02-Nov-15: Terrorist rides bus from Hevron to carry out stabbing attack in Rishon Lezion

Rishon Lezion - immediately after the attack [Image Source: Video]

There has been another Arab-on-Israeli knifing attack.

This one, around 3:50 this afternoon (Monday) was executed by a Palestinian Arab terrorist in his teens who traveled from Hevron to the Tel-Aviv suburbs - specifically to the main bus station in Rishon Lezion, and Herzl Street, its main commercial precinct according to Globes, to make his contribution to defending the Al Aqsa mosque-compound-myth.

Presumably expressing what a New York Times article today calls "the extent of Palestinian frustration", the attacker, according to Ynet's report

stabbed a 35-year-old man on a street corner, seriously wounding him . He continued to a commercial area on an adjacent street, where he stabbed another person, who was lightly wounded. He then attacked an 80-year-old woman outside of a cosmetics store, inflicting severe wounds.  A store employee shut the door. Passersby got hold of the terrorist, a 19-year-old resident of Hebron, and brought him into the store, where he was held down until police arrived and arrested him.

The Ynet article points out that the past week has been marked by unrelenting violence centered in what it terms the Hamas-aligned city of Hebron, which is Hebron some 100 kilometers from Rishon LeZion by car.

Though there is still some uncertainty about the identities, it appears that this afternoon's victims are an 80-year-old woman, stabbed multiple times in the upper body, and suffering moderate-to-serious injuries; a man said to be in his forties, left in serious condition from his stabbing injuries, and a man in his twenties, with knife wounds to the legs. Israel National News says all received emergency treatment at the scene from Magen David Adom (MDA) medics and then rushed to nearby Assaf HaRofeh hospital in Gedera. Medics also treated several bystanders for shock.

The attacker was arrested by police and is being interrogated.

1-Jul-12: Among savages, this one is exceptionally barbaric

Ibrahim Hamed in handcuffs at the military court in Machane Ofer.
It's startling how murderous monsters often look like
ordinary human beings. The tragic and unforgivable mistake many make
is to believe they ought to be treated like members
of some political opposition group. [Image Source]

He's not exactly a household name, even here in Israel. But Ibrahim Hamed is a major figure, a hero,  a man of accomplishment in the world of Islamist terrorists/murderers and their very large number of supporters throughout the Arab world and beyond it. 

This morning in the exceedingly modest military courthouse at Machane Ofer on Jerusalem's northern edge (which we know well from our own bitter experiences), Hamed was sentenced to 54 life terms in prison. (There were reports last week that the prosecution had sought 56.) 

The history of Israeli sentences of this sort strongly suggests the man will go free at some early stage. But for now, the news media here - and almost nowhere else - are reporting in a straightforward way on the crimes he committed and the sentence imposed on him.

Hamed was captured after an eight year manhunt by Israeli forces in 2006 at a place within walking distance of where the sentence was pronounced this morning. Held in prison since that time, he is described in his Wikipedia entry as "a Hamas military commander in the West Bank who ordered suicide bombing attacks during the Al-Aqsa Intifada".  

Let's briefly parse that statement. 

First observation: the word "suicide" is entirely out of place in the description. The crime was murder. The killers, a selection of Islamist losers and dead-enders, may or may not have intended to die in the effort. But that is surely not the defining character of the terrorist outrage. Describing the crime, and by implication the victims, as having a character determined by what happened in the end to the perpetrator is wrong and offensive to the innocent people who were their victims, and unduly respectful of the evil parties.

Second note: a military commander? Like a lieutenant general or a field marshal? What absurd nonsense. We're speaking of the ring-leader of the grandiosely named Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas division that executes its terrorist intentions; a man who never wore a military uniform, since terrorists conduct themselves behind a massive human shield of the societies in which they live. And does Hamas constitute a military force? If so, what are their military objectives? If the suggested answer is "they want to win territory and set up a sovereign state", then show us how this fits with their highly public and well-analyzed political manifesto, otherwise known as the Hamas Covenant (where it's conveniently translated into English). 

They are interested in neither territory nor sovereign states. Read the Covenant - it's all laid out clearly enough.

He was and he is a terrorist. He seeks (present tense) to murder civilians by any means accessible to him or the people taking orders from him. Military commanders everywhere would be fully justified in taking the greatest personal offence at any comparison to the rule-constrained careers they undertook.

The charge sheet against Hamad, describes how he planned, organized, assisted and executed the killing of 46 people and the wounding of more than 400 more. The cowardly bloodbaths he initiated include these: 

• The December 1, 2001 staged, multiple bombings in central Jerusalem's Zion Square. Eighteen people were killed in the Saturday night crowd. A further 188 were injured. The gross savagery of the perpetrators was showcased by the way the first two bombs, detonated on the bodies of the two walking/talking pathetically-human explosives, were followed several minutes later - in accordance with the terrorists' plan - by the explosion of a nearby car bomb. That car bomb was timed to go off just as ambulances and first-responders arrived on the scene. When you are in the presence of barbarians, you must be very careful to distinguish their actions from those of a military.
• The March 9, 2002, bombing of Cafe Moment in Jerusalem. Twelve people sitting in the cafe were killed in the explosion. Fifty-four more were injured, ten of them severely.
• The attack on a social venue, the Sheffield Club, in Rishon Letzion on March 7. 2002. Fifteen were killed, 85 injured.
• The bombing of the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria on the campus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem on July 31, 2002. Nine students, most of them Americans, were murdered in that act of savagery.  About 100 others were injured. The nail-studded bomb was hidden in a bag that was planted under a cafeteria table and then detonated by remote control, allowing the killers to escape safely. The news media reported that day on street celebrations in Gaza.

How long before we see this creature's face on the posters held by "human rights activists"?

1-Feb-12: One down, 1026 to go

Click to enlarge this celebratory 2011 snapshot of
convicted (but freed) Palestinian Arab terrorists in Gaza returning to action

Yesterday, the IDF announced it had taken into custody one of the 1,027 terrorists released in the October 2011 deal with Hamas for the freedom of the Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit. The Israeli news sources that originally reported this on Tuesday seem to have published (in more than one case) the wrong name. Challah Hu Akbar published this about yesterday's confusion.

What we know about the man arrested yesterday is that his name is Mahmud Abdallah Abd al-Rahman Abu Sariya. He appears at position number 189 in the official terrorists-going-free list published by the Israel Prison Service. In May 2002 when he was 32, he and a colleague walked up to the Beer-Sheva Old City branch of an Israeli bank and placed a package on the ground before fleeing for their lives. (Hebrew report here.) That package contained a bomb that thankfully failed to explode completely. As a result, "only" ten people were injured. 

The terrorists intended to execute a massacre (16 Israelis were killed a few days earlier in a Hamas bombing attack on a club in Rishon Leziyon), and would probably have succeeded but for the incompetence or bad luck of the bomb-maker.  Abu Sariya was sentenced to 38 years in prison, and was unjustly released after serving less than nine. 

Free and at liberty to do whatever constructive thing came into his head, he re-established himself in terrorism and, fortunately, will be out of action again for some time to come. He will surely be the very last of the unjustly-freed Shalit deal convicts to return to terrorism. 

Surely the very last.

24-Mar-11: Those Gazan rockets are reaching deeper and deeper into the heartland

The terrorists in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip dispatched two more long-range Grad rockets into this afternoon (Thursday). Haaretz says one landed south of the coastal city of Ashdod, and the other just north it. JPost says the second one landed a little south of Rishon Leziyon, a Tel Aviv suburb, and from personal contacts living in the area we have heard that it crashed into the sand dunes on the Bat Yam beach. Eight jihadist rockets have been fired into Israel so far today.

7-Jan-08: The unbearable lightness of thuggish hatred

You raise people in a religiously-inspired environment of poisonous wall-to-wall hatred and this is what you get:

Palestinian caught with knife says wanted to 'murder Jews'
Jericho resident detained near Rishon Lezion, tells detectives ' I couldn't find work in Israel and I do not have a stay permit, so I decided to murder Jews'
A 29-year-old Jericho resident suspected of planning a stabbing attack was apprehended by Rishon Lezion police Sunday evening near the Beit Dagan Junction in central Israel. The Palestinian said he had entered Israel in order to "murder Jews" because he could not find work. He was later transferred to Shin Bet custody. During a search of the man's body security personnel found a large kitchen knife, which was apparently meant to be used in the planned attack. The police station in Rishon Lezion received word of a man wandering near the Beit Dagan Junction at the entrance to the city, where numerous bus stops are located. Patrol cars were dispatched to the scene and the Palestinian was apprehended. "I couldn't find work in Israel and I do not have a stay permit, so I decided to murder Jews," the Palestinian told the police officers as he was being handcuffed.

