23-Nov-20: Four Arab-on-Israeli terror attempts; close to zero media attention

Qalandiya Crossing, the pedestrian part - seen in a 2019 photo
[Image Source]

No one was hurt. But that was surely not the intention of the perpetrators behind four terror attacks directed against Israelis in the past few days. 

In four separate attempts this past weekend, terrorists sought to carry out lethal attacks directed at Israelis targeted at random. 

Two happened on the edges of the capital, Jerusalem, a third in the country's south and the fourth in the Samaria District. None of them individually got much attention, and we don't see any media saying that four in the space of a single weekend means something.

It's reported ["Explosives placed by terrorists near Jerusalem over weekend" | Jerusalem Post. November 22, 2020] that at the Qalandiya Crossing on Jerusalem's north-eastern entrance, two explosive packages were concealed Friday night close to where vehicles drive through. One exploded but failed to cause injury or damage. Witnesses spotted two suspects arriving at the crossing, placing the explosives and fleeing from the scene. A chase ensued with Border Police eventually arresting two under-age suspects in a nearby convenience store. This Arab source names them as Khaled Salim and Ismail Abu Zaidiya, both residents of the Qalandiya "refugee camp".

It didn't end there. In taking the prisoners away, the security people were confronted by dozens of Palestinian Arabs hurling rocks at them. Riot dispersal measures were used and the melee - which could easily have become the story - ended with no injuries.

The second attempt, on Friday night at the ancient Rachel's Tomb near Bethlehem, was thwarted when a lookout spotted a suspect placing an explosive close to the walled complex and running away from the scene. He was pursued by Border Police who caught up with him and placed him under arrest. He is an 18-year-old male from a so-called refugee camp in the Bethlehem area. His explosive failed to detonate.

IDF forces apprehending a terror suspect this past weekend.
No one was hurt which - being Israelis - was the intention.
[Image Source]

A media release quoted in the Jerusalem Post report says "Border Police are working in the Jerusalem Envelope area to strengthen deterrence and thwart terrorism while increasing the deployment of forces in sensitive places where there have been recent attempts to harm civilians and security forces."

Then Saturday night around 9:30 pm, a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel set off the Tzeva Adom (Color Red) missile attack sirens in the southern coastal city of Ashkelon, according to a Ynet report. The resulting explosion caused damage to a warehouse in an industrial zone of the city. But fortunately no injuries - and to state the obvious (whenever missiles are fired into cities by malevolents totally indifferent to outcomes) this could have been a far more troubling event.

Then on Sunday morning in a third hidden explosives incident reported by Jerusalem Post - making it the fourth terror event of this weekend - IDF combat soldiers carrying out routine searches uncovered camouflaged explosives placed just outside the village of al-Mughayyir, south of Jenin. The military assessment is the intention of those who planted the explosives was to harm Israeli soldiers.

Seems a good time to mention that, for the Palestinian Authority, "...rewarding terrorists is not about social welfare. It is about incentivizing and rewarding terror and murder. “Pay for slay” is an abomination that should enjoy universal condemnation." Those sentiments, which are easy to agree with, come from "Lies, damn lies and Palestinian Authority’s ‘pay for slay’ policy", an op ed published by Jewish News Syndicate four days ago. It's authored by Maurice Hirsch who served in past years as director of the IDF Military Prosecution for Judea and Samaria. 

He's the kind of hands-on expert who can be expected to have some well-founded sense of what foreign aid funding achieves once it's handed over to the terror-addicted kleptocrats of the PA.

As it happens, Yossi Kuperwasser of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a former Director General of the Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs and past head of the Research Division of IDF Military Intelligence, released a brief the same day as the Hirsch piece. It's called "Will the Palestinian Authority Stop Paying Terrorists? End the “Pay to Slay” Program?" and he leaves readers with the impression that no they won't. 

With predictable consequences.

13-Dec-18: On Jerusalem's Hagai Street in the Old City, another Arab-on-Israeli knifing attack this morning

Image Source: Haaretz

A little before a chilly dawn in Jerusalem's Old City today, a 26 year-old Palestinian Arab is caught by a security camera pushing a recognizably ultra-Orthodox man to the ground in Hagai Street, one of the pedestrian lanes running down the hill from the Damascus Gate (in Hebrew, Sha'ar Shechem).

That location is the favored entry point for observant Jews on their way to early morning prayers at the Kotel.

It has also become a popular site for recent Arab-on-Israeli knifings and is heavily patrolled. (Clich here for past Hagai Street attack reports.)

Times of Israel describes how the surveillance footage from the scene shows the attacker using a  knife to try to stab the worshiper. This does not work out, and an instant later [as the video shows] the assailant's attention is directed at two nearby Border Guard police. 

The male officer is (in the favored manner of Palestinian Arab knifing attacks) stabbed in the face, near his eye. The female border guard is stabbed in the leg. Ynet says she is 19, the male 21. The attacker was shot dead by the officers. His weapon was recovered at the scene.

Haaretz, quoting Arab sources, says the knifer's name is Majd Matir. He was a resident of the Qalandiya neighborhood on Jerusalem's north side.

The Arabic edition of the European-financed Ma'an News Agency (but not the English) names him as Majed Jamal Mutair, 25, and in traditional terror-incitement fashion calls him a martyr.

19-Sep-18: Kol Nidrei night stabbing attack at entrance to Jerusalem's Old City

A Palestinian Arab launched a stabbing attack on a Jewish pedestrian outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls on Tuesday evening, the night of Yom Kippur. Times of Israel quotes an Israeli police statement reporting “an attempted stabbing attack” near Damascus Gate, saying “a police unit at the spot neutralized the suspect.”

The Palestinian Authority’s health ministry said the attacker was shot dead by Israeli police.

The thwarted attacker is said to be a 26-year-old male from Qalandiya on Jerusalem's north side. Haaretz names him as Mohammed Yusuf Sha'aban Alian and says he was in Israel illegally. It refers to a screwdriver as the attack weapon and the location as Jerusalem's Hanevi'im (Prophets) Street which leads to the square outside Damascus Gate. Israel National News has post-attack police camera footage here.

The reliably-despicable Ma'an News Agency ["Israeli forces shoot, kill Palestinian for alleged attack"] spells the knifer's name Muhammad Youssef Shaaban Elayyan and reveals that

"Israeli authorities sealed off the street in the al-Musrara neighborhood surrounding the scene for several hours, preventing local residents from accessing it. The Israeli authorities then transferred Elayyan's body to an unknown location after holding his body at the scene for about three hours."

This may seem like a parody but it's representative of how the European-financed Ma'an routinely reports Arab-on-Israeli terror.

We're searching for announcements in the Arab media of the attacker being formally elevated to martyrdom.

UPDATE Thursday September 20, 2018 12:05 am - We didn't have to wait long. The Arabic version, but not the English of course, of the Ma'an news report is headlined "Video and photos - A martyr shot by the occupation in Jerusalem". Other Arabic reports praising the thwarted stabber as "martyr" are all over the web - see http://archive.is/nCaKJ . An Arabic tweet from Palestine Information Center announces that in the Kafr Aqab and Qalandia "refugee camps" they were going to hold strikes Wednesday to mourn "the martyr".]

For reasons related to the time of year and pressures at home, we have not yet written about the shocking murder-by-stabbing this past Sunday of Ari Fuld Hy"d by a Palestinian Arab eleventh-grader in the Gush Etzion Mall. But iy"H we will.

23-Apr-18: Bret Stephens on Israel's robust willingness to defend itself

Familiar scenes - from seven years ago [Image Source]

In a punchy New York Times column published this past Friday ["Jewish Power at 70 Years"], Bret Stephens starts out talking about a hate crime - with an intriguing twist - in today's Germany. But then he heads off in the direction of the Middle East and the challenges posed to Israelis by the people on the far side of our borders.

Here's a first extract:

On Friday, Palestinians in Gaza returned for the fourth time to the border fence with Israel, in protests promoted by Hamas. The explicit purpose of Hamas leaders is to breach the fence and march on Jerusalem. Israel cannot possibly allow this — doing so would create a precedent that would encourage similar protests, and more death, along all of Israel’s borders — and has repeatedly used deadly force to counter it. The armchair corporals of Western punditry think this is excessive. It would be helpful if they could suggest alternative military tactics to an Israeli government dealing with an urgent crisis against an adversary sworn to its destruction. They don’t. It would also be helpful if they could explain how they can insist on Israel’s retreat to the 1967 borders and then scold Israel when it defends those borders. They can’t.

He's right. We're old enough to remember the coordinated Arab assaults on multiple Israeli bordersseven years ago in conjunction with Naqba Day - May 14 and 15, 2011 and around the same time as the ill-fated and unfortunately-named Arab Spring.

A BBC report at the time ["Palestinian protests: Arab spring or foreign manipulation?", BBC, May 15, 2011] said the not-so-peaceful "protestors"

undoubtedly embodied the same kind of risk-taking, confrontational people-power ethos that has fired the revolts in many parts of the Arab world.

How did that risk-taking confrontation play out?

Lebanon

In Lebanon, some 30,000 people were pulled together by the organizers near Lebanon's Israel border and walked towards it just opposite the northern Israeli town of Avivim. Soldiers of the Lebanese army first fired into the air to deter them. But then, as they headed recklessly into and across a border minefield throwing stones towards the Israeli and shouting into the hills for a "right of return", the Lebanese forces shot at them with assault rifles and tear gas. Before the retreat was completed, 11 participants were dead and about 100 injured.

Egypt

On the Egyptian border, thousands were reported to about to make their way from Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and other points of origin toward the Rafah crossing with Gaza. But the military regime then in power intervened, warning bus companies not to answer the convoy organizers' requests. The few buses that did set off were stopped by the military and in the end, according to Ma'an, only some 80 individuals equipped with flags and an arsenal of angry demands and slogans got to the border. 

Fatahland

According to Wikipedia, around 300 West Bank "protesters" assembled at the Qalandiya Crossing - a busy crossing point - to demonstrate, forming human chains, staging sit-downs, hurling rocks. About 120 were said to be affected by tear gas, stink-spray and other crowd-dispersal means. BBC: "Clashes at the Qalandiya checkpoint in Ramallah continued for hours, with dozens of Palestinians injured. Palestinian protesters threw stones at Israeli security forces, who fired tear gas and rubber bullets."

Jordan

In Jordan, about 500 Palestinian Arab Jordanians were prevented by Jordanian army and police forces from doing harm at the Allenby Bridge, the major crossing point into the West Bank and Israel. They used tear gas and other similar tools and some 25 people were reported injured, including 11 Jordanian police. A Ma'an report said the Hamas-aligned Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and what Ma'an called "the powerful Islamic Action Front" termed this "shocking" and turning reality on its end demanded "an end to such policies that have harmed Jordan's image". 

Syria

On Israel's Syria border, 20 buses of "protestors" arrived from Damascus on Naqba Day, May 15, 2011. According to the BBC, the IDF said it "had only fired warning shots as a large number of protesters tried to breach a border fence near the village of Majdal Shams. But reports said at least two people had been killed and dozens injured. Israel's army says this is a "serious" incursion. Brig Gen Yoav Mordechai said soldiers were still trying to control the crowds and that dozens of protesters had crossed. The army has reportedly sealed off Majdal Shams and is carrying out house-to-house searches for "infiltrators"... "We are seeing here an Iranian provocation, on both the Syrian and the Lebanese frontiers, to try to exploit the Nakba day commemorations," Gen Mordechai said... Syria denounced Israeli actions in the Golan Heights and Lebanon as "criminal", Agence France-Presse news agency reported. "Israel will have to bear full responsibility for its actions," the foreign ministry said." The NY Times said "some 13 Israeli soldiers were lightly wounded from thrown rocks." And Ynet, quoting an IDF enquiry, said "nearly 1,000 Syrians approached the fence, with Syrian border forces unable – or unwilling – to stop them. About 300 protesters, including children, rushed the fences and crossed over onto Israeli soil..."

Some weeks later, those May 2011 events in Syria were revealed to have actually been planned ahead of time by the Assad regime. This is all documented in an expose ["Report: Document Reveals Nakba Day Clashes Planned by Syria Government", Haaretz, June 14, 2011]. The bused-in attackers had attempted to breach Israel's border which was the plan. The Haaretz report quotes a Syrian government memo: "Permission is hereby granted allowing approaching crowds to cross the cease fire line (with Israel) towards the occupied Majdal-Shamms, and to further allow them to engage physically with each other in front of United Nations agents and offices. Furthermore, there is no objection if a few shots are fired in the air." There are clear parallels with what's happening now on Israel's Gaza frontier.

