Four Israeli citizens were wounded Thursday morning in a road terror attack near the Jewish community of Tekoa.

The victims were traveling in a car with Israeli license plates when they were attacked by Arabs hurling a barrage of heavy rocks and boulders.

The windows of the vehicle were smashed by the heavy rocks, and four of the people riding in the car were wounded by flying glass and by the hard missiles with which they were struck.

All four were taken to a medical clinic in the nearby Jewish city of Efrat, about ten minutes away from Jerusalem, local sources said.

Just yesterday (Wednesday) Israel Police Lt.-Col. Baruch Mizrahi was laid to rest in the police cemetery at Mt. Herzl, a victim of a terror attack in Judea on nearby Highway 35, on the outskirts of Hevron. Mizrahi was murdered and his pregnant wife and 9 year old son injured when a gunman shot them with an AK-47 assault rifle from the side of the road as they were traveling to attend a Passover seder in Kiryat Arba. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Tekoa is located on the opposite side of the sector, among the hills of eastern Gush Etzion in the shadow of the Herodian, the burial place of the Biblical King Herod.

The community is situated next to the ancient village of Teq’ua, now an Arab village. A number of residents in the two communities have quietly established good relations. Ironically, it was Teq’ua residents who called friends in Tekoa for help when they came under missile fire from Gaza during the last mini-war, Operation Pillar of Defense.

At just after 7:20 PM a mortar from Gaza struck inside the Israeli town of Sha’ar HaNegev.

The Red Alert siren did not go off. Residents did not have any warning of the incoming weapon.

No one was injured in the attack, but the rocket did damage part of the town’s infrastructure.

Tel Aviv University has cancelled the appearance at a campus event of a former Arab prisoner jailed by Israel for his activities on behalf of the terrorist Hezbollah organization.

Mohammed Kana’ane, an Arab-Israeli who spent four-and-a-half years in prison, was invited to speak Monday by the left-wing Hadash and Balad student groups at a conference for Land Day, which marks the deaths of six Galilee Arabs in 1976 during riots over a government decision to expropriate land for what it called security purposes.

Land Day took place on March 30.

“In light of concern for public order in the Land Day events scheduled to be held tomorrow, and since the request to approve Kana’neh’s participation was only received recently, leaving no time for preparations, the University does not approve his participation in the event,” the university said in a statement released late Sunday. The statement said that other Land Day events would go forward as planned.

A Sunday protest on campus by Jewish student groups called for the speech to be canceled.

The university last week had issued a statement saying it would allow the event to go forward in an effort to respect students’ right to freedom of speech, which it apparently thought includes screaming “Fire!” in a crowded theater.

JTA contributed most of the material for this report.

For the past several months, residents of Beit El and other Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria have been living with a wave of increased Palestinian Authority Arab terrorism.

Road terror attacks have included near-daily rock attacks on the roads, including Highway 60, the main artery that runs from the north in Samaria all the way south through Jerusalem and down through Judea to the Negev.

Other attacks involve firebomb attacks (Molotov cocktails) aimed at motorists driving vehicles with Israeli license plates, and occasional shootings as well.

The residents of Beit El, north of Jerusalem, have been living with an especially intense wave of violence emanating from the nearby the Arab village of Jeelazun.

An IDF army base is located right on site at the entrance of the community, however, and soldiers guard the town around the clock – as other security teams both civil and military do in every other settlement throughout Judea and Samaria. The arrangement works for both the residents of Beit El and for the soldiers, who are often tasked with carrying out searches for fugitives in Jeelazun, a hotbed of terrorism.

Nearly as complicated, Beit El is also located right next door to the Palestinian Authority capital of Ramallah.

At least four military personnel died and 16 others were wounded, some critically, in a shooting spree Wednesday about 4:30 p.m. local time at Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas.

The base, located near Waco, was immediately sealed off and held on lock-down for nearly four hours, until the “all-clear” could be sounded.

The shooter, 34-year-old combat veteran Spc. Ivan Lopez, killed himself at the end of the shooting spree with a single shot. He used a .45-caliber Smith and Wesson semi-automatic pistol he had recently purchased in the area, and had not registered at the base, officials said.

In November 2009, a military psychiatrist with Arabic ancestry proclaimed jihad against the United States at Fort Hood and went on a similar rampage, killing 13 people.

Military officials stressed that this time the cause seemed to be a personal dispute, unrelated to terrorism.

The gunman “walked into one of the unit buildings, opened fire, got into a vehicle, fired from [the vehicle], got out of the vehicle, walked into another building, opened fire again and was engaged by local law enforcement here at Fort Hood,” according to Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, who spoke with reporters.

U.S. President Barack Obama also made an effort to play down the terror factor but acknowledged that something indeed had gone terribly wrong and needed to be dealt with.

