19-Aug-17: Tapuah Junction: An Arab-on-Israeli knifing attack is thwarted

The stabber's ID documents are circulating on
social media [Source]

Lethal Arab-on-Israeli knifing attacks keep happening even as mainstream news channels ignore their reality.

A boy from Tulkarem, a Palestinian Arab city of about 62,000 that has been under the full control of the Palestinian Authority since 1995, was killed today while attempting to stab an Israeli service person at Tapuah Junction. From social media, we see the attack was reported around 5:30 Saturday afternoon.

The knifer would have had his seventeenth birthday, according to the image of his ID papers, in seven weeks time.

Yet another weaponized child from the PA's evil production line. Yet another family whose economic standing will rise sharply thanks to the boy's self-destruction (click "Rewards for Terror" to see dozens of previous instances). Yet another life sacrificed to the hideous ambitions of the rich old men who have run Palestinian Arab lives for decades.

Israel's Channel 2 TV news reported this evening that he left a note for his parents, a sort of last will and testament, telling them he had set off to do a “revenge attack”. They should not mourn him, he wrote, because he is now a “martyr”. (A Palestinian Arab website offers the full text.) The PA will ensure he becomes one.

Times of Israel quotes the Health Ministry of the PA which identifies him as Qutaiba Zahran. It reports that an IDF officer was lightly wounded in the attack. The knifer, it says, approached IDF officers stationed at Tapuah Junction in the Samaria district where there have been many previous attacks of a similar nature in recent years. The security personnel called on him to halt as he approached, but instead he pulled out a knife and launched his attack on them. He was then promptly shot and killed, according to police.

The injured IDF officer is 21 and was taken to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikvah for further treatment.

01-Jul-16: Thursday evening Arab-on-Israeli stabbing attack in Netanya

Netanya - an evening view, not from yesterday [Image Source]

It has been a day of turmoil, drama and tragedy.

In Netanya, the Mediterranean coast city of 200,000 some 30 km north of Tel Aviv, a Palestinian Arab man in his forties launched a stabbing attack - the second one to have seized Israel's headlines on Thursday - on Israelis shopping in the early evening.

The moral pygmies at the European-funded Ma'an News Agency call it "the second incident to result in a Palestinian being killed following an attack in less than 12 hours". We assume the various European governments who keep re-supplying the Ma'an financial budget since its inception are comfortable with that way of looking at a martyr-rich, jihad war - sorry, an "incident" - being waged against a civilian population.

The site of the armed attack on unarmed shoppers is a local outdoor produce market located near the intersection of Sheshet HaYamim and Shoham Streets near the city center. (Images here.) Times of Israel quotes police saying the attack was intended as an attack of terror.

Two people were stabbed and suffered injuries. One, evidently a Haredi man of about 40, has serious injures from multiple stab wounds to the upper body. (Knifing attacks by Arabs on Israelis are generally directed at the victims' upper bodies, especially the head.) We don't know his name at this stage.

The second victim is a woman of 62; her injuries are thankfully somewhat milder. She is identified by Israel National News as Luba Gadimov. Mrs Gadimov's daughter is being married today - Friday - and the mother is determined to be there. We wish the whole family much joy and good health.

Both victims were being treated last night at Netanya's Laniado Hospital.

Their attacker was shot dead at the scene by an alert armed security guard. The stabber's name, quoted by various media sources, is Wael Yousef Abu Saleh, 46. Numerous online Arabic-language news channels (for instance here) immediately conferred martyrdom on him, ensuring his act of attempted murder will now be added to Palestinian Arab tales of "glory" and UNRWA school curricula.

An Arab source says he was from the Shweika section of Tulkarem which Ha'aretz improbably calls "a Palestinian village just east of Netanya in the West Bank". Some village: the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said back in 2007 that Tulkarm had a population of 51,300 plus an additional 10,600 living in an what it terms an "adjacent refugee camp". The numbers are certain to have risen substantially n the past decade. There's a good chance the Ha'aretz editors have never been there or even gotten near.

