Revealing Names Of Palestinian Terrorists Is An Erroneous Policy

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

Arik Kudler

The third Intifada began back in 2011, but not according to officials in the state of Israel.

About four years ago, in December 2011, the Jerusalem light rail began operating commercially after a pilot period of around six months. Even during the pilot, the light rail became a constant target for stone throwers of East Jerusalem.

In a trial of a young Arab of East Jerusalem convicted of throwing stones on the Jerusalem light rail in August 2011, the district court judge, Amnon Cohen, sentenced him to 18 months in prison. The honorable judge stated that the act is a violation of public order. Similar was the official response of the state of Israel to continuous acts of terror.

In 2015, coming to its end this month, there have been over a hundred incidents of stones and molotov bottles being thrown by residents of East Jerusalem on the light rail.

Muslims are calling recent events as “the Intifada of Al Aqsa”. According to them, the Israeli government has change the status quo and intends to expel Muslims from Temple Mount.

Absolutely not!

The state of Israel is currently under a murderous terror attack by dozens of terrorists trying to hurt Israeli citizens as much as they can, especially using cold steel. The captains of the country have made a decision to change the course of action towards these murderers and to try and destroy them as soon as possible with as few casualties as possible among Jewish population.

At the end of any such event and sometimes even during it, security services reveal the name of the terrorist, their age and place of residence.

This is a mistake!

Why should they run around and tell everyone?

What’s the rush? Why should we let Palestinians the tools to turn a terrorist into Shahid and celebrate the event in their place of residence? Why help them in hiding the terrorist’s friends or family, who may have even been assisting them or launching to to this revengeful, suicidal mission?

Why give them the option to demand the terrorists’ bodies and hold a funeral publicized all over the world?

Security officials must release details only partially, only after they have exhausted all their intelligence options on the terrorist, their close surroundings and their connections with the terror organizations, and even then, the decision to release information and details on the terrorists, either killed or left alive, should be approved by policy makers.

In the past, destroying the home of the terrorist was an incentive for releasing their names to the press, although in practice, homes were destroyed only in later stages if at all, except for the past couple of weeks when homes are destroyed (probably) due to the backwind of the supreme court residing as the supreme court of justice lately.

This is time to change the code of conduct and operate “field security” as in the time of war.