18-Oct-17: The luckiest Arab in the entire Gush

This photo of the scene accompanies the Ma'an Arabic report quoted here

Ynet reports this afternoon (Wednesday)

IDF force stops attempted terrorist attack | Palestinian armed with knife runs towards IDF force near Gush Etzion; force incapacitates him by shooting at his legs, arrests him.
Elisha Ben Kimon Published:  18.10.17 , 13:46
An IDF force carried out a suspect arrest protocol at a knife-wielding would-be Palestinian terrorist near the Gush Etzion junction Wednesday. A soldier from the Nahal's 50 Battalion was stationed in a pillbox at the junction's security checkpoint. The terrorist was running north, going against traffic. The soldier noticed he was carrying a suspicious object, which later turned out to be a knife, and called out to him, ordering him to stop. When the terrorist kept running, the soldier initiated a suspect arrest protocol, during which he shot the would-be terrorist in the stomach, incapacitating him. The suspect was taken to the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem in moderate condition. There were no Israeli casualties.

Times of Israel says the attacker

ran at them with a knife at the Gush Etzion Junction... The soldiers called for the man to stop. When he didn’t, they opened fire, the army said... According to the hospital, the man is in moderate to serious condition, with a gunshot wound to the stomach. He is approximately 20 years old.

Then there's the version provided by Ma'an, a European-funded Palestinian Arab news source, with its customary spin on the facts:

A Palestinian youth was shot and injured by Israeli forces on Wednesday at the Gush Etzion junction south of Bethlehem in the southern occupied West Bank, for allegedly attempting to carry out a stabbing attack. Israeli media reported that the youth disembarked from a bus at the Etzion bus station carrying a knife and was immediately shot by Israeli soldiers in the area... Witnesses told Ma’an that the youth, who remained unidentified, was crossing the street running to catch another bus that was departing when Israeli soldiers opened fire at him... Though Israeli forces have claimed that Palestinians were allegedly attempting to carry out attacks in a majority of instances when Palestinians were killed, rights groups have disputed Israel's version of events in a number of cases, and argued that many alleged attackers could have been subdued in a non-lethal manner.

(There's little doubt in our minds that Ma'an's disingenuous spinning of terror-attack reports encourages more of them. Their Arabic language edition is even more pernicious. We wonder how much their European government funders are aware of the nature of Ma'an's work-product. Or care.)

Readers might be interested to know that the Arabic version of the same Ma'an news organization has the same surreal accounting - innocent fellow, minding his own business, rushing to catch a bus and shot down in cold-blood by "occupation forces" - adding the not-so-inconsequential detail that the Arab was killed. No other report says he was, and it's fairly clear he wasn't.

This would-be killer is someone's son. If we were his parents, we would be busy this moment composing a heart-felt thank you note to the commanding officer of the young, cool-headed Nahal soldier doing guard duty at the Gush Etzion Junction where innumerable Arab-on-Israeli knifing attacks have resulted in deaths on both sides during the past two years. We would be saying thank you for sparing the life of our misguided, brain-washed, irresponsible and undeserving son who will now have the opportunity to either regret or to relive today's events.

That soldier, in the space of the handful of seconds available to him, had the power and the equipment to stop the knife attacker permanently. Instead he stuck to instructions and incapacitated him, leaving the medical professionals to bring the Pal Arab terrorist back to health - and a future.

A future which will now - as of this afternoon - include a guaranteed monthly salary from the terror-fixated Abbas regime and its appalling Rewards for Terror scheme. He's unlikely to ever be able to otherwise earn anything close to what the PA - thanks to unwitting or merely apathetic European and North American taxpayers - is about to start paying him for what he did in the Gush this afternoon.