11-May-18: An Arab-on-Israel vehicle ramming this afternoon

Just as the Sabbath siren is being heard here in Jerusalem, we are learning of another Arab-on-Israeli vehicle ramming attack that happened late this afternoon.

A soldier aged about 20, as yet unnamed, is lightly injured, says Times of Israel quoting a Samaria Regional Council spokesperson, when he was struck near the Israeli community of Shavei Shomron just before 6 this afternoon. The young man was treated by Magen David Adom ambulance personnel at the scene and then taken to hospital for further treatment.

The IDF's investigations support the idea that this was a terror attack, and the driver who fled the scene with his vehicle is now the subject of a manhunt.

We are also hearing of a second suspected vehicle ramming attack that happened around 6:35 pm in the Har Hevron vicinity. More details after the Sabbath.

UPDATE Saturday night, May 12, 2018: This is what the Chinese newsagency Xinhua knows:

A car hit a soldier at the Ganot Interchange adjacent to Shavei Shomron, west of Nablus. The driver fled the scene, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement. "Forces are searching for it," said the IDF. A second ramming attack took place near Hebron, where a driver attempted but failed to hit a soldier at a checkpoint, and the driver was arrested, Israeli media reported.

Still hoping to have more details to share.

30-Sep-16: South of Hebron this afternoon, a stabbing attack on a senior IDF commanding officer is thwarted

To Negohot [Image Source]

The initial reports are sketchy but it appears there has been a terrorism incident in the Hebron area this afternoon in which a senior officer almost became the victim.

From Ynet:

IDF forces arrested a young Palestinian Friday afternoon after discovering a knife on him during a check which took place after he approached the vehicle of Col. Itzik Cohen, commander of the Nahal Brigade and special forces, during a patrol of south Mount Hebron. The Palestinian knocked on the window prompting the soldiers to alight and conduct a search and arrest.

Via Hebrew social media sources, we see this happened around 2:30 pm this afternoon (Friday). That source also shows a snapshot of the would-be assailant's knife.

Israel National News has now named the senior officer as Colonel Itzik Cohen, an IDF brigade commander with top-level field operations responsibility in the Hebron zone. The attack took place near Negohot, in the region known as the South Hebron Hills (meaning Area C and therefore under full Israeli control):

The terrorist, who was armed with a knife, approached the soldiers who were standing near Negohot in the western Hevron Hills. He attempted to stab the brigade commander Colonel Itzik Cohen. The soldiers who were present managed to stop him in time. Initial investigations show that the soldier who was securing the area spotted the terrorist approaching the senior commander's vehicle. When the soldier stopped the terrorist for questioning, he found that the suspect was holding a knife behind his back. Additional soldiers who were in the area gained control over the terrorist. No one was hurt.

Negahot has the dubious distinction of currently being one of Israel's four most-vulnerable communities. A report just two weeks ago [here] said the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset - whose work covers the foreign affairs of the state, its armed forces and its security, was told that the IDF Homefront Command considers four Yehuda and Shomron communities to be under especially significant security threat. They are Elon Moreh, Otniel, Karmei Tzur and Negahot. The IDF urged the government to enhance the defenses of those places immediately, which may explain the presence of a senior officer there this afternoon.

03-Jan-16: Another day in an ongoing war

Hussein Dawabshe interviewed this week [Image Source]

A cold, rainy and somewhat gloomy January day, and terrorism has insinuated its way into the lives of Israelis in almost every part of the country. In no particular order:

