21-Jun-16: Martyrs, rocks and firebombs: Scenes from an Israeli highway

When a rock hits a fast-moving car, the damage is certainly serious
enough to be lethal: Aftermath of last night's assault on Israeli
vehicles on Route 443 [Image Source: Haaretz this morning]

There are two major highways that connect Jerusalem with the coastal plain, Ben Gurion Airport and the Tel Aviv area. One is Highway One, currently undergoing a multi-billion shekel enlargement and refurbishment. The other is Route 443.

In the early hours of this morning. according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report quoting Israeli security officials, a gang of Palestinian Arabs hurled bottles, rocks and incendiary Molotov Cocktails at fast-moving vehicles on Route 443.

"An initial review suggests that as the mob continued, nearby forces acted in order to protect the additional passing vehicles from immediate danger and fired towards the assailants," a military statement said. "Forces confirmed hits resulting in the death of one of the attackers. At the moment I am aware of one other attacker that was wounded and treated by medical forces and later evacuated to hospital. Two additional suspects were arrested." [AFP via Times of India - today]

Though the AFP reporter says this happened "near the village of Beit Sira", the description suggests to us it happened where the highway passes just below the village of Beit Ur El Fauqua, population around 1,000 people. (An Israel National News report reaches the same conclusion this morning.) We ourselves have been hit by rocks while driving past that spot, as have many of our friends in the neighbourhood. It has a reputation as a source of lethal violence.

Palestinian Arab "security officials" told AFP the dead person is Mahmoud Badran, 20. Times of Israel ["Palestinian firebombs Israeli cars, is shot dead by IDF"] says he is a resident of Kafr Qadum, east of Qalqilya. It adds that two other Palestinian Arabs were "seriously injured", quoting the same Palestinian Arab source. 

Several vehicles driving in the early hours of Tuesday morning were damaged as a result of the Arab attack. Ynet's report says of the victims:

An Israeli and two foreigners in their twenties were lightly injured and taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center overnight Monday when rocks and Molotov Cocktails were hurled at a passing vehicle on Route 443. The terrorists also poured oil on the main road... IDF forces were called to the scene and shot at the terrorists, killing one of them and moderately-seriously wounding four others. Three were evacuated to a government hospital in Ramallah while the other was taken to Hadassah Ein Karem. Two suspects were arrested and taken in by the security forces for investigation.

Associated Press, unwisely (having regard to decades of Arab news-reporting history - this sort of partial and biased journalism didn't exactly begin yesterday) basing itself on an Arab version of events, says

"A Palestinian official says a 14-year-old Palestinian boy has been shot dead by Israeli troops. Wagie Ahmad, head of the Beit Our local council in the West Bank, says Mahmoud Badran was killed and four others were wounded early on Tuesday when their car was fired upon by a military patrol. The Ramallah hospital says another person was moderately wounded and three were lightly wounded. The Israeli military had no immediate response. Israeli media says the shooting took place after rocks were hurled at Israeli vehicles, wounding three."

Haaretz, no stranger to bizarre manipulation of facts if there's a greater need, offers this headline: "Two Tourists, One Israeli Wounded in Stone-throwing Incident Near Major Highway". The vehicles that were hit and damaged were on the major highway. So were the victims. The only part of this that was near the major highway was the gang of thugs with the firebombs, bucket of oil, rocks and evil murderous intentions. That's an odd reason to choose that way of describing where this attack happened.

The editors and reporters at the Palestinian Ma'an news service, not so surprisingly, have a substantially different version of who did what to whom.

"Israeli forces shot and killed a 15-year-old Palestinian [they offer a photo] and injured four other Palestinian teens early Tuesday morning in the village of Beit Ur al-Tahta in the central occupied West Bank, after they reportedly threw stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli settlers, lightly injuring them.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed the death of Mahmoud Raafat Badran, and added that three of the Palestinian minors sustained serious injuries after being shot by Israeli forces in the head and chest, and were evacuated to Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah City.
Initial reports said the fourth teen was taken to an unidentified Israeli hospital, but it was revealed later by Palestinian medical sources that he was detained by Israeli forces for interrogation.
Local sources in Beit Ur al-Tahta identified the three being treated in Ramallah as Dawood Isam Kharroub, his brother Muhammad, and Ahd Ikram Suleiman.
Local Palestinian sources said five teenage Palestinians were travelling in a car between Beit Ur al-Tahta and the nearby village of Beit Sira west of Ramallah when Israeli forces “showered” the vehicle with live fire, killing one and injuring four."

Amid the conflicting claims, we can safely express total confidence that the dead Palestinian Arab is either already a designated "martyr" or being upgraded to one at this very minute.

UPDATE Tuesday at 12:30 pm: Haaretz has an updated report now.

Palestinian Killed in Stone-throwing Incident Near Major Highway Was Likely a Bystander, IDF Says | 15-year-old Palestinian was killed and four were Palestinians wounded, three seriously, after two tourists and one Israeli were wounded along Israel's Route 443 | The 15-year-old Palestinian killed by Israeli military fire during a stone-throwing incident along a major highway was apparently a bystander near the site of the original incident, according to an IDF press release. According to the army, he was traveling by car with his family, according to an initial report conducted by the army that was released Tuesday morning. The investigation reported that stones and a firebomb were thrown at the highway leading from Jerusalem to Modi’in, near the village of Beit Sira, around 1 A.M. Oil was also spilled on the highway. The stones injured an Israeli citizen travelling on a bus as well as two tourists travelling by car. An officer and some soldiers from the Kfir Brigade serving in the vicinity were passing through. They noticed the injured and launched a hunt for the stone throwers. Gunfire was errantly shot at the car, in which the boy was a passenger, killing him, according to the report. Others wounded by gunfire were evacuated to a Ramallah hospital. The army still has been unable to say whether the injured include passers-by shot by accident or people connected to the stone throwing. The army said the investigation into the incident would continue in the Binyamin regional battalion serving in the Ramallah area. 

The Palestinian Authority identified the slain Palestinian as Mahmoud Rafat Mahmoud, a 15-year-old from the village of Beir Ur al-Tahta, west of Ramallah.  Abdul Karim Kassem, head of the village's local council of the Palestinian village of Beit Ore-Tahta, told Reuters that the wounded Palestinians were in a car "returning from a pool in a village near us when they came under fire." According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, four Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire, three of them seriously. Three of the wounded Palestinians were taken to a medical center in Ramallah, while the other remains hospitalized at Ein Karem. Two of the wounded are brothers, according to sources in the village. [Archived at 12:40 pm, June 21, 2016] 

UPDATE Tuesday June 21, 2016 at 1:00 pm:

From Reuters: "Israeli troops mistakenly killed a Palestinian bystander on Tuesday while responding with gunfire to a petrol bomb and rock attack on Israeli vehicles in the occupied West Bank, the military said. An earlier statement from the military had identified the Palestinian as an assailant. The mayor of his village said he was a 15-year-old. The military said several Palestinians threw petrol bombs and stones at vehicles, injuring three civilians, on a highway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem that traverses the West Bank... Troops gave chase and "after an initial inquiry, it appears that uninvolved bystanders were mistakenly hit during the pursuit," a military spokeswoman said, identifying one of them as the Palestinian killed in the incident. She said the military had opened an investigation... Abdul Karim Kassem, head of the local council of the Palestinian village of Beit Ore-Tahta, told Reuters that Mahmoud Badran, the teenager killed in the incident on Highway 443, was in a car with other passengers "returning from a pool in a village near us when they came under fire". Another Palestinian was wounded by Israeli gunfire and taken to hospital in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The military said two additional suspects were arrested.

Who is the dead 20-year old mentioned in the AFP report above? At this point, anyone's guess.

01-May-16: What Yehudit knows

The scene of Thursday night's attack near Beit Horon [Image Source]

Far from the headlines and the public speech-making, the mind-numbing daily violence visited by the Palestinian Arabs on Israelis impacts a broad range of lives: the security personnel, the emergency first-responders, the people living in the communities targeted by the agents of jihad. And the families of everyone we just mentioned.

An email we received this morning from our friend Yehudit brings home some of the back-story - the aspects most people don't get to hear or know about even if they are otherwise well-informed on what the news-reporting industry reveals about daily events in our part of the world.

Yehudit, a veteran resident of one of the flourishing post-1967 communities around Jerusalem's northern edge, as well as being a mother and wife and home-maker, volunteers as an emergency medic. She and her fellow medics are called out at all hours to meet the urgent needs of unforeseen events, and especially in these difficult times of injuries arising from Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks.

Here's what she wrote to us this morning:

This past Thursday night after nightfall, the evening of the seventh day of Passover, we found ourselves called away from the festive meal for yet another security/medical emergency. This time, the location was one where, at least six times before, a terror attack had been launched. This time, B"H, our brave defenders were unharmed. One of the terrorists was shot when she came at them with two really large knives and a syringe with the goal of carrying out a murder. 

Sadly, another attack in which the assailant is a "she". Actually, two of them.

Our team provided the monstrous young female terrorist with emergency medical treatment and she was rushed to hospital. The second terrorist, also a female, was placed under arrest and removed from the scene to be interrogated. Seeing these two girls and realizing what brought them there, what plans they had, what their motivations might have been, is something I can never ever get used to. It's striking to me how we are all - the soldiers on security duty along with their officers and the members of the emergency team - only too well acquainted with the emergency routines. Sometimes, we look one another in the eye for a brief moment even as we are busy with giving the best possible medical care, often life-saving treatment, to someone who is getting that treatment only because he or she wanted to murder one of us. Or more than one. Words don't do justice to the difficulty of that reality. That look in the eye, it's like saying to one another "Can you believe we're here, doing this, now?"

We asked Yehudit how old the two Thursday night would-be murderers were.

Of course I know their ages. 15 and 16, I believe. It's unreal. And don't forget this is happening again and again at a location on one of the busiest highways connecting the capital with Tel Aviv, right next to the busy city of Modi'in and a spot which sees thousands of motorists pass by every day. 

We looked for news coverage of the Thursday night attack. We could find only this:

Israeli authorities arrested on Thursday two Palestinians who tried to stab IDF soldiers in Samaria, the army said, adding that one of them was shot and wounded. The suspects carrying knives approached Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint near Ramallah, in an apparent bid to attack them. The soldiers opened fire in self defense and one of the Palestinians was wounded, an army spokeswoman added... [Israel National News, April 30, 2016]

And this

The incident took place on Thursday evening at the Bell checkpoint, near the community of Beit Horon, in the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council, when the two Palestinian women, armed with knives, arrived at the checkpoint. The two asked the soldiers for water and then tried to stab those seeking to help them. The soldiers, who were unharmed, opened fire, wounding one of the terrorists. The other terrorist fled and was found moments later, hiding in nearby bushes. The injured terrorist was treated on site and then taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. According to the military, one of the women was also found to be carrying a syringe full of liquid whose nature has yet to be determined, as well as a suicide note. [Israel Hayom, May 1, 2016]

Yehudit's account throws light on one small, barely-reported aspect of life in the shadow of a neighbour gripped by a death cult; a neighbour who daily fills the heads of his people's children (though never his own children) with thoughts of the glories of killing and being killed in the name of a centuries-old hatred, all the while brazenly pretending this is some version of "resistance" to something termed "occupation". Pretending to the civilized outside world, of course, but not to their own society.

More sickening still is the way this Palestinian Arab worship at the altar of jihad and "blood purity" has entranced Western onlookers living safely remote from the violence and from the challenges of living side-by-side with blood-lusting neighbours. We doubt their delicate, human-rights-obsessed minds can quite grasp what it must mean to not only share trains, roads, hospital wards with people for whom institutionalized government-promoted martyrdom is a life-defining reality but also to choose to leave your family in the middle of the night and go out to tend to the wounds of the Palestinian Arab children who are the principal (but not only) victims of that death-cult worship.

In her gentle, wise and humane way, Yehudit can probably explain it to them.

13-Mar-16: Friday night rockets and a drive-by shooting

Friday night on Route 443 after a shooting attack [Image Source]

The respite which the Sabbath provides from the rush of news is behind us. While we were engaged in very pleasant family-focused matters, the Arab-on-Israeli violence continued apace.

On Friday night, two attacks occurred at about 10:30 pm, though no one seems to be connecting them. One was directed at the IDF, the other at anyone or anything they could hit. In the jihadist strategy, the two amount to the same thing.

In the Negev region of southern Israel, Tzeva Adom (Color Red) sirens pierced the air in and around Sha’ar Hanegev (population: about 6,000) and Sderot (population: 24,000) warning residents to take immediate cover. Several rockets crashed into open fields a few moments later. It's now known (says Ynet) that the IDF detected four in-bound rockets. There are no reports of injuries or damage, but it's self-evident that, for those doing the firing in the Gaza Strip, this was not the intended outcome.

A little earlier on Friday evening, according to Times of Israel, Hamas hacked into the private satellite feed of Israel’s Channel 2 television channel, interrupting broadcasts with a video promising its “terror will never end.” (According to Israel National News, this is the second time in recent years that Hamas has broken in to Channel Two broadcasts by broadcasting a very strong signal over the same frequency.) The rockets were fired soon after.

Israeli forces shot back at four Hamas targets in northern Gaza. This, according to "senior official Ismael Radwan" of Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip with an iron fist, amounted to “an escalation”. Quoted by Times of Israel, the Hamas man placed “full responsibility” on Israel.

The EU-funded Ma'an News Agency, reporting Israel's response in the Arabic version of its news report (but not in its English edition) terms this "Israeli aggression". The terrorists of Hamas - in every language - warned the following day, also according to Times of Israel, that their patience is "wearing thin".

No other Gaza Strip organization - home to numerous terror-focused factions and splinter groups - has claimed to be behind Friday night's rockets.

At about the same time as the Friday night, rockets, IDF soldiers manning a security checkpoint on busy Route 443, Jerusalem's major northern intercity artery, near Beit Horon came under drive-by gunfire attack . Two soldiers are injured. Both were taken to Shaarei Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem for hospital care. One has a bullet wound to the leg, the other has bruising injuries. Both are reported to be in satisfactory condition. Jerusalem Post says: "The gunman escaped back into Palestinian Authority territory, security forces said, and IDF units launched a search for him."

17-Feb-16: On the search for terror at Haaretz

Route 443 [Image Source]

Over at Haaretz, they have another example of Amira Hass agit-prop disguised as a "news report" today ["Army terror against the Palestinians that journalists only yawn at", Haaretz, February 17, 2016]

It runs through a list of non-lethal actions taken by the IDF and security forces and ends with these words:

[I]n the dictionary of the residents (and mine), destruction of cisterns, theft of land and livelihood, and invasions of homes are acts of terror.

That Hass "dictionary of terror" is a strange and malevolent thing. 

Military actions designed to defensively safeguard the second-busiest artery serving the nation's capital qualify for a prominent appearance in it. 

But it fails to even hint at the numerous attacks, including murders, done in recent weeks by Arabs living nearby. [Google Search]. The very recent killing for instance [about which we wrote: "26-Jan-16: Two attackers stab women at neighborhood grocery store; instantly become figures of emulation"] of a lovely young woman, Shlomit Krigman, 24, stabbed to death on January 26 [her editors at Haaretz reported it, even as she ignores it] on a street in Beit Horon. 

That's a community located an easy stroll away from Beit Ur Al Tahta (the subject of the Amira Hass story) and the adjoining Beit Ur Al Fuqah. Translated to English, the names of those villages are Lower House of Straw, and Upper House of Straw. 

Note also that, as Wikipedia points out, they are built on the ruins of the Biblical... Beit Horon. (Who are settlers here, and who is native? It's rarely as black-and-white in this conflicted part of the world as people like Hass like to portray.)

Hass manages to tell her story without mentioning the rash of murderous stabbings at the Arab-owned Dor Alon gas station on Route 443, an easy hike away from the Beit Ur villages. And other recent Arab-on-Israeli assaults launched on or close to the busy route. And the long history of stabbings, shootings and rammings that have characterized the relationship of our neighbours with this key road. On November 23, 2015, as her editors at Haaretz reported, an Israeli, Ziv Mizrahi, just 18, was stabbed to death there. Numerous other Israelis have escaped with their lives but injured and maimed. [Click here for some of our posts about attacks on Israelis on and near Route 443.] 

There's something depressingly fitting in Hass, recipient of the World Press Freedom Hero award 16 years ago by her peers in the news industry, delivering a bogus slapdown of Israeli "terror" that focuses on a hamlet populated by straw men.

26-Jan-16: Two attackers stab women at neighborhood grocery store; instantly become figures of emulation

Beit Horon [Image Source]

If you drive from Jerusalem towards Ben Gurion airport and the coast, you generally choose one of two alternative routes. One is Route 1, the main highway now under massive reconstruction of the first ten kilometers that wend their way up and down the hills around the capital. The other is Route 443 that passes Givat Ze'ev and then Beit Horon.

Yesterday, in the small Beit Horon community (population: about 1,300, and a long Jewish history) that abuts the busy commuter route, a pair of Palestinian Arab men with terror on their minds made their way unhindered into the heart of the neighborhood - evidently via a breach in its periphery fence or by climbing over - towards the makolet, the local grocery store. This is the fourth attack in a week in which Arabs have brought their terror right inside Israeli communities; the others were in Tekoa, Otniel and Anatot/Almon.

They stopped briefly to place several home-made explosive devices just outside the shop. Just before or after that, they evidently spotted two women, one walking along the sidewalk, a second one in the nearby car park, and stabbed them both brutally. Security camera footage [here] shows them then being stopped at the entrance to the makolet by its proprietor aided by what he had at hand - a shopping cart. This worked. Sometime very soon after that, a security guard shot them both. They are now dead.

Members of the Israel Police bomb squad, called to the scene, neutralized the bombs, three of them. The stabbing victims were given emergency treatment and then rushed to hospital in Jerusalem. One is 23 years old, and was taken by ambulance to the Hadassah Medical Center hospital on Jerusalem's Mount Scopus in critical condition. The other, a woman said to be in her late fifties, has moderate injuries and is now at the capital's Shaarei Zedek Medical Center.

This morning, Tuesday, news reports say the younger of the two victims died of her injuries during the night. We still have no knowledge of who they are. That will surely come later today.

We know the attackers' names. Arabic-language news sources [here, for instance] say they are Osama Ibrahim Yousef Allan, 23, from nearby Beit Ur al-Tahta [بيت عور التحتى] and Hussein Mohamed Abu Ghosh, 17, from Qalandiya, an Arab neighbourhood from which a stream of killers, stabbers and would-be jihadists have emerged in recent months (most recently mentioned in our blog here, here and here.)

It's reported that they posted on Facebook in the hours before the murderous attack that they were "going to hunt porcupines". One of the thugs was immediately claimed [see poster] as "son, martyr, hero" by Fatah, the terrorist band headed by PA president Mahmoud Abbas. Their photos, part of the process of elevating armed thuggery to something higher and worthy of emulation, already began popping up across the Arabic media [here, for instance] in the hours after the terrorism.

Knowing how these matters work, there is no room for doubt that their stabbing of two unarmed women makes them heroes in the perverted society from which they emerged, starting at its highest levels. Their deaths at the hands of a security guard turns them in martyrs with custom posters for family and friends to admire.

Shlomit Kriegman Z"L

The IDF, immediately after the attack, set up roadblocks in the area and cordoned off nearby Beit Ur al-Tahta "with only those requiring medical attention permitted to enter or leave", in the words of a Haaretz report.

UPDATE Tuesday January 26, 2016 at 8:00 am: Israel National News says the woman murdered in Beit Horon yesterday is Shlomit Kriegman, 24, who "did her National Service with Bnei Akiva in Beit Horon. During the last year Shlomit lived with her grandfather and grandmother in the community." Her funeral will be at 1:00 pm today (Tuesday) at Jerusalem's Har Hamenuhot Cemetery. May her memory be a blessing.

23-Nov-15: Second knife-wielding Arab child shot dead this afternoon trying (and succeeding) to murder a Jew

The scene of today's killings [File photo from the August 2015 terror
attack at the same location]

Traveling into Jerusalem from the Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion airport areas requires making a choice: either Highway 1, currently under massive reconstruction, or Route 443. That's the route we generally choose: a busy 4-lane highway almost its entire length, that passes Modi'in and works its way to the northern edge of the capital, coming close to Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority has its base. 

As drivers wend their way up through the hills, there's a gas station which was the scene of a serious terror attack ["10-Aug-15: Stabbing attack at a highway gas station near Jerusalem"] three months ago. We described it as

the pleasant and well-run Dor Alon gas station, an Arab-operated business a few minutes drive south of Modi'in, and one of the two public fueling points on the busy intercity highway. By far most of the drivers pulling in there for fuel or refreshments are non-Arabs. We have been regular customers there for years.

Another terror attack was executed at the very same location this afternoon, this time with lethal consequences for one of the victims.

From Ynet:

A terrorist killed a 20-year-old Israeli man at around 3pm on Monday at a gas station on Route 443, on the same day that a series of other attacks wounded several others, including a Palestinian. A preliminary investigation showed that the Israeli man and woman had arrived at the gas station when the Palestinian terrorist tackled the driver as he exited the car. The terrorist stabbed and killed the man and lightly wounded the woman. An officer at the scene shot and killed the terrorist. 

The identity of the young Israeli man was announced around 7 this evening: according to the Jerusalem Post, he is Ziv Mizrachi, 20, a soldier serving in the IDF.

Palestinian Arab sources identify the perpetrator of the attack, who was himself shot dead on the spot, as Ahmad Jamal Taha, a boy of 16, from an Arab village in the Ramallah they identify as Qutna. (We can't find a place on the map with that name.) Another teenage killer, whose life will now be celebrated by Palestinian Arab society for the homicide he managed to pull off in the last seconds of his short life. And the second 16 year old Palestinian Arab child-terrorist to have been killed today holding a knife while executing an act of hateful savagery. 

It's a pathetic indictment of the failed blood-lusting society that nurtured them and that seeks to sacrifice yet more of its children on the altar of their pseudo-political death cult.

17-Aug-15: Three knifing attacks on Israelis in past 48 hours

The man in the stretcher, being taken to an Israeli hospital
by an Israeli ambulance crew, is the Arab attacker who
asked for a glass of water and then stabbed the IDF serviceman
as he turned his back to go get it for him [Image Source]

There have been three serious knifing attacks on Israelis in the past two days.

This past Saturday, an Arab approached one of the soldiers manning, or patrolling close to. a busy checkpoint on Route 443, the highway connecting Jerusalem via Modi'in with the Coastal Plain. (Route 443 has been in the news several times this month because of Arab-on-Israeli violence.) Pretending to need the soldier's assistance in getting a drink of water, the attacker, according to AP, pounced on the soldier as he turned his back to go take care of helping the thirsty traveler, and stabbed him, causing light injuries. The soldier managed to draw his gun and shoot the knifer, wounding him in the shoulder. The attacker was taken away for interrogation. He is reported to have said that the knife attack came in the wake of an argument he had had with his own father.

A second knifing attack happened later that day, Saturday. Associated Press says a Palestinian Arab, Rafeq Ahmad al-Taj, 21, of Nablus walked up to Israeli police officers conducting a routine security check and stabbed one in the back with a knife, moderately wounding him. Another officer, standing nearby, opened fire and killed the attacker.

The third happened early this afternoon, Monday, at Tapuah Junction, scene of many previous terror attacks on Israelis both in uniform and not. The attacker, according to an Israel National News report, approached several Border Patrol officers and attempted to stab one of them with a large knife. He was was shot and died of his injuries soon after.

The ordinariness of these casual-seeming acts of attempted murder by ordinary-seeming attackers is chilling.

10-Aug-15: Stabbing attack at a highway gas station near Jerusalem [UPDATED]

The aftermath [Image Source]

Two highways serve Jerusalem for traffic to and from the coastal plain, the airport and the Tel Aviv area. One is Highway 1, and it rises through the Judaean Hills from the Sha'ar Hagai area. It's currently undergoing massive reconstruction with the building of a series of tunnels, viaducts and lane duplications. The other, passing by Modi'in and Givat Ze'ev, is called Route 443, leading eventually to the Begin Freeway as it reaches Jerusalem's northern edge.

443 was the scene of a terror attack last night - a reminder of the unbearable pervasiveness of the terror culture around us.

What we know from news reports is that an Israeli man of 25 was stabbed by an Arab assailant during the early evening hours of Sunday August 9, 2015, evidently while working the petrol bowser to fuel his car. He was left lightly injured. IDF soldiers rushed to the site, opened fire at the attacker as he tried to flee the scene of the attack and killed him. (There are two separate, significant IDF security checkpoints within 3-10 minutes drive in both directions, and manned 24x7. Route 443 has a checkered security history because of the easy access to it from nearby Arab settlements.) The assault victim has stabbing injuries to the upper body, according to Haaretz, and was taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, about 40 minutes drive away, for treatment.

The Jerusalem Post adds that

Police believe there are other suspects involved, however their status remains unknown.