Then in June 2011, again on the Syria side of its border with Israel, large numbers of assailants purporting to "protest" were again bused in from Damascus. A Jerusalem Postreport quoted Syrian officials saying 23 were killed and 350 injured "as they attempted over the course of several hours to breach the barbed-wire border".

...

The Bret Stephens essay dwells as well on the intriguing case of Adam Armoush. Thought, when the story initially emerged, to be a young German Jew, he is in reality a 21-year-old Israeli Arab living in Germany 

who, on a recent outing in Berlin, donned a yarmulke to test a friend’s contention that it was unsafe to do so in Germany. On Tuesday he was assaulted in broad daylight by a Syrian asylum-seeker who whipped him with a belt for being “yahudi” — Arabic for Jew. The episode was caught on video and has caused a national uproar... There were nearly 1,000 reported anti-Semitic incidents in Berlin alone last year...

Stephens then connects Israel and Europe:

To be Jewish — at least visibly Jewish — in Europe is to live on borrowed time... There’s a limit to how many armed guards can be deployed indefinitely to protect synagogues or stop Holocaust memorials from being vandalized... There are many reasons to celebrate the date [of Israel's 70th anniversary a few days ago], many of them lofty: a renaissance for Jewish civilization; the creation of a feisty liberal democracy in a despotic neighborhood; the ecological rescue of a once-barren land; the end of 1,878 years of exile. But there’s a more basic reason. Jews cannot rely for their safety on the kindness of strangers... Hence Israel: its army, bomb, and robust willingness to use force to defend itself. Israel did not come into existence to serve as another showcase of the victimization of Jews. It exists to end the victimization of Jews... Though not Jewish, Adam Armoush was once one of the nonchalant when it came to what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century. Presumably no longer. For Jews, it’s a painful, useful reminder that Israel is not their vanity. It’s their safeguard. 

Well said.

28-Dec-17: At a northern Jerusalem security checkpoint, a girl with knives and stabbing victims on her mind

Qalandiya Crossing and some of its security personnel who watch for
attackers [Image Source]

Barely noticed by reporters and overwhelmingly ignored by mainstream news editors, there has been a non-lethal security incident at one of the main entry points through which Palestinian Arabs pass on their way into Israel's capital city, Jerusalem.

But non-lethal was not the goal of the attacker.

A Palestinian teen was arrested Wednesday after trying to illegally enter Israel and allegedly carry out a terror attack, police said. The suspect, an 18-year-old female, was turned away at the Qalandiya crossing near Jerusalem, and later tried to cross again using her 7-year-old sister’s permit. When she was refused, she began arguing with border guards and tried to force her way in, a police spokesperson said. During subsequent questioning, the teen admitted to planning an attack in the Jerusalem area. A source with knowledge of the case told The Times of Israel that the Palestinian planned to buy a knife and stab a police officer. The woman, from the town of Qataneh, was jailed, pending a remand hearing. Her name was not released by police... ["Palestinian teen caught planning stabbing attack — police", Times of Israel, December 27, 2017]

You might want to note how:

• The terror-minded suspect is about the same age as the young woman from Nabi Saleh of whom we wrote earlier this week ["24-Dec-17: Nabi Saleh, the media and a Tamimi child's journey"]. "Girls" of seventeen or eighteen are older, often by several years, than a steady stream of Palestinian Arab teens who have perpetrated (or been thwarted trying) terrorist Arab-on-Israeli attacks during the past two years. [Click on "Weaponizing Children" for dozens such recent cases.]
• News about Jerusalem gets remarkably uneven coverage in the mainstream news industry. The decision of the Trump Administration to recognize that Israel's capital city for the past seventy years has been Jerusalem got vastly more coverage, even though no one's life was directly threatened by it.
• In Qataneh (sometimes written Qatane), from where yesterday's would-be attacker lived, Israeli forces two years ago uncovered a massive weapons cache that included ammunition, knives, IDF uniforms and binoculars [source]. The village is located right next to the Israeli community of Har Adar, 12 km north of Jerusalem. The neighborhood has been in the news recently for the worst kind of reasons ["26-Sep-17: At Har Adar's entrance, an Arab-on-Israeli shooter with problems and a solution"] 
• The security personnel who man the Qalandiya Crossing have realistic expectations by now of what some Palestinian Arabs, and in particular children, have on their minds. Consider for instance events that took place there just a few months back: "20-May-17: A child, a knife and another thwarted stabbing today on Jerusalem's northern edge". That attack-child was 14.

Over at Israel National News, their report of Wednesday's thwarted attack includes this rather poignant additional commentary:

The police said that "the soldiers and policemen work throughout the year at the crossings around the Jerusalem area and in their activities constitute human shields for the residents [of the city], prevent the entry of unauthorized persons into Israel and the smuggling of weapons. This is all in order to protect the residents of the State of Israel."

We can relate to this.

On the day our 15 year-old daughter Malki and 14 other innocents were murdered in the Hamas attack on Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria, the terrorist bomber and her human bomb passed through this same security crossing, Qalandiya. Tragically, no one thought to stop and interrogate the young man with the guitar case slung across his back that afternoon. In those simpler times, we didn't know our neighbours included people with the monstrous capacity to conceal a massively-explosive, shrapnel-packed weapon-of-mass-destruction inside a musical instrument container and then go looking for Jewish children to kill and maim.

Ahed Tamimi, the woman from Nabi Saleh now being called "girl" in much of the heavy media coverage, danced at the wedding of her cousin, the Sbarro massacre mastermind. Like other members of the Tamimi clan, she identifies with the achievement of the convicted-murderer and celebrates the deed and the doer.

20-May-17: A child, a knife and another thwarted stabbing today on Jerusalem's northern edge

The Palestinian Arab girl, minus her weapon, is lead away
unharmed by a police officer [Image Source: Social media]

At Jerusalem's main northern security checkpoint, Qalandiya, police today (Saturday) intercepted a would-be stabbing attacker and restrained her without the need to shoot.

As Times of Israel reports:

The suspect — a 14-year-old Palestinian girl — was arrested by officers while carrying a knife in her hand after failing to obey their calls to halt, according to police. According to Hebrew media reports, officers used pepper spray in order to stop the girl. Officials added that the suspect was taken in for questioning after her arrest. No shots were reported fired in the incident.

Israel National News adds:

She was walking in a passage designated for vehicles only. When they noticed she was holding a knife, they carried out the procedure for stopping a suspect and overpowered her. There were no casualties reported, and a knife was indeed found in her possession.