In terms of the Oslo II Accord between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, Tulkarem is in Area A, defined as being subject to "full civil and security control by the Palestinian Authority... Entry into this area is forbidden to all Israeli citizens." Also in Area A: Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, Qalqilya, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jericho and 80 percent of Hebron.

Israel's Channel 2 News reported during the evening that there was an ongoing search for accomplices "after eyewitnesses told police the assailant was dropped off at the market moments before he began stabbing passers-by".

They are probably not looking inside the presidential compound in Ramallah. They certainly should.

03-Dec-15: Near Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, another Arab-on-Israeli knifing attack tonight

Screen shot from Channel 2 news coverage of the stabbing scene, Street of the
Prophets (Heb: Rehov Hanevi'im) Jerusalem, near Damascus
Gate [Image Source]

Incredibly, there has been yet another stabbing attack close to the Old City of Jerusalem's Damascus Gate tonight. A uniformed police officer is injured. This happened just after dark, around 5:30 this evening (Thursday).

Times of Israel says:

The suspected assailant, a 21-year-old resident of the Palestinian West Bank city of Tulkarem, was shot dead after he approached a police car and stabbed the officer, security officials said. The stabbing occurred on Hanevi’im Street, a main road near Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate... The officer, a man in his thirties [is] a member of the Israel Police’s Special Patrol Unit...

According to Ynet, the policeman who was the target of the stabbing

fought the attacker, and his fellow officers, who saw the ongoing struggle, opened fire and shot the attacker dead. A Palestinian doctor from a nearby clinic who heard the commotion on the street went outside, noticed the wounded policeman and gave him initial medical care until Magen David Adom paramedics arrived at the scene. "We did our job. We gave him first aid and called an ambulance," said the doctor from Silwan. The 35-year-old wounded policeman suffered a stab wound to his hand and a gunshot wound to his leg, the latter likely caused by Israeli forces' fire when working to neutralize the terrorist. Magen David Adom paramedics evacuated the wounded policeman to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in the capital, where he was taken into surgery.

The attacker traveled some distance to reach the highlight of his short life.

Tulkarem is only 30 kilometers from the Tel Aviv metropolis, and twice that distance from Jerusalem. But distances can be deceiving in this part of the world. In Israel's life-and-death War of Independence, which, as a function of extreme Arab enthusiasm for a war of devastation and expulsion (of us Jews), got underway even before Israel managed to declare its independence on May 14, 1948, Tulkarem was under the control of the Arab forces of... Iraq. It may surprise younger readers to know that Iraq's army played a significant role -  an expeditionary force that eventually numbered 8,000 men along with 100 Iraqi Air Force planes - part of the massive Arab military invasion from the north, the east and the south, Once the 1947-49 war was over and Israel survived, Tulkarem - along with all the other Arab towns and cities of Judea and Samaria - fell under Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan occupation. Jordan's rule lasted for 19 years until its forces were routed by Israel in 1967's Six Day War, another life-and-death experience in the Israeli view.

We expect today's knife-man from Tulkarem will quickly be declared a martyr by those interested in creating more dead Palestinian Arabs. When we know more about his identity, we will update this post.

02-Nov-15: An Israeli in his seventies is the latest victim of a Pal Arab with a knife

The stabbing scene tonight in Netanya [Image Source: Haaretz]

In Netanya, on Israel's Mediterranean seashore a few miles north of Tel Aviv, there was yet another stabbing attack this evening. First reported as a criminal assault, it's clearer now that this was terrorism. The attacker is said by Times of Israel and

confirmed by police as a 23-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank city of Tulkarem, which lies just ten miles east of Netanya. He was shot by a police officer, reportedly while attempting to flee the scene. He is said to be in critical condition.

The victim of the knifing attack on Tachkemoni Street is an Israeli man in his seventies. His condition is said to be very serious, with substantial loss of blood from from a single stab wound to the back (to no one's surprise). He is undergoing emergency treatment right now at nearby Sanz Medical Center/Laniado Hospital.

This terror attack comes just a couple of hours after the Rishon Lezion stabbing that injured three, including an 80-year-old woman.