Again: "I couldn't find work in Israel so I decided to murder Jews." Rishon Lezion is a suburb of Tel-Aviv.

25-Feb-07: Why Don't They Tell Us About Thwarted Palestinian Murder Attacks?

The depressingly familiar media distortions and agenda-driven reporting of events in our neighborhood continue to keep us furious.

Most people we spoke with during the last few days (not only here in Jerusalem but also in Paris where we had to be for some work-related meetings this week) seem to have no idea Palestinian Arab terror continues to be a central feature of Israeli lives.

TV and newspaper reports we saw in Europe and here in Israel are largely focused on Abbas smilingly wanly at the cameras while Hamas steamrollers ahead unhindered with its Iranian/Syrian-sponsored offensive, and on the US secretary of state receiving the usual kindergarten lesson from the Pal-Arab ruling junta on how and why things never get better in this part of the world.

For those who get their information from the brand-name news sources, here's some information you probably didn't see or hear. It's about the massive terror attack of last week in Tel-Aviv. The one that, thanks to active counter-measures and divine intervention, never happened.

Four days ago, on February 20th 2007, a Palestinian Arab man exited the village of Jalboun, near Jenin in the northern Samaria district, and headed off in the direction of the Tel-Aviv area. The police say he had a backpack containing a large quantity of instruments of death, mainly explosives. As far as they can tell, his plan was to go to a central bus station - one of the many in the Tel-Aviv area - or a shopping mall - ditto - and meet his 72 virgins by means of a massive act of murder and self-mutilation.

In other words, precisely the sort of action that the current political leadership of the Pal-Arabs praises constantly.

It seems he got as far as Rishon Letzion, one of Tel-Aviv's southern suburbs by the early afternoon. Something then happened, possibly a technical fault. As a result, he threw his bombs into a public garbage dumpster and headed off to an apartment in Bat Yam, another suburb of Tel-Aviv, where he was evidently assured of some shelter and protection. No details of who or why or where have been released at this stage. He was arrested there - again the details are not a matter of public knowledge at this stage.

The police took him back to Rishon Letzion and he showed them where the bomb or bombs had been thrown away. There's no suggestion that this story is fabricated. The man, it's fair to assume, was proud of what he set out to do. His organization publicly confirmed to the media that he was trying to carry out a massacre.

After his apprehension, Israeli security forces, presumably acting on information provided by the arrested terrorist, immediately mounted an action focused on the Jenin "refugee" camp. This happened the day after the arrest - on February 21st. There they intercepted Muhammad Ibrahim Qassem Ubeid. he's known as Abu Jahim in the pro-murder publicity announcements that Pal-Arab society has grown so proficient at propagating. Ubeid was riding around in his car at the time, equipped with an M-16 rifle. The IDF says in its official report that explosive devices were found in his car. Ubeid was one of the most wanted Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists in the area. He is the person who dispatched Jalboun, the failed bomber. He was responsible for recruiting other murderer/bombers and for manufacturing explosive devices. He will no longer engage in acts of barbarism or terror because, in the course of the security forces' activities this week, his life ended.

In case you have forgotten just how soaked with innocent blood these people are, here's a brief reminder of the role played by Palestinian Islamic Jihad:

• Headquartered in Damascus and sponsored and supported by Iran and Syria, PIJ is designated as a terror organization by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Australia and Israel.
• PIJ has been responsible for more murder/bombing attacks in Israel than any other terror group. In the past year, it executed two massacres in Tel Aviv including one on 27th April 2006 at a felafel stand near the Old Tel-Aviv Bus Station. Two attacks that left 9 people dead and 110 injured.
• Its most recent 'achievement' is the Eilat bakery murder we described three weeks ago. That multi-murder was done in collaboration with agents of Fatah, the mainstream Pal-Arab terror organization that owes its loyalty to Abbas. (Currently the president of the Pal-Arab Authority, Abbas is absurdly called 'moderate' by many of the reporters active in the field.)
• Dozens more PIJ attempted massacres have been thwarted by Israeli police, army and other security services and by solid, unpublicized undercover work in the past year.

Dozens. Remember reading about that in your newspaper?