14-Mar-18: Following up last week's Acco ramming attack

Ten days after the dramatic scene of an Israeli pedestrian being struck by a fast-moving late-model car and hurled high into the air ["04-Mar-18: Vehicle ramming attacks, two of them, in Israeli Arab Akko"], some details of who's responsible started emerging today.

A Times of Israel report this afternoon (Wednesday) says

• Four persons were injured in what it terms "a car-ramming attack" in Acre, northern Israel. They are a pair of IDF soldiers, a Border Guard service person and a civilian,
• The Israel Police view is, to use the term they frequently deploy, that the attack was "nationalistically motivated". In plain language, this means terrorism.
• The suspect is a 26 year-old male from Sh'faram, an Israeli Arab. 
• He was remanded in custody today. There will be no change in that status till March 21. Presumably another hearing will take place that day.
• Counsel representing the accused denies that his client is a terrorist or that his motivations were "nationalistic"
• "The court has placed a gag order on all other details pertaining to the case." This has been the case since the day of the attack. The court hasn't given any explanation.

At Ynet, they add that the accused was not present in the Haifa Magistrates Court today. The remand was extended in absentia, as he remains hospitalized. As we noted last week, he was hit by several bullets when Israel security personnel stopped him.

Not that this necessarily means a thing, but Hamas claimed credit last week for what it called the “brave and heroic” ramming, describing it as "continuing the resistance against the crimes of the occupation".

04-Mar-18: Vehicle ramming attacks, two of them, in Israeli Arab Akko

Initial image from the attack scene via Haaretz

Reports coming in around noon today (Sunday) say there has been a pair of Arab-on-Israeli vehicle ramming attacks. Haaretz ["Three Wounded in Suspected Car-rammings in Northern Israeli City of Acre"] says an Israeli Border Guard officer and two soldiers were injured

in suspected car-rammings in two different incidents in the northern Israeli city of Acre. One person was wounded on Yehoshafat St., near the city's outdoor market, and two others by the railway station downtown.

Here's how Times of Israel describes the locations

The first victim was hit by the car outside the Acre city market. The driver then continued toward a train station and hit the other two victims.

Israel National News says

Police emphasize that the background to the incident is still unclear.

Ynet says

According to eyewitnesses, the driver began his rampage after receiving a speeding ticket. Police said they were investigating the matter.

There are varying reports about the attacker's condition but agreement that he was shot by someone Israeli. Haaretz, quoting the police, says the

motivation behind the incident remains unknown.

We've just posted a shocking video via a tweet which makes it hard to believe this was anything other than an attempt to kill Israelis. See it here.

Other reports (we will be adding details) says three Israelis aged 20 were rushed to the Nahariya hospital. Via social media, we hear that two are in light-to-moderately injured condition; one is in critical condition.

Wikipedia says that Acre, usually called Akko or Acco by Israelis, is on

the northern extremity of Haifa Bay. The city occupies an important location, as it sits on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, traditionally linking the waterways and commercial activity with the Levant. The important land routes meeting here are the north–south one following the coast and the road cutting inland through the Plain of Esdraelon; Acre also benefits from one of the very rare natural harbours on the coast of the Land of Israel. This location helped it become one of the oldest cities in the world, continuously inhabited since the Middle Bronze Age some 4000 years ago. Acre is the holiest city of the Bahá'í Faith, and as such receives many Baha'i pilgrims. In 2016, the population was 47,808. Acre is a mixed city, that includes Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze and Baha'is...

More details about the attacks when we have them.

UPDATE 1:50 pm on Sunday March 4, 2018: Times of Israel says the victims are two IDF soldiers, a Border Guard service person and a civilian in his fifties, and that all are lightly injured. The driver of the attack vehicle, a Hyundai SUV, was shot multiple times and critically wounded. It quotes Israel Radio saying that the driver is an Arab Israeli male from Sh'faram, a city of 40,000 with a Sunni Muslim majority "alongside large Christian and Druze minorities" [Wikipedia] and that the particulars of his identity "could not be immediately confirmed by police".

UPDATE 3:00 pm on Sunday March 4, 2018: Wisely cautious, Times of Israel only now quotes an Israel Police statement that the suspected car-ramming attack in Acre was a “nationalistic attack.” Or in simpler terms, a terror attack. Quote:

“The investigation of the incident, as well as the findings from the scene and documentary materials, indicate that this was a nationalistic attack,” police say. The police statement comes after reports said the driver was angry after receiving a parking ticket.

Few details at this stage about the attacker. It appears a court may have issued a gag order preventing name and background from being published though several sources are currently saying the driver of the Hyundai is a male, an Arab, not from Akko and the bearer of a blue (regular Israeli) identity card. All Israeli citizens are issued, and must carry with them, government-issued ID.

UPDATE 5:00 pm on Sunday March 4, 2018: The Jerusalem Post confirms what we reported earlier - that from the standpoint of the police, this was terrorism:

A gag order was placed on additional details of the incident by police who said that the investigation continues. “This is an extremely serious incident,” said Acre’s Chief Superintendent Yaniv Ronen, adding that “the identity of the driver is known and we are also looking into that.” Unconfirmed reports in Hebrew media stated that the driver was a 51 year-old man from the town of Shfaram.
Shortly after the incident witnesses said that the driver of the jeep had received a parking ticket and had run over the soldiers in anger. “The driver got a ticket for NIS 1,000 ($290) for parking in a handicapped spot. He got pissed off and went up on the sidewalk [and] then struck a traffic light and some bushes and ran over a border guard,” eyewitness Shimon Cohen was quoted by the Ynet news site as saying.
Video footage filmed by a bystander on his phone from outside the market where the border police officer was hit showed the jeep driving onto the curb hitting the officer before he turned around in a possible attempt to hit the officer again. He is then seen fleeing the scene as police arrive and as the officer is seen receiving help from bystanders. Other CCTV footage showed the jeep accelerating before it strikes a soldier who is seen flying through the air as the jeep drives off... MK Zuhair Bahlul (Labor), who lives in Acre, stated that Acre “has always been an example of a strong, values-based city where coexistence and strong neighborly ties exist between its Jewish and Arab residents.” Wishing a speedy recovery to those wounded, Bahlul added that he “hopes and believes that the police investigation will reveal that this was not a deliberate terrorist attack. I call upon all the residents of the city to maintain restraint and patience,” adding that “even in difficult times we in Acre know how to join together to preserve the common fabric of life."

The identity of the rammer is still undisclosed, but the indications are (we think) that he's the injured person in his fifties mentioned by Times of Israel.

As far as we know, no one in the news reporting industry appears to have asked yet whether the driver is about to become a beneficiary of the Fatah/PA/Mahmoud Abbas Rewards for Terror scheme.

UPDATE 8:00 am on Tuesday March 6, 2018: A video clip of a senior doctor, Dr Eli Kakashvili, at Nahariya Hospital where all the injured, including the alleged attacker, are being treated, seems to suggest the driver is a male in his twenties (no longer in critical condition after surgery) and the man in his fifties is an innocent victim. Formal announcements by the security authorities as to who did the ramming and why have not yet been made.

21-Nov-14: How safe is it for an Arab in Israel to call for tolerance? This religious leader can tell us

The Imam of Acre: Voice of tolerance

Life is not easy anywhere for Arabs calling for tolerance and understanding of others. A fresh instance today from Haaretz: "Vandals deface car of Acre imam, who called for tolerance after J'lem attack"

Vandals defaced the car of Sheikh Samir Assi, the imam of the Al-Jazaar mosque in Acre, overnight Thursday, in what the city's mayor called an unfortunate incident. Police suspect the vandals poured acid on the car, which was parked outside the religious leader's home. Acre Mayor Shimon Lankri denounced the crime and said he hoped its perpetrators would be apprehended and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. "The residents of Acre, Jews and Arabs alike, have proven they know how to respect one another and to coexist with mutual respect and understanding," he said.
The imam was among clergy representing Christians, Jews and Muslims who met Wednesday near the Jerusalem synagogue where five people were killed in a grisly Palestinian attack to plead for tolerance amid spiking regional tensions. Absent from the meeting were Muslim authorities from Jerusalem and senior Israeli rabbis... With Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theofilis III of Jerusalem and Latin Patriarch Fuad Twal in attendance, Assi condemned the Palestinian attack on the synagogue. "We came to this place to take a stand toward this criminal act, which involves an assault against the sanctity of the house of God, and against the unarmed worshipers," Assi said.

Acid attack on the Imam of Acre's car
[Image Source]

In the background, there are more riots by more "angry" Arabs today [Hundreds riot throughout West Bank after Friday prayers, Times of Israel today]:

• Several riots were reported throughout the West Bank Friday afternoon following weekly sermons.
• Around 350 Palestinians demonstrated in Hebron... hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails at police, who were responding with non-lethal means to disperse the protesters.
• Another hundred people were demonstrating and assaulting security forces near Nablus, where soldiers were using rubber bullets and other means to quell the mob. Three Palestinians were lightly injured there and evacuated to hospital...
• In Qalandiya, north of Jerusalem, several dozen Palestinians were rioting. One man was said lightly injured by a rubber bullet fired by security forces.

A Palestinian Arab source says the violence in Hebron today was not a terribly sophisticated thing - just another instance in which

Hamas movement called for a march against the occupation, concurrent with protests across the West Bank.

The Jerusalem Post says on the highly contentious Temple Mount, where in past weeks, "entry has been limited to [Moslem] men above the age of 35 and women, amid fears of youth rioting". the police decided to lift the restrictions this morning for the second Friday running. This despite the fact that the Hamas terrorist organization, now operating relatively freely throughout the West Bank towns controlled by the PA, had called for a “Day of Rage” against Israel today. The outcome?: Prayers on the Temple Mount ended peacefully, with some 40,000 worshipers - all of them Moslems, since Jews are forcibly prevented from praying there - taking part, according to Times of Israel quoting an Israel Radio report.

6-Aug-06: Disproportionality argument starts to fade

To the evident satisfaction of the Vatican and leaders of most European countries, the disproportionality of losses between Lebanese and Israelis has undergone a significant re-alignment in the past 48 hours.

The tragic deaths of a mother and her two daughters in their own home in the Israeli village of Arab Daramshe on Saturday, almost entirely un-noticed and un-reported by news media outside Israel, pushed the death toll up, as did developments this morning. 

A fifteen minute-long barrage of Katyusha missile attacks on Sunday struck Kfar Giladi, Ma'alot, Safed, Acre, the Golan Heights and numerous open areas in the north. Initial reports say ten Israelis were killed in this morning's attacks, and many others injured. Additional missiles are landing as we write these lines.

Hezbollah's missile firings are always essentially pot-shots. 

This is by no means a strategic problem for the Lebanese Shi'ites since they have never pretended to be engaged in a strategic battle. Every loss of human life - and certainly including Israeli Arab lives, which happen to be over-represented among the Israeli casualties - on the Israeli side of the border is a victory for Nasrallah's barbarians. Any act of violence qualifies as "resistance", and there is a ready supply of media dupes ready to buy and repackage their spun stories.

Part of the freedom that comes from being designated a terror organization under United States, UK, Canadian and Australian law, but not under the laws of most European countries or of the EU, is that Hezbullah can shoot anywhere it likes. Anything that dies or is destroyed can then be treated as an achievement.

So long as Hizbollah can spin the news as effectively as it has done so far, even the deaths of Lebanese advance their cause. While this will sound odd to many ordinary people unversed in the finer points of press coverage, the editors of such sober and object publications as The Independent (UK) understand this well.

30-Jul-06: A War on Three Fronts

Too many people have died, too many people are desolate, this war is atrocious, and too few people care to really examine why it's happening. The news from Lebanon is awful. But it still needs to be said (since so few conventional media channels are saying it) that Israel, in the course of prosecuting its disproportionate war, is under real, live, explosives-and-death attack on three fronts. Here's a Sunday snapshot.

In the north: About 100 Katyusha missiles have fallen so far this morning, making plain that the aggression of Hezbollah which kicked this part of the war off is well and truly in place. It's clear they are delighted with the way all of this bedlam, all this human-shield war, is going. In Acre on the coast, a residential building took a direct hit today, wounding two people and leaving others in need of hospitalization for shock. 6 additional Katyusha missiles landed in Acre, and 30 in and around Kiryat Shmona; here too there were injuries and property damage. Eight missiles crashed into Nahariya, five into Ma'alot, four in or near Rosh Pina and two in Tiberias. Sirens also sounded in the Haifa suburbs, western and upper Galilee, Afula, Nazareth, Migdal Ha'emek and Beit Hashita. On Friday night, 3 Hezbollah missiles with especially large warheads of 100 kilograms each, landed in fields near Afula. On Saturday, at least 90 missiles crashed into northern Israel. Villages and towns as far as 15 kilometers from the point of impact reported hearing the explosions.

In the south: Not much coverage here. To paraphrase the old philosophical conundrum, if a Qassam rocket is fired into a civilian area by barbarians intent on causing as much damage, death and destruction as possible, and everyone is too busy with other matters, did it really fall?
Well, yes it did. Qassams have been falling with deadly constancy since Israel's northern front exploded with Hizbullah missiles 19 days ago. And they continue to be fired into Israel's southern towns. Sderot was a victim this morning. One missile struck a factory in Shaar Hanegev, an industrial area of the town. Several people were injured but thankfully there were no deaths. (This was not the intention of the people firing the missiles.) Had it struck a nearby workshop some thirty meters away, the likely toll would have been far greater and more newsworthy.

Yesterday a Qassam landed next to the kindergarten of Kibbutz Zikim, just south of Ashkelon, where children were engaged in a Frisbee class. Two children were seriously injured; eight others had to be treated in hospital for shrapnel injuries, shock and damage to the hearing. The kindergarten building was damaged. The Al-Quds Brigades, a unit of Islamic Jihad, proudly claimed responsibility, declaring that "the shooting will continue in response to IDF crimes against the Palestinians." On Friday, 5 more Qassams struck Sderot and Shaar Hanegev, and on Saturday others hit Sderot, Netiv Haasara, and southern Ashkelon.

Unfortunately for the farmers, kibbutznikim and townspeople of Israel's south - those living in the arc that abuts the Gaza Strip - the unending rain of Qassam rockets has been all but forgotten outside of their immediate vicinity. Hard to imagine, but only a year ago, the government of Israel carried out an immensely painful and controversial abandonment of Jewish communities in the area, in the stated hope that an unoccupied Gaza Strip would become as beautiful as it was when Israeli towns and greenhouses dotted it. Whatever the hopes of last summer, the outcome has been an unmitigated disaster.

In the center: Yet another intending bomber of women and children was seized this morning. The media call him a suicide bomber, but it's far more accurate and helpful to term him a religious fanatic intent on achieving mass murder at any price, including forfeiting his own life provided he can take Jewish lives with him. This time , Israeli security officers and soldiers from an elite IDF unit seized an explosive belt in a Palestinian taxi in a West Bank town, following pinpoint intelligence tips about plans by terrorists to carry out a suicide bombing attack in Israel. The intending bomber and his accomplice were arrested.

Scanning the television coverage of the bombing of a residential building in Qana, you can't help but notice how the analysts, reporters and commentators in place are adjusting the level of their emotional response to the noise and passion of the Lebanese around them. There are those who say our side needs to make more noise, be more emotional, more demonstrative, wave our arms in the air. But Israeli society wants life - and when a bomber is caught and prevented from carrying out his death-cult plan, it's highly appropriate that we remain subdued, say a silent prayer of thanks, and keep going about our lives.