15-Mar-17: A vehicle ramming attack in Gush Etzion is thwarted... by bollards

After the attack vehicle came to a halt [Image Source]

Time to give thanks for the basic, low-tech security devices that save Israeli lives.

Around 3:45 this afternoon (Wednesday) south of Jerusalem at busy Gush Etzion Junction, a young Arab woman - really a girl - of 16 from Beit Fajjar was behind the wheel of a late model Ford Mondeo sedan with white Palestinian Authority license plates which swerved violently across the traffic divider from the opposite side of the highway and smashed at high speed into a group of civilians and soldiers standing at a public bus stop.

Fortunately for everyone concerned, this was one of the many Israeli stops where metal posts - bollards - had been installed to protect travelers waiting for a bus and to prevent what today's evident attacker had in mind. Her vehicle crashed into the posts, and the injuries to the Israelis watching in horror were limited to shock and abrasions.

The bus stops at Gush Etzion - a cluster of Israeli communities located roughly half way between the capital Jerusalem and Hebron - have been frequent targets during the past two years of (inaccurately named) lone-wolf terror attacks, many of them drive-by shootings and vehicle rammings directed at Israeli pedestrians and commuters. That's why there is a heavy military and security presence there round the clock.

In the words of a Ynet report:

The girl, from Beit Fajjar, rammed her car into a bus stop at the Gush Etzion junction, where several people were waiting, raising the soldiers' suspicions... IDF troops shot and seriously wounded [the driver] who attempted to carry out a terror attack... [Ynet, March 15, 2017]

The driver/assailant was taken to hospital by ambulance in critical condition. Early reports said she died of her injuries - whether from bullets or high-speed impact is unclear. Other Israeli reports from later in the afternoon said she was in fact alive and recovering.

Arabic-language news media name her as Fatima Jibrin Taqatqa. Beit Fajjar is located south of Bethlehem and adjacent to Gush Etzion. The head of its local municipal authority is also a Taqatqa. A quick Google scan shows numerous Taqatqas from Beit Fajjar who have been involved in violent Arab-on-Israeli activities. Here on this blog. we reported on another Taqatqa woman from Beit Fajjar who carried out a stabbing ["02-Dec-14: Yesterday's knifing attack at Gush Etzion Junction: prologue and epilogue"] and on a 19 year-old Taqatqa male who carried out a stabbing a year ago [here].

The version of events published by Ma'an News Agency follows the propaganda outlet's customary template. Headlined "Palestinian girl shot, injured at Gush Etzion junction after alleged vehicular attack", it includes the same video clip as the one embedded above, but describes the events a little differently:

Security camera footage of the events showed a car seemingly losing control at the junction, going over a median strip, and hitting posts near a bus station... Palestinian Red Crescent spokeswoman told Ma'an that the organization was unable to ascertain the health condition of the Palestinian woman, as she was taken away by Israeli ambulance services before Red Crescent ambulances reached the scene. Israeli news outlet Ynet had initially reported that the woman was killed, however the report later indicated that the woman survived the shooting, but was in a critical condition... [Ma'an]

Sixteen is below the age for holding a drivers license in Israel. A Wikipedia source says the minimum age for holding a drivers license in the Palestinian Authority is 18. Clearly this driver was not licensed to be wielding this afternoon's weapon.

27-Oct-16: Who put those knives into the hands of these two little Palestinian Arab boys?

Children and their pure blood: It's a deeply offensive theme that runs strongly
through the messages PA president Abbas delivers to his people.
Why is no one other than advocates for Israel outraged by this? [Image Source]

The Times of Israel reported late last night (Wednesday) on fresh evidence, if any were needed, of how Palestinian Arab society appears to have hit bottom and continues to dig down:

Two Palestinian children carrying knives were detained outside a West Bank settlement, south of Jerusalem, on Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces said. “A short while ago forces identified and apprehended two Palestinian children under the age of ten near the community of Migdal Oz,” the army said. “During the initial questioning the children admitted to have been sent, armed with knives, in order to carry out a terror attack.” The two were spotted near the security fence. IDF spokesperson Peter Lerner said the pair were just eight years old... ["Palestinian kids, 8, detained with knives outside settlement", Times of Israel, October 26, 2016]

That's no typo. The two attackers armed with knives, intending to execute a terror attack, are eight years old. 

Photos of the two knives seized from the children are published in this morning's news. We did a Google image search of that image a few minutes ago; it appears, not so surprisingly, that interest in those weapons of murder and the children from whom they were taken, is limited at this point to the Israeli media. 

Not surprisingly, the Palestinian Arab news channel Ma'an has nothing about it in English at this hour (it's 9:30 am). But their Arabic site does have a brief report here; while it offers no reflections, analysis or commentary on what armed 8 year olds stand for in the larger view of things, it does include IDF security cam footage of the two children making their way in the dark to the outskirts of Migdal Oz.

(Migdal Oz is a kibbutz of some 500 residents, one of the 22 communities that comprise Gush Etzion, the Etzion Bloc, located some 15 minutes drive south of the capital, Jerusalem.)

[UPDATE October 29, 2016: Ynet reports the two little children are from Beit Fajjar. That's a town of some 12,000 people located a few kilometers south of Bethlehem in the area controlled by the PA, and a place with a well-deserved reputation for Arab-on-Israeli violence. It's featured in several of our past posts. Ynet: "During questioning, the children said an adult man gave them the knives and told them to carry out an attack. They were transferred to Palestinian police." We're not certain but we think Ynet is saying the PA now have control of the children. Will we hear any more about this?]

The stunning phenomenon of sub-teen children engaging in actual lethal attacks on Israelis, generally stabbing/slashing attacks, is not new. Nor is the sight of babies, toddlers and little children posing for photographs while equipped - presumably by their parents or guardians or teachers or commanding officers - with killing tools.

There is no way of avoiding the reality that large swathes of Palestinian Arab society are in the thrall of a passionate embrace of vicious bigotry, murderous savagery and explicit incitement of their own children and grandchildren to murder and to be killed.

Two outside actors deserve a special mention in this grotesquerie:

• The central role of UNRWA, ostensibly an agency that exists to ameliorate the suffering of Arab refugees (Palestinian Arab refugees to be more precise) but in reality a cornerstone of the seven-decades-long Arab strategy to keep the Palestinian Arabs displaced, as miserable as possible and in the news - ought to be acknowledged at this point. By their own reckoning, they play a huge role in the education of Palestinian Arab children. They are certainly part of the problem and not of the solution.
• Amnesty International's increasingly explicit identification with the practitioners of the Palestinian Arab brand of terror makes plain their abandonment of principle and betrayal of their supporters' values. As we have noted several times [most recently here: "20-Sep-16: Another Pal Arab boy with a knife died today - exactly as the PA intended him to"], there's no longer anything to expect from them.

There are more than 80 of our blog posts that have the tag "Weaponizing Children". This would be an excellent time to re-acquaint ourselves with the betrayal of, and the outrages perpetrated on, the children of Palestinian Arab society by those responsible for their well-being.

It's a reality that's difficult to deny or ignore. Plenty of reporters and their editors nonetheless do just that. 

Here's an example that has gotten plenty of airing in Israel-friendly channels but much less by the mainstream news reporting industry. It depicts "moderate" Abbas last year speaking in a video [translated from Arabic by Palestinian Media Watch and featured in this post of ours: "13-Oct-15: A bloody day and the malevolence behind it"]:

"We bless you [referring to those carrying out Ribat, the pursuit of religious conflict and/or war to protect land claimed to be Islamic], we bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing. Every martyr (shahid) will reach paradise, and everyone wounded will be rewarded by Allah. The Al-Aqsa [mosque] is ours, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is ours, and they [the Israelis, the Jews] have no right to defile them with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem." [PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, September 16, 2015]

Yes: Every drop of blood. Simple language. So simple, a child could understand it.

