11-Mar-18: Why do so many thwarted Arab-on-Israeli terrorists survive?

The IDF Samaria Military Court compound [Image Source]

If you're a regular visitor to this blog, you won't need reminding that when it comes to the deaths of Palestinian Arabs in circumstances that involve the Israeli military, there's rarely just a single agreed version of the facts. Our question in this post is: why are such deaths so rare?

Bear with us.

The Palestinian Arab side are currently - as they have periodically for years - urging news readers to accept that an innocent fisherman ["High Court delays release of Gaza fisherman’s body", Times of Israel, March 8, 2018] was killed in cold blood by Israeli naval forces. That he's dead is sadly beyond dispute, but the circumstances are not:

“We are sure that the wounded are fishermen who went out to sea to make a living – and nothing else,” the head of the union told Haaretz daily... Incidents involving IDF using excessive or deadly force against the Palestinians have been on the rise since US President Donald Trump announced his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the US embassy there." [RT, February 25, 2018]

Another Gazan fisherman was shot dead by Egyptian forces [Al Araby, January 13, 2018] a few weeks earlier. But for reasons that most readers can intuit, considerably less media attention has been paid to that.

Which brings us to events that unfolded in Israel's Gaza-envelope communities this morning:

Gaza resident arrested after crossing into Israel with grenade, knife | Times of Israel | March 11, 2018, 10:04 am | The IDF arrested two Palestinians early Sunday after they separately crossed the border fence from the Gaza Strip into Israel, one of them carrying weapons. The military said in a statement that troops apprehended the two Gazans shortly after they had crossed the fence. One was found carrying a grenade and a knife. The army said he is suspected of planning to carry out a terror attack in Israel. One of the suspects is from the north of the Strip while the other was from the south. The army said the two incidents appeared unrelated due to the different locations. The two were transferred to security forces for interrogation, likely by the Shin Bet security service. Gazans are apprehended crossing into Israel fairly regularly, many of them apparently seeking to escape an increasingly difficult humanitarian situation in the Strip. Suspects are believed to sometimes carry weapons in the hopes of being sent to Israeli prison rather than back to the Palestinian enclave.

It's too soon to categorize today's two Gazan Arab arrivals. Are they terrorists? Social climbers? Economic refugees?

But it's not too soon to absorb the fact that both are alive. And that at least one of them came equipped with weapons. And that Gazans entering Israel always arrive without badges stuck to their foreheads announcing that they are on jihadist missions and looking to create mayhem. That assessment has to be made in the heat of the pursuit by IDF service personnel.

Given the blood-curdling ideology which Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other like-minded terror organizations successfully pump into the heads of their followers and subjects, it's usually strategically wise to assume the most malevolent interpretation.

The intercepted pipe-bomb from the February 13, 2018 attack. The metal
ball bearings are there to rip apart the flesh of the victims [Image Source]

Just to reinforce that point, all of these incidents of terror-centered Arab-on-Israeli violence were recorded in the past 14 hours - and all were almost certainly intended to produce deaths:

• Three Palestinian Arabs armed with Molotov cocktails were apprehended by IDF forces near Route 90, one of Israel's most strategic arteries, running from the northern border all the way to Eilat in the south. It's Israel's longest road. Israel National News says: "The possibility that they are members of a terror cell that threw Molotov cocktails along central roads over the past month is being investigated."
• Around 10:55 pm last night, an IDF post located just outside Psagot, an Israeli community of about 2,000 residents, came under shooting attack.
• Then near midnight, shots were fired at soldiers manning the busy Beitunia Crossing, a short distance north of Jerusalem and close to Givat Ze'ev (no injuries, no serious damage). A manhunt is underway in both cases. The distance between the sites of the two shootings is only about 30 km.
• Police, quoted by Times of Israel, say two Palestinian Arab children, both of them 16 years old and living in Jenin, were stopped this morning by Border Police guards at the security checkpoint next to the entrance to the Samaria Military Court. It's in northern Israel in the village of Salem and close to Megiddo (called Armageddon in the Bible). They were found to be carrying pipe bombs - one per boy - concealed on their bodies. Each one also had a lighter "with which officers suspect they intended to ignite the bombs. The entrance to the court was temporarily blocked while a sapper inspected the devices, which contained explosives, and neutralized them." The background is extraordinary: though it may come as a surprise to even dedicated followers of news from our area, this morning's weaponized children were carrying out the seventh thwarted attempt at pipe-bombing that same court complex in the past four months. Previous intercepts happened on February 14, 2018 (three Palestinian Arabs arrested); February 13, 2018 (single attacker, his pipe bomb packed with metal shards); February 7, 2018 (single Palestinian Arab male attacker);  December 28, 2017 - again, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy with a pipe bomb); December 17, 2017 (a Palestinian Arab with two pipe bombs - one attached to his body under his clothing, and a second one in his coat pocket); October 15, 2017 (single attacker, one pipe bomb). Again - all aiming at the same target.

