What we're up against
Search in vain for much sign of this story in the British press:
Yasser Arafat's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade this morning killed a 15-year-old Palestinian Arab boy "after the youth tried to stop them from setting up a Kassam rocket launcher near his family's home," the Jerusalem Post reports:
Members of the Arafat-linked terrorist group were trying to plant Kassam rocket launchers next to the Zanin family residence in northern Beit Hanun, when the family, concerned over IDF retaliation, argued and ultimately struggled with the terrorists.
In the ensuing scuffle, the terrorists opened fire on the Zanin family, killing Jamil Zanin, 15, and injuring 5 others. The Kassam crew gathered their launchers and missiles and left the scene. No Kassam rockets have been launched out of Northern Gaza so far Friday.
And this is the Yasser Arafat the European Union continues to insist that Israel deal with.
Perhaps decent people can at least take some comfort from the fact that these animals all get their come-uppance in the end.
Joe Cahill, a founding father of the modern Irish Republican Army who once narrowly avoided the hangman's noose, has died, the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party announced Saturday. He was 84.
Cahill died Friday in his Belfast home after suffering for years from asbestosis, a lung-ravaging condition he acquired while working in Belfast's Harland & Wolff shipyards in the 1950s.
Cahill was the first Belfast commander of the modern ``Provisional'' wing of the IRA founded in December 1969, the year that Northern Ireland descended into decades of civil unrest.
He was also the principal mentor of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, who, as an IRA member, served under Cahill's direct command in the early 1970s, when the IRA began killing British soldiers and police and bombing towns and cities in Northern Ireland and England.
After killing about 1,800 people and maiming thousands, IRA commanders called open-ended cease-fires in 1994 and 1997 - when Cahill's vote in favor was considered critical.
