27-Dec-22: Suspect held in November's twin Jerusalem Arab-on-Israeli bombings

The two Israelis murdered in the twin bombing attacks last month

The authorities here cleared for publication earlier today that a suspect in the November 23, 2022 twin-bombings in Jerusalem ["23-Nov-22: In Jerusalem, twin bomb blasts put terror in the spotlight again"] has been in the hands of Israeli law enforcement officials for a month. He was detained by Israeli security forces six days after those lethal attacks on innocent commuters standing at bus-stops.

The news came in the form of a statement issued jointly by Israel Police and the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service.

According to one report, ["Israel announces arrest last month of Jerusalem bombing suspect", i24NEWS, today], the suspected bomber is a mechanical engineer, Aslam Faroh, 26, described as "an Israeli resident who was living in Kafr 'Aqab in east Jerusalem and Ramallah in the West Bank." (His name is spelled in different ways in English reports.)

He had fled the scene of the morning rush-hour attacks on a motorbike, and was hiding out in a cave in the Judean desert. A search there turned up an additional explosive device secreted in the cave.

The theory is he acted alone "after planning the attack for an extended period of time."

A statement naming him Froukh and attributed to the Shin Bet says the attacker acted alone "out of Salafi-jihadi ideology identified with the Islamic State (ISIS) terror organization" and that he used how-to guides viewable on the Internet to learn to make the bombs used in the attack.

A chilling postscript reports something we had not known earlier;

"Israeli police also revealed that a third explosive device had been found at the bus stop where the first bombing occurred. A mechanical failure prevented its detonation, which had been timed to take place thirty minutes after the initial explosion."

A delayed explosion would indicate that the bomber intended to inflict injuries and death on rescue workers and police at the scene.

Two Israelis were killed in the bombings. Aryeh Shechopek, a 16-year-old student, died at the scene of the earlier of the two explosions at a bustling bus stop (the "trampiada") at the entrance to Jerusalem on Highway One. A second victim, Tadasa Tashume Ben Ma'ada, 50, died three days later in hospital from injuries suffered in the same attack. Some twenty other people suffered injuries.

A Times of Israel report ["Arab Israeli with Islamic State ties arrested for bombings at Jerusalem bus stops"], where his name is rendered as Eslam Froukh, says

"Security forces located the site [near Ramallah] where Froukh allegedly tested his explosive devices. The Shin Bet said troops seized explosive materials, a makeshift sub-machine gun and a primed bomb similar to the ones used in the Jerusalem attack. The agency said it suspected Froukh planned to commit another attack using the explosive device and the weapon. Several other suspects were arrested in the days following the bombing, but were all released. Prosecutors are expected to file an indictment against Froukh in the coming days, which will include murder and other terror charges."

Froukh was reportedly unknown to security authorities until now. 

His posts on social media (quoted here) show that his engineering studies were done at the well-regarded Azrieli College of Engineering in Jerusalem. Azrieli's comprehensive website includes an Arabic language edition reflecting its engagement with Arab students. A 2017 article ("Fulfilling Arab Startup Dreams in Jerusalem") sheds light on Azrieli's efforts to bring young Arab professionals into Israel's start-up culture.

ISIS connection?

An analysis published by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) gives some context to the claim that this terrorist was aligned with the jihadists of the Islamic State. Though Israel has never been the site of much ISIS activity, its terrorists have laid claim to a handful of attacks over the years. 

Two terror attacks in late March 2022 were perpetrated by ISIS supporters. An attack involving a car-ramming and stabbings in Beer Sheba, killing four Israeli civilians and was perpetrated by Muhammad Abu Al-Qi'an who had been in prison for trying to join ISIS in Syria. A shooting in the Israeli city of Hadera killed two border guards and injured twelve Israelis and was carried out by cousins Ayman and Ibrahim Ighbariyeh, the latter of whom had also tried to travel to Syria to join ISIS. ISIS sources threatened in the wake of these killings that "the unbelieving Jews should know that our promises [to attack them] will reach them sooner or later, Allah willing."[7]

MEMRI suggested in May 2022 that ISIS has gone through a shift in focus

and now sees masterminding attacks against Israel as a greater priority than it previously did. However, it is more likely that the perpetrators of these recent attacks acted on their own and that ISIS leadership is not facilitating operations against Israel, other than inciting to them periodically, generally when tensions are high between Israel and Palestinian factions. Thus, it seems probable that ISIS... attacks against Israel will remain at a minimum. At the same time, there are still ISIS supporters living in Israel and the Palestinian territories, who may decide, under the influence of ISIS propaganda, to instigate attacks in the name of the jihadi organization, which views Israelis and Jews as enemies whom it is meritorious to target, provided that the attack is carried out for the sake of Allah and not out of nationalistic motives. [Quoted from The Evolution Of Islamic State (ISIS) Views On Attacking The State Of Israel, May 20, 2022]

11-Aug-19: What money can do: The Sbarro terrorists and the children of Ramot

Basing herself on the fine investigative work done routinely by Itamar Marcus and his colleagues at Palestinian Media Watch, Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman reported in the Jerusalem Post on the role played by money in the lives of the terrorists who destroyed Jerusalem's Sbarro Pizzeria exactly eighteen years earlier.

