22-Apr-20: Jerusalem: Pandemic or not, the terrorism goes on

Teddy Stadium, Jerusalem [Image Source]

We haven't done much blogging lately. No, we're not traveling. Nor are we dealing with back-to-back meetings as sometimes has happened in a previous era.

But in the current circumstances with a virus-borne plague turning life upside down everywhere, we've been distracted with the exigencies of life: staying indoors at home, worrying about family, taking care of food and supplies, protective items and hygiene aids. And engaging in numerous on-line meetings and webinars.

We're planning to do some catching up, starting now.

It's always clear to anyone watching that the practitioners of terror are generally motivated enough to keep at it even when their targets are pre-occupied. That's been made manifest here via two troubling reports.

Word emerged in the past hour of terrorist arrests made by Israeli security in March. As reported by Times of Israel ["Shin Bet says it arrested Palestinians planning bombing of Jerusalem stadium"] today, the suspects are accused of

planning to carry out terror attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank, including a bombing in the capital’s Teddy Stadium, the Shin Bet security service says.... The three members of the terror cell — Ahmad Sajdaya, Muhammad Hammad, and Umar Eid — initially planned to construct a bomb and set it off in Teddy Stadium, performing reconnaissance operations and other preparations, before realizing that this would be too difficult to carry out due to the venue’s tight security. Instead, the trio planned to carry out bombing attacks on IDF troops in the West Bank and attempted a number of attacks last month... [They] also assisted in a number of attempted bombings against Israeli troops in recent years.

The Teddy Stadium, inaugurated in 1990 and named for long-time Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kolek, is owned by the Jerusalem municipality and has room for some 32,000 patrons. the largest sports stadium in the Middle East.

An updated report from Times of Israel adds these details:

• All three suspects were members of Kutla Islamiya, a university campus organization affiliated with the Islamist terrorists of Hamas.
• They got to know each when all three attended Birzeit University, located in Birzeit, near Ramallah, north of Jordan in an area controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Birzeit started life in 1924 as an elementary school for girls and acquired university status, while under Israeli control, in 1975.
• Sajdaya who is from Qalandiya has a history of involvement with explosive devices and lost part of a hand in a bomb preparation "accident" a few years ago.
• Eid, from Deir Jarir, holds an Israeli identity (blue) card. This helped him attend a soccer match at the Teddy Stadium a year ago. His goal was to gather intelligence with a view to blowing it up.
• Hammad, from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Kafr Aqab, does not have permanent Israeli residency.

It's a developing story.

And earlier in the day [Wednesday] in Jerusalem again, a Palestinian Arab driving a van through a security crossing (commonly known as the Kiosk Checkpoint) east of Jerusalem near the city of Maale Adumim at about 8:00 am carried out a combined vehicle-ramming and stabbing attack. 

The attacker was eventually shot dead by armed Border Police forces after running down and hurting a twenty-year-old officer standing in the security checkpoint. The driver then leapt from his vehicle, brandishing a pair of scissors which he used to stab the already injured Israeli. This is captured in the security camera video above.

The as-yet unnamed Israeli is reported in moderate condition and recovering in hospital.

Times of Israel says a pipe-bomb was found in the attacker's possession, indicating advance planning (notwithstanding the use of scissors) and a desire to inflict more serious losses than running down an Israeli sceurity person would suggest.

In the Aljazeera version, the attacker is identified as Ibrahim Halsa, 25, from the village of Sawahra. If they're right, it's located on Jerusalem's south-eastern edge. Israel National News reports that a number of

"Arabs were injured in clashes in a-Sawahra village in the Jerusalem area, home of the Islamic operative who carried out the attack. Residents burned tires and IDF forces fired rubber bullets at them."

The late attacker's family, sad to relate, now become eligible under the Palestinian Authority's bizarre reward scheme ("Pay to Slay, it's commonly called) for the families of dead terrorists.
 

UPDATE 8:30 pm: And now reports of fires raging inside two of the several buildings that make up the Jerusalem City Hall complex. The Jerusalem Post says:

The fire began in the main building of the complex... Once the fire was detected emergency procedures were activated and police and firefighters were called to the scene. The cause of the fire is still unknown. Eight teams of firefighters are currently at work putting out the fire and searching for anyone who might be trapped in the building.
Police arrested a 40-year-old man for allegedly starting the fire. The man is reportedly a resident of East Jerusalem. Molotov cocktails were allegedly found at the scene, according to a Kan News report citing a City Hall official.

More when we know it.

11-Apr-19: Two more thwarted terror attacks at heavily-traveled security checkpoint outside Jerusalem

Image Source: Video of the young female attacker
recorded from inside the Arab bus [Source]

Too many observers of what goes on here in Israel talk about terrorism being behind us, finished, defeated. 

It's certainly not so.

A Palestinian woman tried to stab security forces while they were checking a bus passing through the A'Zaim checkpoint next to Jerusalem on Wednesday. Police fired into the air and police detectives who happened to be in the area were able to incapacitate the woman and take away the knife. No injuries were reported. The woman is being interrogated.
On Tuesday, at the same checkpoint, multiple guns and magazines and hundreds of bullets were found in the car of a Palestinian family. The driver's wife, young daughter and days-old son were in the car when it was stopped. [Jerusalem Post, April 10, 2019]

The "Palestinian woman" in yesterday's mid-afternoon attack looks to us more like a girl than an adult woman. Israel National News says she was a resident of Tulkarm.

The video captured from inside the Arab bus out of which she emerged during what we think was a routine security check leaves no doubt that she was armed with and was brandishing a knife. In the specific circumstances, it's clear she was more interested in offense than defence.

