07-Mar-15: For some, but only some, Friday's Jerusalem ramming/slashing was yet another terror attack

The Jerusalem Arab who rammed his car into
Israeli pedestrians on Friday [Image Source: Ynet]

We now know that the dramatic events we described on Friday morning ["06-Mar-15: Jerusalem, Purim and terror... once again"] were a classic terror attack. They involved an ideologically committed jihadist who signaled ahead of time that he planned to do it; a loving mother (a genre with which we are only too familiar) who beams with pride at her son's murderous passions; a car driven into a group of pedestrians; and a thwarted attempt to seriously maim and kill people via a butcher knife that failed only because alert people with guns sized up the situation and popped the attacker, leaving him lying in a pool of his own blood, but alive.

Here's what we now know happened.

First, yes, it was certainly a terror attack, executed by a Jerusalem Arab. Several news sources (this Times of Israel story for instance) say he advertised his intentions via Facebook a day before. His mother supports the son's 'heroic' ploughing down of defenseless pedestrians.

Of course, the state of journalism being what it is, major newsagencies like Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported Friday's attack without once mentioning the words "terror", "terrorism" or "terrorists". The closest AFP came was to say

The car ramming on Friday bore the hallmarks of a series of "lone wolf" attacks by Palestinians in Jerusalem last year. [AFP as carried by Telegraph UK yesterday]

As for the BBC with its notoriously selective see-no-terrorism policy, see BBC Watch for another fine example of its usual penetrating critical analysis.

The attacker is Mohammed Salaymeh from the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Ras al-Amud, according to family members. (The Jerusalem Post has his name as Mohammed Mahmoud Abdel Razek Salaima.) His portrait above shows a proclivity for wrapping Palestinian Arab flags around his torso.

His 'resistance' activity involved pointing his Honda sedan at a group of young Israelis standing on the sidewalk in the vicinity of a Jerusalem Light Rail tram stop on the city's Route 1. At about 10:00 am, Friday morning, Purim in Jerusalem and thus a day on which many Jerusalemites were on the streets, he managed to strike five people. Four were young women, all serving in the Border Police, all in their twenties, all standing near the entrance to the Border Police centre.

He then drove several hundred meters further along the road where he then struck a bicycle rider said to be in his fifties. All five victims suffered light-to-moderate injuries.

Same terrorist, immediately
after his attack was forcefully stopped
by alert security personnel
[Screen shot from eye-witness
video]

The terrorists was armed with
this butcher knife [Image Source]

After smashing his car into the people, the terrorist jumped out, brandishing a butcher’s knife that he used to slash at passersby. Fortunately, before he caused more injuries, the terrorist was shot and neutralized, though not killed, by an alert Border Policeman and a Jerusalem Light Rail security guard at the scene. He is in a Jerusalem hospital now, getting Israeli medical care.

No one here thinks for a moment that this terrorist attack was the last of its kind.

06-Mar-15: Jerusalem, Purim and terror... once again

Without wishing to make a tense situation more so, Purim - which Jerusalem uniquely celebrates today (Friday) a day after the rest of the world - is too frequently associated with acts of terror. (Last year, for instance.)  There appears to have been one in the past hour. It's now 10:00 am Friday and ambulance and police sirens are being heard here in northern Jerusalem as we write this.

Five people, according to a very partial report via Walla!, have been injured in a running-down attack a very short time ago, in which a car struck them on Jerusalem's Shmon Hatzadik Street, near the Jerusalem Light Rail station on Route 1. A different report (Hebrew) says there is a stabbing involved as well, and two female police officers are injured.

According to Ynet (posted at 10:07 am): "According to initial reports, a man rammed his car into a group of Israelis waiting for Jerusalem's Light Rail on Friday morning. Early reports suggest at least three individuals were wounded in the attack."

According to one report, this is today's attack scene opposite the Shimon
Hatzadik quarter and on Jerusalem's busy Route 1 [Image Source]

Israel National News says (at 10:30 am):

ZAKA reported Friday morning that a rampage terror attack occurred a short time ago near the Border Patrol's base in the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood in Jerusalem. Initial reports indicate that an Arab driver mowed down three border policewomen on a city sidewalk, injuring them; differing reports indicate that the terrorist left the vehicle and began stabbing them as well, but this has yet to be confirmed. The perpetrator was apprehended; four people - some policewomen - are injured and listed in mild to moderate condition. 