The calmness of the response of the security personnel stationed at Qalandiya offers a stark contrast with the violent events at the same spot on Thursday evening involving scores of Arab rioters.

Parts of the Arab media, deeply invested in turning their communities' adolescents into killers to advance their version of terrorist warfare, are busy spinning Saturday afternoon's events tonight. Here's the Ma'an News Agency headline in their English-language edition:

Israeli forces detain 14-year-old Palestinian girl at Qalandiya checkpoint

Just like that: "detained" out of the blue. And a child yet. Will she be arrested? Or just stay detained?

Ma'an's report goes on to quote the spokesperson for Israel Police (who happens to be an Israeli Arab woman) about the knife and the attempted attack both of which are central to the report and the event, of course. But click on the Arabic version of the same story from the same despicable news source [here] and that version of the report of the child's arrest, for a very different readership, makes no mention at all of the knife, or the attempted stabbing or the restraint shown by the Israeli security personnel who were the target of the would-be killer's assault..

Then there's this notorious non-Arab propagandist for the Palestinian Arab campaign who tweeted this sadly characteristic message a few hours ago:

Cruel and heartless IOFers, pointing guns at 14 year olds for no reason at all other than the sheer thrill of it and from close range yet. And (gasp) kidnapping them. Where were the police?!

It's almost as if this Twitter person has no idea the Palestinian Arabs are cultivating a society and an education system which seeks to turn innocent and young Palestinian Arab children into martyrdom-seeking murderous bigots. Some achievement!

PA president-for-life Mahmoud Abbas, speaking in the White House on May 3, 2017, addressed this in classic black-is-white manner without even once smirking:

Mr. President, I affirm to you that we are raising our youth, our children, our grandchildren on a culture of peace. And we are endeavoring to bring about security, freedom and peace for our children to live like the other children in the world, along with the Israeli children in peace, freedom and security. [From the White House Press Office transcript]

Abbas, naturally enough, said not one word about the dozens of children - yes, children, right down to Palestinian Arab would-be stabbers as young as eight! - who have taken knives and gone out seeking Jewish victims. As if it had never happened. As if schoolchildren educated in the PA's own institutions, and UNRWA's as well, don't appear daily on PA television proclaiming their deep devotion to killing "Zionists". As if Abbas himself has not praised the blood-lust, as he did on television [see it here with English-language subtitles] on September 18, 2016, explicitly praising and welcoming "every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem... blood on its way to Allah... they |Israel| have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet and we won't allow them to."

Every Palestinian Arab understands the president's barely-coded advice about what to do to the Israelis and their "filthy feet". Even fourteen year olds.

The reality is that the weaponizing of Palestinian Arab children - and the devastation this has brought to families in every part of their society - continues in full force alongside brazen Palestinian Arab efforts to claim precisely the opposite.

24-Apr-17: At Qalandiya Crossing, a woman stabber attacked an Israeli official this morning

The alleged stabber
[Credit]

Yet another Arab-on-Israeli stabbing attack today. This one, around 6:45 Monday morning at the busy Qalandiya security checkpoint close to Ramallah and to Jerusalem's northern suburbs, involves the sort of malice aforethought that is endemic among our neighbours.

First, about the victim: she's an Israeli woman of 28, an employee of the Ministry of Defense’s Civil Administration. Ynet says she was rushed by ambulance to Hadassah Medical Center in Ein Kerem, Jerusalem, to be treated for a shoulder stab wound after being attacked by an assailant armed with a knife.

The attacker, also a female, is uninjured even though she was stopped and apprehended. This, perhaps surprisingly, is not surprising. For all the bad publicity Israeli security personnel often get, in reality they take an amazing amount of care to minimize harm to those they are called upon to neutralize, even at the risk of physical harm - or worse - to themselves.

The attacker is

Asya Kaabana, 41, who lives in the Shechem (Nablus) area town of Duma, the Shin Bet security agency reported. Kaabana is married and a mother of nine children, and recently has had difficulties in her marriage, with her husband threatening to send her back to her family in Jordan. The Shin Bet also discovered that the terrorist fought with her husband on Sunday night over their children's education. This argument caused the woman to decide to carry out a terror attack, in the hopes Israeli security forces would shoot her, since, "she was sick of her life anyway"... [Israel National News]

According to a police spokesperson, she

The attacker's weapon [Image Source:
Israel Police]

came to the Qalandiya checkpoint... While waiting in line to be checked, the terrorist approached a female security officer, claiming to have a question she needed to ask her. At this point she apparently drew a knife that was in her purse and quickly approached the female security officer and stabbed her. Police and security guards that were on the scene overpowered her and neutralized her... [a different Israel National News report]

Duma, where the knifer lives, is the village where an Arab home was destroyed by fire in mid-2015, causing the deaths of three members of one family, the Dawabshas. Charges in connection with that fire and the deaths were brought against an Israeli adult and a minor in January 2016. But no convictions have yet been entered. A vague Wikipedia reference [here] says various media accounts have "attributed the wave of stabbing attacks by Palestinians from late 2015 through 2016 at least partly to the Duma arson killings as well as Israeli delays in pressing charges against any suspects". Could today's attack be part of the "revenge" campaign?

Over at the Ma'an News Agency site, they name the attacker as Asiya Kaabna, calling her a resident of the village of "Tayba", near Ramallah. Taybeh (a better spelling) is considered the last remaining all-Christian community under Palestinian Authority control, so - given that stabbing attacks by Christian are quite unusual - we doubt they have the facts right.

A not-so-minor side issue: if today's knife-woman is convicted by an Israeli court of a terrorism offense, those nine children at home, as well as the husband with whom she fought last night, are likely to benefit financially. 

That's thanks to the notorious Palestinian Authority "Rewards for Terror" scheme. It's been going for quite some years [see "28-Jul-11: Taxpayer-funded salaries to convicted Palestinian Arab terrorists. What a good idea."], it still plays a huge role in maintaining the extraordinarily high levels of Arab-on-Israeli violence [see "28-Mar-17: The US can end the Palestinian Arab bureaucracy of terror"] and while there's talk of curbing its lethal impact ["01-Mar-17: Washington may be launching a long-overdue assault on Abbas' lethal Rewards for Terror scheme"], it keeps showing tremendous endurance ["29-Jan-17: What's the exchange rate for American dollars into Palestinian Arab terror killings?"].