It identifies the stabbing victim as Yehuda Ben Moyal, 26, and quotes this spine-chilling statement from him:

[H]e went to fill up one of his back tires with air and as he was bending down to fill the tire, he was surprised by a stab in the shoulder by a knife. He ran from his attacker and tried to escape, but the attacker continued to chase after him.  "He chased me and I fell. I got up but fell again," he remembers... All the workers at the gas station were Arabs and they "just looked at me and snickered. Not one single person there did anything to help," Moyal said. 

But there's a different view from Times of Israel:

The IDF was alerted to a Sunday night terror attack at a gas station on Road 443 by Palestinians working at the station, says a cafe worker who witnessed the attack. In a Facebook post, army spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner says that Tami Boreda Mizrachi, who works at the cafe adjacent to the gas station where the stabbing attack took place, told him “how the Palestinian workers at the gas station alerted the army to come and catch the assailant.”

Israel National News says this morning it knows the identity of the deceased stabber:

Anes Tah (sic), from a village near Ramallah. Tah, aged 26, was previously incarcerated in an Israeli jail.

There is not much else in the way of background reporting about the circumstances of the attack other than that it took place at the pleasant and well-run Dor Alon gas station, an Arab-operated business a few minutes drive south of Modi'in, and one of the two public fueling points on the busy intercity highway. By far most of the drivers pulling in there for fuel or refreshments are non-Arabs. We have been regular customers there for years.

All the workers at the gas station were Arabs and they "just looked at me and snickered. Not one single person there did anything to help," Moyal said.

Reuters, reflecting how mainstream news organizations view such "clashes", prioritizes cause and effect for its news consumers today in the customary way: "Israeli soldiers shoot dead Palestinian who stabbed Israeli in West Bank".

UPDATE Monday 11:00 am | Graphic first-person testimony via Israel National News:

"I was on the way to Jerusalem from my home, and he (the terrorist) took advantage of the opportunity when I got out of the car and he stabbed me," recalled the terror victim to Army Radio. "He came at me from behind, I felt suddenly that I was stabbed, and I ran, I fled from him."
"I ran, I fell, and got up and ran again, and again I fell," he said, reliving the nightmarish chase from his knife-bearing attacker. "He of course chased after me, and stabbed me again at every opportunity."
Yehuda recalled being stabbed no less than five times, noting, "I shouted 'help me, help me.' I ran to my car while still bleeding and just drove off."
In a chilling detail of the attack, Yehuda pointed out that the Arabs who were present at the gas station simply watched him being pursued by the knife-wielding terrorist bent on murdering him, and did not help him in any way.
"They watched and chuckled and didn't come to help. Even after I was stabbed," he said. "He just didn't stop until I managed to escape with the car."
Before being neutralized by the police, the Arab terrorist tried to stab other victims at the gas station. One driver locked himself in his car and video-taped the attacker lurking outside while brandishing the knife. The video can be viewed by clicking the image [here].

A Hamas blog this morning has taken "credit" for its man, Anes Taha, and the brave thing ("heroic martyr operation") he did last night.

21-May-12: This is what war by terrorism feels like from up close

There have been hundreds of violent attacks on Israeli civilians as well as against IDF patrols, Border Police and civilians by Palestinian Arabs in the last few days. Almost none of this gets reported. The weapons of the terrorists in this asymmetrical warfare are cement blocks and rocks, fire-bombs and Molotov Cocktails. The intention is rarely to cause something as mild as a protest. People have been killed, and anyone observing the venom and - frequently - the degree of planning knows that lethal outcomes are very much part of the agenda of those with terrorism on their minds.

The incidents recounted below come from the reporting of Yehudit Tayar who receives and distributes field intelligence in real-time from the Hatzalah Yehudah and Shomron first-responder organization and from other sources including the IDF.

Frdiay May 18, 2012

• Border Police serviceman suffered moderate injuries as a result of being hit by rocks hurled by Palestinian Arabs in the vicinity of the flashpoint village of Nabi Saleh. He was evacuated to Belinson Hospital for treatment.
• In the south of Israel, near Kibbutz Nahal Oz which abuts the Israel-Gaza border, IDF troops came under fire from the other side of the border [see Ynet's brief report]. 

Saturday May 19, 2012

• Several rock throwing attacks directed at security checkpoints on the edge of Jerusalem, near the community of Adam and at the edge of the Arab Shuafat neighbourhood. A Border Police serviceman suffered moderate injuries in the Shuafat attack.

