Today's would-be knifer brandished this
weapon [Image Source]
Female Palestinian Arabs equipped with concealed knives, possessed of extremely malicious intentions and making their way into or near the venerated Tomb of the Patriarchs in the holy city of Hebron are barely news any more.
Another was intercepted there this morning (Wednesday):
Suspect said to be in critical condition after attempted stabbing attack at Tomb of the Patriarchs holy site | A Palestinian woman tried to stab Israeli security forces Wednesday morning at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and was shot and critically wounded by officers at the scene, according to security forces. The woman, who wasn’t immediately identified, brandished a knife at the flashpoint West Bank holy site and attempted to attack one of the police officers deployed there, the Border Police said in a statement. Officers subsequently opened fire, and medical officials said she was in critical conditions, the statement said. The tense city of Hebron, where Palestinians live in close proximity to settlers who are guarded by Israeli troops, has been the scene of numerous stabbings and attempted stabbings in recent years. Last month, a 15-year-old Palestinian teenager was arrested after a knife was found in his bag among school textbooks during a security screening. ["Palestinian woman tries to stab Israeli troops in Hebron, is shot – police", Times of Israel, October 30, 2019]
There's a video clip here posted to Twitter by the news service of Israel's KAN public broadcaster.
Palestinians have killed over 60 Israelis in stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks since 2015. Israeli forces have killed over 260 Palestinians in that same period. Israel has described most of the Palestinians killed as attackers, but occasional clashes between protesters and soldiers have also turned deadly.
"Israel has described most of the Palestinians killed as attackers" says the newsagency. But presumably rational people like those the AP editors are writing for understand that it's all subjective and just ignore the knives, the incitement, the Palestinian street's celebrations accompanying Arab-on-Israeli stabbings.
Worth noting that during the 19 massively destructive years of Jordanian military occupation, no Jews were permitted into the Tomb, considered in Jewish tradition to be the second-holiest site in the world after Jerusalem's Temple Mount.
Israeli Border Police on Friday [today] said that they found two explosive devices in a courtyard of a home not far from the Tomb of the Patriarch’s in the West Bank City of Hebron. Police bomb disposal experts were called to the scene where they successfully neutralized the explosives without incident or injuries and "prevented any further danger to the units or to civilians," according to a police spokesman. The explosives were found in the courtyard of a home located next to one of the security check points where "security measures are implemented... Security measures continue in the area to prevent attacks of all kinds,” said police. ["Israeli police diffuse two explosive devices near Tomb of Patriarchs in Hebron", June 22, 2018, i24news.tv]
This happened three days earlier
An improvised explosive device was thrown at police guarding the entrance of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron Tuesday night, police said. The attacker fled the scene after throwing the bomb at border guards manning a station just outside the tomb. The device did not explode and there were no injuries. Police said they were searching the area for the perpetrator and had opened an investigation in the incident... In the area of the tomb, there is unique coexistence that the security forces, including border police, protect with the goal of allowing freedom of worship and religion to both Jews and Muslims at the Tomb of the Patriarchs,” police said in a statement after the incident. “The soldiers will continue to work with determination and professionalism to protect the security of all the citizens, residents and visitors to the site,” it said... ["Bomb thrown at border police at Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, no injuries", Times of Israel, June 20, 2018]
And eleven days ago
A bomb found near the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron was detonated by police on Sunday. Border police stationed outside of the ancient historic and religious site noticed the suspicious device and scrambled sappers to the area, clearing it of all civilians. The device, which included two small gas canisters, was blown up by the police bomb squad in a controlled explosion, near one of the entrances typically used by Muslims. Police launched an investigation, and issued a statement in which they promised to “protect the security of all the citizens, residents and visitors” to the Judea burial place of biblical forbears Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Leah. According to local law enforcement, “in the area of the tomb, there is unique coexistence that the security forces, including border police, protect with the goal of allowing freedom of worship and religion to both Jews and Muslims at the Tomb of the Patriarchs.” ["Bomb near Tomb of the Patriarchs detonated by police", Jewish News Syndicate, June 11, 2018]
The Cave of Machpelah - part of the Tomb of the Patriarchs complex, is "the world's most ancient Jewish site and the second holiest place for the Jewish people, after Temple Mount in Jerusalem... Over 300,000 people visit Ma'arat HaMachpelah annually. The structure is divided into three rooms: Ohel Avraham, Ohel Yitzhak, and Ohel Ya'akov. Presently Jews have no access to Ohel Yitzhak, the largest room, with the exception of 10 days a year." [Jewish Virtual Library]
Totally unrelated to today's report, this product of the UN-operated
UNRWA school system has learned valuable skills involving household
tools which many of his age-mates have applied - under the influence
of inspiration from multiple levels of their society - to their daily lives
Today there's yet another. Times of Israel reported around 4:00 pm this afternoon:
For the second day in a row, Border Police arrested a Palestinian suspect in the West Bank city of Hebron on Saturday, after finding a knife hidden under his clothes at the entrance to the Tomb of the Patriarchs holy site. After the 15-year-old boy set off the metal detector at a checkpoint outside the holy site, officers cocked their weapons at him and asked him to slowly raise his shirt. Upon recognizing the knife underneath, security forces detained the teen and took him in for additional questioning... ["Palestinian stopped outside Hebron holy site with knife", Jacob Magid in Times of Israel, February 10, 2018]
Times of Israel reports that in a separate thwarted attack yesterday (Friday), Israeli security forces arrested another armed Palestinian teenager at the entrance to the West Bank community of Hashmona'im, located just off Route 443 and a short stroll away from the city of Modi'in.