30-Dec-16: On Jerusalem's northern edge, another Palestinian Arab woman and her knife

A Times of Israel bulletin this morning reports on yet another attempt by a knife-wielding Arab female to kill her some Israelis. Fortunately, like most - but not all - such attempts in the past 16 months, this was thwarted by fast-moving Israeli security personnel.

Security forces shot and wounded a Palestinian woman on Friday at the Qalandiya checkpoint in the West Bank as she tried to carry out a stabbing attack, police said. There were no other injuries. “She approached the security forces with a knife in her hand. She did not respond to the calls of the soldiers to stop,” police said, adding that the threat was “neutralized.” Soldiers fired at her legs when she refused to stop. She was “lightly” wounded and arrested, police said... The Qalandiya crossing has two approach lanes, one for pedestrians and the other for vehicles. Israel Radio reported that she came through the vehicle lane...

There's a dramatic photo [here] of the attacker lying on the ground after taking some bullets from Israeli security personnel, but unfortunately none showing her getting medical assistance from Israeli medics. To restate the outcome, she's lightly hurt and will live.

As for why women:

Defense officials have pointed to a trend among some young Palestinian women who, often due to personal problems, have in recent months attempted to commit suicide by staging knife attacks against soldiers and police with the expectation that they will be shot.

The Arab news industry never notes this but sticks rigorously to assertions that the attack was alleged and somehow never real. Ma'an News Agency's report at this hour illustrates this:

A Palestinian woman was injured after being shot by Israeli soldiers at the Qalandiya checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem in the central occupied West Bank, for allegedly attempting to stab Israeli soldiers Friday morning... Lawyer Muhammad Mahmoud of prisoners' rights group Addameer told Ma'an that the woman was identified as Jihan Muhammad Hashimeh, 35, from the neighborhood of al-Issawiya in occupied East Jerusalem. Locals said that Hashimeh was ill, and that she was on her way to Jerusalem for medical treatment when she entered the vehicle lane by mistake.

As for her knife (a photo of which appears in a Tweet posted by the foreign press spokesperson for Israel Police), Ma'an presumably views its existence too as "alleged".

Qalandiya and its very busy security checkpoint - large numbers of people enter through it each day - is on Jerusalem's northern edge. Click here to view some of the many posts we have published here of terror attacks that have been launched in its vicinity.

In the most recent one ["13-Dec-16: Qalandiya and another vehicle-ramming attack on Israelis"], the assailant was also a Palestinian Arab female. Like today's attempted stabber, she too was fortunate enough to survive to talk about it afterwards. As for recent Arab-on-Israeli stabbing attacks, click here for some of our many previous posts.

13-Dec-16: Qalandiya and another vehicle-ramming attack on Israelis

Moments after the attack at Qalandiya, the assailant's vehicle is in the center
of this photo [Via social media]

Times of Israel, quoting the Israel Police, reports that a Palestinian Arab woman attempted a vehicle-ramming attack on Israeli security personnel manning the Qalandiya crossing on Jerusalem's northern edge, near Ramallah, early this afternoon.

Police say she approached the crossing at high speed in her vehicle and troops forced her to stop. She then got out of her vehicle with a knife. Guards at the checkpoint subdued and arrested her, police say. There are no injuries... [Times of Israel, today]

The attack evidently happened around 1:45 pm this afternoon (Tuesday). Israel National News adds that

Witnesses report the terrorist shouted “Allah Akbar” while charging soldiers.

An initial Ynet bulletin says "She was shot and neutralized before being able to harm anyone." But a slightly later Ynet report makes no mention of any shooting:

The woman sped towards the security forces stationed at the checkpoint, prompting them to begin the arrest procedure by firing into the air. This caused the woman to stop the car, exit it wielding a knife, and call out "Allahu Akbar." Security forces overpowered her and arrested her. She was unharmed... [Ynet, today]

In characteristic fashion, the Palestinian Arab news channel Ma'an describes what happened as being an Israeli response to a woman "allegedly attempting to run over Israeli forces stationed there". Arab-on-Israeli attacks by Palestinian Arabs are invariably "alleged" in the Ma'an lexicon.

22-Nov-16: At Qalandiya, yet another would-be Pal Arab stabbing attacker is thwarted

The Qalandiya security checkpoint on a quieter morning
[Image Source: Mati Milstein]

At the Qalandiya Crossing on Jerusalem's northern edge, another Palestinian Arab man wielding a knife and evidently intent on finding an Israeli victim has been stopped by forceful Israeli scurity action.

Today's attempted assault happened at about 10:30 this morning (Tuesday). Not much is known at this stage about the attacker - his name, his age and where he comes from are all as yet unannounced in the news media - other than that the Arabic-language media already (no surprise in this) call him "martyr" (see for instance Ma'an News Agency's Arabic report here).

A spokesperson for Israel Police is quoted by Times of Israel saying

The attacker was declared dead of his wounds at the scene... [as] he attempted to stab a guard... [T]he assailant approached guards manning an area meant for vehicular traffic with a knife drawn and was shot. No Israeli guards were hurt.

Click here for our previous posts about the long, sad history of Palestinian Arab attacks on Israelis at Qalandiya.

UPDATE 1:30 pm Tuesday November 22: It's reported in Arab media that he Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Health identifies today's failed stabber as Jihad Muhammad Said Khalil, 48, from the village of Beit Wazan, near Nablus.

01-Oct-16: At Qalandiya Crossing on Jerusalem's northern edge, a thwarted stabbing attack leaves the assailant dead

With the end of the Sabbath, we're starting to catch up on the news of the past 28 hours. Not so surprisingly, one of the key reports concerns a Palestinian Arab man with a knife in his hand and mayhem on his mind.

This is how Times of Israel reports it:

An Israeli soldier was moderately wounded in a stabbing attack in the West Bank’s Qalandiya area north of Jerusalem on Friday, a police spokeswoman said. She said the Palestinian attacker was shot dead by surrounding forces. The 24-year-old IDF soldier was stabbed by a 28-year-old assailant who approached the Israeli checkpoint at Qalandiya on foot, officials said. The attacker was shot by both a soldier from the Military Police and a civilian security guard, and was killed. The soldier suffered stab wounds to his upper body. He was treated at the scene by paramedics who then took him to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem. The attacker was a Jerusalem native, according to AFP. Some 200 Palestinians were rioting at the Qalandia checkpoint an hour after the stabbing. Police said security forces at the checkpoint were using riot-dispersal means. The Qalandiya checkpoint is the main crossing into the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Israel National News reports that the IDF serviceman is in fact a 20-year-old. His injuries were said to be moderate-to-serious when initially treated by an IDF medical team and Magen David Adom paramedics. He was quickly evacuated to the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem. A later report, also from Israel National News, this evening (Saturday) says he is now in moderate and stable condition and fully conscious.