Sunday May 20, 2012

• At the Gush Etzion Junction, a Palestinian Arab attempted to stab an IDF serviceman but managed only to get seriously injured from contact with the knife concealed in his clothing. [See our report: "20-May-12: Ongoing 'cycle' of violence, Jerusalem Day edition"]
• Israel's Secret Service together with the IDF and Israel Police arrested nine members of a terror gang in the Ramallah region who are alleged to have made multiple attempts to carry out kidnappings as part of an effort to extort further releases of incarcerated terrorists. [The Times of Israel report is here.]
• On the road between Efrat and Tekoa in the Gush Etzion region on Jerusalem's southern fringe, several Israeli vehicles came under rock attack. The rock throwers caused property damage and placed lives at risk.
• On Road 446 near Na'alin (also known as Ni'ilin), more rock attacks on Israeli vehicles causing shattered windshields and endangering the lives of the drivers and occupants.
• Shuafat security checkpost, on Jerusalem's northern edge: Palestinian Arabs hurled rocks at the security personnel. A policeman suffered moderate leg injuries.
• The community of Adam in Jerusalem's northern-eastern suburbs: Palestinian Arabs hurled blocks and rocks at Israeli vehicles causing substantial damage and endangering the lives of the people in the cars and trucks.
• Ofra, a community of 3,000 people north of Jerusalem: Rock attacks by Palestinian Arabs.
• On Route 443, the main highway running south into northern Jerusalem from Ben Gurion airport: rock attacks on vehicles near the city of Maccabim, halfway between Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv.

Monday May 21, 2012

• In Issawiya, East Jerusalem, Palestinian Arabs directed a hail of rocks at the Border Police post
• Tekoa in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem: Two separate rock-throwing attacks on Israeli vehicles, smashing windshields and threatening the drivers' and passengers' lives
• The notorious stretch of road between Bet Umar and El Arub on the Gush Etzion-Hebron highway: another round of vicious rock attacks
• In the Southern Hebron Hills: a violent demonstration at Mizpe Yair, two kilometers from the community of Sussia 
• The East Jerusalem neighbourhood of A-Tur: A Border Police patrol vehicle was attacked by dozens of Palestinian Arabs. Authorities arrested five of the rioters.

Whether or not you are familiar with the place names, what would be the response you would expect from the police and security personnel in your community if cement-block-equipped hoodlums set themselves up on the road next to your home, your school, your shopping mall?

The restraint of Israel's security services in the face of irresponsible, indiscriminate and deliberate violence is extraordinary. But inevitably shattered windscreens give way to shattered bones and shattered lives and then the restraint becomes even more counterproductive than it often appears to be in the current wave of malicious attacks.

19-Sep-06: High Alert Again in Jerusalem, Center

Basing themselves - as usual - on concrete intelligence reports, the authorities in Israel declared a high-level terrorism alert today.

The second of the two main-roads (called Route 443) that serve Jerusalem in the direction of Tel-Aviv has been shut down for some hours by police road-blocks during the middle of the day. Security check-points have been thrown up at the entrance to Jerusalem, in the Latrun area on Highway One (the main arterial route serving Israel's capital) and in the Modi'in area. No reports of arrests at this stage.

UPATE: Haaretz now (1.45 pm Tuesday) says that the police have called off the terror alert.

Meanwhile Yediot Aharonot is reporting the terror alert still in effect at 2:00 pm. They write:

"Police have also beefed up security in central Israel, and the alert level in the Sharon area has also been raised for fear of an infiltration by a terrorist. Security forces are in possession of 16 specific warnings on intentions to carry out attacks. The warnings mainly originate from the Samaria (north West Bank) area and Gaza, and refer to suicide bombings, kidnappings and shooting attacks. Vehicles are being checked and buildups in traffic have been noticed in the area, in addition to the existing jams following the ongoing roadwork in the capital. Police Chief Moshe Karadi announced ahead of the New Year that police will increase its activities throughout the country due to concerns of terror attacks. Working in a number of circles, thousands of police, Border Guard officers and volunteers from the Civil Guard, backed by IDF soldiers, will take part during the New Year in security measures at markets, synagogues and entertainment districts. The security operations will take place from the green line area and into the inner cities."

That the mainstream foreign media routinely don't report this does not change the fact that terror and dealing with the threats and attacks of Palestinian Arabs on our lives are part of the daily agenda for millions of Israelis.