Another report, unpublished, says a meat cleaver was involved, the attacker has been shot, and the people who were run down were all females.

UPDATE: Here's how The Guardian reports it ["Palestinian motorist rams pedestrians in Jerusalem"] in a story that uploaded around 11:30 am Friday, Jerusalem time:

A Palestinian motorist rammed his vehicle into a group of pedestrians standing near a Jerusalem tram stop, injuring at least four, Israeli police said. The incident, which police are treating as a suspected terrorist attack, occurred close to an Israeli border police station on a main road near East Jerusalem, the predominantly Arab side of the city. Police said the driver got out of the vehicle and attempted to stab passersby before he was shot and wounded by a security guard. None of those hit by the car were seriously injured. Friday’s incident happened close to the scenes of a spate of similar attacks late last year when Palestinians drivers rammed their cars into people waiting at tram stops. In those attacks, three people were killed and around a dozen wounded.

Anyone with eyes and a sense of daily events in this part of the world understands that the use of the word "suspected" is entirely superfluous in that account. Nonetheless, we can be certain the clans-people and family members of the driver/attacker will soon claim tearfully, in the spirit of nothing-ventured-nothing-gained, that the poor fellow's GPS malfunctioned while he was driving to volunteer at a soup kitchen for the indigent; the vehicle then skidded out of control into the people standing on the footpath or platform, and the knife or axe or whatever caused the stabbing/slashing injuries to the innocents on the street inexplicably flew into his hand from some unknown recess of the car where parties unknown had hidden it for unknowable reasons. He's an innocent victim.

20-Feb-15: Jerusalem and Paris: Abuse and disabuse

Screen-grab from the Paris video

Here's TIME's coverage of a thoroughly-viral video that tries to throw some light on what it means to be a Jew living in one Europe's most civilized and appealing capital cities:

Zvika Klein, a journalist who works for the Israeli news outlet NRG, filmed himself walking the streets of Paris for ten hours one day while wearing a yarmulke. The video opens with Klein putting on the traditional Jewish skullcap in front of the Eiffel Tower, before walking around the city. Along the way, Klein experiences what he describes as “fear and loathing,” as the camera catches people spitting on the ground near him, shouting “Viva Palestine” or simply saying, “Jew” or “Juif.” The video has been edited down into a minute and a half and Klein had to go to areas where he, or any outsider, was likely to arouse attention. Klein, who wore a tzitzit or tasseled prayer garment to emphasise his identity, told the BBC that filming took place earlier this month and that while few incidents took place in the central areas of Paris, the outskirts of the city were a different story. “As we went to the suburbs, or certain neighbourhoods in the city, the remarks became more violent,” he said. (Klein also told the BBC that some bystanders also spoke out against the abusive comments he received.) [Watch the Abuse This Jewish Man Gets as He Walks Through Paris | Megan Gibson | TIME | February 17, 2015]

The video itself is posted on YouTube [click] where it has been seen 4.2 million times as of this morning. At a guess, we think some proportion of those viewers are likely to come away mistakenly convinced that if Jewish/Moslem (or Israel/Arab) relations are this bad in the bosom of European culture, they're bound to be as bad or worse in the hateful, uncivilized Middle East.

We live in Jerusalem. It's a city where Jews, Christians, Moslems and a broad spectrum of the faithful and the not-so-focused-on-faith live, visit and bump up against each other daily. You see it on the trams, buses and streets as well as in stores, hospitals and eateries. Spend time in Jerusalem's down-town area and you're struck by the very visible, disproportionate presence of Arabs, particularly since the Jerusalem light rail (tram) network began operating in 2010 after nearly a decade of construction. (Nonetheless it is routinely stoned as it passes through Arab neighbourhoods.)

This doesn't stop the snide comments from outside about how our's is an apartheid society. Easy to say, but a little harder to believe once you walk around. 

Jerusalem light rail

Security here is a reality that Jerusalemites and Israelis take in their stride by necessity. (Our daughter's murder in 2001 happened in a pizzeria where no security guard was posted, and no security barrier was yet in place.) Whatever people think of its significance or what it symbolizes, the lives it has saved, and the open interaction among people that it enables, ought to be beyond question. Tensions certainly exist if you go looking for them - though nothing close to what is depicted in the video from Paris. And from our own experience in dozens of visits to Paris and other European cities, tensions - particularly at a time of terrorism - exist. So, alongside the problems, does co-existence. It's such a natural part of life here that it's rarely talked about.