A-Zaim (sometimes written Az-Za'ayyem and Al-Zaim; א-זעיים in Hebrew; الزعيم in Arabic) is a busy security checkpoint on one of the roads connecting Maale Adumim with Israel's capital.

A 16 year-old Arab female was intercepted just three months ago ["30-Jan-19: Pal Arab would-be stabber, a 16 year old girl, is stopped before executing an attack near Jerusalem"] at the very same location on Jerusalem's eastern edge. The outcome was far more serious then:

A Palestinian teenage girl was shot dead as she tried to stab an Israeli security officer at a checkpoint outside Jerusalem on Wednesday, police said. According to police, the assailant attacked one of the guards at the A’Zaim crossing east of the capital, in the central West Bank. The Palestinian girl was identified as Samah Mubarak, 16, from the nearby village of al-Ram, the Palestinian Authority’s official Wafa news agency reported... Israeli security officials have said that many attacks by Palestinians, especially women, are driven by personal and domestic issues, more than by ideological considerations. In some cases, Israeli officials have said Palestinians appeared to have carried out attacks or attempted to do so in order to be shot dead by Israeli security forces, as a form of “suicide by cop.” [Times of Israel, January XX, 2019]

Again at A-Zaim, two days ago:

...multiple guns and magazines and hundreds of bullets were found in the car of a Palestinian family. The driver's wife, young daughter and days-old son were in the car when it was stopped. [Jerusalem Post, April 10, 2019]

No one seems to be noting in the news reports (there are very few of them) how appalling it is that a man smuggling a serious weapons cache would use his family, including a new-born infant, as human shields.

30-Jan-19: Pal Arab would-be stabber, a 16 year old girl, is stopped before executing an attack near Jerusalem

From the police security cam video

In yet another instance of a thwarted attack by a weaponized child, a teenage Palestinian Arab girl launched a stabbing attack on an Israeli officer at the A-Za'im security checkpoint east of the capital between Ma'ale Adumim and Jerusalem today (Wednesday) at about 10:15 am.

An Israel Police statement, quoted by Times of Israel, said

"A rapid response by additional security forces brought about her neutralization with no injuries to the security personnel... Police are investigating where the female suspect came from, and heightened security is continuing in the area."

The same media source speculates that this may be yet another instance of 

attacks by Palestinians, especially women, [that] are driven by personal and domestic issues, more than by ideological considerations. In some cases, Israeli officials have said Palestinians appeared to have carried out attacks or attempted to do so in order to be shot dead by Israeli security forces, as a form of "suicide by cop".

Later in the day, the assailant was identified in Arab media as Samah Mubarak, aged 16, from the nearby village of a-Ram. A different Israeli news source says she was

Samah Zuhair Mubarak, an 11th grade student from Ramallah, whose family was originally from Gaza... [source]

She died of her wounds according to Palestinian Authority health ministry officials.

Video footage released by the police show a female, draped from head to toe in black and wearing black gloves, approaching the security personnel at the crossing. Police also circulated a photo of the knife in her possession - while throughout the Arab media reports we have scanned, it's claimed she was unarmed and executed in cold blood. 

None of the many thwarted Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks of the past three years (at least) has ever credibly been shown to meet that description. And A-Za'im has seen numerous Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks - vehicle-rammings, stabbings and bombings. 

The claim this time is embellished by the assertion, pulled out of thin air as far as we can tell, that the girl was shot after refusing to undress and remove her black robes. This line of explanation plays tragically well in Palestinian Arab circles.

08-Apr-18: In Ma'ale Adumim's industrial zone, a thwarted Arab-on-Israeli stabbing this afternoon

Ma'ale Adumim city skyline [Image Source: Flash90]

It's a glorious Sunday afternoon here in Jerusalem, and as Israel emerges from a week of Passover pleasures, everyone's aware of the murderous atmosphere being cultivated by the terrorists of Hamas. Their focus is of course on the Gaza/Israel border. But the impact of the reports emanating from there about dead and injured is felt in the wider Palestinian Arab sphere.

Reports emerged around 1:15 pm today of an Arab-on-Israeli attack on the edge of Ma'ale Adumim, a city just east of Jerusalem. The Times of Israel report says a Palestinian Arab male was stopped in the course of trying to stab a man at a gas station near Mishur Adumim, the thriving industrial section of the city which provides very well-paid employment for Palestinian Arabs ("I can bring a million people who want to work here, boasted Ahmed Nasser, taking a break from his job..." via Haaretz), making it a prize target for terrorists.

Today's suspected attacker was shot by an armed civilian bystander.

According to police, the suspect “had an object in his hand and tried to stab a man” who was at the gas station. An armed civilian opened fire at the suspect and “neutralized him,” the police said. The suspect’s condition was not immediately known. There were no Israeli injuries, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service.

We won't post them here but there are plenty of eye-witness cell phone snapshots of the aftermath on the Hebrew-language Rotter news site.

Ynet's report says

A suspected attack arrived at the gas station near Mishor Adumim early Sunday afternoon and attempted to stab an Israeli man with a screwdriver, police said. A civilian passing by with his car noticed the altercation, opened fire at the suspect and neutralized him. The suspected attacker, who is around 21 years old, was rushed to the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem's Mount Scopus in serious condition. Three people were treated from [sic] shock.

The latest reports we are seeing are that the alleged attacker is alive with life-threatening injuries after taking a shot in the head. A JTA report [here] says he's 31, and not as Ynet said. And this JNS report says his condition was described at Hadassah hospital as "critical", though the same report's headline says he is dead. That appears to be a mistake.

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.

