The main point is certainly valid: Arab organizations need to condemn - and stop supporting - attacks on other countries and other people. At least, if they ever want to be taken seriously by the non-Arab world.

That said, the letter is mostly fantasy - it bears little or no resemblance to the facts. The story has been widely reported, quite a lot of details have been release about both the victims and the attackers. Just to name two examples:

- The victims are four older men (one of them 68 years old). So...26 newly orphaned Jewish children?

- There is no mention, in any news story (and I looked at several) of the attackers being insiders. Given all of the other details - names, where they lived, etc. - it is highly unlikely that such an important fact would have been omitted.

In short: This is a letter written to describe events as the author imagined them, rather than as they actually took place. Well meaning, perhaps, but ultimately counterproductive.

Actually, the one I linked at the top, I believe, says the guy worked in a convenience store in the neighborhood.

And the woman is maybe hyperbolizing on the orphan count. I was interested in the personal connection of the attackers.

It is possible it's all wrong -- and I appreciate that you questioned this, a_random. Always good.

It's also possible she's talking about grandchildren.

"... want to know what Jesus was doing between the time he was a baby and then showed up all bearded ..."

Paper was expensive and the story was boring.

Other than the bible there is almost no physical evidence that Jesus existed. And while many modern people find that preposterous or evidence that Jesus is made up; the same is true of numerous other historic figures.

Socrates, Alexander the Great, and Pythagoras all have less evidence they existed than Jesus. In Pythagoras's case there is some decent evidence that there were several people over many decades from the Pythagorean cult that have been generalized into 'the Pythagorean'.

The reality is back in those days you would be out of a job Amy. Paper equivalents were expensive. And at the equivalent of $100-$1,000 per page people only wrote down the most important things. Even tax records were unwritten. Only provincial tax summaries were documented.

Having lived in Israel for many years, in a hardali community no less, and having friends in har nof: Jewish religious texts refer to grandparents as parents and frum people do -- as Amy noted -- use grandchildren and children interchangeably fairly often. Those texts also refer to grown children whose parents have died as "orphans." The cultural meaning and assumptions are related, but not identical. Yet, Israelis routinely refer to their fully grown offspring as "children" and would think of having a parent killed -- even if you are an adult -- as being orphaned. Not everyone is a Waspty Westerner and some things are "lost in translation." Also -- despite their brusque manner and tough-as-nails reputation -- Israelis tend to sit around emoting and listening to "crying music" more than is quite seemly by Western standards. As for the "insider" bit, that has often been the case, but once the yenta-network gets a hold of it... it is always the case. I have yet to meet a yenta who didn't have a capacity for panic.

"At least, if they ever want to be taken seriously by the non-Arab world." a_random_guy

Dude, we spend our blood and billions of dollars fighting them, how much more seriously can we take them?

None of this is surprising, as they will kill each other depending on their sect, when they are at prayers in mosques, why would they not do so for Jews? They have burned plenty of churches down too.

"Arab organizations need to condemn - and stop supporting" a_random_guy

Why would they do that? This is their mission, and they drag along billion innocent worshipers in their quest for domination. Hard to decide this all isn't according to plan, and the fact that they don't care when Muslims are killed either, makes it a sure totalitarian pogrom/genocide...

Just in a motion slow enough that you are not quite sure what you are seeing.

If you're waiting for a Muslim Reformation, Ali Eteraz argues that it's already happened ... and the results were not pretty.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/sep/28/theislamicreformation

Excerpt:

According to 18th century records, the Ottoman empire - Islam's ruling power - had not flogged, imprisoned, or passed the death sentence on adulterers for nearly 400 years. Under the kanun - secular Ottoman imperial law - the highest punishment for adultery had been a fine. The traditionalist Ottoman jurists had relied on the Quran's "four witnesses" rule, which had made proving adultery virtually impossible.

Along came a self-professed Islamic reformer named Abdul Wahhab. He was trained classically but attracted to Ibn Taymiya - who 400 years earlier had broken away from Sunni traditionalism. Wahhab said that procuring a confession was enough to stone someone to death and proceeded to do so.

At the time, the Ottoman sultan, backed by a class of traditionalist jurists in Istanbul, was considered the equivalent of the Muslim pope - "the shadow of God on earth". Wahhab (just like Luther in Germany) accused the religious elite of materialism, corruption and decadence, and rejected the "tradition-based" approach to Islam. He then found political protection under a rebel leader named Ibn Saud and instituted further "reforms" - which linked up nicely with Ibn Saud's expansionist agenda.

And:

Wahhab's "reformation" started Sunnism's unmooring from traditionalism. The Quran and the hadith, long bound together in a legal system (and hierarchy) so complex that, according to the orientalist John Makdisi, it gave birth to British Common Law, were now left wide open for Wahhab and his followers to access. What they now had was the power to do ijtihad. Except, in their distaste of Ottoman scholarship, they made up their "method" as they went along.

[...]

Philosophers concur that when a text, any text, can be interpreted by anyone using any means at their disposal, the most likely result will be for the text to become subservient to ideology. Wahhab was a rebel; his ideology was intolerance, patriarchy and violence. It coloured what kind of ideological direction Muslim dissenters of the future would take.

Wow. I walked through the door this evening to be told that one of our friends who lives in Har Nof lost a brother in this attack.