The 15 year-old from Bil'in had this knife on his body when arrested at the entrance to Hashmona'im on Friday
Service personnel from the Border Guard (Mishmar Hagvul) police were alerted and ordered the suspect to stop. He ignored their command and was soon overpowered, arrested, searched and taken into custody. The would-be attacker, a resident of nearby Bil'in, was found to be armed with a knife. No one was injured though it's apparent to any intelligent observer that this, like today's attack, could easily have ended very differently.
With its easy access - located near major highways and half-way between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Bi'in is host to an ongoing media-focused cottage industry of holding weekly "protests" to which members of the reporting industry have made their way on Friiday's throughout the past thirteen years [see Al Jazeera for background]
The underlying story, which is egregiously ignored by the mainstream media, is the way fifteen year-old Palestinian Arab children are front-line troops on behalf of the Palestinian Arab cause, having undergone a relentless and ongoing process of weaponization in their schools, social media and mosques.
Video capture [Source: YouTube] shows the checkpoint where the
alertness and cool-heads of the personnel prevented an awful outcome
It's a gorgeous early-Spring day here but the miserable problems of living side-by-side with significant numbers of violent and extremist neighbors are still with us.
Around noon today (Friday) for at least the sixth time in two months, another Palestinian Arab armed with a knife was apprehended by service personnel of the Border guard police as he attempted to enter the sacred Tomb of the Patriarchs complex with a concealed knife - in his case, a kitchen knife tucked into one of his socks.
noticed that the 23-year-old Arab arriving at the site was behaving oddly, and asked him to walk through a metal detector. After the metal detector beeped a few times, the officers found a large kitchen knife hidden in one of the Arab's socks. Following an initial investigation, Border Police estimate that the Arab planned to carry out a stabbing attack at the Cave of the Patriarchs. The suspect has been taken for questioning.
Well, this morning we have another at that same site. From Times of Israel last night (Monday):
Palestinian man caught trying to enter Hebron holy site with knife
Jacob Magid | 22 January 2018, 9:05 pm 0
Border Police arrested a Palestinian man in the West Bank city of Hebron on Monday, after finding a knife hidden under his clothes at the entrance to the Tomb of the Patriarchs holy site. Officers asked the man, in his 30s, to walk through a metal detector upon his arrival at the checkpoint. While the device did not sound an alarm, the statement from Border Police said the security forces still suspected the Palestinian and conducted a full body search. “An initial investigation revealed that the suspect was apparently intending to carry out a stabbing attack,” Border Police said. The Palestinian, said to be from the nearby village of Dura, was detained and transferred for questioning. “Beyond the technological means at the disposal of the soldiers in their missions, there is no substitute for the professionalism and alertness of the fighters, who once again managed to prevent an attack and thereby save lives,” the Border Police statement concluded. The Tomb of the Patriarchs is a frequent target for stabbing attacks.
Dura is a town of some 30,000 Arabs, located roughly 10 km south of Hevron. It has gotten mentioned in many of our blog reports of terror attacks.
The security checkpoint, one of several in the vicinity of the ancient Tomb
of the Patriarchs, where the woman and her two knives were
intercepted on Friday [Image Source]
We happen to live in a land richer in history than almost anywhere else on earth. The fact that we share much of it with people whose beliefs bring some of them to self-destructive acts of violence against us is one of the tragic aspects of that specialness and causes a large measure of that history to have heavily violent overlays.
This past Friday gave us three reminders. Two have strong scriptural resonances.
Regular readers will be aware of how often the ancient Tomb of the Patriarchs (Hebrew: Ma'arat Hamachpelah, in recognition of its name according to Bereishit/Genesis 23, when our patriarch Avraham purchased it for full value, 400 pieces of silver) in Hebron has been a target for armed, terror-minded Palestinian Arabs with mayhem on their minds.
You can see some of our earlier reports of attacks in that sacred place, most of them thwarted, by clicking on the index term Tomb of the Prophets. There was yet another this past Friday afternoon. Israel National News reports that the would-be attacker was, once again,
a Palestinian Arab woman who was armed with two knives... The Border Police officers asked the woman to undergo a security inspection when she tried to escape the checkpoint. The officers arrested her and asked her to reveal the items she had been carrying. The suspect, who took out a knife, was asked by one of the officers to empty her bag, and when she did, another knife fell to the floor. The Border Police said that the circumstances of the incident and the knives found in the woman’s possession indicate that she was planning to carry out a stabbing attack. The suspect, a resident of Idna in her 30s, was transferred for further interrogation by the security forces.
The Palestinian Arab news company, Ma'an News Agency, says this about the thwarted attack:
Wafa [an arm of the Palestinian Authority] reported that a Palestinian woman was detained by Israeli forces for alleged possession of a knife. According to Wafa, the 32-year-old woman was detained after she was searched at the entrance of the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron’s old city... Israeli forces have detained scores of Palestinians, many of the minors, for allegedly being in possession of knives following a spate of alleged and actual small-scale knife attacks by Palestinians that surged in the fall of 2015... Eyewitnesses have also said in a number of cases that Israeli security forces planted knives on slain or imprisoned Palestinians to claim that they were acting in self-defense during a stabbing attack.
What's the attraction of the Tomb of the Patriarchs? First, it's considered the most ancient, continuously-used prayer structure in the world, though the building resting on top of it - a mosque which had been converted from a large rectangular Herodian-era Judean structure, in Wikipedia's words - is relatively new, only about 850 years. It's also the place where, continuously for nearly 4,000 years, Jews have revered the burial sites of three patriarchal couples: Avraham and Sarah, Yitzhak and Rivka, Ya'akov and Leah.
Times of Israel reports on another attack - this one not thwarted - earlier the same day. An IDF service member was injured
in an attempted car-ramming attack in the Jordan Valley. The incident took place near the entrance to the Qasr al-Yahud baptismal holy site near Jericho. The vehicle did not have the necessary permit to enter the site and did not stop when soldiers flagged it down, an army spokeswoman said. Security forces detained the driver for questioning and the lightly injured soldier was treated at the scene of the incident.
The attack was caught by an Israeli security camera:
Video source (There's a zoom-in video view of the same attack here)
Qasr al-Yahud is an Arabic name. It means Castle of the Jews and is believed to have that name because, in a less-politically-fraught era, the Arabs acknowledged that the site, a short walk from the Jordan River, is where according to tradition Joshua led the Children of Israel in the final stage of their forty-year-long journey from bondage in Egypt to freedom, autonomy and dominion in the Land of Israel. Right afterwards, they conquered (still) nearby Jericho.
Christian tradition marks this site as the place of the “spiritual birth” of Jesus, as opposed to his physical birth in Bethlehem. As such, the baptismal site is of great sacred significance - the third holiest site in the Christian world (after the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem).
For Friday's vehicle-rammer, religious faith may well have played a role. But its details are not likely to be explained on any tourist site.
Also on Friday, according to Ma'an, forces of the IDF arrested four Palestinian Arabs in pre-dawn raids in al-Yamoun, a village north of Jenin:
The detainees were identified as brothers Jihad and Abd al-Qader Freihat. Israeli forces confiscated mobile phones and surveillance camera recordings from their house during the raid. Two other residents of al-Yamoun, identified as Yahiya Abu al-Haija and Mustafa al-Karam. The two were detained during a raid on the Jenin refugee camp... A Palestinian from the Wadi Burqin neighborhood of Jenin, just outside the Jenin refugee camp, was killed during a predawn raid on Thursday. The slain Palestinian, Ahmad Ismail, 30, was killed during an alleged shootout, as Israeli forces were conducting raids in search of Palestinians allegedly suspected to be involved in the shooting of an Israeli settler last week near Nablus.
WAFA says today that IDF raids in the same general area have continued into today (Sunday). Both those Palestinian Arab media channels are evidently too delicate to connect the arrests and raids with a specific act of murder. But it's clear they mean the cold-blooded killing of Rabbi Raziel Shevach HY"D from Havat Gilad ["10-Jan-18: Hamas praises a murderous drive-by shooting that orphans six young Israeli children"] nearly two weeks ago in the area of Nablus, or Shechem as we knew it in Hebrew.
It's where, according to the Torah,the Alm-ghty appeared to Avraham and first promised that “To your offspring I will give this land”, a promise that has been integral to the traditions of Jewish history ever since.
A Palestinian Arab armed with a knife was stopped today (Wednesday afternoon) around 4:00 pm at one of the security checkpoints that surround the ancient and sacred Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. He was promptly arrested.
The would-be stabber from the Arab town of Dahariya, 23 kilometers south of Hebron, aroused the suspicions of the Border Guard officers stationed at the checkpoint. They demanded he submit to a metal detector examination. It found a metal object hidden on his body.
The suspect then mysteriously declined a request by the officers to empty his pockets after the metal detector found what it found, and preferred instead to pull out and brandish the knife. The Border Guard men brought their powers of persuasion into play and convinced the Palestinian Arab man - by means of their quickly-raised weapons and well-focused words - to surrender before he was able to stab anyone.
The men with the guns could have killed him on the spot but chose instead to take him custody. No one was injured.
Under preliminary questioning, according to Israel National News, the gentleman under arrest agreed with his interrogators that he had come with his knife to "to carry out a terrorist attack against the officers".
UNESCO decided by a vote in July that the Tomb of the Patriarchs is a "Palestinian heritage site". Haaretz reported at the time that 12 states on its World Heritage Committee voted for the resolution and three voted against. The vote also recognized the site "as being in danger, meaning that each year UNESCO's World Heritage Committee will convene to discuss" its case.
It would be nice to think the UNESCO concern stemmed from the long line of stabbers and would-be stabbers who have targeted the ancient site for their murderous purposes. But our impression is they have not the slightest interest in Palestinian Arab violence and their influence on sites of cultural significance.
The alleged knifer is taken into custody this morning [Image Source: Screen grab from a social media video]
Knives, youths and holy sites; they're a dangerous combination. We have reported here many times on would-be attackers and thwarted attacks, and there's another today from the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hevron.
Here's what Times of Israel reported:
Border guards arrested a Palestinian teenager on Monday morning, as he tried to dodge security at a checkpoint leading to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron, police said. Suspicious officers asked him to lift his shirt and saw that he was carrying a knife in his pants, police said in a statement that noted the suspect was about 16 years old. A very similar incident took place Sunday afternoon, when police arrested a 17-year-old boy at the same place, trying to do the same thing. In both cases, the youths were attempting to get through to the site, holy to both Jews and Muslims, with a concealed blade... ["Palestinian teen arrested in Hebron with a knife", Times of Israel, November 27, 2017]
Today's thwarted attack happened around 8 this morning, according to this report from Hebrew social media.
They're legally classified as children but their plain intentions and likely ability to kill or seriously injure are clear and obvious.
Outside the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Israeli Border Guard officers
check arriving Arabs - June 2017 [Image Source]
The man who was America's most senior diplomat between 2013 and 2017 and before that a failed candidate for the highest elected office in the land, has some surprisingly naive views, it turns out, about the Palestinian Arabs.
In a recording broadcast last night by Israel's Channel 10 News, John Kerry is heard telling an unspecified conference in Dubai "in the past year attended by Middle East leaders" including the head of Israel’s Joint (Arab) List (a Knesset/parliamentary party), that he
blamed the Israeli government’s resistance to the establishment of a Palestinian state for harming the prospects of a peace deal
and foresaw a "violent Palestinian uprising if there was no progress in peace talks" ["In recording, John Kerry says Israeli government doesn’t want peace", Times of Israel, November 7, 2017]. We can only guess which peace talks he means. Kerry warned
that frustrations among Palestinians could boil over into violence and that the current status quo cannot last.
This must have been a welcome message for the entirely-Arab audience, as we assume was his summing up of the Palestinian Arab role:
“The Palestinians have done an extraordinary job of remaining committed to nonviolence. And in fact when the [knife] intifada took place they delivered non-violence in the West Bank,” Kerry is heard saying in the recording. “This is overlooked by the general [Israeli] population because it is not a topic of discussion. Why? Because the majority of the cabinet currently in the current Israeli government has publicly declared they are not ever for a Palestinian state”...
He's echoing Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president-for-life who has repeatedly gone public with explicit messages of incitement to violence directed at young Palestinian Arabs while asserting - pretty much at the same time - that the hundreds of stabbing, shooting and vehicle-ramming Arab-on-Israeli attacks of the past two years are representative of an alleged Palestinian Authority devotion to non-violence.
Kerry was a headline speaker ("The path ahead for the Middle East") at
the Credit Suisse Salon in Dubai, May 09, 2017 [Image Source]
As a sort of reality check, some of that "non-violence" was on display today.
Israel National News says a young Arab male was intercepted by Israeli security around 7:30 this this morning (Wednesday) on his way into the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron:
Border Police officers stationed at the entrance to the holy site spotted the suspect attempting to circumvent the security checkpoint and avoid passing through the metal detectors. Officers ordered the suspect to return to the entrance and pass through a metal detector, which indicated that he was carrying metal object he had neglected to remove from his person before passing through the checkpoint. When officers checked the suspect, they found a knife concealed in one of his socks. A Border Police spokesperson identified the suspect as a 17 year old local. The suspect was taken into custody for questioning. [Israel National News today]
In the Hebrew social media, there are images of the would-be attacker's seized knife [here].
It's only the latest in a long string of thwarted attacks by typically-young Arabs making their way to the religious shrine with a knife concealed on their bodies or in their clothing. A very quick scan of 2017 media reports just now shows similar intercepts at more-or-less the same location on September 12, 2017; September 8, 2017; July 22, 2017; June 13, 2017; May 17, 2017; May 13, 2017; March 4, 2017. A good thing we have alert security.
"an Arab resident of Hevron in Judea was arrested Tuesday morning after he attempted to sneak a knife into the Tomb of the Patriarchs (Maarat Hamachpela). Border Police officers arrested the teen, roughly 15 years of age, after they discovered the weapon at a checkpoint outside of the tomb, a Border Police spokesperson said. The suspect approached the checkpoint at one of the entrances to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, but before he could enter the site the suspect was asked to lift his shirt after he aroused the suspicions of the officers operating the checkpoint. Officers spotted the handle of a knife the suspect had concealed, and ordered him to surrender. The suspect drew the knife, but was arrested after officers drew their weapons and repeated their demand that he surrender. No shots were fired and no injuries reported."
Maa'an says this is the knife
used by the child in today's
thwarted attack
[Image Source]
Another child, another knife, another bloodless intercept by fast-thinking security personnel of the IDF even as the child prepared to slash and stab.
The version pushed today by the notorious Ma'an News Agency has a very different feel to it. It starts with a quotation from an Israel Police source:
A 15-year-old Palestinian boy was detained Tuesday morning at a military checkpoint near the Ibrahimi mosque in the southern occupied West Bank city of Hebron, alleging that the child had a knife hidden under his clothes. Luba al-Samri wrote in a statement that the boy was taken for interrogation and added that "no human casualties were reported." She claimed the incident marked the third time in six days that Israeli forces arrested Palestinian minors attempting to pass through Israeli checkpoints with knives in their possession.
(We are surprised by the mention of two other such thwarted attacks. If we can find more information about them, we will add it to this post.)
For all the genocidal intentions routinely attributed to Israel's military, the indisputable fact is the child armed with a knife concealed under his shirt today is alive. This could have easily ended up with an entirely different outcome for him and his family.
Rights groups have disputed Israel's version of events in a number of cases, also denouncing what they have termed as a "shoot-to-kill" policy against alleged attackers who did not constitute a threat at the time of their death, or who could have been subdued in a non-lethal manner -- amid a backdrop of impunity for Israeli forces who have committed the killings... [Ma'an, today]
Naturally, being in the all-propaganda-all-the-time business, the Ma'an people fail to mention the open incitement to stabbings that have become a prominent feature of the Palestinian Arab establishment's messaging to its public throughout the past two years.
Widely circulated posters like these, putting stabbers on a pedestal and encouraging lethal knifings of ordinary Israelis, set the tone that enables the ongoing weaponization of their badly educated, intensively indoctrinated children:
These are merely sample images from a vast, growing catalogue of malevolence intended to incite and inspire young Arabs to murder Israelis. It's a campaign that owes much of its lethality and destructive power to a deeply-felt sense of victimhood, self-pity and grievance that plays a central role in the Palestinian Arab narrative and consciousness.
Deeply-felt it may be. But it's also false and contrived - and cynically leveraged by an unpopular PA leadership vainly clinging to power and relevance.
When violence against Jews occurs inside Israel, or on the West Bank, a consensus tends to be reached quickly by outside analysts and political leaders, one that holds that such violence represents the inevitable consequence of Israel’s occupation and settlement of Palestinian territory. John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, said in an appearance earlier this week at Harvard that, “What’s happening is that unless we get going, a two-state solution could conceivably be stolen from everybody. And there’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years.” He went on to say, “Now you have this violence because there’s a frustration that is growing, and a frustration among Israelis who don’t see any movement.”
The violence... encouraged by purveyors of rumors who now have both Israeli and Palestinian blood on their hands, is rooted not in Israeli settlement policy, but in a worldview that dismisses the national and religious rights of Jews. There will not be peace between Israelis and Palestinians so long as parties on both sides of the conflict continue to deny the national and religious rights of the other. [Goldberg in The Atlantic]
He might have added that violence of the kind we saw today - children equipped with knives and blood lust - is part of a wide, ugly and almost entirely unreported (outside of Israeli channels) program of child weaponization that is encouraged and guided from the highest levels of the Palestinian Arab power pyramid.
And megaphoned by the likes of Ma'an, enabled - it has to be said - by their European and American funders (Denmark, Sweden, the United States, Netherlands, the United Kingdom and others as well as major NGOs including UNESCO, UNDP, Arab Human Rights Fund, Catholic Relief Services and Save the Children) without whose cash infusions they simply could not engage in their vile practices.
UPDATE Thursday September 14, 2017: Here's something we have learned about the claim made in the Ma'an report above that this was "the third time in six days that Israeli forces arrested Palestinian minors attempting to pass through Israeli checkpoints with knives in their possession." The following appears in "Attempted stabbing thwarted near Hebron, attacker shot", published by Times of Israel yesterday (13-Sep-17):
"On Friday, a Palestinian man in his twenties was arrested in Hebron when he was discovered to be hiding a knife on his person, while last Wednesday Border Police officers arrested a Palestinian teenager in the West Bank city after finding a knife in his possession. Both of those incidents also took place at checkpoints near the Tomb of the Patriarchs."
So one attacker in his twenties, a second who is a teen.
Moments after today's attacker was neutralized
[Image Source]
A report from Ynet at about 8:30 this morning (Thursday) says there has been another Arab-on-Israeli knifing attack, this time at or just outside the ancient, sacred and heavily secured Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.
An attacker is said to have charged at a group of IDF soldiers while holding what's described as "a dud grenade" as well as brandishing a knife.
IDF Border Police soldiers standing at a military post near the cave opened fire and neutralized him. No other injuries were reported. The terrorist was evacuated to hospital... [Ynet]
Via social media, it appears he may have been armed with a pistol or something resembling a pistol as well.
He has bullet wounds to the stomach and was sent to Hadassah Medical Center, Ein Karem (Jerusalem) for emergency treatment, arriving there around 10:00. He is said to be conscious and with injuries described as moderate.
The woman's handbag and its contents after they were seized
this morning by alert Israeli security personnel
Israel National News reports that yet another knifing attack at the ancient and sacred Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron was averted today because Israeli security personnel were there, were alert and were doing their jobs efficiently.
Security forces foiled an attempted terror attack Tuesday afternoon in Hevron. The suspect, an Arab woman armed with two knives, was nabbed near the Tomb of the Patriarchs while on her way to carry out a stabbing attack. When the terrorist reached a security checkpoint outside of the Tomb, her behavior aroused the suspicions of Border Police officers guarding the area. Officers operating the checkpoint ordered the terrorist to empty her purse. After she drew two knives from the purse, Border Police officers managed to capture her with no injuries. According to the initial investigation, the terrorist had intended to carry out a stabbing attack in the area... ["Female terrorist nabbed on way to attack", today]
Reports of the attack started to appear around 12:30 pm today, The knives and the other items on her person made it onto social media very shortly after. Ma'an News Agency's Arabic edition identifies the attacker as "the girl Sabah Abdul Muti Abu Something" (not clear to us), age 30 years. The English-language version of Ma'an's report, even more self-parodying than usual, describes how
she "allegedly had knives in her possession" and includes a photograph of them, as a result of which she was "allegedly detained".
One of the extremist groups advocating for the Palestinian Arab cause says [here] the thwarted assailant is the mother of four children aged 10, 8, 4 and 1.
A shooter, presumed to be a Palestinian Arab, opened fire yesterday (Friday) towards the Israeli community of Ofra, with little effect other than to prompt a temporary broadening of the local IDF security presence. Soldiers from the IDF's Kfir Brigade, who have general security responsibility for the sector (Ofra with about 3,200 residents is located on Route 60 about 32 km north of Jerusalem), set up an ad hoc checkpoint. This became the focus of an Arab-on-Israeli attack some hours later.
As Israel National News reports, during the early morning hours of this past Friday night/Saturday morning - the Jewish Sabbath - a driver approached a small contingent of IDF service personnel who were checking a vehicle near Ofra. The driver, an Arab male of about 30, accelerated his vehicle as he got closer, attempting to run the Israelis down, and a warning shot was immediately fired in his direction. Having failed to injure anyone, he stopped the car, jumped out with what turned out to be a knife in his hand, and assaulted the soldiers. Other soldiers then shot him.
(Ynet's report says the assailant was in fact equipped with a meat-cleaver. It's the source of the meat-cleaver picture below which it says it received from the Israel Police spokesperson.)
He was taken to the Hadassah hospital on Jerusalem's Mt Scopus where he is reported to be in serious condition. None of the soldiers were injured.
Meanwhile a Palestinian Arab news site says the charges against him are mere allegations:
Local sources told Ma'an that Israeli forces opened fire at Ahmad Ayman Hamid, 21, while he was driving his car near the village. Witnesses highlighted that Israeli forces on the main road of the village opened fire at Hamid while he was in his car, and left him to bleed before taking him to a hospital later on. Locals added that Israeli forces raided Hamid's family home in the predawn hours of Saturday morning and interrogated his family... ["Israeli forces shoot, injure Palestinian near Ramallah in alleged attack on Israeli soldiers", Ma'an News Agency, October 29, 2016]
Ma'an's Arabic language edition [here] quotes a lawyer for the Palestinian Prisoners Society saying Hamid was hit by three bullets (one in his abdomen, one in his right leg, one in his right shoulder) leaving him wounded in the lungs and liver and with broken ribs. It states his age and home town, and says he is doing better after undergoing surgery in Hadassah hospital in what it disingenuously calls "the town of Isawiya in Jerusalem". (Isawiya is the Arab neighbourhood closest to Hadassah's Mt Scopus campus. There are two Hadassah hospital campuses in Jerusalem. The other is in Ein Karem.)