Ma'an News Agency, the self-described independent Palestinian Arab news source, uncharacteristically fails to include the word "alleged" from its headline ["Palestinian shot dead after stabbing soldier at Qalandiya checkpoint"]. It says the attacker is a

28-year-old Palestinian was from the nearby village of Kafr Aqab in the Jerusalem district of the occupied West Bank. He was later identified on Palestinian media sites as Naseem Abu Meizar.

The young dead man from Kafr Aqab is already being turned into a "martyr" as the poster in tonight's Tweet [here] shows. And other parts of the Palestinian Arab media [here, for instance] haven't given up on the use of the word "alleged" in describing the last moments of the knifer's life.

01-Sep-16: Yet another young Palestinian Arab woman's dreams of glory-by-stabbing are thwarted this evening in north Jerusalem

Tonight's attempted stabbing at Qalandiya as reported
by a Palestinian Arab news site

Food for thought for those who claim Israel's security checkpoints are superfluous and exist merely to harass.

Alert Israeli security personnel apprehended a young Palestinian Arab woman of about 21 around 9 o'clock this evening (Thursday) as she sought to walk through the busy Qalandiya Checkpoint on the main road between Jerusalem and the PA administrative capital, Ramallah.

Israel's Channel 2 news this evening, quoted by Times of Israel, said she was from Al-Azariya and that she admitted to the security people that she was intending to carry out a terrorist attack. A knife was found concealed in her clothes or bag.

Another knifing attack was thwarted at the same location just this past Saturday afternoon [report] when a different young Palestinian Arab woman, also in her twenties, was stopped by security personnel and found to be carrying a knife in her bag.

And a month before that, again at Qalandiya, yet another young Palestinian Arab woman, this time just 18, was shot in the leg by Israeli security people as she rushed towards them, armed with a knife, and tried to stab them. In that July 26, 2016 intercept [report], the assailant was left with light injuries and treated at the scene by an ambulance crew from Magen David Adom before being removed from the scene to assist the authorities in their enquiries.

The Qalandiya crossover is on the edge of the once-busy industrial zone of Atarot, on the northern edge of Jerusalem. Apart from previous terror attacks of which there have been many [links], it's been in the news recently because of plans announced by an Israeli supermarket entrepreneur, Rami Levy, to erect the first "Israeli-Palestinian mall" [see this backgrounder from June 28, 2016]:

Levy’s company has been working hard to make sure the stores will reflect the local population, including finding Palestinian retailers and private shops to rent storefronts. Currently, most of the Palestinian stores that have reserved space are food suppliers, including the well-known Palestinian bakery Sinokrot. Another possible store will be the famous Zalatimo candy store. At one point, Levy had reeled one of the biggest Palestinian wholesalers of electronics, but after the deal was made, the potential client got cold feet. “There are many who are not afraid. I have rented to many Palestinians. I don’t know exactly happened, but he became scared for political reasons.” [Times of Israel, June 28, 2016]

Al-Azariya, a hard-scrabble Jerusalem village which figures in Biblical accounts under another name - Bethany - has produced a string of Palestinian Arab terror attackers in the past couple of years. One such attack, by a 16 year old boy from that village on December 3, 2014, was directed at... customers at another branch of the Rami Levy supermarket chain [see "03-Dec-14: Stabbing attack inside an Israeli supermarket", and "4-Dec-14: Knifing attack on shoppers in an Israeli supermarket: the aftermath".

26-Jul-16: Arab-on-Israeli stabbing is foiled at Qalandiya

After the April 28, 2016 attack at the same location [Image Source]

A stabbing attack on Israeli security personnel was thwarted this afternoon at the Qalandiya Crossing controlling a heavily-traveled road connecting Jerusalem and Ramallah where the Palestinian Authority administration is based. Qalandiya, the site of many previous Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks [link] on which we have reported, is

the largest and most frequented passageway for Palestinian laborers from the Ramallah area to cross into Jerusalem, with lines flowing in a relatively orderly manner. [Times of Israel, May 17, 2016]

It's the same site as the April attack we mentioned here ["28-Apr-16: Terror-by-knifing attack foiled at Qalandiya; assailant, again, is a child"].

Times of Israel, quoting a police statement today, reports that

a Palestinian woman, roughly 18 years old from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Aqab, approached the checkpoint and walked into the inspection area for cars. She then ran at security guards “who told her to stop multiple times,” When the woman ignored their warning, the guards shot at her legs, the statement said. The woman was lightly injured and Magen David Adom paramedics treated her at the scene. A police bomb disposal expert was called in to check the woman’s bag, and found a knife inside.

She was recorded screaming at the Israelis shortly before she was stopped in a video that is circulating on social media [an Arabic source here via YouTube]. Arabs began rioting at the site soon afterwards.

A photo of the inside of the attacker's handbag, showing a kitchen-knife, is doing the rounds of the social media [here for instance].

28-Apr-16: Terror-by-knifing attack foiled at Qalandiya; assailant, again, is a child

The attackers came equipped with these stabbing
implements - two identical kitchen knives
and a switchblade found on the body of the young male
[Image Source: Israel Police]

A violent attack at the Qalandiya security checkpoint yesterday (Wednesday) on Jerusalem's north side has cost a pair of Palestinian Arabs, a young married woman and her teenage brother, their lives.

Times of Israel reports that, while no Israelis from among the security personnel attacked suffered any injuries, the two assailants, armed with knives, were killed after attempting to attack the heavily-armed Israelis.

The attackers are identified as Maram Salih Hassan Abu Ismail, a woman of 23, and her brother Ibrahim Saleh Taha, 16. Both are said to be from Surif, an Arab community located south of Jerusalem and north of Hebron. Ma'an News Agency says the woman is the mother of two children and pregnant with a third.