In a statement following the shooting, Obama said, “We’re heartbroken something like this might have happened again. We’re following it closely. I want to just assure all of us we are going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened… Obviously this reopens the pain of what happened at Fort Hood five years ago. We know their incredible service to our country and the sacrifices that they make. Obviously our thoughts and prayers are with the entire community, and we are going to do everything we can to make sure the community of Fort Hood has what it needs to deal with a tough situation, but also any potential aftermath.”

Lopez was in the process of being evaluated for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which Lt. Gen. Milley described as “a lengthy process.” He added that the soldier – whom he did not identify at any time during his briefing — was also “undergoing behavioral health, psychiatric treatment for depression and anxiety and a variety of other psychological and psychiatric issues” at the time of the attack. He added that he also had a self-reported traumatic brain injury.

Lopez had served four months in Iraq during 2011. He remained on active duty and was subsequently assigned to the 13th Sustainment Command based at Fort Hood.

The tragedy ended when a female police officer drew her weapon, according to Lt. Gen. Milley, who said that in response, the armed soldier “put his hands up and then reached under his jacket. He pulled out the gun, and she engaged, and he put the weapon to his head.” He paused. “It was clearly heroic, what she did at that moment in time.”

His body was found in a parking lot near the First Medical Brigade area. Three of the victims died in local hospitals. Seven of the injured were admitted to nearby Scott & White Memorial Hospital. Three of the injured are in critical condition and being maintained on respirators. Five are listed in serious condition with gunshot wounds to abdomens, chest, necks and extremities, doctors told reporters. Other victims are being treated on base at the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center.

“Experience has taught us many things here at Fort Hood,” Milley said. “The soldiers who have served so bravely through the last 13 years in Iraq are strong, and we will get through this.”

The Saudi Arabian government has begun to issue a series of laws aimed at outlawing any activity loosely connected to terrorism — or criticism of the government.

According to a report by the “Human Rights Watch” (HRW) organization, the Muslim Brotherhood and two Syrian jihadist groups were outlawed as terrorist organizations. Saudi citizens were ordered to return home from fighting in the Syrian conflict within 15 days or face jail time from three to 20 years. The sentence comes in connection with the new “Royal Decree 44″ issued by Saudi King Abdullah which bans “participating in hostilities outside the kingdom.”

A new set of provisions added in early March further defines terrorism as “calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based.”

Recently two human rights activists in Saudi Arabia lost appeals in court following convictions for dissent and criticizing the government, HRW noted.

Over at the ParliamentToday.com update service (“operated by Parliamentary News Services, Press Gallery, House of Commons”) they posted the following exchange today to their subscribers, one of whom (H/T Michael H.) kindly forwarded it along to us.

E-001778/2014 | Monday, 3 March 2014 Question for written answer to the Commission (Vice-President/High Representative) Rule 117: Michał Tomasz Kamiński (ECR) VP/HR — Salaries to terrorists in Israeli prisons

It is a well-known fact that the Palestinian Authority proudly owns up to illegally spending over 6% of its budget — donated by, among others, the EU, where funding terrorism is against the law — on salaries for terrorists in Israeli prisons and pensions for the families of suicide bombers. The Palestinian Prisoner Affairs Minister, Issa Qarake, has admitted on television that the salaries are directly proportional to the terrorists’ sentences and the number of Jews they have killed. 1. What information can the EEAS provide concerning this case? 2. What is the Commission’s strategy to stop EU funds being used to pay salaries to terrorists in Israeli prisons? As the last known case of paying money for killing Jews was in Nazi Germany, will the EU High Representative condemn this practice?

Answer given by Mr Füle on behalf of the Commission

The EU is aware that the Palestinian Authority has a system of allowances in place for Palestinian prisoners, their families and ex-detainees. This scheme is not and has never been financed by the EU. All the funds the EU allocates to the Palestinian Authority for salaries, pensions and social allocations, are subject to rigorous ex ante and ex post verification procedures, notably including a specific check against a recognised data base of individuals listed as having a connection with terrorism of any sort. Any name which is signalled by the check is automatically deleted from the list of beneficiaries. The Commission would also refer the Honourable Member to its answer to Written Question E-14320/2013

Anyone who has reviewed the tragic history of EC double-talk around the subject of money – generously but ignorantly provided by unwitting European taxpayers via their representatives in Brussels – handed over to the Palestinian Arabs, knows that it is rich in language like what’s on display here. Don’t blame us; we didn’t do anything wrong; we have rigorous ex ante and ex post verification procedures, and so on.

This sand-in-your-eyes resort to self-parodying language is calculated to do precisely what it achieves: to conceal far more than it reveals.

Some might be interested to know that we wrote about this phenomenon in the Wall Street Journal Europe as far back as September 2003: see “Blood, Money and Education“. The issue was by no means new or unknown even then.

In fact, from personal knowledge, there has been an inside understanding among the civil servants of the EC and their political masters [9-Sep-13: Snouts and troughs"] since at least 2003 to do whatever it takes to hide the truly hideous things that everyone knows are done with those European funds that go to Ramallah.