11-Oct-15: Human bomb attack narrowly deflected near Jerusalem: connection to suicide is nil

Aftermath of this morning's human bomb assault

A Palestinian Arab woman, driving a white Subaru sedan slowly and in the bus lane of a busy commuter route during the Sunday morning rush hour, exploded her car and herself at about 7:00 am today (Sunday). Her license plates were yellow, like those of Israeli vehicles though not Palestinian Arab vehicles.

The explosion injured a police officer, and is currently causing a massive tie-up on the eastern approach to Maale Adumim, about 10 kilometers east of Jerusalem, the nation's capital. His (the officer's) injuries are not thought to be life-threatening.

Initial indications are that the vehicle had multiple explosives on board, and that the intention of the driver was to cause some very serious pain. Sappers have found additional unexploded materiel inside.

Meanwhile she herself is en route to Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital in Ein Karem where we assume the very best medical care in the region will be applied to her burns, her other self-inflicted injuries and her recovery (this is not Syria). She is said to be 20 years old, and until now had her whole life and huge potential ahead of her. We can assume that is not how she saw things. That's a tragedy.

Just four days ago, as we reported here, a vehicle-ramming attack was launched on the security personnel manning the A-Zaim checkpoint on Maale Adumim's eastern side. We think, though not sure, that the location is the same as today's.

Is she a suicide bomber?

No, because such things are extremely rare. And (though this is only marginally relevant) she did not die. Until we know differently, it is safe to assume she meant to kill and maim via the lethal materials she carried and ignited, and that her own life and its possible end were of no interest to her. This makes her a human bomb in a long tradition of human bombing attacks closely associated with Islamist (but not only Islamist) thinking. This had nothing whatever to do with suicide. We try to explain this in a past post: "30-Jun-15: We need to be calling them what they are: human bombs".

Calling such people "suicide bombers" is inaccurate and counter-factual and contributes to the deplorable glorification of acts of murder and intended murder that involve persuading a gullible or highly ideological or pathetically religious individual that his or her body is the most effective delivery mechanism for carrying out a cold-blooded murder of unsuspecting victims.

Should we expect more human bomb attacks in the coming days? To a certain extent, that will depend on the impact today's failed attempt has on our side, on the onlooking and aghast world, and - most significantly - on the Palestinian Arabs and their opinions.

07-Oct-15: Despatches from the fronts

Shuafat, North Jerusalem, Monday October 5: Border Guard
officers taking care of business [Image Source]

It's early Wednesday evening in Jerusalem and the extreme violence is continuing.

• This morning, an Israeli man in his mid-thirties was attacked by a knife-wielding Palestinian Arab female aged about 18-20. This attack, like the murderous assault on a small group of Israeli pedestrians this past Saturday night ["03-Oct-15: Arab violence escalates in Jerusalem: Multiple stabbings in Old City tonight"] was carried out adjacent to Lion's Gate in Jerusalem's Old City. Today's victim suffered stab wounds in his upper body and back - he was stabbed from behind. The attacker's name is given [here] as Shorouq Dwayyat. Like her victim, she is being treated at Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital where she is said to be in critical condition after her victim managed to get off some accurate shots in her direction. The attacker's family are in the news as well, as Times of Israel reports: "The family of the terrorist said that officers stationed outside her hospital room would not allow them to visit the woman, Channel 2 reported. One of the family members was detained by police for questioning. Dwayyat’s mother told the TV station in a later interview that her daughter stabbed the man in self-defense after he attempted to pull off her head covering. It later transpired, however, that Dwayyat had written a Facebook post saying she was “going to become a shahid” - a “martyr.” Lovely people.
• Seven vehicles (at least) were damaged by rocks hurled by Palestinian Arabs this morning on the Jerusalem to Tekoa road near the volatile Arab neighbourhood Beit Sahour. One vehicle, driven by a young Israeli woman, Rivi Ohayon, a resident of Tekoa, came to a stop because of the hail of rocks and was quickly surrounded by a mob that forced the door of the car open. The driver was kicked multiple times and the car’s front windshield was smashed. She was treated by Magen David Adom paramedics and then sent to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem with light injuries. Times of Israel quotes Josh Hasten, a journalist for the Jerusalem Post, and a resident of Elazar, a nearby community, who said that earlier this morning he had been attacked on the road: “As I slowed down, I saw a mob of 40 to 50 masked Palestinians on the side of the road. They were holding rocks and cinder blocks... As they approached my car, I took out my gun and fired one round in the air. The shot obviously scared them and they ran up the hill away from the road... I have no doubt that I would be dead now if I hadn’t used my gun. They were going to kill me.” There's an audio interview with Josh Hasten here.
• A Palestinian Arab male stabbed and then stole the weapon of an Israeli soldier in the coastal city of Kiryat Gat. Security personnel pursued the assailant to a nearby building - evidently in order to take up a position inside an accessible apartment, which he sought to enter [video] - where they succeeded in mortally shooting him.
• Around 6:30 this evening, a similar attack happened in the central city of Petach Tikva where a Palestinian Arab stabbed several people in a shopping mall. There are multiple casualties and few details. One of the victims, an Israeli male of about 25, is reported to be in moderate condition and stable with knife wounds, and being treated at nearby Beilinson Hospital. The attacker was arrested and in the hands of the police.
• Again, few details at this stage, but it's reported that a 15-year-old Palestinian Arab youth was arrested in Abu Tor, a mixed Jewish/Arab section of Jerusalem, after attempting a knife assault on Israel Police forces around 7:00 pm this evening.
• Times of Israel reports that two people were injured lightly when a Palestinian Arab driver rammed his vehicle into a checkpoint on Jerusalem's eastern side around 8:30 pm Wednesday night. The vehicle's driver was shot by a Border Guard officer and injured at the A-Zaim checkpoint, between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem, According to police, the vehicle driven by a Palestinian Arab was coming from east of Maale Adumim when the driver rammed it into the checkpoint.

In addition, dozens of rock-hurling attacks and firebombings (Molotov cocktail attacks). It's now almost midnight, and the sounds of police sirens are audible from points across the city.

12-May-15: More stabbings

An IDF secured crossing point 

Wondering why Israel's security forces put young Arabs through 'demeaning' physical checks? A reminder from Sunday morning's rush hour.

Israeli stabbed in suspected terror attack [Israel Hayom, May 11, 2015]
A 19-year-old Israeli man was stabbed in Maaleh Adumim, east of Jerusalem, on Sunday morning. He sustained moderate wounds and was rushed to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in the capital. Security forces, assisted by police helicopters, began searching the area for the assailant, who according to the victim was Palestinian, and the Judea and Samaria Police have launched an investigation into the incident. According to available details, the victim was waiting for a bus at the Mishor Adumim industrial park when he was attacked by a Palestinian man, who stabbed him and fled... Eyewitness accounts suggested the attacker ran towards the people waiting at the bus stop, stabbed one of them at random, and fled toward the nearby Palestinian city of Jericho.

Knifing attacks have become frequent occurrences here.

• Two Palestinian Arabs pulled knives on a small group of IDF soldiers on Sunday night (May 10, 2015) near the Israeli community of Yakir (population: 1,130). They were overpowered and then taken away for questioning. [Times of Israel, May 3, 2015]
• On May 2, 2015, an IDF military policeman manning a security checkpoint on the Jerusalem-Hebron highway was attacked by a knife-wielding 16-year-old Palestinian Arab child while checking a bus [JPost]. The attacker was over-powered and he too was taken away for questioning.
• And a chain of earlier attacks summarized in our earlier post here ["29-Apr-15: Almost entirely unreported, violent Arab attacks in and on Jerusalem"]

29-Apr-15: Almost entirely unreported, violent Arab attacks in and on Jerusalem

Jerusalem's Light Rail serves Arab neighbourhoods of the city but
is attacked almost daily by rock-hurling Palestinian Arabs [Image Source]

Traveling outside Israel (which is what we were doing for the past week) puts you in a position where news reports of the daily acts of violence in this ongoing war are liable to pass almost without being noticed.

Here are some notes (based on news items originally published by Israel National News and a handful of other sources) on events of the past week that, like us, you might not have picked up.

April 25, 2015 (Saturday)

• A 17-year-old Palestinian Arab attacked security personnel manning two checkpoints near Ma’ale Adumim. He was armed with a meat-cleaver and a knife. The attack was foiled when he was shot and killed.
• A Palestinian Arab, a resident of the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Shuafat, drove his car directly at four Israelis standing at the location known as the Kohanim Route in the village of A-Tur, part of Jerusalem, on Saturday night. A woman in her twenties suffered moderate injuries (though we see the Jerusalem Post said she is in critical condition. The injuries of three other people were defined as light. The vehicle was founded abandoned later the same night, and following an intensive police search, the driver was found and arrested.
• Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat was driving to the scene of the attack the same evening when his vehicle came under a hail of rocks hurled by people from the roadside. The mayor's car was damaged, but there are fortunately no injuries to report. 
• Not far from Jerusalem, on Route 443, the road that connects north Jerusalem with the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and with the new city of Modi'in in-between, a Kavim commuter bus was firebombed on Saturday night. Fortunately there were no passengers on board and the drive was unhurt. One source reports that security forces located a second firebomb nearby, evidently prepared and about to be hurled at something in the vicinity.

April 26, 2015 (Sunday)

• A security guard was attacked during the evening while he was standing, evidently on duty, at a bus stop in the community of Eli. The purpose of the attack, carried out by a 19-year-old Palestinian Arab resident of Nablus, appears to have been to steal the security man's weapon. The attacker was replled, and handed over to the police.
• In a second weapons-related attack, an Arab prisoner serving time in Ketziot Prison on terror charges, and for being a member of Islamic Jihad, a prohibited terror organization, attempted to grab the gun of a security guard by coming at him armed with a can opener. The guard's face suffered lacerations, but he managed to subdue the prisoner. The Arab is now in solitary confinement, and will be charged with attacking a guard.
• Outside the ancient Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron around 6:15 pm, a serving member of the Border Police suffered stab wounds to the head and upper body, and left in moderate condition, after coming under knife attack by a Palestinian Arab, Assad al-Salayma, 20. The attacker was shot dead on the spot by other officers. 
• Arab rock-throwers attacked the Jerusalem Light Rail while it was passing through the Shuafat, Jerusalem, neighbourhood. There are no injuries but one of the tram cars was damaged. Attacks on the Light Rail's 23 vehicles have become an almost daily occurrence.
• Rioting continued in the A-Tur neighborhood, close to where the tram was attacked. Rocks and fire-bombs were hurled at police and security personnel.

And a postscript to an earlier report we posted here: "17-Apr-15: In the aftermath of another lethal car-ramming in Jerusalem". The driver of the vehicle in that attack, which resulted in the killing of a young man, Shalom Yohai Cherki, 25, and the injuring of the young woman who was standing at the French Hill bus stop with him, has now confessed:

Khaled Koutineh confessed to carrying out the vehicular terrorist attack last Wednesday, the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day,” the authorities said in a statement. “Koutineh confessed to carrying out the attack with the intention of harming Jews, a decision he made just moments before the actual deed,” the statement read. The authorities said that Koutineh was driving along Route 1, searching for Jews on the side of the road to run over. Eventually, he came upon a junction in French Hill and targeted the bus stop. Koutineh initially told interrogators that he had suffered from mental imbalances, though authorities said he admitted to concocting the alibi in hopes of evading a stiff penalty. [Jerusalem Post, April 21, 2015]

Most people, even those who think of themselves as careful readers of news from the Middle East and well informed on the Arab/Israel conflict, have no idea any of these events happened.

4-Dec-14: Knifing attack on shoppers in an Israeli supermarket: the aftermath

Lazar Berman, writing in Times of Israel this morning ["Supermarket owner says he won’t let terror attackers win"], quotes supermarket entrepreneur Rami Levy. The Ramy Levy chain has a major presence in the West Bank and is notably popular with both Israelis and Palestinians and a significant employer of Palestinian Arabs.

Levy says yesterday's knifing attack in the Mishor Adumim branch of his eponymous chain "wouldn't keep customers from his stores". He will continue to employ Arab workers alongside Jewish workers as he has till now. 180 people are employed in that Mishor Adumim branch. 

Levy said: 

"I call on people to come more, to this branch and to every place there is a stabbing, just like I call on people to come more to Jerusalem".

Security cameras captured the moments of the frenzied attack on unsuspecting civilians - see the YouTube clip above, focused on the wine aisle. The two knifing victims, both of them men in their 50s, suffered light to moderate injuries. One was stabbed in the head, the other in the hand. Both were rushed to a Jerusalem hospital for emergency treatment and are thankfully recovering.

The attacker turns out to be a 16-year-old Arab male from the West Bank town of al-Azariya on the outskirts of Jerusalem, who arrived at the supermarket with two accomplices from his hometown; they too were arrested after the attempted murders. He is in the photograph above, which is taken from Wednesday's New York Times. The man who eventually stopped him by firing his pistol is an off-duty member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security detail who happened to be in the store.

It's not at all hard to imagine a knife-artist like this punk being torn limb from limb in a different setting far from Mishor Adumim. But this particular aspiring terrorist was removed from the scene by solicitous and professional ambulance men and is now being made all better in a Jerusalem hospital - a first-rate, world-class Israeli Jerusalem hospital.

For the haters of Israel who will never see these words, it's worth our noting that the mayor of Ma’ale Adumim, Benny Kashriel, says in the same Times of Israel article that while there will inevitably be demands for Palestinian Arabs to be excluded now from the Mishor Adumim area (it happens to be a significant industrial zone where many Arabs have well-paid jobs), he remains "committed to ensuring that they continue to work at Mishor Adumim and make a decent living".

We are waiting to see which of the numerous Palestinian Arab terror industry operations claims credit for the attempted killings in the supermarket. No one has till now, but it's bound to come.  And right after it, sadly, the first claims that Israel is again oppressing Palestinian Arab children like the 16 year old knifer in the video.

03-Dec-14: Stabbing attack inside an Israeli supermarket

Supermarket magnate Rami Levy [Image Source]

The Rami Levy chain of supermarkets are a phenomenon in Israel: well-tended large-format stores, attractive prices, a growing list of locations, and some showcase examples of Arab/Israeli co-existence both behind the counters and among the clientele. In other words, an obvious target for the hatred and racist jihadism of the Palestinian Arab terror industry.

Just in from Times of Israel:

A man stabbed two people and was shot by a security guard in the West Bank Wednesday afternoon. Police are treating the incident as a terror attack. The assault took place at a Rami Levy supermarket in the Mishor Adumim industrial zone, east of Jerusalem... One of the injured was a paramedic who fought with the attacker, according to an eyewitness. The two victims, men in their fifties, were moderately injured, with wounds in the upper body. The assailant entered the supermarket and began attacking customers at the checkout lines, Channel 2 reported. He was shot in the legs.

Ynet is reporting that two accomplices of the knifer have been arrested.

From informal sources, we understand the man whose gun-shot stopped the would-be killer was not the store security guard but an ordinary shopper who, like many Israelis and especially those who live in Judea and Samaria, carries a well-holstered pistol and the skill to use it when absolutely essential. Like this afternoon.

The Rami Levy business has been the target of Palestinian Authority bile for some time, as Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh reported in 2010 ["PA warns Palestinian shoppers"]:

Thousands of Palestinians converge every day on the Rami Levy supermarkets at Sha’ar Binyamin and Mishor Adumim, the only two branches in the West Bank [there are more today]. The two stores also employ dozens of Palestinians. This was the first threat of its kind issued by the PA against Palestinians who visited the Israeli supermarkets, which are named after their founder. Levy, who was born in a tin shack in Jerusalem’s Nahlaot neighborhood in 1955, founded the company in 1976. He has never lived in a settlement...  Abu Libdeh [PA Economy Minister at the time, Hassan Abu Libdeh] warned Palestinians in an interview with the local Al-Watan TV station that the PA knew the names of individuals and families who shop in the Rami Levy stores. He condemned the phenomenon of Palestinians buying goods at the Israeli supermarkets in the West Bank as a “big disgrace.”

There's plenty of disgrace to go round whenever the story concerns the Palestinian Authority.

5-Aug-14: Another terrorist stabbing attack, this time in Ma'ale Adumim

Ma'ale Adumim [Image Source]

From Israel National News this (Tuesday) afternoon:

A terrorist stabbed a security guard at the entrance to the city of Maaleh Adumim, east of Jerusalem, Tuesday. The guard suffered moderate to severe wounds. He fired at the terrorist but apprently failed to hit him. The attacker ran away toward the village of Azariyeh. Magen David Adom medics gave the guard initial care and took him to Hadassah Har Hatzofim (Mt Scopus) hospital. Large police and Border Police forces are combing the area.

Times of Israel's account expands on this:

Three men from an Arab village near Ma’ale Adumim are arrested on suspicion of stabbing an Israeli man in his 60s at the entrance to the West Bank city... There were three private security guards at the checkpoint where the incident occurred. According to one of the guards, they noticed the Palestinian man loitering at the junction, looking ill at ease, before he decided to approach. The guards asked him to present an ID, at which point the attacker pulled out a knife and stabbed one of guards, named Avi, in his torso. The victim, in his 60s, was fully conscious when he was brought to the hospital. The other two guards opened fire, but failed to hit the perpetrator, who fled into Azaria, and adjacent village.

27-Jul-12: Reflecting on the power of memory

The park; the youth club building; the banner across the street. The
entrance to our Jerusalem neighbourhood today

In the world of Jewish memories and experience, this time of year has an especially stressful character. 

It’s a very hot Friday here in Jerusalem at this moment. The Sabbath will settle in as the sun sets, and the following 25 or so hours of disconnect from the surrounding world, always welcome, will be especially so because of what follows it on Saturday night: the observance of the ninth day of Av.

Av is a difficult month for people who live by the traditional Jewish calendar. The ninth day of Av is when the Babylonians destroyed the one-and-only Jewish temple in Jerusalem, bringing an end to independent Jewish life in what we call Israel today and killing some 100,000 Jews while exiling almost all the others. 

Some 640 years later, in the year 70, it was the turn of the Roman empire to conquer Israel and for the second time the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. This time, some two million Jews were killed; a million more went into an exile that lasted many centuries. An independent Jewish nation in its own land did not arise again until the establishment of modern Israel 64 years ago.

Av the ninth is marked by a sunset-to-sunset absolute fast that begins this coming Saturday night. There are mournful prayers, deliberate physical discomfort and a great deal of personal and community introspection. Beyond the ancient history aspects, the same date has been associated with some of the Jewish people’s blackest moments: on this day, the entire Jewish community of Spain was expelled in the fateful year 1492. On this day in 1942 in the city of Warsaw - one-third of whose entire population was Jewish at the time - the Nazi Germans began to liquidate the ghetto and send its inhabitants to their deaths in the Treblinka factory of death.

Once the ninth of Av is safely behind us, the rest of the summer for most religiously observant Jews gets easier and more enjoyable. The relaxation doesn’t quite reach our family, unfortunately. In 2001, our eldest daughter Malki, 15, was killed in a Hamas terrorist outrage in the center of Jerusalem. Even as most Jews breathe a sigh of relief with the end of the fast (this year, that means this coming Sunday night) we prepare ourselves for the annual pilgrimage to her grave and the public commemoration of the anniversary (called the azkara in Hebrew) of her murder.

We feel indescribable pain, but we are not morose or neutralized. We’re terribly sad, even overwhelmed by the feeling of loss. But we have full and constructive lives to live.

It’s not self-evident. With so much death and anger around, and a full-time industry of propagandists declaiming about the unbearable insults suffered by their pride, a person might be forgiven for thinking that in a community like ours here in Jerusalem, where hundreds of young people were killed in terrorist attacks, the mood would be characterized by vengeance and confrontation. It simply isn’t so.

Malki died alongside her best friend. They were two beautiful young girls, busy with a day full of good deeds, standing at the counter of a bustling pizza shop at lunchtime. For the past eleven years, they lie side by side in Jerusalem’s soil. Their friends from the neighbourhood and from their youth organization – many of whom were as close as teenage friends get to both girls – suffered an incomprehensible double blow.

I have heard people say over the years that they could easily imagine passionate young people reacting to the vicious and deliberate killing of their closest friends by resorting to their own acts of hate-based violence. The reality, as anyone who knows anything about Israeli society, is far from that. Here is what the friends actually do.

Every August for the past ten years, the graduating group at Malki's youth organization (it’s called EZRA) sits down and organizes a public fun fair and bazaar. It runs from mid afternoon until late at night, and it takes place in a small and pleasant public park just near where we live on Jerusalem’s north side.

The park happens to abut the building that serves as the clubhouse for EZRA in our part of town. 

When the building was still just a few weeks old back in 1997, we rented it for an evening and held Malki’s bat mitzvah party there. On the awful night of August 9 eleven years ago, the same building was filled with hundreds of youngsters conducting a prayer vigil while the search went on for the two girls in other parts of our city. We knew by then that Malki and her friend Michal had both been inside Sbarro that afternoon. But it took some hours (12 in the case of our daughter) for the friends and the families to learn the bitter outcome.

And it was in that same park, on a hot September night some thirty days after the Sbarro massacre, that we held a public memorial event there, an azkara, to allow our friends, our neighbours and us to express our grief, collectively and privately, at the loss of two such beautiful, innocent, good lives. The agony of that evening was greatly sharpened by the events that had kept most of us glued to our televisions throughout the afternoon and evening leading up to it: this happens to have been the night of September 11, 2001.

The EZRA fun day is held annually in memory of Malki and Michal, and with the stated intention of giving all the proceeds to charity. This year’s will be the tenth such fair. It is set for Monday afternoon, July 30, and will run from 4 in the afternoon until 10 at night. The banner announcing it is already stretched across the road leading into our community to create awareness (photo above). The Hebrew words state the message of the fair: “To give when you love”.

It’s a message which puzzles me, year after year. Why do the children in our community here in Jerusalem who have lost parents, siblings, friends to acts of overt hatred, respond by doing acts of charity, declarations of love? It’s not so obvious. They’re busy kids. The boys are weeks or months away from starting their army service, so they probably are grappling with complicated thoughts. Most of the girls will be starting their national service (most girls of religious orientation do this in place of army service, but some do go into the military) and are aware of the challenges ahead. Still, when they take time out to do something as a cohort of friends, a collective action, it’s about charity and remembering and – their choice of word – love.

It’s hard not to make invidious comparisons with what we see in the news from other parts of our region: grief stricken young men and women, strapping bombs to their chests and expounding on how anger and pride demand that they kill people and perhaps themselves as well. We’re all too familiar with the horrifying dynamic.

But over here, the dynamic is about recruiting vendors who will set up tables to sell school books, pens, small household appliances, decorative objects and works of art, clothing and gifts. They find jugglers, food-stall operators, people who will install inflatable bouncies in the shape of castles or large animals which delight the toddlers who are brought by their mothers. The volunteer team, all of them barely out of high school, advertise the event by flyers distributed throughout Jerusalem; by ads in bus stations, synagogues, message boards and other key locations.

It’s not just in our neighbourhood either. People of all ages have addressed the painful memories of their own lost loved ones by creating worthy undertakings, concerts, park benches, small libraries, and on and on throughout Israel. Our Malki, all of fifteen years old when she did it, served as youth leader for a group of nine year old girls in a city that is an hour’s bus ride from here. This coming Monday, the youngsters of that city too are holding their own memorial fair (proceeds to charity) in Malki’s memory as they do year after year. The cohort of friends now taking charge were only seven or eight when Malki was alive, so they cannot really have known her. Yet they understand the symbolism and it clearly resonates with them.

There is an apocryphal tale told about Napoleon who was walking in the streets of Paris on the 9th day of Av. His entourage passed a synagogue and the sounds of wailing from within caused him to send an aide to ask what terrible thing had happened. The aide enquired, and reported to Napoleon that the Jews were in mourning over the loss of their temple. Napoleon asked with indignation: “How could this happen without me being informed? When did this occur? Which temple?” The answer given by the aide was that the loss occurred on this date 1,700 years ago and in Jerusalem. Napoleon was silent for a moment, and then is famously reported to have said: "A people that mourns its loss through countless generations will surely survive to see the rebuilding of its temple.”

A society that chooses to honour the lives of its murdered children through constructive acts of remembrance, joy and charity has a special resilience. Their pain is not removed or even lightened; their hopes and dreams are not necessarily granted to them; and the men (and women… and children) with the bombs strapped to their chests are not thwarted. But the strength of a society that knows how to remember is something to behold. It is a privilege to be living in its midst.

Click here for pictures of last year’s EZRA charity fair in memory of Malka Chana Roth and Michal Raziel, of blessed memory, which was attended by nearly a thousand people. For information on times and locations for Monday’s two charity fairs (one in Jerusalem, one in Maale Adumim), please email us at thisongoingwar@gmail.com

The Hebrew banner adjacent to the local EZRA youth organization branch reads "Latet K'sh'ata Ohev", "To Give When You Love". That has been the slogan of the annual bazaars in memory of Malki and Michal for ten consecutive years.

27-Jun-12: The terror attack in Ma'ale Adumim, and the role car license plates play

Maale Adumim [Image Source]

Ma'ale Adumim, a modern city of 30,000 people in the Jerusalem suburbs, is about 7 kilometers east of where we are writing this. 

The name is mentioned in the Bible's Book of Joshua; it marked the border between the Israelite tribes of Judah and Benjamin. In the Book of Luke in the New Testament, it's where the Good Samaritan parable is set. Currently there's a shortage of good Samaritans in the area.  

On December 17, 2011, one of the security guards manning the checkpoint at the community's entrance was stabbed by an unknown assailant who spoke Arabic [report]. A 21 year-old suspect by the name of Hanaishe, a resident of the village of Qabatiya, was arrested two months later and [according to Ynet's account] admitted to the stabbing, ascribing nationalistic reasons to no one's surprise. 

Typical yellow Israeli

vehicle license plate

[Image Source]

This afternoon (Wednesday), there was a similar stabbing in more or less the same place, with a different outcome. 

A Palestinian Arab who lives in Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem, drove a Mitsubishi which, according to an initial report was owned by an east Jerusalem resident, came into Ma'ale Adumim and attempted to run over a police officer. Unsuccessful in this, he rammed the borrowed vehicle into a police squad car. What follows next is according to the reported testimony of Superintendent Uri Yoran, commander of the Ma'ale Adumim police station. 

The assailant emerged from the driver's seat and, abandoning the borrowed car, climbed a fence and ran about 100 meters to the security guard's booth at the city's entrance, with a  police officer from the rammed car in hot pursuit. The Arab then lunged at the guard's weapon and attempted to grab it. A struggle ensued, during which the Palestinian Arab attacker was shot. He was rushed (in accordance with invariable Israeli practice) to Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Medical Center with severe injuries. If he survives, he can expect to get some of the best medicine available anywhere in the Middle East. 

License plate issued to

a Bethlehem vehicle owner by the

Palestinian Authority

[Image Source]

Dr David Applebaum is one of the medical professionals who turned Shaare Zedek emergency room (which we have unfortunately gotten to know too well over the years) into a globally-outstanding center for emergency and trauma care. David, who we knew, was murdered with his daughter on the evening before her wedding in what came to be known as Jerusalem's Cafe Hillel Bombing in 2003.

Why was today's attacker driving a borrowed car? 

We're surmising, but probably because the vehicles belonging to East Jerusalem residents, including many thousands who openly identify with the cause of the Palestinian Arab terror gangs, have ordinary yellow license plates like other Israelis do. People from Bethlehem, like the man who rammed the police car, pay their car fees to the Palestinian Authority and get license plates that bear the PA's insignia. Those vehicles get extra scrutiny from Israeli security guards. 

Today's terror attack is a reminder of why.

2-Aug-06: Remembering Past Losses

We're a people with a memory, we Jews. Tonight is the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av. We call it Tisha B'Av, and it's been a day of fasting for us these past, oh, two thousand years. Not just fasting, but a day of remembering how the heavy burden of Jewish history has impacted generation after generation of Jews down through the ages.

As a child, I recall hearing from a teacher how Napoleon Bonaparte walked past a synagogue and heard the sounds of weeping. He looked inside and saw Jews of all ages sitting on the floor, reading and sobbing. When he asked why, someone told him it was what the Jews do when they call to mind their losses of 2,000 years earlier. His response, as my teacher conveyed it to me, was "A community that can mourn for 2,000 years will surely see the renewal of what was lost."

We spent this evening, as we have in past years, in a public reading of the Biblical book of Lamentations - Eicha, in Hebrew. Not in synagogue, but on a ridge on Mt Scopus about ten minutes drive from our home, looking out over Jerusalem, the city whose name every observant Jew pronounces dozens of times a day in prayer, as our grandparents did in Jerusalem, in Krakow, in Casablanca, in London, in Berlin. And as their grandparents did, and their grandparents' grandparents' grandparents did.

Sitting on a low stool as a sign of mourning (or on concrete steps, as we did) and looking out over Jerusalem as the words of Jeremiah the prophet are intoned mournfully, you would have to be made of rock yourself not to be aware of the history, and of what that history is telling us.

It's not a history that's confined to books, and not even to prayer books, but a history unfolding around us, enfolding us, embracing us.

The particular ridge where our community - with friends, guests, children, we are about 250 people - chooses to meet each year on this night used to be somewhat isolated. Then they built a road right beside it as part of the new rapid access routes that connect Jerusalem's eastern suburbs - places like Maale Adumim - to the center. The new road also serves part of the population that does not see the same significance in Tisha B'Av as we do: the Arab residents of this city. So this year, the quiet of our outdoor prayer gathering blended with the shouts and whistles of Arab Jerusalemites as they pulled up alongside. Not enough to bother anyone. Just enough to remind us of where we are, who else is here and what's on the agenda.

Today was a violent day in a violent period. Hezbollah's 'freedom fighters' have managed to fire more than 1,700 missiles into Israel since the start of the latest phase of this ongoing six-year, one-hundred-year war. Just today, Wednesday, they created a new record: 210 missiles, according to Haaretz; 182 according to Reuters. And the day is not over.

So far today, the Magen David Adom civil ambulance service has had to treat 159 people from injuries caused by Hezbollah missile attacks. 5 are described as moderately wounded; 47 as 'lightly' hurt; 107 needed treatment for shock. You can play with those definitions, because moderate, severe, light are words that make sense when we speak about other people. But when it happens to you and me, we're in much less doubt about what to call it. The family of David Lalchuk understand that. He became a kibbutznik after moving to Israel from Boston about the time we did, two decades ago. 52 years old, he had arranged for his wife and two daughters to take refuge down south while the missiles fell in the Nahariya/Kibbutz Saar neighbourhood. He heard the incoming-missile siren today and got on his bike to pedal to safety, but was hit and died.

In the 22 days since Hezbullah's six-year plan to wage war on the Zionists burst into activity, 2,208 Israelis have had to be treated in hospital for injuries from the missile attacks. 77 are still hospitalized, 3 in serious condition, 34 moderately injured and 40 in what Israelis like to call light condition. And 19 are dead, not including soldiers killed in action.

For the apostles of proportionate response, these are bad numbers. There need to be far more injured and killed Israelis. Perhaps there will be, and those critics will be happier. Meanwhile, almost every last one of us Israelis - stubborn, opinionated folk that we are - would like to have those casualty numbers stay exactly where they are and not grow.

Sitting on that dark hillside tonight, reading from the light of a small lantern, we could hear the cacophany of Moslem muezzins from various corners of East Jerusalem, calling their faithful to prayer. It's a fairly raucus sound if you are not familiar with it. Not melodious in a conventional sense, not meant to be easy-on-the-ears, but rather to burst right through whatever other activity might be underway. Which is just how it was for us tonight; disturbing, intrusive, a reminder of their very different outlook on life. They do it five times each day, and each time it seems, for those of us who hear it in this renewed, flowering, thriving Jerusalem a reminder of profound differences.

That's not to say that we Jewish Jerusalemites are provoked or angered or even, in most cases, bothered. Tonight at least, sitting on the hillside, looking down at the Temple Mount, visualizing the many tragedies we associate with the 9th day of Av, the person chanting the mournful verses did not even raise his voice. It's something we Jews do well: remember, quietly mourn our losses, recall our pain, honour those who came before us and who did not forget.

When you internalize the lessons that history has handed our people, you understand why there are some thousands of young Israelis on Lebanese soil and guarding northern Israel and southern Israel tonight. And also why the sputtering moral outrage and crocodile tears that accompanied yesterday's photographs of dead Lebanese children have so little impact on mainstream thinking in this country.

We have internalized our lessons from history, and other people have internalized theirs. On the whole, our version works for us, and has allowed us to establish a mainly tolerant, robustly democratic, forward-looking and justice-cherishing society. And for those still wondering: there is very, very little we need to learn regarding respect for human lives and for children from the Nasrallahs, the Assads, the Ahmadinejads and the Chiracs.

May the occasions of mournful remembering be turned to days of joy and celebration quickly in our time.