04-Oct-15: Jerusalem Watch | A teenage boy is stabbed from behind just hours after last night's two murders

Security personnel pursued and caught up with this morning';s knife man,
and terminated his terrorism activities [Image Source]

It's early Sunday afternoon here, the day before the end of Sukkot, the Tabernacles festival that provides millions of Israelis with the opportunity for time with family, picnics, rest and recreation. Plus the joy of Simchat Torah which starts at sundown this evening.

But in the new reality here, Jerusalem and its citizens are grappling with seriously escalated violence, and a deeply worrying sense that more knifing and more shooting attacks, and perhaps worse, are exactly what the ruling echelon in the Palestinian Arab world have decided we are going to get.

Just a few hours after the killing of two Israeli men in the Old City of Jerusalem last night (Saturday), a second stabbing attack, terribly similar to the earlier one, was carried out on a 15 year old boy close to Damascus Gate, one of the heavily-used entrances to the Old City from Jerusalem's Western neighbourhoods. According to JTA, a news syndication service, this morning

The 15-year-old victim was in moderate condition after being treated on the scene early Sunday morning by paramedics, according to initial reports. He was taken to the hospital with wounds to his chest and back. The suspected assailant reportedly fled the scene after stabbing the teen. A video posted online appeared to show him hundreds of feet away, on the tracks of Jerusalem’s light rail, where he was shot by police officers. Hamas media named the suspected stabber as Fadi Aloon, a resident of the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya. A post before the attack on what appeared to be Aloon’s Facebook page pledged martyrdom and asked God’s forgiveness for sins.

Israel National News focuses on the victim who understands from his hospital bed in Jerusalem's Shaarei Zedek Medical Center well just how fortunate he is to have come through the trauma more or less intact:

15 year-old Moshe Malka is on the mend after being stabbed near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City on Saturday night - and he regards his survival as nothing more than a miracle... "Now I will take with me something for self-defense, I will not walk around like that in the street... The general feeling among Jerusalemites is fear to walk around the city streets, defenseless." Malka had been walking toward the Old City from his yeshiva when he was attacked. "During the walk I saw an Arab who looked as if he's waiting for something to happen, and then began running toward us with a hand in his pocket," he recounted. "We started to run away, I got stuck on the sidewalk and he began to stab me... A friend of mine saw him and sprayed him with tear gas, but the terrorist escaped... I didn't feel blood until I touched my shirt"...  Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat notified Malka early Sunday that security forces had caught and killed the terrorist, and called Malka a "hero." But Malka is simply thankful to those who came to his rescue.  "I survived through a miracle," he said. "If my friend had not sprayed him with tear gas he would have continued to stab me... I thank G-d I was saved." 

So how disturbed by these most recent lethal Jerusalem attacks are the 'moderate' leaders of the Palestinian Authority, and Mahmoud Abbas, its peace-aspiring senior figure, in particular? We may soon know. But it's worth noting that tributes to the nobility of a man with a knife who plunges it into the back of a defenceless fifteen year old boy can already be seen online. Here, for instance, on the Facebook page of something called Palestine Social Global [archived here, in case it gets changed in the coming days] where they display his photo (that's it over on the right) next to the caption "Palestine worth sacrificing" and call him "martyr".

How widely or well is this morning's vicious stabbing attack reported? We expect to come back to that question today.