Surif is familiar to Israelis with a sense of history. It is home to most of the Arab mob who carried out a total massacre of the convoy of Jews (among them Frimet Roth's cousin Eliyahu Herskowitz ז"ל) known as the Lamed Heh. Its 35 members had set out on foot in January 1948 with the goal of relieving the Arab siege on the Gush Etzion communities. Those beleagured communities, numerically overwhelmed by the surrounding enemies, eventually fell to the invading the Arab Legion, the military arm of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on Friday May 14, 1948, some hours before Israel’s independence was declared in Tel Aviv. They remained, judenrein, under Jordanian military occupation for the next 19 years. The massacre and then capture of the Gush was "one of the major episodes of the State of Israel-in-the-making", playing a significant role in Israeli collective memory. Wikipedia reminds us that the post-1967 revival and massive flourishing of the Gush Etzion communities is regarded as deeply symbolic, linked in the Israeli psyche to the massive loss of life in Israel's War of Independence.

Ynet's report of yesterday's terrorist attack says the Arab couple

attempted to walk through a passage intended for vehicle entry and began speeding up in the direction of Border policemen stationed at the scene. The female assailant had her hand in her bag in which there was a knife. The male assailant's hand was held behind his back which aroused the security forces suspicion. The police called upon them to stop several times. However they continued to quickly approach in their direction. The police continued to call upon them to stop and throw down the bag the woman was holding. The woman stopped close to the Border policemen, both of them took several steps backwards and then suddenly they turned towards the forces, the woman took out a knife and threw it straight at the policeman closest to her. The policeman was not injured. The security forces acted quickly and shot them dead. A search of the area revealed that in addition to the woman's knife, the male had a similar knife in his belt, as well as a pocket knife.

As always, there's an air of Rashomon ("alternative, self-serving and contradictory versions of the same incident" embodying "multiple eye-witness testimonies of an event contain conflicting information") already evident in parts of the media.

Arabic-language audiences are getting a sadly-familiar-sounding narrative at considerable odds with the Israel Police and media accounts. An Iranian news source calls yesterday's thwarted terror attack a "massacre". A Gazan source refers to a "child martyr", and martyr-posters are, not surprisingly, online [here] already. Al Safir, a Palestinian Arab news outlet, calls what happened an "execution". So does this Gulf news source. For Aljazeera, it's about the woman's orphaned children, and the death of a younger brother. As far as we can tell, none of those Arabic reports shows the knives that were removed from the clutches of the attackers.

As usual, the events we see as terrorism are described by the Arab and Muslim media to Arab news consumers context-free form, devoid of connection to the ongoing wave of knifings, rammings, shootings, bombings. Forgotten for the moment are the multiple public acts of glorification of women, sub-teen and teenage children enjoying the acclaim of Arabs and Moslems from across the spectrum - and at the highest levels of Palestinian Arab power - for the violence of their usually-pointless murderous assaults on Jews. It's an ongoing tragedy for all concerned.

Haaretz says

Hassan Tahah, another sibling, told Haaretz that he doesn't believe his sister was planning to carry out an attack. "We have no details about what transpired and no one briefed us, but I don't believe this whole terrorist attack story," he said. According to him, his sister was on her way to a doctor's appointment, accompanied by his brother. "She was probably lost, or didn't understand what was going on at the roadblock, and the soldiers shot her and my brother," he said.

We wrote about another terror-minded sixteen year-old from Surif with a knife in the wake of an earlier attack ["23-Oct-15: Scenes from a stabbing/ramming/shooting war of terror"] some months ago. And for a sense of some of the numerous recent Arab-on-Israeli attacks at Qalandiya, click here.

26-Jan-16: Two attackers stab women at neighborhood grocery store; instantly become figures of emulation

Beit Horon [Image Source]

If you drive from Jerusalem towards Ben Gurion airport and the coast, you generally choose one of two alternative routes. One is Route 1, the main highway now under massive reconstruction of the first ten kilometers that wend their way up and down the hills around the capital. The other is Route 443 that passes Givat Ze'ev and then Beit Horon.

Yesterday, in the small Beit Horon community (population: about 1,300, and a long Jewish history) that abuts the busy commuter route, a pair of Palestinian Arab men with terror on their minds made their way unhindered into the heart of the neighborhood - evidently via a breach in its periphery fence or by climbing over - towards the makolet, the local grocery store. This is the fourth attack in a week in which Arabs have brought their terror right inside Israeli communities; the others were in Tekoa, Otniel and Anatot/Almon.

They stopped briefly to place several home-made explosive devices just outside the shop. Just before or after that, they evidently spotted two women, one walking along the sidewalk, a second one in the nearby car park, and stabbed them both brutally. Security camera footage [here] shows them then being stopped at the entrance to the makolet by its proprietor aided by what he had at hand - a shopping cart. This worked. Sometime very soon after that, a security guard shot them both. They are now dead.

Members of the Israel Police bomb squad, called to the scene, neutralized the bombs, three of them. The stabbing victims were given emergency treatment and then rushed to hospital in Jerusalem. One is 23 years old, and was taken by ambulance to the Hadassah Medical Center hospital on Jerusalem's Mount Scopus in critical condition. The other, a woman said to be in her late fifties, has moderate injuries and is now at the capital's Shaarei Zedek Medical Center.

This morning, Tuesday, news reports say the younger of the two victims died of her injuries during the night. We still have no knowledge of who they are. That will surely come later today.

We know the attackers' names. Arabic-language news sources [here, for instance] say they are Osama Ibrahim Yousef Allan, 23, from nearby Beit Ur al-Tahta [بيت عور التحتى] and Hussein Mohamed Abu Ghosh, 17, from Qalandiya, an Arab neighbourhood from which a stream of killers, stabbers and would-be jihadists have emerged in recent months (most recently mentioned in our blog here, here and here.)

It's reported that they posted on Facebook in the hours before the murderous attack that they were "going to hunt porcupines". One of the thugs was immediately claimed [see poster] as "son, martyr, hero" by Fatah, the terrorist band headed by PA president Mahmoud Abbas. Their photos, part of the process of elevating armed thuggery to something higher and worthy of emulation, already began popping up across the Arabic media [here, for instance] in the hours after the terrorism.

Knowing how these matters work, there is no room for doubt that their stabbing of two unarmed women makes them heroes in the perverted society from which they emerged, starting at its highest levels. Their deaths at the hands of a security guard turns them in martyrs with custom posters for family and friends to admire.

Shlomit Kriegman Z"L

The IDF, immediately after the attack, set up roadblocks in the area and cordoned off nearby Beit Ur al-Tahta "with only those requiring medical attention permitted to enter or leave", in the words of a Haaretz report.