• After Friday's murderous point-blank shooting attack on patrons (and staff) at a busy, central Tel Aviv drinking place on Friday afternoon [see our posts of Friday afternoon and Saturday night], the manhunt for Nashat Melhem continued all day today (Sunday). We happened to visit north Tel Aviv's Ibn Gabirol precinct this afternoon, and saw something we are accustomed to seeing regularly in Jerusalem, but rarely outside it: heavily armed rapid-response police riding in pairs on fast motor bikes. Ynet says security forces are patrolling the city in large numbers, "focusing on north Tel Aviv, where Melhem was last seen and where he is believed to still be hiding since the attack on Friday. They are still waiting for the terrorist to make a mistake, or for a "golden tip" that would lead them to him." There's concern the fugitive gunman will launch another attack: "Because of that, the Tel Aviv municipality decided to increase security across the city, particularly around education institutions, including Tel Aviv University. Despite that, many parents chose not to send their children to school. According to the municipality, in the north of the city only about 50 percent of the students came to school..." 
• Two men murdered in Friday's attack, Alon Bakal and Shimon Ruimi, were buried today. Thousands attended the two funerals in Carmiel and Ofakim. There remain about ten individuals who are still being treated for their injuries. A third victim has still not yet been definitively connected to the Friday terror attack, but tragically is as dead as the other two. He is Amin Shaban, a taxi driver and an Israeli Muslim Arab murdered in north Tel Aviv on Friday afternoon about an hour after the Dizengoff shootings. Two hundred of his family and friends, including his three widows and 11 children, gathered in Lod this afternoon to lay him to rest. Ynet quotes family members saying they still do not know whether his murder is connected to the Dizengoff attack. "There are a lot of rumors and the family is not being updated. There is still an attempt to see if the background is criminal, and that's bizarre because there's no chance".
• Around 4 this afternoon (Sunday) in Jerusalem's Armon Hanatziv ("Government House") precinct, a Palestinian Arab knife man launched a stabbing attack on a civilian waiting at a bus stop on Barazani Street. He pulled out his knife and managed to stab but failed (because the weapon became bent out of shape) to penetrate the skin of his intended victim, a person he, of course, did not know. He then fled in the direction of nearby Sur Baher, an Arab community. A Jerusalem Post report says security forces "launched a manhunt shortly after initial distress calls and apprehended a suspect who fits the description given by eyewitnesses". He was arrested.
• At about 2:00 this afternoon, a female soldier was struck and wounded in a sniper-fire shooting attack at a security checkpoint close to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. A search was conducted by Israeli security forces of the area. Haaretz says the shooter is believed to have fired from one of the adjoining Palestinian Arab residences: "A 20-year-old female Israeli soldier was moderately wounded... She was evacuated to Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem. Security forces are combing the area... Magen David Adom paramedic Hanoch Zalinger Siffer said... "She was shot in the lower body, and we provided medical treatment while evacuating her to the hospital", which we understand was Shaarei Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.
• Indictments were announced this morning for several Jewish males - some of them minors - accused of involvement in the firebombing of a residence in the Arab village of Duma ["31-Jul-15: In the wake of a lethal arson attack"]. This disturbing story is going to be with us for some time to come. For now, here is what Hussein Dawabsha, an elderly member of the clan whose daughter, son-in-law and grandson died in the fire on July 31, 2015, reportedly said in an interview today: "There is no law nor justice in Israel. It’s one big show... The Israeli court system, the State of Israel is a dark country. They will probably decide to put them in prison for several years and then release them. Instead of killing them like they killed my boy and my grandson... Those who burned my family should themselves be burned... Only an intifada will avenge the death of the Dawabsha family. They should continue with more attacks, having faith in Allah. Only in this way we will achieve our rights." We say that putting terrorists into prison and then releasing them a short time later is indeed a serious issue and a heavy, almost insurmountable, challenge to justice in this country. We suspect Grandfather Dawabsha is unaware that by far the majority of those walking free - like the more-than-a-thousand convicted terrorists, many of them murderers of Jewish Israelis, who were set loose in the Shalit Deal in 2011 - were, of course, Palestinian Arabs. And most of them have sickeningly murderous views similar to his.
• Grandfather Dawabsha's ugly threats contrast greatly with the messages issued in his name half a year ago in the immediate aftermath of the Duma village deaths. Here's what he is reported to have said in a Times of Israel interview published August 2, 2015 [here]: He had been a construction worker who helped build Chaim Sheba Medical Center, the vast Tel Aviv hospital where doctors are today working to save the life of his four-year-old grandson Ahmad. "My friends are Jews. I worked here, and helped build the buildings at the Sheba Medical Center where my relatives are now hospitalized... We want to live. Please join our prayer for their recovery — Jews and Arabs — so that my grandson will be the last victim of the terror war... We are simple people, who pursue and seek peace,.. We don’t want terror on either side, and we condemn it." For reasons which ought to be obvious, there's no reason to be surprised.
• A shooting attack in the Har Hevron area around 6 this evening has resulted in injuries to an Israeli male. Times of Israel says he is an IDF soldier; his injuries are believed to be non-life-threatening. No word on the shooter. Further details to come.
• Saturday night, shots were fired at vehicles traveling the Tunnel Road that connects Jerusalem with the Gush Etzion communities to its south, passing through and underneath hills on the south and east of Bethlehem. The section of Route 60 running to, through and from the tunnel was closed to traffic for some hours while security personnel sought the shooter, effectively isolating thousdands of households in Efrat, Alon Shvut and other sizable communities in the Gush Etzion area. Ynet says the sole victim of the shooting is a Palestinian Arab driver, whose injuries are not life-threatening. The shooter has not yet been apprehended.

Another day.

31-Aug-10: Once again, the terrorists deliver their message

Israelis know from bitter experience that when Palestinian Arab political leaders are arm-wrestled into taking part in discussions about peace with the Israelis, other Palestinian Arab political leaders will take the opportunity to remind the onlooking world that they are really, really desperate, and will murder Israeli civilians to show just how desperate.

Tragically it's happening again tonight.

In the past hour, at the entrance to the Israeli community of Kiryat Arba, south of Jerusalem, four Israeli civilians were shot dead by Palestinian Arab gunmen. We know less than all the facts at this stage. 

But we know enough to report that the four, traveling in one car, were probably residents of Beit Hagai, in the Judean Hills south of Hebron. YNet quotes ambulance officers saying the victims include two men aged about 25 and 40, and two women of about the same ages, one of them pregnant. 

The attackers apparently followed up the initial volley of shots by walking over to the vehicle and shooting the two couples again at close range before fleeing the scene - a cold-blooded, hate-driven execution of innocents. The vehicle was sprayed with dozens of bullets.

The attack took place just as the Ramadan fast was ending at nightfall. Ynet quotes a Palestinian Arab security official saying this is the work of Hamas. It then quotes Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas terrorist spokesperson, saying the attack was not meant to foil direct peace talks starting today in Washington, but that the negotiations had failed even before starting.

Listen to the words of the jihadists: 

"This is a natural response by the Palestinian resistance to the enemy's crimes, and is proof that despite the resistance's persecution by the security services and despite Israel's crimes, the Palestinians are capable of responding to these crimes. This is proof that the Palestinian resistance is living, breathing, and kicking."

The jihadists speak very clearly. The question is whether the rest of us are listening.

UPDATE Wednesday morning:  The victims of last night's Hamas ambush and executions are Talya and Yitzhak Ames the parents of six children 18-months-old and up; Cochava Even-Haim; and Avishai Schindler. All were residents of Beit Hagai.