Here are some snapshots of Jerusalem life and a look at the unremarkable presence of Arabs (please especially the widespread presence of unaccompanied, unafraid women) as part of the life and fabric of the city.

Sisters waiting for family member to emerge after treatment
Shaarei Zedek Medical Center

Downtown Jerusalem last summer

Hadassah Medical Center, Ein Karem where she evidently
works on the nursing staff

Shopping arcade at Hadassah Medical Center, Ein Karem

Visiting a new mother: Shaarei Zedek Medical Center

Makeshift breakfast in the family waiting area outside
a surgical suite at Shaarei Zedek

On board the Jerusalem Light Rail: multiple destinations,
varied origins [Source: Tablet Magazine] 

(The images are deliberately low-res and faces have been disguised. We have no desire to intrude on people's privacy.)

Israelis and those who visit here might be wondering why the reality of people living different styles of life in this city even needs discussing. The NRG video from Paris is the answer. Israel's war with the terrorists is not so different from everyone else's. Israel's ability, learned the hardest-possible way, to safeguard the conditions for ongoing, ordinary, unremarkable lives is also not so different. In fact, compared with how some other countries' capital cities are dealing with their challenges, you might think things are not too shabby here.

27-Oct-14: Another quiet, decent life whose tragic end fails to merit news reporting

Second victim of the terror attack on passengers waiting for
a Jerusalem tram [Image Source]

The ever-more-heartbreaking account of innocent people caught up in the vile blood-lust of men and women with terrorist savagery on their minds grew by one more name this morning.

In addition to Chaya Zissel Braun, whose terribly brief life was forfeited in Jerusalem this past Wednesday evening to the murderous intentions of a Palestinian Arab man armed with a car, there is another. As Times of Israel reports today, a young woman from Ecuador, Karen Yemima Mosquera, had come to Israel to convert to Judaism after discovering she was descended from Conversos, Spanish Jews who were forcibly converted to Catholicism in the course of the Spanish Inquisition in the fifteenth century.

Karen suffered critical injuries in the terror attack when Abdelrahman Shaludi rammed his car into Jerusalem's Ammunition Hill Light Rail station. He fled the scene on foot immediately after completing his jihadist mission, and was shot dead by police who pursued him. The young woman struggled with her injuries until Sunday evening at Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem before succumbing to them. The funeral took place (as happens often in this city) after midnight in the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. Hundreds attended:

Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday flew in Muscara’s [we think their spelling is wrong] parents after she suffered head wounds and was seriously injured in the attack. Her mother said Sunday that her daughter’s dream had been to come to Israel and build her life here, but her life was cut short. [Times of Israel]

Haaretz (only) has this striking quote:

Speaking at Hadassah Medical Center, where Mosquera died, the mother added: "People always say things against Israel in the news, but when you come here you see the truth."

But not everyone does. As far as we can tell this morning in the wake of her death, only a handful of non-Israeli media reports mention the murdered young woman by name. The terrorist who killed her, by contrast, is all over the web, as are sympathetic photos of his grieving sisters, grandmother and other family members. His hero status, certified by both Palestinian Arab regimes (the Mahmoud Abbas-led PA and Hamas), is assured.

24-Oct-14: Imagine if the NYTimes knew how to sincerely apologize

The infant Chaya Zissel Braun
of blessed memory

Jodi Rudoren
New York Times Jerusalem Bureau
Jerusalem, Israel

Dear Mrs Rudoren

We are writing to you for the first time. It's about something quite shocking you published on your Twitter account this morning.

You Tweeted a link to an article penned by one of your NYT Jerusalem colleagues. It relates to a sickening attack - one that epitomizes what most people think about when they call an act 'cowardly' - by a violent Palestinian Arab man, Abdel Rahman Al-Shaludi, with a demonstrated commitment to terror and violence, driving a car.

But someone in your newspaper tacked the words "police say" onto the headline. So reasonable people are going to know that there's no compelling reason to believe it was what the police say at all.

But what we do know is Al-Shaludi very deliberately, and at devastatingly high speed, veered off Jerusalem's Route 1 on which he was traveling on Wednesday evening and drove directly into a cluster of ordinary Israelis standing on the platform of a Jerusalem Light Rail stop. As you may know, that's the public transport system that makes it so simple - finally - for Arab Jerusalemites to head into the center of town comfortably, cheaply and often, which they now do in strikingly large numbers.

The unsuspecting Israelis were mowed down like skittles. All, that is, apart from one, a tiny, pretty girl baby of three months old. She was flung violently into the air, we heard, but what was done to her tiny body is irrelevant to us at this point. Her grieving parents buried her last night.

Driver Plows Into Group at Jerusalem Train Station, Killing Baby, Police Say, via @nytimes http://t.co/Q6aOyf8lm6
— Jodi Rudoren (@rudoren) October 23, 2014

Was there any room, at any point in the past 24 hours, for doubt about the malevolence of the driver's intent? And if you say yes, then we will humor you by saying it's par for the course that the ideological zealots of a minor Arab news channel will quote "witnesses... [who] stressed that the incident appeared to be an accident", and the killer's family will insist the former security prisoner didn't have a political bone in his body.

You will surely agree that smart reporters for big metropolitan newspapers know how to look right through those tissues of self-serving narrative, right? But since that did not happen in this case - at least not at the NYTimes - can we point you to what the security cameras at the location picked up?:



If this fails to clarify matters, then perhaps one of these reports can help put the killing of an infant into a somewhat sharper perspective:

• The Fatah organization which is the largest component of the Palestinian Authority and is headed by Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president, glorified the killer today by posting a flowery obituary on its Facebook page: "The Palestinian National Liberation Movement [Fatah] Silwan branch accompanies to his wedding [a euphemism for funeral] the heroic Martyr Abd Al-Rahman Al-Shaloudi who carried out the Jerusalem operation, in which settlers in the occupied city of Jerusalem were run over. Rest in peace, we are loyal to you..." [PMW, today].
• An official Hamas statement that borders on self-parody (but is tragically consistent with many previous such Islamist grotesqueries) calls Chaya Zissel Braun, the baby killed in the attack, a "female settler". Here's the context: "The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas praises its son, the hero martyr Abd al Rahman Idris al-Shaludi (23 years) implementer of the operation of running over the settlers in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem, which led to the death of a female settler and the injury of 8 others..." [Source: Investigative Project, today] 

But to be honest, what prompted us to write now is not to quote Arab reports to you but rather a fierce desire to hear you say something contrite. Like this for instance:

"Yes, friends, for a moment my colleagues and I here in Israel's capital and in our company's editorial suites in Manhattan, did indeed lose our moral compasses again last night. But we're better now. We realize we should not have resorted to those cheap and nasty weasel words "police say" when that headline was composed. We ought to have made it clear that something breathtakingly ugly and dangerous was done last night, and anyone with eyes could and can see it for what it is. The cruel attack in north Jerusalem fits a pattern, it stems from ongoing incitement, it does no good for anyone and it cripples and damages Arab society at least as much as it does the Israeli side - and probably more so. At the Times, we like to pretend that we don't judge, so we "adopt" what the police or a judge or some official source said and then say it in their name when it suits us. That way, we make it look like it was not us reaching conclusions. But actually, we know you have noticed that we have no difficulty at all in engaging in moral judgement of horrible human behaviour. It's part of what made us journalists in the first place. The trouble is, we just don't feel we can do it when the horrible human behaviour is done by the jihadist side. Why not? Too hard to explain just now. But since the video showing the Palestinian Arab mowing down the poor Israeli victims on the light-rail platform was published today, there's no reason for us to continue the silliness. So for the record - of course this was terror, and of course it's appalling - but not at all surprising - that both parts of the failed Palestinian Arab state rushed to glorify his sickening deed in their time-honored, customary fashion. And unless and until something really fundamental changes on the Arab side, we despair of where their addiction to terror is taking them. And yes, we do feel much better now that is off our chests.

It will be perfectly alright for you to change the words to suit your own style, Jodi. And we don't need you to do it publicly. Being bereaved parents ourselves, we know how uncomfortable some people can become in our presence. And we have learned how very hard it can be for people in the news reporting industry to face up to unpalatable realities that clash with the spirit of the times (and The Times) or the policies of their employer. So it's enough if you just say it in a private email sent to thisongoingwar@gmail.com. We will be happy to respect your privacy.

Sincerely,
The bloggers at This Ongoing War