B'Tselem's site fails to label some terrorists as terrorists
Despite being listed as terrorists by the Shin Bet, and despite their past in the grisly business of murdering Israelis, numerous such individuals are not listed on the far-left group’s website as terrorists, and are instead referred to as Palestinians killed in fighting, whose participation in hostilities remains unknown.
The phenomenon was discovered when an IDF soldier who fought alongside Lt. Daniel Mandel— who was killed at the age of 24 in a shootout with terrorists in Nablus on April 15, 2003—searched on the internet for information about his fallen comrade as the “Mandel Team” Nahal reconnaissance unit prepared to mark the 14th anniversary since his death.
Mandel, who is buried near the top of the small hilltop cemetery of Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, was killed by Mazen Freitah, who was then one of the commanders of the militant Tanzim faction of the Palestinian Fatah movement.
On B’Tselem’s website, he is not listed as a terrorist, despite being responsible for multiple murderous attacks.
Instead, Freitah appears on the group’s website under the category entitled “Palestinians killed by the Israeli security forces, unknown whether they participated in fighting in the West Bank.”
He does not appear under more appropriate sections on the site, such as “Palestinians who participated in hostilities and were killed by the Israeli security forces” or even “Palestinians who were the target of assassination.”
Freitah is not the only one who appears to have been misplaced. The names of numerous other terrorists who participated in the killing of Israelis and who planned to carry out murderous terror attacks appear in the same misleading category.
According to B’Tselem there could be no certainty as to whether they were involved in hostilities, leaving open the possibility that they may have been innocent,
By contrast, some of the names of people appearing on the list about whom B’Tselem states there is a degree of ambiguity, appear on the Shin Bet lists as active terrorists.
Moreover, many of the names on the Shin Bet list can also be searched for on the internet where a history of their murderous past is readily available.
On its summary of the incident that took place in April 2003, B’Tselem identifies Mandel’s killer as Mazen Abu Freitah and offers the following brief biography:
"25-year-old resident of Nablus, killed on 15.4.2003 in Nablus. Additional information: Killed during an exchange of gunfire.”
According to the Shin Bet, Freitah was a resident of the Yasmina neighborhood in Nablus, and belonged to the Tanzim group in the city, which was responsible for carrying out attacks in Israeli territory and carrying out attacks against IDF forces in the Nablus area.
Speaking in an interview with Yedioth Ahrononth, one of the soldiers who fought with Mandel said: “I myself saw the terrorist Freitah shoot. I am 100% sure that Lt. Daniel Mandel fell as a result of his shooting, and every investigation led to that conclusion. In that skirmish he also dropped his gun—he had an M-16 and a handgun. It is absolutely incorrect to say that it is not certain that he (Freitah) was involved in hostilities.”
Also appearing under the ‘unknown' category alongside Freitah on B’Tselem’s website is Naif Abu Sharah who was killed by the IDF in 2004.
According to the Shin Bet however, Sharah was the commander of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in Nablus, an armed wing of Fatah, and was responsible for planning and executing a string of suicide bomb attacks in Israel. Some of these attacks were directly funded by Hezbollah from Lebanon and by officials in the Palestinian Authority.
So well known is Sharah's murderous record, that it is not just the Shin Bet that has tracked his past activities. Sites such as Wikipedia acknowledge his position in the brigade.
Luay Jihad Fath-Allah al-Saad, the one-time leader of a Islamic Movement’s military infrastructure in Tulkarm—an infrastructure that was directly responsible for a series of serious terror attacks—is also listed on B’Tselem as a person who was killed by the IDF but whose participation in terror activities is supposedly unknown.
One of the IDF soldiers involved in taking al-Saad out in a battle in the Tulkarm refugee camp told Yedioth Ahrononth that he engaged the IDF in a prolonged shootout. “There is no don’t at all that he was involved in fighting. If that is not a terrorist, I don’t know what is,” he said, before expressing his thoughts on B’Tselem.
“I am shocked at what B’Tselem has written about him. It is both a personal and national insult.”