It's an impressive degree of detail. But sadly it leaves out any mention of how, why or when those bullets entered the young man's body. Still, it's unlikely Ma'an's readers will be scratching their heads.
In another Friday Arab-on-Israeli attack, a 23-year-old Palestinian Arab was arrested while trying to enter the ancient and sacred Cave of the Patriarchs compound in Hebron while armed with a knife. For reasons rarely disclosed in media reports, he aroused the suspicions of the Israel Border Guard officers stationed at one of the checkpoints who requested that he submit to a search of his body. Israel National News says he objected, but the search was done anyway, and the knife was found. He was handed over to other security officials for further interrogation. Ynet says the attacker is a resident of Hebron and that "following his arrest and questioning, it was revealed that he planned to carry out a stabbing attack at the Cave of the Patriarchs."
A female terrorist attempted to carry out a stabbing attack in Hebron on Friday morning when she produced a knife at one of the entrances to the Cave of the Patriarchs during a routine security check. Israel Border Police soldiers shot and neutralized the terrorist. No Israeli injuries were reported.
At Haaretz, they offer this news flash:
Initial report: Attempted stabbing attack in Hebron, assailant shot
Not much more from the Twitter account of the official spokesperson at Israel Police
Female Palestinian terrorist attempted to stab border policeman at Cave of Patriarchs, Hebron. Officer responds by shooting terrorist. [Posted about 10:00 am Friday morning]
Is she alive? We don't know.
Ma'an News Agency ["Palestinian woman in 'critical condition' after being shot by Israeli police in Hebron"] is allegedly saying that
Israeli forces Friday shot and "neutralized" a Palestinian woman who allegedly attempted to carry out a stabbing attack near the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Old City of the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron, according to an Israeli police spokesperson.
(A few minutes after we posted that Ma'an article, they allegedly changed it to say she's dead. Allegedly.)
Arab-on-Israeli knifing attacks on worshipers and security personnel at the sacred and ancient Tomb of the Patriarchs are no longer a rarity.
UPDATE July 01, 2016 at 2:30 pm:
Keeping that last paragraph in mind, no one should be surprised by a flash from Israel National News posted at 12:30 pm this afternoon:
15-year-old Arab girl was arrested near the Cave of the Patriarchs after she aroused the suspicions of a Border Policeman. Upon searching her a knife was found in her bag.
And this.
Over at Ynet, they have the identity of the knife-woman whose attack on Israelis, thwarted this morning at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, ended in her death. They say she is Sara Hajaj, 27, from Hebron but previously from Bani Na'im. That's the hamlet from which the now-deceased young thug who broke into the home of 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel on Thursday morning and slashed her to death as she slept, came from too.
It turns out too that, according to Ynet, the maiden name of this morning's now-dead female attacker is the same as the surname of yesterday's killer. This, in the way of the Palestinian Arabs, indicates they belong to the same clan. A study of the demographics of Bani Na'im (here) names seven clans to which most of its residents belong. One of those, Trayrah, is the clan of yesterday's murderer and today's attempted murderer.
Via Israeli social media, a cell phone snapshot of the automatic weapon taken from the body of the dead Palestinian Arab attacker from Arake, a child of 15 [Source]
The news focus here in Israel this mild and pleasant evening has shifted dramatically away from the events of another traumatic day of Arab-on-Israeli violence to a major road accident in which an intercity Egged bus appears to have struck a parked concrete-laden semi-trailer, causing multiple deaths and many injuries ["6 killed, at least 12 hurt when crowded bus hits parked truck", Times of Israel, February 14, 2016].
The day has been difficult from the outset. And consistent with the violent messaging emanating from the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, children are at the forefront of the attacks.
Jerusalem Post says an IDF unit spotted two Palestinian Arabs hurling rocks at Israelis this morning in the vicinity of the security fence near Arake, an Arab village north of Jenin. (Arab sources call it Araqah.) A Hebrew-language social media report places the attack at about 10:30 this morning (Sunday). An army unit deployed to the scene then came under live fire. In response, the soldiers traversed the security fence and engaged the Arab attackers on the Palestinian Arab side. One, it turns out, was armed with an automatic rifle; the second had a knife, according to army sources. Once they were dead, sources from the Palestinian Arab side identified them as two boys aged 15. Both are from Arake. Ma'an names them as Nihad Raed Muhammad Waqed and Fuad Marwan Khalid Waqed.
During the early afternoon, an Arab assailant armed with a knife hurled himself at Border Police officers manning the Mizmoriya checkpoint between the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Har Homa and Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem. According to Israel Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld, the attack occurred at about 1:30 pm: "The terrorist ran toward police at the checkpoint with a knife, and when he did not stop Border Police opened fire and killed him...” Fortunately, none of the officers was wounded in the attack." The Jerusalem Post names the dead attacker as 17 year old Naim Safi, of Bethlehem.
Later Sunday afternoon, at about 3:00 pm, Israel Police received an emergency phone call from a woman reporting that an Arab male had attempted to attack her with a knife in Talpiot, one of Jerusalem's southern neighborhoods. Police units immediately set up road blocks and searched for the suspect, but no arrests were made. The search was still going on as we write (Sunday 7:00 pm).
The Hebron attacker, a girl, was rushed to hospital [Image Source]
Then during the early Sunday evening hours, yet another Arab-on-Israeli stabbing attack in the Hebron area. The Jerusalem Post report describes this as the work of a "female terrorist", and says she was shot and subdued by security forces. Quoting the Border Police, the same source says the attacker was rushed to hospital by military medical personnel and was reported to be in critical condition. According to Times of Israel, it appears the knife attack was the work of a 14 year old Palestinian Arab girl. It quotes police saying she arrived at a checkpoint near the violence-prone ancient Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, took out a knife and attempted to stab a Border Police officer. He pushed her away and shot her, according to the police. Ynet, quoting Palestinian media sources, says the attacker is 14-year-old Jasmine Rashad al-Zaru, and that she is being treated in the Shaarei Zedek Medical Center hospital in Jerusalem.
While some commentators and political figures still seem to want to hear the Palestinian Arab leadership condemn the terror emanating from their ranks, the larger and more significant issue by far is the recruitment of Palestinian Arab citizens' children to the frontlines of their fruitless and massively self-destructive war of terror against Jews and Israelis.
This has implications that will continue to plague lives on both sides of the border long after the manipulative kleptocrats and child-abusers of the Mahmoud Abbas regime have passed on and gone to their rewards.
Hussein Dawabshe interviewed this week [Image Source]
A cold, rainy and somewhat gloomy January day, and terrorism has insinuated its way into the lives of Israelis in almost every part of the country. In no particular order:
After Friday's murderous point-blank shooting attack on patrons (and staff) at a busy, central Tel Aviv drinking place on Friday afternoon [see our posts of Friday afternoon and Saturday night], the manhunt for Nashat Melhem continued all day today (Sunday). We happened to visit north Tel Aviv's Ibn Gabirol precinct this afternoon, and saw something we are accustomed to seeing regularly in Jerusalem, but rarely outside it: heavily armed rapid-response police riding in pairs on fast motor bikes. Ynet says security forces are patrolling the city in large numbers, "focusing on north Tel Aviv, where Melhem was last seen and where he is believed to still be hiding since the attack on Friday. They are still waiting for the terrorist to make a mistake, or for a "golden tip" that would lead them to him." There's concern the fugitive gunman will launch another attack: "Because of that, the Tel Aviv municipality decided to increase security across the city, particularly around education institutions, including Tel Aviv University. Despite that, many parents chose not to send their children to school. According to the municipality, in the north of the city only about 50 percent of the students came to school..."
Two men murdered in Friday's attack, Alon Bakal and Shimon Ruimi, were buried today. Thousands attended the two funerals in Carmiel and Ofakim. There remain about ten individuals who are still being treated for their injuries. A third victim has still not yet been definitively connected to the Friday terror attack, but tragically is as dead as the other two. He is Amin Shaban, a taxi driver and an Israeli Muslim Arab murdered in north Tel Aviv on Friday afternoon about an hour after the Dizengoff shootings. Two hundred of his family and friends, including his three widows and 11 children, gathered in Lod this afternoon to lay him to rest. Ynetquotes family members saying they still do not know whether his murder is connected to the Dizengoff attack. "There are a lot of rumors and the family is not being updated. There is still an attempt to see if the background is criminal, and that's bizarre because there's no chance".
Around 4 this afternoon (Sunday) in Jerusalem's Armon Hanatziv ("Government House") precinct, a Palestinian Arab knife man launched a stabbing attack on a civilian waiting at a bus stop on Barazani Street. He pulled out his knife and managed to stab but failed (because the weapon became bent out of shape) to penetrate the skin of his intended victim, a person he, of course, did not know. He then fled in the direction of nearby Sur Baher, an Arab community. A Jerusalem Post report says security forces "launched a manhunt shortly after initial distress calls and apprehended a suspect who fits the description given by eyewitnesses". He was arrested.
At about 2:00 this afternoon, a female soldier was struck and wounded in a sniper-fire shooting attack at a security checkpoint close to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. A search was conducted by Israeli security forces of the area. Haaretz says the shooter is believed to have fired from one of the adjoining Palestinian Arab residences: "A 20-year-old female Israeli soldier was moderately wounded... She was evacuated to Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem. Security forces are combing the area... Magen David Adom paramedic Hanoch Zalinger Siffer said... "She was shot in the lower body, and we provided medical treatment while evacuating her to the hospital", which we understand was Shaarei Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.
Indictments were announced this morning for several Jewish males - some of them minors - accused of involvement in the firebombing of a residence in the Arab village of Duma ["31-Jul-15: In the wake of a lethal arson attack"]. This disturbing story is going to be with us for some time to come. For now, here is what Hussein Dawabsha, an elderly member of the clan whose daughter, son-in-law and grandson died in the fire on July 31, 2015, reportedly said in an interview today: "There is no law nor justice in Israel. It’s one big show... The Israeli court system, the State of Israel is a dark country. They will probably decide to put them in prison for several years and then release them. Instead of killing them like they killed my boy and my grandson... Those who burned my family should themselves be burned... Only an intifada will avenge the death of the Dawabsha family. They should continue with more attacks, having faith in Allah. Only in this way we will achieve our rights." We say that putting terrorists into prison and then releasing them a short time later is indeed a serious issue and a heavy, almost insurmountable, challenge to justice in this country. We suspect Grandfather Dawabsha is unaware that by far the majority of those walking free - like the more-than-a-thousand convicted terrorists, many of them murderers of Jewish Israelis, who were set loose in the Shalit Deal in 2011 - were, of course, Palestinian Arabs. And most of them have sickeningly murderous views similar to his.
