05-Dec-14: Another knifing attack, this time at Qalandiya Checkpoint, and the attacker is a child

Qalandiya Crossing [Image Source]

Tonight's news from the Qalandiya Crossing security checkpoint.

First, the Palestinian Arab version:

Palestinian girl, 14, arrested at Qalandiya checkpoint | Maan News Agency | December 4, 2014 | 22:31| Israeli forces arrested a 14-year-old Palestinian girl at Qalandiya checkpoint on Thursday evening after allegedly wielding a knife at border police. Yathrib Salah Rayyan, 14, from Beit Duqqu village northwest of Jerusalem, was overpowered by Israeli forces as she walked in the car lane leading to the military checkpoint. Witnesses initially said that the girl had been shot twice by Israeli forces. An Israeli army spokeswoman told Ma'an that a "female Palestinian suspect" approached a "civilian security guard" at Qalandiya carrying a knife. Israeli border police fired shots in the air and then detained the girl, she said. The suspect is currently being interrogated, she added. Witnesses at the scene refute claims that she attempted to stab a soldier. Video footage published by The Jerusalem Post showed Israeli forces using what appears to be pepper-spray to overpower the girl. She is then wrestled to the ground by several border police officers.

The Times of Israel version:

Teen girl arrested after approaching checkpoint with blade | Border police at Qalandiya crossing near Jerusalem fire shot in air, wrestle Palestinian youth to ground
Times of Israel | December 4, 2014 | 9:25 pm
Israeli security forces arrested a Palestinian teen after she apparently approached soldiers at a checkpoint with a knife Thursday evening. The incident, at the Qalandiya checkpoint just north of Jerusalem, came amid a spate of attacks by knife-wielding Palestinians over the last several weeks. The teenage girl, from the West Bank town of Beit Duku, was arrested as she approached a group of border policemen at the checkpoint armed with a knife, according to a report on Israel’s Channel 2 news. The policemen, who became suspicious of her as she approached them, spotted the knife and fired a warning shot into the air before restraining and taking her into custody. A video of the arrest showed the girl in a standoff with police, before one appears to Tase or pepper spray her and wrestle her to the ground. Palestinian news agency Ma’an news identified the girl as 14-year-old- Yathrib Salah Rayyan. It said she was shot at twice by IDF soldiers. An IDF spokesperson denied the suspect was shot at or injured in the incident.

The security camera version:

Security officer at Israel's Qalandiya Checkpoint, on Jerusalem's northern edge,
points a pepper-spray device at the child who arrived at the checkpoint this evening
equipped with a concealed knife. A moment later, he pinned her
to the ground and everyone (including the attacker/child, naturally) was safe

Go to Mako to view the video

Throughout the Arab world tonight, there will be widespread but misplaced belief that the girl - just a child - in this news report was unjustifiably attacked and shot by Israeli forces. In reality, she is just another aspiring jihadist, the product of a jihad-producing culture that treats its children as useful garbage ["4-May-13: So you thought the people who raise children to become "the fertilizer of their land" could sink no further?"]. The security personnel whose lives she came there to threaten efficiently neutralized her (at risk to themselves - a more violent response would have been more certain but unbearably expensive to all concerned) with no injury to her.

Based on what we know about how this works (here's one recent precedent - just one of many), she will live to try something similar again in the future, which is what her parents' society is raising her to do. And what the 16 year old boy with a knife and a passion to murder Jews did in a Maale Adumim supermarket yesterday [report here].

Qalandiya Crossing is where a human bomb, en route to the center of Jerusalem and the Sbarro pizza shop, passed through with an explosives-filled guitar case on his back, and accompanied by his handler, a young female dressed to look like an Israel but in reality a Hamas terrorist, on August 9, 2001. Our daughter Malka Chana Roth was murdered in the explosion that followed, along with 14 others.

On that summer 2001 day, the Israeli security officials tragically allowed them through without inspecting them closely.