of the Dol­phin­ari­um Bombing, Husam Badram, hailed the attack, noting that Hamas vowed to turn the Islamic holy month of Ramadan into a new season of terror for Israelis.
This latest terror attacks comes just days after reports that Hamas had deepened its ties with Islamic State through its affiliate in the Sinai Peninsula. The group now known as Sinai Province, (pre­vi­ously Ansar Beit al-Maqdis) pledged alle­gi­ance to Islamic State in 2014 and since that time has carried out a series of soph­ist­ic­ated and dev­ast­at­ing attacks targeting Egyptian troops in the region and bringing down a Russian jet in October 2014, killing 224 people.
The alliance is a complex one. Hamas maintains a vice-like grip on all aspects of life in the territory it controls and would see the rise of a rival Islamist movement as a threat to its own power. Hamas has a history of dealing with it political opponents with a singular malevol­ence.
Defen­es­tra­tion and the blowing apart of kneecaps are among the more creative methods of stifling dissent that the group has routinely employed.
But Hamas and Islamic State also share a pathology that makes them natural allies. Both groups have chosen ter­ri­fy­ing brutality as a means of sup­press­ing dissent and advancing their interests, and share a political program steeped in religious ultra-orthodoxy.
The bur­geon­ing rela­tion­ship between Hamas and Islamic State has involved joint weapons smuggling oper­a­tions and has seen Hamas oper­at­ives travel to the Sinai to conduct training in the firing of anti-tank missiles.
Perhaps the training has been recip­roc­al. While Hamas has been teaching Islamic State how to fight con­ven­tion­al forces, Islamic State may well be inspiring Hamas to pursue a new wave of suburban commando oper­a­tions, which have dev­ast­ated cities such as Istanbul, Paris and Brussels. The Tel Aviv attack certainly differs markedly from the stabbings and suicide bombings that have already afflicted Israeli civilians for decades.
Equally dis­turb­ing is the state of the Palestini­an street. Sweets were dis­trib­uted by jubilant Palestini­ans through­out the West Bank and Gaza in honour of the latest killings, as has become the custom in Palestini­an society. At the Damascus Gate to Jerusalem’s Old City, Arab residents cheered as news of the attack broke.
Meanwhile, new polling has shown that Palestini­ans hold some of the most fun­da­ment­al­ist views in the Islamic world, with 65% believing that their gov­ern­ment should strictly follow the teachings of the Koran, while 89% believe that Sharia Law should become the law of the land. Only Afgh­anistan and Iraq polled higher.
When Irina Rudina lost her 17 year-old in the Dol­phin­ari­um attack she reflected, “I don’t think there will ever be peace… I don’t see a political solution.” This latest attack will only add further credence to Israelis’ already bleak view of their neigh­bours.
Alex Ryvchin is the Public Affairs Director
of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry.