22-Nov-15: Sunday: Three Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks so far and it's only mid-afternoon

Head of the Gush Etzion Regional Council being interviewed at the scene of
this afternoon's stabbing attack on a teenage girl [Source]

It's Sunday, the first day of the work week, and the wave of Palestinian Arab terror attacks - the physical expression of racist bigotry, hatred made concrete - appears to be at full strength. Victims' lives upended, attackers' lives absurdly celebrated for ugly deeds, and life goes on (mostly) for the rest of us.

The three attacks so far:

1. A Palestinian Arab woman armed with a knife attempted to stab an Israeli near Shechem (in Arabic: Nablus) this morning. The attack happened at a road junction near Beit El and the IDF’s Samaria Brigade headquarters. An alert driver, the well-known lawyer and public figure Gershon Mesika who served in the past as head of the Shomron Regional Council, struck the attacker with his vehicle [says Israel National News], preventing her from doing more harm. Soldiers then fired, killing her.
2. A Palestinian Arab taxi driver attempted to ram a group of Israelis with his vehicle at a roadside location near Kfar Adumim, a community on the edge of the city of Maale Adumim, this morning. He failed to hit them and so got out of his car and launched a knife attack. An alert armed civilian then shot and killed him, according to a police report. An Israeli male in his fifties suffered light injuries to his arms, and was treated by Magen David Adom rescue service personnel. The attacker is said to be from the Palestinian Arab town of Al-Bireh, near Ramallah.
3. An Israeli, a young woman in her late teens, suffered serious stabbing injuries to the neck when knifed this afternoon by an Arab assailant in the vicinity of Gush Etzion Junction (yes, again), near the suburban Jerusalem communities of Efrat and Alon Shvut. After emergency treatment at the scene, she was rushed by ambulance to Shaarei Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. The attacker is said [Times of Israel, today] to have been shot and killed by security forces at the scene. 

Three cowardly attacks on civilians. Three new Palestinian Arab "martyrs" to add to the despicable worship of savagery that has the PA and Hamas and Palestinian Arab public opinion firmly in its grip: a society spiraling downwards into uncontrolled barbarism.

We also now know the identity of the knife-equipped terrorist who stabbed four Israelis, including a girl of 13, last night in Kiryat Gat ["21-Nov-15: Quietly and with determination, Israel responds to the stabbers, shooters, rammers"]. His is Muhammad Tarada, 18 from a village west of Hebron. Arrested with him were two other members of the Tarada clan from the same village: Fares Tarada and Rafat Tarada. More background about them when we have it.

21-Nov-15: Lethal journalism: Fabricating victimhood at the "moderate" Palestinian Authority

Friday's funeral for Rabbi Ya'akov Don, one of the victims of the Gush Etzion ramming/shooting terror attack
a day earlier [Image Source]

As the tools for creating and disseminating news become more widely available via the Internet, a plague of false reporting and fact distortion has become a growing factor in the incitement of gullible audiences, and eventually the taking of innocent lives. (Think of Al Durah, the children killed in the Shati refugee camp, the Jenin massacre.) We're seeing an egregious instance unfold in front of our eyes.

Ezra Schwartz, 18 - murdered

Shadi Arafa is the name of the Hebron-area Palestinian Arab who was killed in a terror attack aimed at Israelis in the suburban-Jerusalem community of Gush Etzion two days ago ["19-Nov-15: Thursday, bloody Thursday"].

Three people were murdered in the attack: Arafa, along with Rabbi Ya'akov Don, 49, a beloved, lifelong educator (well-known in Toronto for the four years he spent there as a visiting teacher at CHAT) who left a widow and four children, and Ezra Schwartz, a young man of 18 from Sharon, Massachusetts who was spending a post-high school year learning in an Israeli yeshiva and engaging in acts of volunteerism (that was brought him to the Gush Etzion area that fateful day). Five of Ezra's friends, also students from overseas spending the year in Israel, were injured, none of them very seriously.

The deaths of the three came as a result of the terrorist, attacking while behind the wheel of his Toyota sedan, opening fire with an Uzi sub-machine gun at people inside other vehicles at the always-busy Tzomet Alon Shvut road junction [video]

[F]ootage from the scene shows that after he [the attacker] drove at high speed with his gun blazing at vehicles stopped in a traffic jam, he crashed into a car and got out unharmed with his hands raised, at which point a Border Patrol officer arrested him... [Israel National News]

Rabbi Ya'akov Don, 49 - murdered

Two Israeli women were hospitalized after the attack: one for wounds suffered in the shooting attack; the other for injuries suffered in the vehicle ramming. Both were sent to Shaarei Zedek Medical Center and released the following day.

The attacker identified by Palestinian Arab media as the terrorist is Mohammed Abdel Basset al-Kharoub, 24 from a village close to Hebron that is reported widely - but inaccurately - as Dir Smat. From our knowledge of the area, we think they mean the place various rendered into English as Dayr Samet, Dayr Samit and Deir Sammit. The killer's background is not our concern - though we do ask rhetorically how long it's going to be before we hear calls for the ramming/shooting murderer's release from behind Israeli bars on the customary nonsense grounds that he's a political prisoner?

But what is very much on our minds is the way our moderate, peace-seeking neighbours (excuse the deep cynicism) in the Mahmoud Abbas-dominated Palestinian Authority have turned reality on its head and declared the death of the Arab victim as another instance of Israeli malfeasance. And how little (meaning no) attention this has aroused in the mainstream news media.

The ramming/shooting terrorist was captured
unharmed. A celebrity now, his photo is
all over the Arabic-language media 
[Image Source] 

Here's how the editors at the European-funded, influential Palestinian Arab news source, Ma'an News Agency, tell it:

Hundreds of Palestinian mourners marched in Hebron on Friday for the funeral of Shadi Arafa, who was killed a day earlier in a shooting attack in Gush Etzion. Arafa's body was carried by mourners along Ein Sara street towards the al-Shuhada cemetery as the crowd shouted "God is Great" and slogans calling for national unity...
Official Palestinian sources said that Arafa, from Hebron, was killed by Israeli forces who opened fire during the shooting attack. Israeli sources say he was killed along with two other Israeli victims when a Palestinian gunmen [sic] opened fire with an automatic weapon. A series of attacks have been carried out by Palestinian individuals on Israeli military and civilians since the beginning of last month, leaving at least 15 Israelis dead.

In its Arabic-language on-line edition [here], Ma'an is less restrained:

A large crowd in the city of Hebron, after Friday prayers today, buried the body of the martyr [الشهيد] Shadi Zuhdi Arafa [شادي عرفة] at his final resting place in the Martyrs Cemetery in the Zoughair neighborhood in Hebron.

Ma'an's not-so-successful attempts to sound independent and authoritative are notorious. But in this case, it's the substance of their reporting that's the point. When, in their English-language edition, they write "Official Palestinian sources", they mean government ministry sources inside the allegedly-moderate Mahmoud Abbas regime, the Palestinian Authority. (There's some background here: "10-Mar-15: The not-so-moderate Palestinian Authority and the terrorism it enables".)

It's likely that every person in this crowd of Arab mourners at Friday's funeral
of Arafa in Hebron is there because his death at the hands of a
shooting/ramming Palestinian Arab terrorist has been knowingly twisted
by the moderates of the PA into another incident of "death by Israelis"
[Image Source: Ma'an] 

Here's an interpretation of what that means:

Israel had delivered Arafa's body to the PA late Thursday, reports the Palestinian Arab Ma'an News Agency. His body was taken from Bethlehem in Judea to the al-Ahli Hospital in Hevron... and there official PA sources [claimed] that IDF forces who responded to the attack killed Arafa... [D]espite the fact that Arafa was killed in a blaze of gunfire rained down on vehicles by an Arab terrorist driving by, the Palestinian Authority (PA) buried him as a victim of Israel in a twisted perversion of the events... [T]he PA Health Ministry's claim was apparently good enough for the masses at Arafa's funeral on Friday, who were organized into a protest by Hamas activists that began the funeral march from a local mosque... Funerals of terrorists in Hevron have been frequently used in recent weeks to incite more terror... Arafa's funeral would seem to show that even Arab victims of Arab terror are being used to incite more attacks. ["Arab bystander in shooting attack buried as 'victim of Israel'", Israel National News, November 20, 2015] 

The official mouthpiece of the Palestinian Authority, WAFA, on Friday published a heart-rending account of Arafa's death at the hands of an Arab terrorist (though he is not mentioned once), focusing on the pain of his mother and his pregnant widow who became his bride only a few months before... and on Israeli culpability. The article quotes his brother:

"This is [because of] the occupation and the crimes against the martyrs... We will follow the legal procedures in order to hold them accountable and bring our case to international courts... " [WAFA]

And brazenly invents a bogus Israeli alibi:

"Israeli forces claimed that they "fired by mistake on the young Arafa during an operation in the area" [WAFA]

On Twitter [click to view], there's a bunch of Arabic-language tweets, many with accompanying photos, proclaiming Shadi Arafa's "martyrdom", laying it at the feet of the Israelis. There are hundreds of hits when you Google (in Arabic) "martyr Shadi Arafa" - try it.

These Arabic-language accounts, along with the rich resources of photos and videos, inevitably have limited impact on Western audiences like the good people reading our blog. But we need to be aware that Arabic-speaking audiences are daily incited to more and more acts of terror, vengeance and hatred by precisely this kind of cynical mis-reporting. The process is appropriately described  as Lethal Journalism. And it's high time the price of allowing its practitioners to keep doing it, and of ignoring the way it's ignored by the global news media channels, is better understood and stopped.

19-Nov-15: Thursday, bloody Thursday

Aerial view of Gush Etzion Junction, south of Jerusalem
[Image Source]

It's been a day of bloody Arab-on-Israeli attacks here again. We are witnessing an escalation - rammings, shootings, stabbings - but it's early to reach conclusions about what this signifies.

Times of Israel says a 16-year-old Palestinian Arab boy approached Border Patrol security personnel guarding the entrance to the ancient and sacred Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron during early Thursday morning. He managed to arouse their suspicions and they stopped and searched him. He was found to be carrying a knife which, in the context of the dozens of stabbing attacks perpetrated by Arabs on Jews since the start of October, is something that produces an immediate Israeli response. He was arrested and taken away to be interrogated. No one was injured in what could easily have become a fatal encounter.

In another part of Hebron this morning, at the Pharmacy Checkpoint (as it's known to Israelis), an improvised explosive grenade was hurled at the security personnel manning the barrier during a "demonstration" by Palestinian Arabs. Times of Israel reports injuries to one of the Israelis, a soldier, who was treated on the spot. No word at this stage about the identity of the attacker. Firebombs were hurled at the security team manning the same checkpoint three weeks ago.

There has been further bloodshed in two major terror attacks done this afternoon in metropolitan Tel Aviv and in the Gush Etzion communities a few minutes drive south of Jerusalem.

South Tel Aviv's Beit Panorama Center via Google Street View

Based on reports from Israel television news, Haaretz, Ynet and Times of Israel, we know of a murderous rampage early this afternoon by a Palestinian Arab male of 26, a resident of Dura, a village near Hebron, and the bearer of a fresh entry-permit issued less than a week ago and allowing him to work in Israel, according to a Channel 2 report, "came to kill Jews" in the Tel Aviv area. The attack, by knife, was done inside the large and busy Beit Panorama office/retail/workshop complex on Ben Zvi Road in the southern section of Tel Aviv. Some reports are saying he was employed in one of the Beit Panorama restaurants. The knife man, in search of Jewish victims, perhaps religious Jews as happens with sickening frequency, spotted a minyan engaged in afternoon prayers in a makeshift chapel inside a Judaica shop. There, he managed to stab three people before being subdued by an alert passer-by equipped with no weapons other than an iron bar, yet managed to stop him and hold him in place until police arrived. Haaretz says two of the Israelis, males and said to be in their thirties, died of their injuries. The third has stabbing injuries defined as moderate. The terror-minded Palestinian Arab assailant is lightly injured and in the hands of the police.

Based on an Israel National News report, it appears that a short while later this afternoon, a terror-minded attacker (and perhaps 3 - we are checking) shot at Israelis traveling in at least three vehicles, including a light bus, via an Uzi sub-machine gun (according to Channel 2 News coverage at 6:00 pm) from his car, a Toyota sedan, in the Tzomet Gevaot road junction adjacent to the Alon Shvut community.

The shooter continued on from there, ramming his vehicle into an Israeli victim at the frequently-jam-packed Alon Shvut Junction. One of the shooting victims, described by Jerusalem Post as "an approximately 18-year old... youth [who] was an American tourist"], was pronounced dead at the scene. At least seven more people are injured - two of them critically including a man of about 50 who suffered bullet wounds to the upper parts of his body. He was rushed unconscious to Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem. Other casualties were taken for emergency treatment at Jerusalem's Shaarei Zedek Medical Center. The attacker was shot; reports say he was "neutralized", a term which leaves some doubt as to whether he is going to be interrogated. (This video appears to show him dead beside his car.) Israel's Channel 2 News says (5:45 pm) reports the shooting deaths of two Israelis and of a third victim, a Palestinian Arab male ("in his forties") described as "evidently killed by accident".

There's still much to absorb in all of this. Israelis will be wanting to understand the implications, including the use of what is termed in Hebrew "hot weapons", a reference to the Uzi. One thing, however, is clear: the very limited interest there is here in attaching flags of Israel to people's social media avatars - experience tells us this generally fails to keep the killers out of our lives.

28-Oct-15: The Pal Arab passion for knife attacks isn't just for social media: they sincerely mean to kill

Real child, real knife, real savagery
[Source: This video via Twitter]

Two separate Pal Arab stabbing attacks on Israelis have happened in the ancient city of Hebron, south of Jerusalem, on two consecutive days: yesterday (Tuesday) and today.

Both were launched by Arab assailants equipped with knives and in both cases the attackers were stopped and killed by IDF personnel.

Yesterday's attack took place in close proximity to the sacred Tomb of the Patriarchs; today's was in the Tel Rumeida section. Israel National News says today's attacker "did not succeed in harming anyone before being eliminated". The same result happened yesterday.

In ideologically-zealous corners of the anti-Israel news industry, yesterday's frustrating of a more-tragic terrorism outcome is described as "extrajudicial executions". It's hard not to notice that the narrative offered up by those groups never manages to identify any actual terror-motivated attacks. The Arab men and women with the knives or meat-cleavers or pistols in their hands, and with Israeli backs on their minds, are somehow invariably caught up by mere chance in the wrong place and at the wrong time.

That's of course for the English-speaking media. The Arabic-language media unabashedly celebrate their martyrdom and heroic attempts at 'resistance'.

Also today, around the same time as the Tel Rumeida attack, an Israeli woman was stabbed in the back in the manner that numerous Palestinian Arab men have carried out stabbing attacks on defenceless Israelis in the past month.

This afternoon's attack took place at the entrance to the Rami Levy supermarket in Gush Etzion, on the road leading to Alon Shvut. It's the store that has been in the news repeatedly because of the management policy of employing Israelis alongside Palestinian Arabs, and encouraging the custom of Palestinian Arab consumers. The embodiment of a form of peaceful and productive co-existence, in other words. And therefore poison in the minds of the Palestinian Arab terrorists and their backers.

Daddy behind the camera is proud

Today's victim was conscious at the time that rescue personnel reached her at the scene. An ambulance paramedic says he found her inside her car:

Initial reports indicate the victim was moderately wounded and received medical treatment from Magen David Adom (MDA) crews at the scene. She has since been evacuated to Shaare Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem - with the knife still embedded in her back, according to reports... “When I arrived to the scene, I saw an approximately 40-year-old woman sitting in her vehicle,” MDA paramedic Wally Wolfstahl said. “She was fully conscious and suffering from a stab wound to the upper body. People on the scene told me they put her in the vehicle after she was stabbed by a terrorist. We gave her medical care with the help of IDF medics that arrived on the scene. After giving her first aid in the field, we sent her to the hospital. She is in moderate and stable condition,” he said. [Israel National News]

The attacker fled the scene after carrying out the stabbing. He was intercepted a short time later by police and is in their custody now. His victim is in hospital in nearby Jerusalem.

Seems like a good time to mention yet another online video clip doing the social media rounds at the moment. This one [see it here via Twitter] appears to have been filmed by a proud father as his daughter, probably no more than 4 years old, brandishes a deadly-looking knife, waves it in the air, attacks a piece of fabric, and indicates that its purpose is to allow her to kill her some Jews. We're all accustomed to scenes like this sickening one to the point where it's accepted that this is what passes for normal in Palestinian Arab society.

Who's the knife for? "Yehudi" - Arabic
for Jews - the little girl shouts

For people like us, it's essential to help others realize there's a direct line connecting little children and their perverted fathers/mothers/leaders/teachers with acts of murder and attempted murder taking place every few hours on Israel's streets. This is the face of a society in the full grip of an addiction to savagery with no red lines. None.

Also in today's battles with terror, six Israeli residents of Tira, a city of some 23,000 people, almost all of them Arabs, were arrested today (Wednesday). They are being charged with hurling firebombs at vehicles traveling on Route 6, Israel's main north-south express road. An investigation by Israel Police and the Shin Bet uncovered their terrorist activities.

Tira, along with Umm al-Fahm, is in the region colloquially known by Israelis as The Triangle. We mentioned it two weeks ago in the context of the rising levels of terrorist activity emanating from those communities.

That the urge to kill Israelis is not restricted to the margins of Palestinian Arab society is made clear yet again today.

As the Jerusalem Post reports, the Palestinian Authority controlled by Mahmoud Abbas has just decided to honor Muhannad Halabi by naming a street after him. Halabi is the 19-year-old murderer of two Jews killed close to the Old City's Lion's Gate on October 3, 2015 in a stabbing and shooting "operation" that took the lives of Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi and Aharon Benita and seriously injured Benita’s wife, Adele, and their two-year-old son.

The assailant was shot dead by police at the scene. Palestinian Media Watch reported several days ago that the Palestinian Bar Association has already grotesquely bestowed an honorary law degree on the deceased stabber/shooter/attacker. Now the municipality of Surda/Abu Qash, in the suburbs of Ramallah, will name a street for him "to emphasize the national role played by Palestinian municipalities."

Can a society ever be rehabilitated from pathologies as deep and all-pervasive as theirs?

10-Nov-14: Second terrorist knifing attack of the day and this time an Israeli victim is dead

The bus stop at the entrance to Alon Shvut [Image Source]

At the bus stop located at the entrance to the Israeli community of Alon Shvut this afternoon, around 4:45 p.m., an Arab with a terrorist record attacked several Israelis.

A young mother in her mid twenties, Dalia Lemkus, a resident of nearby Tekoa, was stabbed to death, and two other people were injured: a 26-year-old man suffered light-moderate injuries, and a man in his 50s was lightly hurt. Alon Shvut is located in the Etzion Bloc (Gush Etzion) south of Jerusalem.

Times of Israel quotes Israel's Channel 2 reporting that

the older man was driving by the scene when he saw the attack in progress, then stopped his car and wrestled with the attacker before suffering an injury to his face. The stabber was shot by a guard on duty at the site, police said. Initial reports indicated he was killed, but later reports dispelled that claim. Magen David Adom said he was in serious condition.

A video recording of the attack (below) shows the Arab terrorist ramming into three people waiting at a bus stop with his Subaru minivan - a vehicle which bore yellow Israeli license plates, and not Palestinian plates (according to Israel National News). Our guess is this means the vehicle had been stolen. He failed to run them over, and is seen leaving the vehicle and attacking them, evidently with a knife. A security guard runs into the frame, fires a pistol at the terrorist who does not fall, and chases him along the road.


A Hamas radio station is reported to have named the attacker as Maher Hamdi al-Hashalmoun, a resident of Hebron known to be affiliated with Islamic Jihad. Times of Israel says he served four and a half years in Israeli prisons after being convicted of fire-bomb offences. He was released five years ago.

This was the second stabbing attack involving Arab attackers and Israeli victims today. (Here is our report of the first one,)