25-May-20: Monday: Two Arab-on-Israeli stabbing attacks

Image Source: NYTimes

Ramadan, culminating in Eid al Fitr which was marked by Moslems on Saturday and Sunday, has ended and the head of the Palestinian Authority has notified the world that security co-operation with the Israelis is now ended.

There are signs that the Palestinian Arab street has taken note.

A report broke this morning around 10:30 am of a thwarted Arab-on-=Israeli stabbing attack. Eight Palestinian Arabs are reported [JNS] this morning to have approached a group of soldiers on patrol near Amichai, a small new Jewish community of some 200 inhabitants, first populated in early 2018 and located northeast of the Palestinian Arab administrative capital, Ramallah. 

Two of the Arabs, said to be residents of nearby al-Mughayyir village (Times of Israel said they were brothers), assaulted the soldiers attempting to injure them with what the IDF called “sharp agricultural instruments.” The soldiers fired back at the assailants, reportedly hitting them in the lower extremities and injuring them. They subsequently received medical attention at a hospital in Ramallah, according to the IDF. 

The Palestinian Authority’s WAFA news agency offered no details about the extent of their injuries. The Israeli soldiers suffered no injuris in the course of the attack.

Later today (Monday around 4:15 pm), an Arab said to be about 30 and armed with a box cuttter knife [pictured here] as well as tear gas (according to Times of Israel) charged at a Border Guard police officer on on Meir Necker Street in Jerusalem’s Armon Hanatziv neighborhood. The location of the attack close to Jabel Mukaber, an Arab quarter. The attacker was reportedly shouting “Allah Akbar” as he hurled himself on his target.

He was shot by other officers at the scene and according to JNS was being ttreat at Hadassah Ein Karem medical center where he was said to be in serious condition.

An Israeli police officer was injured in the attack.

07-Oct-17: A quiet evening

London's museum precinct this afternoon: The driver
is pinned down by police [Image Source]

It's an ordinary Saturday night here in  Jerusalem.

Alright, not so ordinary since the whole country is in the midst of the Jewish religious festival of Sukkot which runs for a week and whose central motif is the temporary and generally-flimsy dwellings that are built by hundreds of thousands of families all over the country, and wherever in the world Jews live. It's the tail end of summer, the days are still sunny and warm and the evenings - Jerusalem's summer evenings are like this - are breezy and pleasant. A relaxing time.

All of which has gotten us thinking about the range and volume of news reports about terror in tonight's bulletins. A selection:

• Authorities in New York City revealed last night (Friday) that they have arrested three ISIS sympathizers who planned terror attacks on various New York locations including the MTA subway, music concerts and targets in the Times Square area. NBC News says the FBI arrested Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy, 19, a Canadian citizen, who [source] has been in US custody since May 2016 when he was arrested in New Jersey and who pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in October 2016; Talha Haroon, 19, an American citizen living in Pakistan and arrested there; and Russell Salic, 37, a Filipino who is being sent to the US for trial. It quotes Federal prosecutors saying the three men’s goal "was to kill and injure as many people as possible"  and that El Bahnasawy had already acquired bomb-making materials and secured a cabin to build them. They also planned - shades of last week's Las Vegas massacre - to shoot civilians "at specific concert venues". Reuters says "documents unsealed in federal court in Manhattan on Friday [showed] El Bahnasawy and Mr Haroon planned to carry out attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ran from early June to early July."
• In Switzerland, a man wielding two knives rushed at police and two refugees inside a refugee center in the southern Italian-speaking region of Ticino at 2:00 am, local time, today. Police fired at the attacker as a result of which he is now dead. The French news agency AFP says the assailant was a 38 year old Sri Lankan "asylum seeker". Police were called to break up a fight in Brissago, on the shores of Lake Maggiore and were in the building when the man with the knives attacked the other people. 
• French police yesterday (Friday) charged three men in Paris with launching an explosive attack on a residential building in the city's upscale 16th Arrondissment. The plot failed when the gas canisters they rigged up failed to ignite. According to Times of Israel, two of the suspects were already on a police terror-watch list. The three, identified as Amine A, his cousin Sami B, and Aymen B., are now charged with multiple crimes and in detention. Police found four gas cylinders after being called to the scene: two in the hallway attached to a mobile phone which evidently served as a detonator and two more on the sidewalk outside the building. Associated Press says the charges against the three are attempted murder linked to a terrorist enterprise, transporting explosives and participating in a terrorist association aimed at preparing attacks. All three have prior French criminal convictions; we are not yet able to learn the details.
• In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a little-reported shootout today between police and terrorists, according to an RT news story, resulted in the deaths of a "gunman and two guards... as the Saudi Arabian security forces prevented a terrorist attack near the royal Al Salam Palace... There has so far been no confirmation of the attack from Saudi authorities. The US Embassy in Saudi Arabia has issued a security warning to American citizens in Jeddah over the reported attack." This is bound to get more coverage but there's almost none tonight. 
• Another little-reported terror attack though on a much larger scale in the huge (but almost invisible to Western eyes) West African state of Niger. CNN says "three US Green Berets were killed and two others were wounded... near the Mali-Niger border when a joint US-Nigerien patrol was attacked Wednesday... Initial indications are the Green Berets were ambushed by up to 50 fighters who are thought to be affiliated with ISIS... The Green Berets were part of a team advising and assisting local forces when they were attacked." A sizable French and US military presence is seeking to stem the incursion of ISIS forces into Niger: some 800 US troops are currently based there; some are called advisers but that's likely to be mere foreign policy camouflage. CNN: "The US military has maintained a presence in the northwest African country for five years, with small groups of US Special Operations Forces advising local troops as they battle two terrorist groups, ISIS-affiliated Boko Haram and al Qaeda's North African branch, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb." 
• In Malaysia, where the authorities have been on high alert for human bombs and shooters since "Islamic State launched multiple attacks in Jakarta, the capital of neighboring Indonesia, in January 2016", Reuters says 8 people, four foreigners and four Malaysians, were taken into custody today "for suspected involvement in terrorist activities linked to Abu Sayyaf, the Islamic State and Jemaah Islamiah". Those arrested are said to include three Filipinos, one Albanian (a law lecturer at a local university) and two people convicted in 2016 of participating in terrorist activities (so people might be asking why are they free now).
• And here in Israel, the death of Reuven Shmerling, a Jewish Israeli in his 70s who lived with his family in Elkana and whose body was found on Wednesday at a location on the outskirts of Kafr Qassem, an Israeli town whose residents are overwhelmingly Arab, now appears (after the police expressed initial doubt) to have been the result of terrorism. Haaretz says "Shmerling left his home on Wednesday morning and went to a warehouse in Kafr Qasem, which belonged to his son. When his wife Hanna noticed he did not return home and is not answering his phone, his son was called to the warehouse, where he discovered his father's body. Paramedics pronounced Shmerling dead. In a statement, Shmerling's family stressed they have no doubt he was killed in a terror attack."

