Yesterday in Israel, security forces arrested three terrorists in connection to the August 23 murder of Rina Shnerb.  An IED exploded outside the Israeli neighborhood of Dolev, south of Jerusalem, as her family was casually hiking near a natural spring.  The terrorists are believed to be associated with a Palestinian Marxist-Leninist group known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).  The remotely detonated blast killed this young lady, who had just celebrated her 17th birthday the previous week.  The explosion seriously injured her brother and her father, who is a rabbi.  The survivors were hospitalized.

It is past time that a line be drawn between attacking security forces and terrorizing civilians.  Humanity has advanced beyond killing innocent people, whereas Palestinian terror is stuck in the 9th century.  Palestinian terrorist organizations still do not recognize a difference between attacking a civilian and a military serviceman.

Compare the terrorist attacks by groups such as the PFLP and Hamas to revolutions that history now sees as heroic battles against tyranny.  In the American Revolutionary War, the patriots fought against the British army.  General Washington's army did not target all British citizens; the military fought the British soldiers fighting on behalf of King George III.  In the 1940s, the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto did not just kill any Germans they could find; they killed 12 SS guards who were preventing them from escaping to freedom.  Both the imprisoned Jews in these ghettos and the American patriots in the Revolutionary War were limited in their killing.  They killed only those who were standing in the way of freedom. 

Anti-Israel terrorists cannot claim to fight for righteousness because they do not limit their violence to only those standing in the way of Palestinian freedom.  Rather, they see all Jews as a valid target.  This demonstrates that the PFLP and Hamas are not fighting for freedom; they are fighting for the eradication of Jews from Israel.

If Palestinian terrorists are trying to resist the current political situation in Israel, then an extremist could easily find a way to justify an attack against Israeli soldiers or police.  But the attack that the world witnessed against the Shnerb family was against a family innocently walking in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Killing a 17-year-old-girl and critically injuring her father and brother does not achieve anything.

This attack, like all attacks on Israeli civilians, shows that this revolution Palestinian terrorists claim to be fighting is not a stand in the face of tyranny.  Palestinian terrorists are not trying to defend their people or anyone's rights.  The Palestinian terrorists target innocent people because they hate Jews.  Hamas and the PFLP are not defending anyone.

This attack, which Hamas's political leader praised, specifically victimized Jewish people.  There is no reason to believe that the terrorists knew anything about their victims — that is, other than the fact that the hospitalized father was presumably wearing a kippah (Jewish religious headwear).  Apparently, that is all the terrorists needed to know.  This tells the world that Hamas, along with the other Palestinian terror organizations, believes that killing any Jews is justified.