22-Feb-20: In Jerusalem, two thwarted Arab-on-Israeli stabbings

Screen capture [Source]

Earlier today (Sabbath morning) around 11, a knife-wielding Arab male ran towards Israel Border Police officers on duty near the Lions Gate of Jerusalem's Old City.

Israel National News says the officers

called to the terrorist, asking him to stop, but he turned towards them instead. The officers fired at the terrorist, neutralizing him. He later died of his wounds.

A passer-by, a woman of 42, suffered a leg injury which, according to i24News, resulted from the shooting, and was taken to Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Medical Center for treatment. Haaretz says she was inadvertently hurt when the attacker was shot "probably by a ricochet of the bullet fired at the him".

Times of Israel quotes Israel's Channel 13 TV news naming the attacker as Maher Ibrahim Za’atara, 33. of East Jerusalem’s Jabel Mukaber neighborhood.

Security camera video footage [here and in Yisrael Medad's tweet below incorporating material for Israel Police] shows him clearly waving his knife as he rushes towards the scene of the attack. Not so surprisingly, his family, according to the Haaretz report, "say they don't accept the Israeli police's account of the events".

ttps://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-attacker-shot-dead-in-suspected-stabbing-attack-in-jerusalem-s-old-city-1.8564432

"Palestinian Shot Dead in Suspected Stabbing Attack in Jerusalem's Old City"

Suspected?

The video clip pic.twitter.com/RzVojJj39d

— ymedad (@ymedad) February 23, 2020

Aljazeera's report on the thwarted stabbing ["Israeli forces kill Palestinian in Jerusalem after alleged attack"] quotes the official Palestinian Authority news agency Wafa saying "the man was shot several times and left on the ground bleeding near the Lions' Gate (also known as Bab al-Asbat) before Israeli paramedics arrived at the scene". Presumably the Israelis were supposed to do something else.

Image Source

A Palestinian Arab news source [here] has the thwarted attacker's picture and describes him as the father of three children. It also reports that "Israeli forces raided [the attacker's] home and detained his father and two of his brothers, Palestinian news agency WAFA reports."

Based on past experience, the orphans and widow of the attacker's family can now expect to have a well-funded life at the expense of the PA's program of financial incentives for terrorists and their heirs. The foreign taxpayers (mostly European) who keep providing misguided foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority are financing this, whether they want to or not.

Another terror attack was thwarted in Jerusalem yesterday (Friday).

By way of background, the promenade in Armon Hanatziv, a southern suburb of Jerusalem, offers one of the most impressive views of the city as a whole and in particular the Old City and the Temple Mount. That it attracts large numbers of visitors, both locals and tourists, every day is part of what also makes it a favored site for terror attacks by knife-wielding or vehicle-ramming assailants, intent on their moment of fame - and victims. In January 2017, an Arab resident of East Jerusalem aimed his truck at a group of IDF soldiers in the car park area of the promenade ["08-Jan-17: Where the World Council of Churches stands as Israelis are rammed to death"] and killed four of them.

Times of Israel says a woman attempted to stab passers-by at the popular promenade on Friday morning. Said to be a Palestinian Arab from East Jerusalem, she made several stabbing attempts with her knife while screaming Allahu Akbar (according to Ynet) before being wrestled to the ground by civilians. Police then took her into custody. One man was mildly injured by the assailant.