The Tel Aviv Shooting.

On Friday (1/1/16) a gunman opened fire on a bar in the Israeli capital Tel Aviv killing two and injuring seven.

I was tempted to title this post; "The Israel Terror Attack." However with terror attacks seeming to take place several times a week in Israel that is a statement that seems to have lost all meaning. To understand why this particular attack was different though you have to go back to the events of July 31st 2015 (31/7/15).

That was the night that two family homes were set ablaze in the Palestinian village of Douma near Nablus on the West Bank. The fire completely destroyed the buildings and seriously injured two members the Dawabsheh family who were in one of the homes. The fire also killed the mother Reham Dawabsheh and her 18 month old son Ali Saad Dawabsheh.

Due to anti-Muslim and pro-Jewish graffiti painted in Hebrew at the scene it is widely suspected that this was yet another "Price-Tag" attack intended to force Palestinians from their homes to make way for illegal Jewish settlements.

This particular attack though was so shocking that it provoked international outrage. It also triggered a lot of outrage within Israel and unusually the Israeli authorities immediately set about prosecuting the suspected Jewish attackers to the full extent of the law.

However the phrase; "The Full Extent of the Law" means something different in Israel then it does in, say, the UK or the US. In Israel it means indefinite administrative detention without trial and "enhanced interrogation."

Exactly how far the Israelis go with their interrogation has long been a contentious subject. The Palestinians maintain that it constitutes torture while the Israelis insist that it goes right up to the line of what is internationally considered torture without ever crossing it.

Without the big press conference announcing that prosecutors were seeking charges, the big press conference announcing that the Grand Jury had issued indictments or the media spectacle of a trial many people aren't aware of the level of action the Israelis took against the Douma suspects.

Their supporters certainly did notice and have been aggressively protesting the treatment of their heroes. On one occasion in particular they staged a piece of street theatre in the normally quite liberal Tel Aviv in which one of them was chained to a bed frame and beaten as they claim was happening to the Douma suspects.

Matters in what has been a big and long running story in Israel when in mid-December a video of the wedding of the brother of one of the Douma suspects was broadcast by the Israeli media.

The video showed wedding guests celebrating the Douma attack by dressing up in masks an re-creating it with guns and firebombs. The highlight of the 'celebration' was the groom stabbing a photograph of Ali Saad Dawabsheh with a knife.

I would say that the bar attacked on Friday (1/1/16) was in Tel Aviv's gay district. However the point is that Tel Aviv is so tolerant of gay rights that it doesn't really have a gay district. Instead all the bars, hotels and business just welcome gay customers just the same as everybody else.

Although they mark the internationally recognised, secular New Year Jewish Israelis only tend to really celebrate the religious Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah). In 2015 that occurred on September 13th/14th and marked the start of the year 5776.

However the bars and clubs in Tel Aviv all celebrated the secular New Year with parties and special events. The specific bar that was attacked was no doubt full of people nursing hangovers and comedowns as they were across much of the world.

Therefore as soon as the attack took place pretty much everyone - including the first responders - just assumed that it had been carried out by Jewish settlers as revenge against the treatment of the Douma suspects and punishment for the godless gays loving Jews for not being religious enough.

It turns out though that the attack was just another one carried out by an Israeli Arab. That suspected attacker has been identified as 19 year old Nashat Melhem but is still on the run creating fear that he may attack again. With Israel Arabs attacking Jews several times a week at the moment I wouldn't think that there is one more out there would be considered much out of the ordinary. However this particular story seems to have run and run.

A large part of the reason for this is that because a firearm was involved the attack was slightly different than all the knife and run-over terror attacks. This gives people something new to talk about.

However I think the story also highlights how this current wave of Palestinian terror has been heavily influenced by US President Barack Obama. Particularly his Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign and his response to the February 10th 2015 (10/2/15) Chapel Hill shooting.

Immediately after one of these attacks occur either the attackers family or someone from the Palestinian community come forward and announce that they were a good boy who didn't do nothing and it's all just police brutality. The lesson they seem to have learnt from cases such as Micheal Brown and Freddie Gray is that if they make this ridiculous claims everyone will rush to support them and completely ignore the video of the crime being committed.

In this particular case it was immediately claimed that Melhem was suffering from some sort of mental illness. However it's emerged that at no point did he attempt to seek treatment for this mental illness nor was it identified by any of his employers or during his 5 year prison sentence. This is another trick the Palestinians seem to have learnt from BLM who frequently claim that feeling a bit sad one day frees you from any legal responsibility for your actions.

American Jews who tend to be politically left of centre have been big supporters of Obama's BLM campaign. However if you're familiar with the 1968 Baltimore riots on the 1991 Crown Heights riots in New York City this seems to be more to do with pragmatic self-preservation than an ideological endorsement. The Israeli left - which is extremely left-wing - has also been big supporters of Obama's gun-control quest.

This case highlights just how futile that quest is because Nashat Melhem didn't buy the gun used in the attack legally or otherwise. Instead it belonged to his father who obtained permission to own it by serving for several years in the Israeli police force and going through the yearly process of re-certification. If a background check that rigorous can't stop a terrorist obtaining a gun no background check is going to stop them.

In fact in response to Friday's (1/1/16) shooting the Israeli authorities are now talking about strengthening their already extensive firearms licensing system so the background checks include not only the individual applying but all of their family members and known associates.

On Saturday (2/1/16) US President Obama made his New Years address.

This occurred three days after the Belgian city of Brussels had to cancel its New Years Eve celebration due to the terrorist threat and two days after the German city of Munich had to shut down its rail network to prevent a terrorist attack. It came the day after several people were injured in an Islamist run-over attack on French soldiers guarding a Mosque in the town of Valance.

It also came on the day that Saudi Arabia announced that it was moving beyond the proxy of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) towards open warfare against the regions Shia-Muslims with the highly provocative execution of Nimr al-Nimr along with 46 others.

In her Christmas/New Years message the UK Queen spoke of a world being consumed by darkness and tried to reassure us that light would eventually prevail. The French President Francois Hollande used his New Year's message to look back at the November 13th (13/11/15) Paris Massacres and warn the French people that they still face the threat of terrorism at its highest level before thanking the French military who are working hard to protect the nation.

In his New Year's message US President Obama ignored all that. Instead he announced that he was going to disregard the result of the 2014 mid-term election and force through his precious gun control measures by executive action by-passing Congress.

To many in the business this was seen as Obama announcing that he has absolutely no intention of actually doing his job in 2016 his final year as President. Instead he's going to cling to his position to use the powers it brings to settle old scores and impose his prejudices on the nation.

In short Obama's become the type of tyrant the second amendment is supposed to protect against.

Today it's been announced that the Douma suspects have been charged as terrorists and will face trial. I think this can only be a good thing because when I heard it was being dealt with quietly by immediate concern was that they'd be quietly released in six months or so.

Their guilt or innocence will now become a matter of public record and if convicted I think they could well be looking at whole life terms.

21:30 on 4/1/16 (UK date).