19-Sep-18: Kol Nidrei night stabbing attack at entrance to Jerusalem's Old City

A Palestinian Arab launched a stabbing attack on a Jewish pedestrian outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls on Tuesday evening, the night of Yom Kippur. Times of Israel quotes an Israeli police statement reporting “an attempted stabbing attack” near Damascus Gate, saying “a police unit at the spot neutralized the suspect.”

The Palestinian Authority’s health ministry said the attacker was shot dead by Israeli police.

The thwarted attacker is said to be a 26-year-old male from Qalandiya on Jerusalem's north side. Haaretz names him as Mohammed Yusuf Sha'aban Alian and says he was in Israel illegally. It refers to a screwdriver as the attack weapon and the location as Jerusalem's Hanevi'im (Prophets) Street which leads to the square outside Damascus Gate. Israel National News has post-attack police camera footage here.

The reliably-despicable Ma'an News Agency ["Israeli forces shoot, kill Palestinian for alleged attack"] spells the knifer's name Muhammad Youssef Shaaban Elayyan and reveals that

"Israeli authorities sealed off the street in the al-Musrara neighborhood surrounding the scene for several hours, preventing local residents from accessing it. The Israeli authorities then transferred Elayyan's body to an unknown location after holding his body at the scene for about three hours."

This may seem like a parody but it's representative of how the European-financed Ma'an routinely reports Arab-on-Israeli terror.

We're searching for announcements in the Arab media of the attacker being formally elevated to martyrdom.

UPDATE Thursday September 20, 2018 12:05 am - We didn't have to wait long. The Arabic version, but not the English of course, of the Ma'an news report is headlined "Video and photos - A martyr shot by the occupation in Jerusalem". Other Arabic reports praising the thwarted stabber as "martyr" are all over the web - see http://archive.is/nCaKJ . An Arabic tweet from Palestine Information Center announces that in the Kafr Aqab and Qalandia "refugee camps" they were going to hold strikes Wednesday to mourn "the martyr".]

For reasons related to the time of year and pressures at home, we have not yet written about the shocking murder-by-stabbing this past Sunday of Ari Fuld Hy"d by a Palestinian Arab eleventh-grader in the Gush Etzion Mall. But iy"H we will.