UPDATE Tuesday January 26, 2016 at 8:00 am: Israel National News says the woman murdered in Beit Horon yesterday is Shlomit Kriegman, 24, who "did her National Service with Bnei Akiva in Beit Horon. During the last year Shlomit lived with her grandfather and grandmother in the community." Her funeral will be at 1:00 pm today (Tuesday) at Jerusalem's Har Hamenuhot Cemetery. May her memory be a blessing.

24-Dec-15: Thursday noon vehicle ramming at Adam Junction

The attack vehicle, Adam Junction, this afternoon [Image Source]

When the weather is pleasant, the terrorists crawl out of their holes. We're seeing that now.

It's a delightful early winter afternoon here, and we're reporting the third terror attack of the day so far.

One person was injured lightly around 11:45 this morning (Thursday) when a driver, evidently a Palestinian Arab, steered his white Hyundai van into a cluster of IDF soldiers and Border Guard police at Adam Junction on Jerusalem's northern edge. The busy intersection (where Routes 57 and 90 meet) has seen numerous Arab-on-Israeli attacks in the past three months.

In accordance with current IDF guidelines, the security personnel opened fire and the attacker was shot and killed at the scene, according to an IDF statement quoted by Times of Israel. From social media sources, we hear he - like several other attackers in the past 48 hours - is a resident of Qalandiya. Ma'an News Agency says his name is Wisam Abu Ghwaila, 22.

23-Dec-15: At Jerusalem's Jaffa Gate, two knife-attackers, three victims

The promenade leading to Jaffa Gate is the scene of this afternoon's
co-ordinated stabbing attacks [Image Source]

There has been a stabbing attack at Jaffa Gate, the major entrance to Jerusalem's Old City. Three Israelis are injured; one is in critical condition, evidently after being inadvertently hit by Border Guard fire; two others with knife injuries defined as serious.

[UPDATE: 7:00 pm Times of Israel reports that the Israeli, a man of 40, unintentionally shot by Border Guard fire, has died of his injuries. Ofer Ben-Ari, 40, of Jerusalem, is survived by his wife and two children. A second Israeli victim, Argentine-born Rabbi Re'uven Biermacher from Kiryat Ye'arim, a teacher of Torah at Aish HaTorah, father of 7, died of knife-attack injuries.]

It's reported [Times of Israel, December 23, 2015] that the attackers were a pair of Palestinian Arabs. One of the victims is reported to have struggled with his stabber and was stabbed multiple times. Both of the knifers were shot by Border Guard fire at the scene. Both are dead.

In the Arab media, they are named as Anan Abu Habsah Hamad, 20, and Issa Assaf, 19, both from Qalandiya. There's no confirmation of this from official Israeli sources since the pair were not carrying ID or other documents, according to the police. How likely is it that they are already elevated to the Palestinian Arab pantheon of murdering "martyrs"? Quite. (And for those anxious to see what the savages looked like, here's a Twitter photo.) Israel National News says both spent time in Israeli prisons in the past for terrorism offences.

Our most recent mentions of Qalandiya were here:

• 18-Dec-15: Vehicle ramming attack on Jerusalem's northern edge
• 23-Nov-15: Central Jerusalem's shuk - two slashers attack and are stopped
• 17-Oct-15: Bloody Saturday
• 17-Oct-15: Knife attack at Qalandiya Crossing tonight

Two of today's victims were rushed to Jerusalem's Shaarei Zedek Medical Center, where the individual who had been shot was taken directly to the operating room. The other two victims were sent by ambulance to Shaarei Zedek and to Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital.

As of today's stabbings, Arab-on-Israeli attacks have cost the lives of 23 victims since the current wave of extreme violence began during the Jewish New Year festival period in September 2015. With that in mind, let's recall what the prime minister of Sweden, Stefan Lofven, said in an interview with the Swedish news agency TT in early December:

“There is an international classification regarding what constitutes or does not constitute [terror]. As far as I know, the [knife attacks in Israel] are not defined as terror.” [Source]

His Minister of Foreign Affairs Margot Wallstrom was quoted a few days before that saying Israel

was conducting “extrajudicial executions” of Palestinian stabbers, calling the Israeli response to the terrorist attacks “disproportionate.” [Source]

18-Dec-15: Vehicle ramming attack on Jerusalem's northern edge

From Israel National News, a reminder that the ordinary lethal violence carried out against any available Israelis by non-uniformed combatants on the Palestinian Arab side keep on coming:

A Palestinian terrorist attempted to run down Israeli police and soldiers using his car at a Samaria checkpoint on Friday but was shot and wounded without causing Israeli casualties, police said. "A Palestinian terrorist... drove at speed toward police and soldiers in an attempt to ram them," a statement said, adding that a guard fired at the car and hit the driver in the leg. The alleged assailant was then placed under arrest. The incident occurred at the Qalandiya checkpoint, near Ramallah and close to Qalandiya refugee camp, where soldiers on Wednesday shot dead two Palestinians who tried to ram their cars into troops in separate attacks. An AFP journalist at the scene of Friday's incident said the wounded Palestinian could be seen sitting on a stretcher as security forces fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse onlookers and journalists.

Sabbath is descending upon Jerusalem. May its spirit of peace and holiness prevail over the forces of darkness.

17-Oct-15: Knife attack at Qalandiya Crossing tonight

Qalandiya Crossing [Image Source]

In an earlier post this evening, we mentioned briefly that a stabbing attack had just happened at the Qalandiya Crossing, on Jerusalem's northern perimeter. Now we know more:

Security forces at Kalandia checkpoint north of Jerusalem shot an Arab terrorist who attempted to attack soldiers with a large knife. One Border Police officer was targeted in the attack, but the knife did not pierce his flak jacket, and the terrorist was shot. A bomb squad specialist then arrived to inspect the terrorist's body to ensure he was not strapped with an explosive, at which point the terrorist drew a second knife and tried to stab the bomb squad crew member. Fortunately he did not manage to stab his intended victim, and was instead shot again and critically wounded, later dying of his wounds. The terrorist was identified by Palestinian sources Ayoub Shahada, a resident of Kalandia who had previously been arrested for terrorism and then released. Two more knives were found on his body. [Israel National News, October 17, 2015]

When was Shehadeh released? And after engaging in what kind of terrorism? We hope those details will become known soon. He might be the young man described in this sympathetic 2007 portrait.