Motives don't get enough attention in this part of the world. Perhaps that's because the urgency of the task at hand and the potential price of the security people failing to act quickly enough. The result is  that there's always a premium on decisiveness and on certain prevention.

Fortunately for those Gazan infiltrators who come across the border for the personal benefits of the experience, and for the pipe-bombers turning up like lemmings at the doors of the Samaria Military Court compound, the IDF usually doesn't shoot first and ask questions later, at least when circumstances permit. If they acted differently, the number of dead thwarted terror-attackers would be substantially greater.

Let us know if you ever see a mainstream news article that reaches the same conclusion.

01-Jan-18: Another reason we call it the catastrophic Shalit Deal

Sasson Nuriel, tortured and murdered in 2005 by Hamas
terrorists. One of them is now in Israeli custody,
suspected of having launched a
post-Shalit-Deal terror gang that was intercepted by Israel
in November. [Image Source: AP]

Another set of revelations from Israel's security establishment points today to yet another of the 1,027 beneficiaries of the 2011 Shalit Deal having been at the center of Arab-on-Israeli terror. This time, the terrorism was thwarted in time.

Israel National News reports ["Terrorist freed in 'Shalit deal' planned terror attack", January 1, 2018] that the leader of a recently captured gang of 17 Hamas terrorists had been in an Israeli prison up until October 2011 after having been convicted of involvement in the kidnapping and murder of an Israeli, Sasson Nuriel, in 2005. (We started this blog about a year after that.)

A moment about the victim: Sasson Nuriel manufactured candies in the Mishor Adumim industrial zone on Jerusalem's eastern edge until his business got into financial difficulties. Needing to support a wife and three children, he closed the company and went to work for Maya, a spice manufacturer with premises in the same industrial park. On September 21, 2005, he left the factory to go out and buy chocolate. When he failed to return, his family called the police. Through an intelligence lead, they learned he had been kidnapped by a Hamas terror cell.

Shalit Deal: Armed Hamas terrorists watch as a bus carrying freshly-released
Palestinian Arab prisoners arrives at Rafah Crossing, southern
Gaza Strip, October 18, 2011 [Image Source: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash 90]

It eventually emerged that its members included two Palestinian Arabs who had worked for Nuriel in his candy business. On behalf of Hamas, they had lured him to a-Ram, an Arab village on Jerusalem's north side, by making up a story. A BBC report at the time said

Palestinian militant group Hamas has released a video of a bound and blindfolded Israeli businessman it says it kidnapped and later killed. The body of 51-year-old Sasson Nuriel, who vanished last week, was found near Ramallah in the West Bank on Monday. Hamas said it had planned to trade him for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, but decided to kill him after Israel began raids in the West Bank.

Israeli sources said his abductors brought Nuriel at gunpoint to Beitunia, a village under PA control and west of Ramallah. There they stabbed him to death, throwing his body into a garbage dump before claiming responsibility in Hamas' name. The dead man was 51.

