Saturday, October 20, 2018

20-Oct-18: In Har Adar today, a terrorist is stopped in time

Har Adar [Image Source]
No one was killed. No Israeli family was left upended or orphaned*. But a thwarted terror attack in the Jerusalem suburb of Har Adar this morning ["Stabbing attack thwarted in Har Adar", Tzvi Lev in Israel National News, October 20, 2018] could easily have ended tragically:
A stabbing attack was thwarted in Har Adar on Saturday after a Palestinian Arab aroused the suspicions of a security guard. The 20-year-old suspect caught at the town's entrance after he began acting strangely. After being detained by a security guard, the suspect admitted that he was intending to carry out a stabbing attack with a knife he had hidden in the village... In the wake of [a 2017] attack, army officials barred PA workers from entering Har Adar, and pledged to make improvements at the checkpoint workers must pass through at the entrance to Har Adar.
In that earlier Har Adar attack a year ago ["26-Sep-17: At Har Adar's entrance, an Arab-on-Israeli shooter with problems and a solution"] an Arab day laborer with a valid work permit, a history of family violence and no known background in terror, killed three security personnel, opening fire on them when ordered to halt while attempting to enter the gated community.

Criticism of Israel's serious focus on security and the accompanying problems it brings - the expense, the intrusion into the lives of Arabs en route to school or work, the wide deployment of lethal weapons in the hands of security personnel - are legitimate. But while they should never be dismissed out of hand, the imperative of saving lives and taking a realistic view of the neighborhood in which we live mean that security-mindedness is a core element of Israeli life.

As today's successful intercept demonstrates, there's a lot we have to be grateful for when it comes to the alertness of security people.

Har Adar, a pleasant community of about 4,000 people about 10 kilometers outside Jerusalem, gets its name from a British radar installation that used to be where the homes now stand.

---
* So it's highly unlikely this will get any media coverage outside of the Israeli and Jewish media. That's not a light-hearted observation. We Israelis pay a heavy price for this editorial-selectiveness.

No comments: