17-Mar-16: This morning's Arab-on-Israeli stabbing attack went by the book

The scene of this morning's stabbing attack [Image Source]

A young Israeli woman, about 20 years old according to initial reports, was stabbed a little after 11 this morning (Thursday) at a bus stop on the highway just outside the Israeli community of Ariel (population, almost 20,000).

Times of Israel says she was left in serious condition. Haaretz says she was rushed to Beilinson Hospital at the Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva, and that her attackers were shot and killed. Israel National News says she was stabbed in the throat. The Palestinian Arab news channel Ma'an, whose work product is almost entirely paid for by the EU and other Western funders, says her injuries come from an attack that is "alleged".

Though terror attacks probably sound pretty much the same as each other, there are a handful of aspects worth keeping in mind this time:

• The victim is a young woman. It is highly likely there were men at the same stop. Something about making women their victims holds a despicable kind of appeal to the people doing Palestinian Arab terror, and to those who send them.
• The attackers worked as a team of two. That has been the new standard configuration for these absurdly mis-named lone-wolf attacks for the past month or more, but rarely before. The attackers receive guidance and very likely more than that. The current guidance is: do it in pairs. It works better, more deadly, that way. There's some background in an Avi Issacharoff article: "No longer ‘lone wolves,’ Palestinian attackers pair up" [Times of Israel, March 2, 2016]. In his words, those behind the Arab-on-Israeli terror wave now believe "doing so with a partner or two at their side offers the possibility of causing far greater harm [and] helping to sustain the motivation to attack until the moment of action". 
• Issacharoff also believes Arab-on-Israeli terror number of attacks now mainly take place "from Thursday to Sunday". Today is Thursday.
• The target of the stabbing was the unfortunate young woman's neck. Stabbing Jews in the neck holds a special appeal too. For background, see "Videos teach would-be Palestinian attackers ‘how to stab’", [Times of Israel, October 15, 2015]
• Wondering how in tune with Palestinian Arab popular sentiment the stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks in general, and today's knifing assault on a young woman, are? As we reported some weeks ago ["14-Dec-15: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?"], and despite some bogus optimism we have seen in some corners of the Israeli media in the past two weeks, terrorism has the Palestinian Arabs firmly in its grip. We said this in that post: "The numbers show clear, unambiguous and widespread support for a violent, armed intifada against the Israelis: 60% support it today, up from 57% in the PSR September 2015 poll... The cohort most opposed to a two-state solution and most supportive of "an armed intifada and stabbings" is the one aged between 18 and 22. Two-thirds of Palestinian Arabs say they are in favour of stabbing attacks on Israelis." 

The Arabic version of the Ma'an news report about the attack an hour ago already confers "martyr" status on the two evidently young Palestinian Arabs who carried it out, and prominently displays their dead bodies in a photo accompanying the piece. A Hamas-aligned Arabic-language news agency calls the now-deceased attackers "youths".

UPDATE 8:30 pm on Thursday, March 17, 2016: Arab sources say the knife-attackers from this morning's assault are Ali Jamal Muhammad Taqatqa, 19, and Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Kar Thawabta, 20, both from Beit Fajjar, a village of 11,000, located just south of Bethlehem and whose chief economic activity is agriculture and stone cutting. Several dozen residents of the town were arrested two years ago on charges of involvement in shooting and firebomb attacks on Israelis.

UPDATE 11:30 pm Saturday, March 19, 2016: Please pray for the full recovery of Ofir Bat (daughter of) Einat who still has some way to go.