Here's how it starts:

Eighteen years ago, on August 9, female terrorist Ahlam Tamimi smuggled a bomb in a guitar case into Jerusalem and led a suicide bomber to the crowded Sbarro pizza shop in Jerusalem’s city center.

Suicide terrorist Izz Al-Din Al-Masri ate a slice of pizza and then blew himself up, murdering 15 people, seven of them children, and wounding close to 130 others.

“I have no regrets,” Tamimi told Channel 1 TV in an interview that was recently rebroadcast on Palestinian Authority TV. “No Palestinian prisoner regrets what he or she has done.”

Since that fateful day, in which two Americans – Malki Roth and Shoshana Yehudit Greenbaum – were among the murdered, the PA has paid the seven terrorists who helped orchestrate the attack as well as Al-Masri’s family $910,823 (3.2 million shekels), according to a report released Thursday by Palestinian Media Watch.

These payments include monthly salaries paid to the terrorists in prison; payments to the family of the dead terrorist; and payments to the terrorists, like Tamimi, who were released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal, brokered between the Israeli government and Hamas...

The report concludes with some observations about the catastrophic policies of the Mahmoud Abbas regime:

“The Palestinian Authority glorifies all its terrorists, including child murderers and suicide bombers, as heroes,” explained Maurice Hirsch, PMW’s head of legal strategies in a related release. “In addition to granting the terrorist prisoners a monthly salary, the 2004 PA Law of Prisoners and Released Prisoners prohibits the PA from signing any peace agreement that does not include the release of all the Palestinian terrorists, including the child-murderers who carried out this attack.”

In 2018, the PA admitted to spending $134 million in salary payments to terrorists. Currently, every terrorist salary starts at a minimum of NIS 1,400 per month and can reach as much as NIS 12,000 month after 30 years.

J-Wire, an online Australian Jewish news service, gave Arnold Roth the opportunity on Friday to respond and published his comments here today:

In the park down the street from where we live in Jerusalem, the local teens are putting final touches today to the annual charity bazaar held every year the day after Tisha B'Av. The bazaar exemplifies how Israel and its children deal with the bitter experience of ultra-violent hatred like that which blew up the Sbarro pizzeria 18 years ago today and obliterated so many futures. My daughter Malki's life ended there that day.

How we manage and use resources says a lot about society. Money, spent wisely, would make Palestinian Arab lives better, improving their prospects in life, their health and education.

The chronically insolvent Mahmoud Abbas regime that lives from foreign aid chooses loudly, aggressively and without shame to devote a massive share of its budget to honoring the killers of children and to nurturing yet more of them. Tragically, this is one of the few ways the inept Palestinian Authority manages to change its hapless subjects' destiny.

The children on our street raise substantial funds each year from a fine event that remembers Malki and her dearest friend Michal Raziel. Their values symbolize and honour Israel and the Jewish people's efforts to create better futures - tikun olam. It's not an outlook our Arab neighbors share with us.

Eventually it will prevail. But only after the politicians behind the foolish funding policies of the governments refilling Abbas' purse understand the chronic damage they do and stop.

If you're in Jerusalem tomorrow, August 12, 2019, you won't regret coming along to the annual Ezra Charity bazaar that honors the lives of our daughter Malki Roth and her friend Michal Raziel. It's held in the northern Jerusalem community of Ramot: jumping castle, face painting, caricatures, live performances by Yam Refaeli and Harel Tal and the magic act of Lior Laufer. Proceeds of the bazaar benefit the Malki Foundation.

That's the official poster above, with details. Feel free to email us [click] if you need translation or directions.

09-Mar-16: Another Arab-on-Israeli attack in Jerusalem this morning

Scene of this morning's shooting near the Old City
[Image Source: Social media]

Police and ambulance sirens have been in the air non-stop this morning in the part of Jerusalem where we live.

A pair of Palestinian Arab men traveling in a car shot and critically injured an Israeli man this morning as he was standing at or close to the Jerusalem Light Rail line on Ha-Tzanhanim Street, beside the walls of the Old City and a 2 minute stroll from Damscus Gate.

