11-Aug-16: Another Jerusalem stabbing

Young Hassidim, like this afternoon's stabbing victim, are
frequent visitors to the ancient Jewish graves of the
Mount of Olives [Image Source]

Another violent Arab-on-Israeli incident is unfolding in Jerusalem as we write this.

We are working from initial reports only at this stage, but it appears an Israeli male of 18 was stabbed this afternoon (it's now Thursday 3:00 pm) in the A-Tur neighbourhood of the city about half an hour ago.

The weapon is reported to be a screwdriver and the assailant is the subject of a police manhunt. The victim's injuries at this early stage are being described as moderate which for the rest of us means serious.

At Ynet, they are reporting that he is a yeshiva student who was leaving the ancient Mount of Olives Jewish cemetery and walking in the direction of a bus stop when attacked and pushed to the ground and stabbed in the back and neck. Social media reports quoting sources at nearby Hadassah Mt Scopus emergency room confirm back and neck injuries to a young man who was visiting the thousands-of-years-old Jewish cemetery as part of a group of Slonimer Hassidim,

Arab-on-Israeli violence has, for decades, been part of the reality of visits to the thousands of hallowed graves (estimated to number 70,000) on Jerusalem's Mount of Olives. A huge number of ancient Jewish tombstones were vandalized, sacked and appropriated for road-paving purposes during the Jordanian military occupation of the area between 1949 and 1967. Smashing and desecration of Jewish graves at the site by Arab youths are a daily reality [link].

None of this, you will not be surprised to know, has the slightest impact on the Palestinian Arab news reporting industry. At the European-funded Ma'an News Agency, its report on this afternoon's stabbing attack includes this zinger:

According to Israeli police spokesperson Luba al-Samri an 18-year-old Israeli was leaving a Jewish cemetery at the Mount of Olives when an unidentified youth stabbed him with a screwdriver in the neck and back before fleeing the scene. ["Israeli youth stabbed, lightly wounded in occupied East Jerusalem", Ma'an, today]

Sacred ground, and the place of final repose of tens of thousands of Jews since the days of the Second Temple, and the ideologically-obsessed reporters and editors sitting in Ma'an's Bethlehem office call it "a Jewish cemetery". That's some fine, world-class reporting, boys and girls.

(Needless to say, Ma'an's Arabic version, which in general makes little pretense at being anything other than an echo chamber for Arab-on-Israeli malice and the airbrushing out of the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and Israel, reports [here] merely that "a settler" - that's how the young Hassidic Jewish victim, the location of whose home is completely unknown to the bigots of Ma'an, is described - was "stabbed Thursday".)

20-May-15: Car-ramming attack again in Jerusalem

It's a beautiful, sunny morning here in Jerusalem. But there are reports of yet another deliberate car-ramming attack done by a Palestinian Arab for an evidently-terrorist motivation. This time, it has happened at the A-Tur junction on Jerusalem's north side, close to the Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus and the Mount of Olives. So far, we know of two Israelis, uniformed police, who are injured.

Times of Israel says the driver was shot by police and in critical condition and that he is being treated for his wounds at the scene. But both Haaretz and Ynet say, in updated reports, that he is dead. According to Ynet, immediately after running down his victims

he tried to "confirm the kill" by reversing back over the wounded officers. He was then shot by police... Bystanders hurtled stones at security forces as they arrived at the scene. There were also riots reported at the site. [Ynet]

The weapon in this morning's attempted killing in A-Tur,
Jerusalem [Image Source]

In an 11:30 am update, Ynet says the attacker is a 41-year-old male resident of Jabel Mukaber, a neighbourhood of Jerusalem (abutting Talpiot) whose population have permanent resident status, courtesy of Israeli law, and are entitled to hold blue Government of Israel identity cards which give them "wide freedom of movement within Israel, and... access to health care, unemployment and other benefits" [Wikepedia]. Worth noting that the SUV driven by the alleged, suspected militant attacker is considered expensive and prestigious in Israeli terms. Let each us make of that what we will. (Some might want to note that entering the search term "Jabel Mukaber" and clashes delivers 45,000 Google hits.)

The Haaretz report, providing some context and perspective, says

Jerusalem Police Chief Moshe Edri who arrived on the scene said that "the Border Patrol officers acted as was expected of them, neutralized the terrorist and prevented further harm to innocent people."

Our most recent previous report on a similar attack is just five days old: "15-May-15: Attempted murder by vehicle: yet another Palestinian Arab attack on pedestrians".

A couple of weeks before that, a similar vehicle-borne attacker struck at almost the same spot in Jerusalem's A-Tur. We wrote about here: "29-Apr-15: Almost entirely unreported, violent Arab attacks in and on Jerusalem". It's highly likely today's attack will get minor media coverage outside Israel, if any.

29-Apr-15: Almost entirely unreported, violent Arab attacks in and on Jerusalem

Jerusalem's Light Rail serves Arab neighbourhoods of the city but
is attacked almost daily by rock-hurling Palestinian Arabs [Image Source]

Traveling outside Israel (which is what we were doing for the past week) puts you in a position where news reports of the daily acts of violence in this ongoing war are liable to pass almost without being noticed.

Here are some notes (based on news items originally published by Israel National News and a handful of other sources) on events of the past week that, like us, you might not have picked up.

April 25, 2015 (Saturday)

• A 17-year-old Palestinian Arab attacked security personnel manning two checkpoints near Ma’ale Adumim. He was armed with a meat-cleaver and a knife. The attack was foiled when he was shot and killed.
• A Palestinian Arab, a resident of the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Shuafat, drove his car directly at four Israelis standing at the location known as the Kohanim Route in the village of A-Tur, part of Jerusalem, on Saturday night. A woman in her twenties suffered moderate injuries (though we see the Jerusalem Post said she is in critical condition. The injuries of three other people were defined as light. The vehicle was founded abandoned later the same night, and following an intensive police search, the driver was found and arrested.
• Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat was driving to the scene of the attack the same evening when his vehicle came under a hail of rocks hurled by people from the roadside. The mayor's car was damaged, but there are fortunately no injuries to report. 
• Not far from Jerusalem, on Route 443, the road that connects north Jerusalem with the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and with the new city of Modi'in in-between, a Kavim commuter bus was firebombed on Saturday night. Fortunately there were no passengers on board and the drive was unhurt. One source reports that security forces located a second firebomb nearby, evidently prepared and about to be hurled at something in the vicinity.

April 26, 2015 (Sunday)

• A security guard was attacked during the evening while he was standing, evidently on duty, at a bus stop in the community of Eli. The purpose of the attack, carried out by a 19-year-old Palestinian Arab resident of Nablus, appears to have been to steal the security man's weapon. The attacker was replled, and handed over to the police.
• In a second weapons-related attack, an Arab prisoner serving time in Ketziot Prison on terror charges, and for being a member of Islamic Jihad, a prohibited terror organization, attempted to grab the gun of a security guard by coming at him armed with a can opener. The guard's face suffered lacerations, but he managed to subdue the prisoner. The Arab is now in solitary confinement, and will be charged with attacking a guard.
• Outside the ancient Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron around 6:15 pm, a serving member of the Border Police suffered stab wounds to the head and upper body, and left in moderate condition, after coming under knife attack by a Palestinian Arab, Assad al-Salayma, 20. The attacker was shot dead on the spot by other officers. 
• Arab rock-throwers attacked the Jerusalem Light Rail while it was passing through the Shuafat, Jerusalem, neighbourhood. There are no injuries but one of the tram cars was damaged. Attacks on the Light Rail's 23 vehicles have become an almost daily occurrence.
• Rioting continued in the A-Tur neighborhood, close to where the tram was attacked. Rocks and fire-bombs were hurled at police and security personnel.

And a postscript to an earlier report we posted here: "17-Apr-15: In the aftermath of another lethal car-ramming in Jerusalem". The driver of the vehicle in that attack, which resulted in the killing of a young man, Shalom Yohai Cherki, 25, and the injuring of the young woman who was standing at the French Hill bus stop with him, has now confessed:

Khaled Koutineh confessed to carrying out the vehicular terrorist attack last Wednesday, the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day,” the authorities said in a statement. “Koutineh confessed to carrying out the attack with the intention of harming Jews, a decision he made just moments before the actual deed,” the statement read. The authorities said that Koutineh was driving along Route 1, searching for Jews on the side of the road to run over. Eventually, he came upon a junction in French Hill and targeted the bus stop. Koutineh initially told interrogators that he had suffered from mental imbalances, though authorities said he admitted to concocting the alibi in hopes of evading a stiff penalty. [Jerusalem Post, April 21, 2015]

Most people, even those who think of themselves as careful readers of news from the Middle East and well informed on the Arab/Israel conflict, have no idea any of these events happened.