Two additional alarming reports turn out (so far at least) to be unrelated to terror:

• An incoming-missile alert was sounded in the Israeli communities closest to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip around the time we started writing this report. As of now (10:30 pm Saturday), the alert appears to be without basis and there were no actual rockets. This happens.
• In London, a car drove onto the sidewalk outside a popular museum at 2:20 pm London time today. According to Financial Times, this happened "at the junction of Exhibition Road and Cromwell Road, between the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Natural History Museum — is part of a shared space experiment and the pavement is at the same level as the road." The response from security services was rapid and large: "dozens of armed officers flooded the area and a 200 metre cordon was created around the scene. Witnesses fled in panic as police told them to "keep running" and put businesses around the area in lockdown." [Telegraph UK]
  The BBC quotes the Metropolitan Police saying one person was arrested. But earlier concerns that this was a terror attack were now being set aside, and "the incident was being treated as "a road traffic collision". London Ambulance said the people it treated - including the detained man - had mostly sustained head and leg injuries. Nine were taken to hospital." Meanwhile the driver "is being held in custody at a north London police station." The British are uncommonly tense over the prospects of more terror in their lives; as BBC notes tonight: "The current terror threat in the UK is at "severe" - the second highest level - meaning an attack is highly likely."

Life is so much more relaxed when you ignore what terrorists are planning and doing. But the difficult reality is that ignoring them doesn't make them go away.

26-May-17: With Ramadan starting tonight, the Indonesians sense where their problems are coming from

Indonesian police spokesman shows materials collected as evidence
from the bombing site, during press conference in Jakarta
on May 25, 2017 [Image Source]

The world's largest Moslem nation is reeling after a pair of human bombs exploded near a bus station in the capital.

Aljazeera says the explosions went off minutes apart this past Wednesday night around 9:00 pm at Jakarta's Kampung Melayu terminal. They killed three police officers and injured at least 10 others - five of them police, five civilians.

"This is the biggest attack in the capital since last year," Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen said, reporting from Jakarta. "Police say they were on high alert after the attack in Manchester and they were expecting something. They only didn't know what was going to happen and where." ...Authorities in the world's biggest Muslim-majority nation are increasingly worried about a surge in "radicalism", driven in part by a new generation of fighters inspired by ISIL. Indonesia has long been fighting armed groups but in recent years hundreds have flocked to fight for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria and Iraq... [A]uthorities believe about 400 Indonesians have gone to join the group in Syria, and could pose a more lethal threat if they come home. [Aljazeera, May 25, 2017]

Reuters adds that an anti-terrorism unit carried out a raid the following day (Thursday) at the home of one of the suspected human bombs. It quotes a statement by President Joko Widodo: "We must continue to keep calm... keep cool...  Muslims are preparing to enter the month of Ramadan for fasting".

Ramadan runs for a month starting tonight (Friday). The Indonesians evidently understand that the passions it arouses have a deeply worrying impact on already feverish Islamist terrorist minds. They probably wonder about the good sense of people like the leader of a Moslem Cultural Center in south-western England who, reflecting on the atrocity in Manchester, is quoted yesterday in a local newspaper saying

“We stand united with Manchester, the British people in general and people all over the world who suffer at the hands of the small yet dangerous minority of murderous extremists and remind people that terrorism has no religion and despite their claim, the terrorists have nothing to do with Islam..." ["Terrorists have nothing to do with Islam", Wiltshire Times UK, May 25, 2017]

Considerably more sense emanated from the Archbishop of Canterbury when he said publicly half a year ago:

Society should no longer say the atrocities of Isis have “nothing to do with Islam” because the approach restricts efforts to fight extremism, the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned. The Most Rev Justin Welby has called on all religious leaders to “stand up and take responsibility” for the actions of extremists who claim to be following the strictures of their faith... ["Justin Welby: It's time to stop saying Isis has ‘nothing to do with Islam’", Independent UK, November 19, 2016] 

And a timely alert from a year-old New York Times article:

As the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan approached, jihadist propagandists told their followers that it was a good time to kill people. The spokesman for the Islamic State said in late May that jihadists should “make it, with God’s permission, a month of pain for infidels everywhere.” Another extremist distributed a manual for using poisons, adding, in poor English: “Dont forget Ramadan is close, the month of victories.” A bloody month it has been [remember - 2016], with terrorist attacks killing and wounding hundreds of people in Orlando, Fla.; Istanbul; Dhaka, Bangladesh; and now Baghdad, where a bomb killed more than 140 people early Sunday in a shopping area full of families who had just broken their Ramadan fasts.
For the vast majority of the world’s Muslims, violence is completely dissonant with the holy month, which in addition to fasting is a time for spiritual renewal, prayer and visits with friends and family.
It is widely believed that the rewards earned for noble acts are greater during Ramadan, which culminates in the Eid holiday this week. Jihadists have perverted this belief to serve their own ends, analysts said. In short: If one believes it is good to kill those who are considered infidels, all the better to do so during Ramadan..." Many large attacks occurred during Ramadan last year [2015], too, hitting a Tunisian beach resort, a Shiite mosque in Kuwait, a Kurdish town in northern Syria and African Union troops in Somalia. ["ISIS Uses Ramadan as Calling for New Terrorist Attacks", New York Times, July 3, 2016]

16-Jul-15: Innocent-looking young women are not always

The "suspected" "activist"
who "allegedly" carried out the stabbing attack
[Image Source: An Arabic language source] 

We have no first-hand experience of it, but it's fairly obvious that standing guard at a security checkpoint can be a trying experience, not to mention a dangerous one.

A young Israeli doing his national service with the IDF at a security checkpoint was stabbed in the back yesterday (Wednesday) near the community of Nahliel. Ynet says he was serving with the Netzah Yehuda battalion.

The attacker is identified by the IDF Spokesperson's office as Rawan Abu Matar, a 22 year old female from Beitillu [but this Arab source says she is 17], one of the Arab villages located close to Nahliel. She is now in the hands of the security officials for interrogation. Ynet says she confessed that her intention was to murder a soldier.

The young soldier is reported to be in Tel Hashomer where he is being treated for light-to-moderately-serious knife wounds. We don't have his name.

How much easier life would be for people who want to live constructive, peaceful lives if the neighbours with heads filled with Ramadan messages of vengeance, violence and bloodshed wore badges or stickers on their foreheads. But they don't - which is something to keep in mind when criticisms are sounded from hostile sources about what are sometimes called the disrespectful ways Israel's security apparatus deals with keeping the population unharmed.

A few moments earlier: same place, same young woman
[Image Source: Another Arab website]

Nahliel, a modest village-scale community in Israel's Mateh Binyamin Regional Council region, describes itself via Wikipedia as a "warm, Torah-centered community, a place where it is fun to live". It is home to about 80 families, most of them Haredi, and is located some 20 kilometers north of the capital, Jerusalem.

Netzah Yehuda is a battalion in the Kfir Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces. It was formed in 1999 to allow religious Israelis to serve in the IDF "in an atmosphere conducive to their religious convictions, within a framework that is strictly halachically observant" [Wikipedia]. Its motto "V'haya Machanecha Kadosh", "And your [military] camp shall be holy", is based on scripture (Deuteronomy 23:12).

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

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

Tragically it's happening again tonight.

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

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

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

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

Listen to the words of the jihadists: 

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

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

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