15-Oct-15: At Jerusalem's main transit hub, the making of another "martyr" [video]

Jerusalem's Central Bus Station on a more ordinary day [Image Source]

Ordinary Israeli commuters arriving back home in Jerusalem or leaving work confronted every Israeli's nightmare in yesterday's (Wednesday's) evening peak hour rush: chaos, fear and armed soldiers pursuing a man with death-to-the-Jews on his mind.

This video below (via Israel National News) from Jerusalem's always-bustling Central Bus Station captures what thousands saw with their own eyes just a few hours ago.

Ahmed Fathi Abu Sha’aban, 26, said to be a resident of Ras al-Amud, a neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, arrived at the busy transit hub armed with a knife. He's no stranger to acts of terror against Israelis - Times of Israel says he was released recently from Israeli prison where he served three years on terror charges.

Being a man's man, this thug spotted a middle-aged Israeli woman on Jaffa Street, just outside the bus station, and attacked her viciously. She has what are formally described as moderate injuries to her upper body - the details will probably come later - was rushed to Jerusalem's Shaarei Zedek Medical Center for emergency treatment. Ynet's report suggests the injured and traumatized woman ran for shelter into one of the buses lined up and with their doors wide open on Jaffa Road. The attacker, whom it names as Ahmad Shaaban, tried to follow her on board but the bus driver managed to keep him away by shutting the door. Soon after, Israeli security forces arrived, and took permanent care of the man with the knife.

The late stabber [Source]

There's no indication at this stage whether the attacker had tried to get into the station itself. Much of Jerusalem's bus transport operates from the streets outside, rather than within, the busy terminal.

In the aftermath of the murder-minded attacker's assault, some thirty people were treated for shock and emotional issues.

The Twitter account of an entity calling itself Palestine Center for Dialogue publishes this photo of the stabber whom it unsurprisingly awards the status of "martyr". We guess this means his values are their values, his achievements are their dreams. A role model, perhaps. Some dialogue.

Other Palestinian Arab social media sites refer to the knife-attacker having been "executed", politely ignoring the unarmed bloodied Jewish woman (didn't even label her a member of the Zionist Occupation Forces) in her sixties who was his principal and we think only victim. As marginal and counter-factual as such things may seem to onlookers in Western countries far away, it's clear to anyone following their Twitter and Facebook worlds that much of Palestinian Arab society pays obsessively close attention to accounts of this kind, seeing inspiration and justification for their cause in the upside-down reports of courageous resistance fighters taking on cruel colonizers.

Their wallowing in self-delusion, glorification of attacks by savages with knives, axes and meat-cleavers - their passion for terror-worship - have tragically predictable consequences, and not only for us.

Meanwhile Jerusalem's remorseless vengeance was expressed in the hour after last night's barbarism by a spontaneous outburst at the site of the assault captured on video below:

The question we wish people far away would ask themselves is: whose passions and selflessness are going to prevail? The Palestinian Arabs' or the Israelis'? Are we really two sides of the same coin?