Abdallah Arar, the man behind the Hamas 

cell busted six weeks ago by the Shin Bet,
and another Shalit Deal graduate 

[Image Source]

This week's revelation via a Shabak (Israel Security Agency, or Shin Bet) media release [reported here] is that the key person behind the Hamas terror cell discovered during November 2017 is Abdallah Arar. He had been part of that Hamas gang that murdered Sasson Nuriel in 2005. For the record, the Jerusalem Post says today that the gang consisted of five members.

Arar was deported to the Gaza Strip in the 2011 Shalit Deal. (Our daughter's murderer, Ahlam Tamimi, walked free in the same transaction.) Like so many other terrorists who were released at that time, he promptly went back to doing more terror.

The investigation into the cell and Arar's involvement is "currently being handled by the military prosecution, which is examining the investigation's findings prior to filing an indictment", according to the INN report.

18-Feb-16: A Palestinian Arab reminder this afternoon of what, in their eyes, children are good for

Time for people to better understand who provides
the knives, the encouragement and the inspiration
that is destroying the lives of  poorly-educated,
highly motivated Pal Arab youths

Not for the first time [refer back to December 2014 and November 2015], a branch of the Rami Levy supermarket chain, known for its open and welcoming approach to Palestinian Arabs on both sides of the shopping transaction, has become the scene of a violent Arab-on-Israeli terror attack.

First reports came around 4:45 pm this afternoon, near dusk. From Times of Israel in the past hour:

Two Israelis were wounded, one of them seriously, in a suspected terror stabbing in an industrial zone north of Jerusalem Thursday afternoon. The stabbing occurred in a supermarket belonging to the Rami Levy chain in the Sha’ar Binyamin industrial zone, located southeast of Ramallah in the West Bank. One of the victims, a 17-year-old, was said to be in moderate condition, while the second, 35, was in moderate-to-serious condition. Two Palestinian stabbers were shot by a civilian. They were reported to be in serious condition and were described by an eyewitness as “very young children.”

We don't know for sure at this stage whether that is true or not. We do note that the Palestinian Arab media are describing the attackers as aged 17 and 35. See Ma'an News Agency's report here. This is almost certainly wrong.

Ma'an News Agency, a Palestinian Arab source (screen shot). Note how old Ma'an,
but almost no one else, thinks the attackers are

In characteristic fashion, the Ma'an article spins some self-serving context by writing: "A wave of small-scale attacks carried out by Palestinian individuals in the occupied Palestinian territory -- predominantly on Israeli military targets -- have increasing targeting illegal settlements this month... International bodies have attempted to quell the ongoing violence through urging restraint by both Israeli and Palestinian leadership." Most of that is factually plain wrong including, we are fairly certain, the ages of the Arab attackers.

We know now [6:30 pm Thursday] that a 21-year-old Israeli is seriously wounded (now receiving emergency treatment at Shaarei Zedek in Jerusalem) and a 36-year-old Israeli is moderately injured (now in the emergency room at Hadassah). People who pray have been asked to have in mind the names of טובי׳ה ינאי בן אורלי and אברהם בן חמדה (Tuvia Yanai ben Orly, and Avraham Ben Hemda) for a Refuah Shleimah, a full recovery.

Haaretz says "The attackers were both are said to be alive and en route to an Israeli hospital."

The supermarket where this evening's attack was carried out [Image Source]

This seems a good time to point to the highly-political campaign being waged right now by supporters of Palestinian Arab terror in the social media under the hashtag @FreeAhmadManasrah. That name belongs to a child of 13 who was part of a two-child stabbing spree (along with a cousin a mere two years older who died in the effort) in Pisgat Ze'ev, a northern Jerusalem neighbourhood a few minutes drive from the scene of this afternoon's stabbing. We explored some of the issues in a post ["12-Nov-15: What about Palestinian Arab terror gives it that unique savagery?"] at the time.

Those behind that morality-deficient campaign to free the child (immediately) and to absurdly blame the Israelis for the freedom-limiting changes that have come over his life can legitimately be thought of as among the authors of today's knifings.

When those social activists and "human rights" protestors starting giving thought to the dozens of victims of child-enacted Palestinian Arab lethal violence - on both sides - we can start assessing their claims in different tones.