Times of Israel says the two occupants of the vehicle were shot dead by Israel Police officers at the scene and that the shooters are

likely the same men who had carried out a failed shooting attack at a Jerusalem public bus elsewhere in Jerusalem earlier in the morning. They had opened fire on a number 32 Egged bus at the Ramot Junction in the city’s northwest. There were no injuries in the earlier shooting attack, and police launched a search for the vehicle that was seen driving away from the location.

The guns found inside the attack vehicle by
police after the two shooters were
eliminated this morning  next to the Old
City walls [Image Source]

And as if to remind us that everyone - Jews, Moslems, Christians, residents, visitors, old, young, soldiers, civilians - face the exact same danger from the jihadists, it quotes an ambulance service paramedic, Muhammad Abed al-Rahman, an employee of Magen David Adom, who treated the victim of the attack:

"We administered life-saving treatment to him and quickly took him away while keeping him sedated and on respiration. He is in serious condition."

And indeed, it turns out (according to an Israel National News update) that the man seriously injured in the gunfire was a Jerusalem Arab of about 50 named Imad Abu Ali. He too (like the Israeli victims of yesterday's gun attack) suffered a shooting injury to the head. That's where the jihadists are instructed to aim.

Ma'an News Agency's spin is, unsurprisingly, consistent with past form:

"Israeli police shot dead two Palestinians outside Jerusalem's Old City on Wednesday morning after they allegedly carried out a shooting... They were later identified as Abdul-Malak Saleh abu Kharoub,19, and and Muhammad Jamal al-Kalouti, 21."

The report published by Ma'an for its Arabic readers is, naturally, cast a little differently, inevitably describing both dead men as "martyrs". On one view, that's an odd thing to call a couple of well-armed toughs who opened fire from inside a moving car at a bus-load of rush-hour civilian passengers - which is what they did in Ramot this morning - and then a little later on passers-by in a predominantly-Arab part of the city.

But since their very well-funded news reporting is backed by such governments and major donors as the Human Rights and International Law Secretariat, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Netherlands, UK, EU, US, UNESCO, UNDP and the Arab Human Rights Fund, who are we to judge?

28-Jan-16: Another Arab-on-Israeli knifing attack tonight at a gas station on Jerusalem's northern edge

An Israeli male, variously described in reports as being in his thirties, forties and fifties, is the latest victim of the Palestinian Arab stabbing season.

He suffered serious injuries tonight around 11:00 pm when a knife-wielding Palestinian Arab male teen attacked him at a food shop - from the description it sounds to us like the Nehama Bakery - adjacent to a well-known gas station on the main highway leading from the northern Jerusalem neighbourhood of Ramot towards Givat Ze'ev, a community of some 15,000 residents.

He is being treated at this hour in the emergency room of Jerusalem's Shaarei Zedek Medical Center where, according to Times of Israel, he is in moderate to severe condition.

Twitter, whose ability to showcase killers and jihadists en route to fame and martyrdom exceeds that of the news-reporting industry by far, has already identified him: Abada Abu Ras, 17, from a Palestinian Arab town, Bir Nabala.

Ynet says the attacker entered the restaurant and stabbed the man, evidently without knowing him, several times in the upper body. He then fled, dropping the knife, and was pursued by civilians incensed by the brazen act of terror. They caught up with him some 200 meters south of the gas stop. A second knife was found on his person, and this along with the robustly physical attentions of the five or six men who caught up with him, resulted in him being slightly hurt.

What happens next is knowable in advance. In that perverse society in the grip of rampant blood-lust, Abu Ras will be proclaimed a hero for plunging a blade into a Jewish chest or back, His name and face, along with the trade mark of the political group who claim him as their own, will be rapidly emblazoned across the Arabic social media, and on posters hung up in kindergartens, schools, supermarkets and places of moderate religious worship throughout the PA realm, and perhaps in Gaza too if it turns out he is affiliated with the Islamists of Hamas. He will then quickly be forgotten (replaced in Palestinian Arab public affections and attention by the next stabber, the latest car-rammer or human bomb) unless he then engages in prolonged self-imposed fasting in his prison cell, in which case his stocks as a hero will rise yet higher. He may then be freed in some deal.

We pray that the still-unnamed victim will receive the best of emergency care and achieve a speedy and complete recovery.

01-Dec-15: Arab-on-Israeli knifing attacks continue this morning

In the first of this morning's terror attacks, Gush Etzion Junction where ten (at least) stabbing attacks have been launched against Israeli civilians during the last two months (in particular) was the scene of another this morning. This one was directed at people standing at a hitchhiking stop, according to the IDF quoted by Times of Israel. The attacker was stopped by the gun-fire of soldiers who rushed to the site, and he is now dead. Pathetically he is yet another sixteen year-old with a knife, named as Ma'amoun al-Khatib from Bethlehem, according to a Ynet report. It's fair to assume the martyr posters and candies for the celebratory funeral are being prepared at this moment.

