28-Nov-13: Rock-hurling attack in Jerusalem tonight scores direct hit on prime target

Asher Viner Street (via Google Maps) on Jerusalem's southern flank

There's another reminder this evening of the reality of living in an environment in which terrorism is both encouraged and denied by the Palestinian Authority even as it impacts with growing frequency and ferocity on our lives.

Haaretz reports in the past hour (it's now 7:00 pm in Israel):

A two-year-old girl was wounded on Thursday in Jerusalem when assailants hurled rocks at a car she war riding. She sustained a moderate head injury. According to initial reports, the incident took place on Asher Viner Street in the capital, at the entrance to the Armon Hanetziv neighborhood. The area is located on the Green Line, near the village of Sur Baher. Paramedics who responded on the scene evacuated the girl to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center. Her condition was initially defined as serious, but later was reassessed as moderate.

The story which exploded in the southern suburbs of Israel's capital city is still unfolding, and reports are not entirely clear and consistent at this stage. We will provide updates when we know them.

As of 7:05 pm, we understand that the toddler regained consciousness even before she reached the hospital.

There's a tendency in the media and in some polite circles to treat injured little children like tonight's victim as having had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught in the crossfire and so on. This is nonsense. When Palestinian Arab terrorists are pressed to explain their calculations [here, for instance], they speak of the pride they take in hitting Jewish children, hurting them (or worse) and by extension their families and their society because the hitters have a burning need for vengeance, for justice, for their own country, for a new set-top console. We have heard them; we have watched them from up close.

We remember the tragic September 2011 attack on Asher Palmer and his infant son Yonatan.

We recall how the men and women with religiously-inspired zeal in their eyes spout semi-coherent explanations which half-mask this ugly reality: that they hate in ways and with an intensity that their victims and the onlooking world will never fully comprehend.

This ongoing war is fueled by the hatred of the rock-throwers and those who sent them. The children whom they seek are not caught in the crossfire,as is so often claimed. They are, in reality, precisely the target.