Grandfather Dawabsha's ugly threats contrast greatly with the messages issued in his name half a year ago in the immediate aftermath of the Duma village deaths. Here's what he is reported to have said in a Times of Israel interview published August 2, 2015 [here]: He had been a construction worker who helped build Chaim Sheba Medical Center, the vast Tel Aviv hospital where doctors are today working to save the life of his four-year-old grandson Ahmad. "My friends are Jews. I worked here, and helped build the buildings at the Sheba Medical Center where my relatives are now hospitalized... We want to live. Please join our prayer for their recovery — Jews and Arabs — so that my grandson will be the last victim of the terror war... We are simple people, who pursue and seek peace,.. We don’t want terror on either side, and we condemn it." For reasons which ought to be obvious, there's no reason to be surprised.
A shooting attack in the Har Hevron area around 6 this evening has resulted in injuries to an Israeli male. Times of Israel says he is an IDF soldier; his injuries are believed to be non-life-threatening. No word on the shooter. Further details to come.
Saturday night, shots were fired at vehicles traveling the Tunnel Road that connects Jerusalem with the Gush Etzion communities to its south, passing through and underneath hills on the south and east of Bethlehem. The section of Route 60 running to, through and from the tunnel was closed to traffic for some hours while security personnel sought the shooter, effectively isolating thousdands of households in Efrat, Alon Shvut and other sizable communities in the Gush Etzion area. Ynet says the sole victim of the shooting is a Palestinian Arab driver, whose injuries are not life-threatening. The shooter has not yet been apprehended.
Police security checkpoint in Jerusalem's Old City [Image Source]
It's Sunday mid-afternoon here: a bright, sunny, mild and violent day. Some of the day's events since our morning post:
During the morning, a Palestinian Arab woman tried to stab an Israeli near Ma’ale Shomron, an Israeli community west of Nablus. She was stopped with no injuries to anyone. She is said to be from the nearby Palestinian Arab village of Azzun. [Times of Israel, December 27, 2015]
A separate incident: a Palestinian Arab woman was stopped at the entrance to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and found to be in possession of a knife. She is under arrest, and alive.
A Palestinian Arab man was arrested by Israel Police officers patrolling the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City this afternoon. Asked to show identification, Times of Israel says he instead drew a blade that had been secreted in his clothing. The officers relieved him of the weapon and took him into custody, alive. Palestinian Arab sources say he is from the Ramallah area. No one was injured, and there are no names or other identifying details at this stage.
In Hawara, a village south of Nablus, the day's fifth (so far) Arab-on-Israeli terror attack saw two Arabs approach a gas station near the IDF checkpoint. Israel National News says they suddenly stabbed one of the soldiers stationed there, inflicting moderate knife wounds to his limbs. Other security personnel opened fire and killed the attackers at the scene. The second soldier was lightly wounded in the fire. Both Israelis received emergency treatment at the scene and were then evacuated to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva. The Palestinian authorities say the attackers were aged 17 and 23.
In Hebron, Israeli Border Guard police personnel arrested a Palestinian Arab woman of 27 this morning after she pulled a knife on them at a security checkpoint near the ancient and sacred Tomb of the Patriarchs. We assume they could have shot her in accordance with current security force guidelines that have become tougher as the epidemic of Arab-on-Israeli stabbings continues to rage. But they didn't. Instead they overpowered her (Israel National News mentions the use of tear gas) and then arrested her. No one was injured though her aspirations may have suffered: she's quoted telling the police she intended to become a martyr.
A Palestinian Arab news report says the same thing, more or less, happened yesterday (Monday) in the same locale. The steady stream of pro-stabbing, pro-killing, pro-terror messages emerging from the political leadership of the Palestinian Arabs in Ramallah is reaping what it so knowingly sows.
We spent this afternoon in one of the Gush Etzion communities. As the sun was setting, the urgent sounds of ambulances heading south with sirens shrieking filled the air. That's often an indicator of another terror attack in the Gush area or Hebron. Now that we're back in Jerusalem we see there was a stabbing attack in the vicinity (again) of the ancient Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron - the Me'arat HaMachpelah in Hebrew - around 3:40 pm today (Monday):
A 40-year-old Israeli was critically wounded in a stabbing attack near the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron on Monday afternoon. The terrorist was reportedly shot and killed by border police troops. Zaki Yahav, an MDA paramedic told ynet, "When we arrived at the scene we saw a 40-year-old man lying on the floor, partially conscious with a number of stab wounds to his upper body. We immediately loaded him onto the ambulance in order to evacuate him to the hospital as soon as possible. We evacuated him while providing initial life saving care which included stopping the bleeding, and giving him fluids." [Ynet]
Times of Israel reports that the victim was a by-stander who was walking past the checkpoint at the time the terrorist pounced. Social media reports say the injured Israel lives in Kiryat Arba, and that he worked as a gardener. He underwent emergency treatment at Shaarei Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem and is now in critical condition. For Hebrew speakers, please include his name גנאדי חיים נוטה בן רעיה רחל in prayers for his complete recovery. We would transliterate that as Genady Haim Noteh ben Ra'aya Rachel.
The attacker, killed in the attempt, is also now featuring in certain parts of the social media, along with his photograph and name. Ma'an's headline is "Palestinian shot dead after stabbing Israeli in Hebron", but the article itself calls it an "alleged" attack, and names the knife-man as 21-year-old Ihab Fathi Miswadi [ايهاب فتحي مسودة] though this Arabic news-site says he's 18. Hamas is circulating (via Twitter and other channels) pictures of the killer posing in front of Islamic structures on the Temple Mount. The process of martyrizing him is bound to be well-underway at this hour, along with the inevitable cries to avenge his "victimhood".
UPDATE Wednesday December 30, 2015: Israel National News says the stabbing victim, Genady Kaufman, succumbed to his injuries today at Shaarei Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. He died after a three-week struggle with the knife injuries that damaged his heart, lungs and stomach.