In all those years during which torrents of European funding, amounting to billions of Euros, were channeled, first, to the blood-drenched Arafat regime, and then to the corrupt and insider-controlled regime of Mahmoud Abbas, those oh-so-careful Eureaucrats managed to avoid carrying out even one financial audit, until the one published this past December [full text here]. All of this while the the EU “provides 20% of the direct financial support for the PA“, making it “the biggest multilateral donor to the Occupied Palestinian Territories”.

And what did that audit find?

• EU aid to the Palestinian Authority worth billions of euros needs an “overhaul” and major changes in some areas, the bloc’s Court of Auditors said… If the circumstances are difficult, there are still “a number of aspects of the current approach in need of an overhaul,” said Hans Gustaf Wessberg, who wrote the report for the court. “There is a need for major revisions such as encouraging the PA to undertake more reforms” [EUbusiness, December 12, 2013]

• “The EU should stop paying the salaries of thousands of Palestinian civil servants in the Gaza Strip who are not going to work… They called for a major review, saying money spent on civil servants there should go to the West Bank instead.”BBC, December 11, 2013

• “It is difficult to ensure that EU money is not misused or does not become a drip-feed, it said… The PA is not undertaking all the reforms that the EU would like. At every turn there are political causes and factors. The audit is therefore a political minefield.” [European Voice, December 12, 2013] (It’s worth noting that a Times of London journalist who saw the pre-publication version of the audit report in October 2014 wrote an article then that went further, summing up what the pre-publication version of the report he saw was going to say: “Billions of euros in European aid to the Palestinians may have been misspent, squandered or lost to corruption, according to a damning report by the European Court of Auditors...” Our sense is that the report went through a sanitization process after his article appeared and before the public saw it.)

A Palestinian Authority survey has found that terrorist Marwan Barghouti, serving five successive life terms in prison but hoping to be freed by Israel, would easily win the election for the successor Mahmoud Abbas if the vote were held today.

“If presidential elections were between Marwan Barghouti and Haniyeh, the former would receive 60% and the latter would receive 34% of the participants’ vote,” according to the results in the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll.

If presidential elections were between Abbas, Barghouti and Haniyeh, Barghouti would receive the largest percentage (36%) followed by Abbas (30%), and Haniyeh (29%).

The results are similar to a poll in December but more significant now because Barghouti is one of the terrorists who has been added Abbas’ list of terrorists he wants Israel to release in order for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace talks to continue.

If the Netanyahu government were to free Barghouti, and there is some support from the more leftist Cabinet minister to release him, Israel would in effect have named the successor to Abbas, who succeeded arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat.

Since Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize, it can be assumed that the same fate would await Barghouti in recognition of his love for killing Jews and then switching strategies to take over Israel through Zionist governments’ willingness to commit hari-kari.

Barghouti started out his career as a terrorist at the age of 15, joining Arafat’s Fatah terrorist party and showing his promise as a model for young people by co-founding the Fatah Youth Movement. By the age of 18, Barghouti already had been arrested, and he quickly learned how terror pays off in Israeli prisons.

He studied and received his high school diploma while in jail, where the prison system is so sure that educating terrorists will change their lives for the better.

In Barghouti’s case, it changed the lives of dozens of Israeli. More accurately, it ended the lives of dozens of Israelis, with the tacit help of the Israeli government.

Israel deported Barghouti to Jordan for his leadership in the beginning of the Intifada in 1987 but returned under the terms of the Oslo Accords, the agreement that the Palestinian Authority has torn up clause by clause.

Israeli governments have had a weird penchant for pardoning terrorists, perhaps because the powers-to-be want to make sure that the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and IDF have plenty of work to do. Lebanon, Egypt and Syria apparently are too boring.

Seeing that Arabs could get what they wanted by  bleeding Israel dry in the diplomatic process backed by the United States and the European Union, Barghouti championed “land for peace,” so long as the Palestinian Authority could get land without having to agree to peace. The proof came in 2000 when he backed “new forms of military struggle” after the Camp David Accords.

He led the Tanzim terrorist group while proclaiming his opposition to violence against Israeli civilians – soldiers were fair game – and showed how much he could be believed by his involvement in suicide bombings. Barghouti was convicted for three attacks that killed five people in Tel Aviv, Judea and Samaria.

While in jail, Israel has given Barghouti all the mobile phones and tools he needs to use his jail cell to organize and incite Arabs throughout Israel and keep up his popularity. He even announced he would run from his prison cell to succeed Arafat after he died in 2004, but withdrew from the race in favor of Abbas.

He staked out his claim for the next Nobel Peace Prize by initiating and helping to formulate the National Conciliation Document of the Prisoners that called on Hamas, the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Islamic Jihad and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine to form a coalition government and negotiate with Israel.