An Israeli civilian of about 35 injured by the IDF gunfire in the assault was taken to Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem for emergency treatment of wounds to the hand and chest.

The second, around 8:00 am was initially reported as a terror attack in the Beit Yisrael neighbourhood of Jerusalem (there was a victim, he was stabbed) but the police are quoted saying it was actually a criminal attack, unrelated to terror, even though the victim asserted otherwise.

A third, in the northern Jerusalem neighbourhood of Ramot Alef, was reported around 8 as well. Multiple first-responder vehicles were heard, their sirens shrieking, as they converged on the site. Initial reports spoke of an Arab attacker armed with a knife on board an Egged 71 city bus. There are currently no reports of casualties. This suggests the alarms were false, or (which we have seen reported) the attacker fled - indeed it appears someone did jump off the bus before doing harm. More details if we get any. As of now, this is not being treated as a terror attack.

The day is far from over.

10-Jul-15: Man with knife stopped by security; Israeli lives are saved; media yawn

A 2010 snapshot of the scene of yesterday's attack
[Image Source: Machsom Watch]

The next time the young man in the story that follows appears in the media (if he ever does) is likely to be as one of the faceless "detainees" depicted as having been thrown into a cruel Israeli lock-up for no logical reason other than Israel's perceived need to have more and more "political prisoners".

Back to reality:

Stabbing attack prevented in north Jerusalem | Ynet, July 10, 2015 | Authorities confirmed Thursday night that a stabbing attack had been prevented in northern Jerusalem where a Palestinian suspect was arrested after approaching a group of soldiers with a knife. The soldiers saw the Palestinian approach and called for him to stop without receiving a response. When the soldiers cocked their weapons, however, the suspect threw his knife to the ground in surprise and the soldiers were able to search and arrest him. The commander of the roadblock where the attack was prevented said that, "We are prepared and trained for these types of event; to my joy, the response of the team at the roadblock was quick and professional so that the attacker was unable to fulfill his plans."
Chief Superintendent and Battalion Commander Golan Sharoni said, "The soldiers acted with determination and professionalism exactly as is expected of them; there's no doubt that the quick response prevented a worse event." Initial investigations suggested that the suspect had intended to attack the soldiers.

The Jerusalem Post clarifies that the attempted attack took place at the Ras Bidu checkpoint on Jerusalem's northern edge. B'Tselem, a far-left activist group which lists IDF security checkpoints [here] calls this one a "permanently staffed" crossing point in the Separation Barrier between the villages of Bidu and Beit Iksa for regulating passage of residents of Beit Iksa, Bidu and East Jerusalem. Beit Iksa is close to northern Jerusalem's Ramot neighbourhood (but for manifestly-ideological reasons, B'tselem routinely call it East Jerusalem).

Over at Israel National News, they add that the knife-man is 17, and that he pulled a knife on the soldiers when they challenged him. He then dropped it and was taken away for questioning.

Needless to point out that yesterday's attempted murder is unreported in the non-Israeli media, like thousands of similar acts before it by other Palestinian Arabs, because (a) no one was killed; (b) Israel's forces conducted themselves in highly appropriate way in the context of a daily battle of nerves with Palestinian Arabs seeking murder victims, especially during their Ramadan; (c) it highlights the persistence of the ongoing, ever-refreshed community-based hatred - connected only in the most tenuous sense to the political narratives that fill the mainstream media - that inspires 17 year olds to go kill themselves an Israeli or two and damn the consequences.

22-Oct-11: Stabbed this afternoon in Ramot

Because we don't listen to the news or have our computers switched on during the Sabbath, it was alarming to hear the sounds of police and ambulance sirens wailing through the air this afternoon, along with a helicopter swooping through the skies. We now know that 3 minutes drive from our home, a young man was stabbed at about 3 this afternoon by an Arab.

Reuters quotes Israel police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld saying they see it as "a terrorist attack" and that witnesses saw the suspect fleeing the scene. The young victim, name still unknown, is said to be in critical condition in the trauma unit at Shaarei Zedek hospital. The news reports here say he and a friend were sitting on the curb "when a young Arab man passed by them. According to the friend, the Arab man turned around, headed toward the two, stabbed the man in the back and the stomach, and fled".

UPDATE Saturday night 9:00pm: This report says the victim is a 17 year old boy and gives his name. If our guess is right, he's the son of a local storekeeper here in the neighborhood. We're praying for his full and speedy recovery.

UPDATE Sunday 1:45pm: The boy stabbed in our neighborhood yesterday afternoon by a Palestinian Arab is reported today to be in stable condition, we're pleased to say, following surgery for stab wounds to the abdomen and back.