We can put numbers to the scale of the disaster. A report published yesterday [Ynet, February 17, 2016] based on data collected by the Shin Bet and the Israeli military, finds that about half of the 200+ perpetrators of terrorist attacks against Israelis in the past five months are under the age of 20, About ten percent are under the age of 16.

We are witnesses to a massive loss of moral compass in which children - as young as 11 - are encouraged by the instrumentalities of Palestinian Arab society to see stabbings, shootings, car rammings and bombings as acts of redemption, justified by a sense of feverishly-cultivated victimhood and sense of oppression, validated by the most powerful voices in Palestinian Arab society. The lethal incitement comes non-stop from (among others) the prime minister, the president, the religious establishment, the schools. Describing their society as being in the grip of a death cult seems a fair description to us.

Inside the store this evening [Social media source]

Back to this past hour's events, an attack during the week's busiest supermarket hours when Israeli families stock up for the upcoming Sabbath:

Paramedics treated the wounded at the scene of the attack and took the victims to Jerusalem hospitals. A large number of security forces were at the scene. An eyewitness identified as Uziel told Army Radio the supermarket was packed at the time of the attack. “I was in the middle of selecting vegetables inside when suddenly we heard screaming. Everyone immediately knew it was a terror attack.
“Within a matter of seconds soldiers and civilians with weapons rushed over…they shot the first terrorist and after 10 seconds or so they shot the second terrorist as well.”
[...A] military medic who was doing his shopping at the time ran over and gave the victims initial medical assistance. [The stabbers]  "both looked very young, children…everyone was in shock that these were kids — at least, they looked very young." The supermarket is located in an industrial zone frequented by Israeli settlers as well as Palestinian shoppers. Several attacks have taken place there in recent months... [Times of Israel]

UPDATE February 18, 2016 at 7:15 pm: Channel 10's correspondent Alon Ben David has tweeted that the attackers are aged 14 and 15, and one is now dead. Times of Israel says the knifers are children of 14 and 15 from the West Bank village of Beitunia, near Ramallah. Ma'an has now changed its report by deleting the bogus ages they quoted earlier, and that we screen-shot a few paragraphs above this. Times of Israel also reports that the younger of the two Israelis stabbed in the attack has now unfortunately succumbed to his wounds and died. His name is Tuvia Yanai Weissman.

8-Sep-06: Following Up the Almost-Entirely Unreported Story of Yet Another Stabbing

On 5th September, just a few days ago, we wrote about a stabbing in the Atarot industrial zone, not far from our north Jerusalem home.

Today it's reported that a Fatah operative, Ramaz Da'ar Haj, 24, from the village of Beituniya near Ramallah, was apprehended Tuesday. The Jerusalem Post says he had worked at two factories in the zone, had planned the attack well in advance, telling investigators that he had repeatedly practiced stabbing on his bedroom mattress.

Haj told investigators that he planned to carry out an attack on a Jew a year and a half ago in the city's northern French Hill neighborhood but changed his mind after encountering police in the area. On the morning of the attack, he came upon the factory worker and stabbed him in the shoulder from behind. The attacker had also concealed a second knife in the sole of his shoe, planning to stab his police investigators as well.

If, like us, you search for the terms "Palestinian" + "Unemployment" on Google News right now, this minute, you'll get 376 hits. The very first of them starts like this:

Some 75 percent of Palestinians live in poverty while there is a 65 percent unemployment rate...

It's from Socialist Worker Online, and there's nothing on that site about a 63 year-old proletarian Israeli being stabbed by a "desperate", terrorism-minded thug, strangely enough. Many of the other Google News results are along similar lines.

Meanwhile (as you can see from the picture at right, above) other Fatah operatives spent today trashing (again) the Palestinian parliament building in Gaza City. Thousands of them, well armed with expensive, high-power weapons that the PA say they can't afford, smashed windows in a violent protest on the fourth day of a strike called by Mahmoud Abbas over non-payment of civil service salaries.

Stabbing Israelis in the handful of industrial zones which employ Palestinian workers is a sure way to get those salaries paid.