Now (as we wrote a year ago) if you were a callow teenage boy or girl of 13, 14, 15, and getting bombarded in the mosque and at school and on the street where you hang with your friends, always, always about Jerusalem and its sacred state - and then the president comes along and promises you paradise and a reward from Heaven, and a free pass to do whatever harm to the Jews that you can imagine, wouldn't your mother's largest kitchen knife be the very next thing you go looking for?

If any of Abbas adviser's are reading this, and want to deny the claim, they're invited to please send us written evidence of the PA president's calls to his people to stop their blood-lusting violence, their overt and cold-blooded weaponization of their society's children, and their hunting for defenceless, civilian Israelis at bus stops, tram stops and shopping precincts.

For Europeans reading this - congratulations! None of this could have happened without the tax money you pay to your governments who in turn send millions of Euros to Ramallah to enable Abbas and his henchmen to get away with murder. Click on "Rewards for Terror" to learn more.

Finally, with fresh thoughts in our minds of a pair of eight-year boys in the hands of police, and thinking back to an earlier blog post ["15-Jul-16: Abbas, who praises vehicle rammers to the sky, has just (yes) condemned the French savagery"], here's a reflection on the leader of the depraved clique that stands at the heart of these awful events, and on those who ought to be exposing this sickness but aren't:

Abbas is no moderate. He's not a moderate liar. He is not even a moderate kleptocrat. He formulates his views carefully and in odious ways that are frequently fig-leafed by a compliant media concerned that the man's true views and actions might accidentally get better known outside the fellowship of Pal Arab advocates. In fact, as we see it, the only thing more loathsome than this man's actions - and especially his incitement to murderous stabbings, to vehicle rammings, to shootings and their impact on the lives lived by ordinary people in this part of the world - is the stunning ignorance of reporters and their editors. With the journalistic equivalent of a straight face, they manage to publish transparent nonsense like this afternoon's Abbas "condemnation" without falling off their stools laughing or becoming paralytic with embarrassment.

And one additional request. Please share this item we wrote at the start of the year: "09-Feb-16: The unthinkable things Palestinian Arab society wants for and from its children"

22-Nov-15: Getting behind the Abbases and the Haniyehs and what that means

This is going on tonight outside the home of the murderer of Hadar Buchris [Image Source]

The large crowd of Palestinian Arabs out on a chilly November night in Beit Fajjar, a Palestinian Arab town of about 11,000 people, close to Efrat, is there at this moment because a man who lived in the house is dead.

His life ended this afternoon shortly after he plunged a knife into the neck of a young Jewish woman, Hadar Buchris. The specific circumstances, the man's name, his age, are all of no interest to us at this point. (We noted them here.) Every part of the Palestinian Arab media is tonight calling him a "martyr" and relates to his deed - an attack on a defenseless, unarmed girl - as an act of heroism.

It's facile and inaccurate to view this scene only as an expression of a society flushing itself down the drain. Years of astute coverage by dedicated analysts like Palestinian Media Watch and MEMRI have brought home the message, for anyone willing to take note, that Palestinian Arab society has been implanting in generation after generation of its own children a hateful and murderous bigotry that sees only evil in their Jewish neighbours, and that impels them towards acts of zealotry, savagery and self-destruction.

It's not new. It hasn't changed (at least not for the better). And no one who takes an interest in the Arab conflict with Israel has any right to be surprised by it.

