12-Jan-14: Sabbath afternoon knifing attack in Jerusalem

Down the stairs and through the Old City of
Jerusalem's Damascus Gate [Image Source]

Haaretz says a young Palestinian Arab stabbed a 30-year-old man in Jerusalem Saturday afternoon (yesterday) around 4:00 pm near Damascus Gate in the Old City. The Jerusalem Post quotes Micky Rosenfeld of the Israel Police saying the attacker stabbed his victim from behind and without provocation, adding unnecessarily: "This was a terrorist attack and not a criminal incident".

The victim, said to be in moderate condition with knife wounds to the neck, was taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center for emergency medical care. The assailant fled the scene and as of the most updated report has not yet been taken into custody. As of 7:00 pm, Saturday night, the victim had undergone surgery and was in stable condition in SZMC's Intensive Care Unit.

Over at Israel National News, they say he is a Haredi man; at that hour on Sabbath afternoon, many religious Jews enter the Old City via Sha'ar Shechem (commonly called Damascus Gate in English) to take part in the afternoon Mincha prayer service at the Kotel, Judaism's holiest site.

A Palestinian Arab news agency, Ma'an, added this insight:

Palestinian sources referred to the Israeli victim as a "settler," but it was unclear where he was from.

We can tell them. The dismissive descriptor "settler" is routinely applied by the Arab press to refer to Israelis of Jewish religion or peoplehood, irrespective of where they live or come from. We did a search just now on the Ma'an site and found there was an average of a story a day for every day of 2013 in which its reporters and editors refer to Israelis as "settlers".

Stabbing attacks on unarmed Israelis by knife-wielding Palestinian Arabs are noticeably on the rise as the "peace process" engine pushes ahead. Among recent victims: a nine year-old girl "settler" in October, a traffic cop "settler" in December, an ordinary religious Jew "settler" stabbed by two assailants in July 2013 at the same spot as yesterday's attack; a Border Guard "settler" who was also targeted by a knife-wielding attacker at Damascus Gate just a week ago on January 3; his attacker happens to have been a Palestinian Arab teenage girl.

Those charged with saving lives in this part of the world know that when you are responsible for security and the suspected attackers include teenage girls, you think very carefully before giving anyone a free pass.