For us, the significance of the crowd paying homage to today's killer is in the way it throws light on a handful of matters:

1. Other than the readers of a few obscure blogs like ours, most people have no idea it's happening. That includes consumers of most of the world's major news channels, even those that focus time and attention on the Middle East. It's simply not reported.
2. We can express all the abhorrence we can muster up at the men - it's almost entirely men, and boys - in the Beit Fajjar crowd. We can tell them (hypothetically) what we think of their values, and we can pour scorn on their bigotry. But nothing in their society - from their two prime ministers on down - is going to condemn them or the murderer or the murder. Nothing is going to tip them off to the idea that they are engaging in the celebration of something most people outside their region think is horrible. They don't know; they won't know. They are what they are - what their society has made them into.
3. It's the people living far from here who are on our minds tonight. Those who give their backing to the cause represented by Fatah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad ought to look long and hard at the throng in the picture. Translated into practical terms, this is what their support achieves. This is what it means to be aligned and in solidarity with Mahmoud Abbas or Ismail Haniyeh or both. Far from condemning men who plunge knives into the necks of girls, the Palestinian Arab leaders call these heroic acts. Heroic acts! 

This is what resistance (a favourite word in those circles) means. In reality, it's self-destructive, corrosive terrorism.

02-Dec-14: Yesterday's knifing attack at Gush Etzion Junction: prologue and epilogue

The knife attacker: Alleged
to be "mentally ill" 

The woman who stabbed an Israeli civilian at Gush Etzion Junction yesterday [see "01-Dec-14: Knifing attacks north and south this morning"] is getting world-class treatment for her bullet-inflicted injuries today in Jerusalem's Hadassah Medical Center, Ein Kerem [source].

Both her medical condition and her survival (she was defined last evening as being in critical condition) are a consequence of her murderous actions being thwarted by Israeli armed security personnel who could so, so easily have just shot her in a different part of the body and ended her jihadist career cold. Instead she stands a chance of recovering, spending more time (again - read on) in an Israeli prison and getting back out onto the streets at some point to do whatever her passions next guide her to do.

The Palestinian Arab news agency Maan says

Witnesses said Israeli forces prevented the Palestinian Red Crescent from reaching her following the shooting.

That may be why she is still alive now.

The wooden-handled steak knife wielded by the stabber
in yesterday's attempt to murder at Gush Etzion Junction
[Image Source]

According to Palestinian Arab sources mentioned in a Times of London report, the steak-knife-armed woman is identified as Amal Taqatqa, 22, from the village of Beit Fajjar, near Bethlehem. In the laconic phrasing of the British report: "She has served time in Israeli jails", though she is of course innocent until tried and convicted by a court.

We found a March 2011 news report in a terror-friendly Arab media source ["Israel arrests mentally ill woman from Beit Fajjar"] that says

Israeli occupation forces arrested Friday evening a Palestinian young woman from Beit Fajjar north of Al-Khalil for allegedly attempting to stab an Israeli soldier. According to the woman’s family, the Israeli army has arrested Amal Jamal Taqatiqa, 19, near the Etzion crossroads in eastern Beit Fajjar claiming she attempted to stab a soldier. The family submitted reports confirming Taqatiqa’s mental illness to the Israeli Bethlehem liaison office seeking her release. But authorities are keeping her in custody [source]

Beit Fajjar: Soldiers "storming" outside the alleged stabber's
home yesterday [Image Source]

Worth noting (according to Times of Israel) that her village honoured the formerly mentally-ill woman's attempt at murder by engaging in a rock-throwing riot yesterday when IDF soldiers entered the town after the stabbing.

Maan reports it differently:

Locals in Beit Fajjar told Ma'an that over 30 Israeli military vehicles stormed the town shortly after the incident and ransacked Taqatqa's family home. Taqatqa's family denied claims that she attempted to stab an Israeli and said the Israeli army deliberately targeted her and shot her in cold blood.

Another Arab source ["Young Woman Seriously Injured Near Bethlehem"] takes a similar terror-friendly approach, referring to her as

Amal Fakhri Taqatqa, 22 years of age, from Beit Fajjar town, near Bethlehem. Taqatqa is a former political prisoner.

Still another prominent Palestinian Arab news source said that having been taken to an Israeli "hopsital", she

currently faces death... [The knifer] turned out to be a released prisoner who affiliates to the Palestinian Liberation Organization. 

Allegedly.