4-Apr-13: What lies behind the rioting, the firebombs and the dead Palestinian Arabs?

Nablus, yesterday [Image Source]

The BBC says this morning

Palestinians shot dead by Israeli fire in West Bank | Two Palestinian teenagers have been shot and killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank city of Tulkarm after clashes between soldiers and youths. One teenager was confirmed dead on Wednesday while the body of a second youth was found on Thursday. [more]

The actual facts - as distinct from the BBC's characteristic way of telling such narratives (in particular: the Palestinian Arabs are always having things done to them, never actually act) - involve one specific location, two fatalities and a background of much rioting, violence, growing danger and cynical manipulation.

Last night (Wednesday), a group of Palestinian Arab men and boys launched a hail of Molotov cocktails (firebombs) and rocks at an IDF security checkpoint located close to the Israeli community of Einav, and quite near to a Palestinian town, Anabta, 9 km east of Tulkarem.

The soldiers returned fire, and Times of Israel, quoting a spokesman for the Palestinian Red Crescent, says Amer Ibrahim Nassar, 17, took a bullet in the chest and died. A later search of the area turned up another dead Palestinian Arab youth, as yet un-named. Times of Israel says a third Palestinian Arab man was sent to hospital in Tulkarem, and more may have been hit as well. On the Israeli side, a soldier was injured from the onslaught of rocks and explosive material.

The background is that throughout the day on Wednesday, there were dozens of attacks by Palestinian Arab mobs on IDF security emplacements and soldiers in towns and villages, as well as the public roads, throughout the West Bank. Molotov cocktails and burning tyres have been the preferred modes of attack until now, along with rock/cement block hurlings at Israeli civilian vehicles traveling the West Bank's roads. (This includes attacks on ambulances. Why are we not surprised?) In this connection, please see "2-Apr-13: Justice and rocks" to give those cowardly and only-too-lethal assaults some essential context.

The whipping up of furies and frenzies attracted the attention of a veteran commentator, Amos Harel, in Haaretz: "Palestinian Authority using prisoner's death to keep up populist struggle against Israel". He makes some important, and mostly little noticed, points about the death of a terminally-ill, heavy-smoking convicted terrorist prisoner and the rioting staged in its wake:

• "The Palestinian Authority knows full well that the prisoner Maysara Abu Hamdiya, a resident of Hebron, who died of cancer Tuesday morning, did not become ill because of Israeli abuse. It is reasonable to believe that the PA leadership in the West Bank assumes that the last prisoner who died in jail at the end of February, Arafat Jaradat, did not die as a result of being tortured. And yet, in both cases, PA President Mahmoud Abbas publicly accused Israel of playing a part in the prisoners' deaths. In the Jaradat case, Israel was explicitly accused of torture. On Tuesday the PA said Israel should have released Abu Hamdiya because of his illness, though the Israel Prison Service says the release procedure had indeed begun before Abu Hamdiya's death.
• "The PA does not wish to ignite a third intifada in the territories, but its leadership has an interest in making public accusations against Israel. One reason is to keep the prisoner issue high on the political agenda. Even after the deal to release captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit was completed, there are still thousands of Palestinians serving lengthy prison terms in Israel. (Even worse, Fatah has not succeeded in securing the release of any of them, while Hamas got Israel to release more than 1,000 prisoners in exchange for Shalit.)
• "In criticizing Israel after Abu Hamdiya's death, Abbas met the expectations of his domestic audience.
• "Continued pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, in conjunction with prolonged hunger strikes by some inmates, are likely to lead to Israel's eventual release of Palestinian prisoners. If this takes place, it would likely be seen as one of the gestures to the PA the U.S. government expects Israel to implement in the near future, as discussed during U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Israel last month.
• "Another consideration of the PA leadership is its need to maintain the popular struggle in the West Bank. The strikes, prisoner riots in Israeli jails and protest rallies across the West Bank, especially those accompanied by clashes with IDF forces and the Border Police, are all seen as serving the Palestinian cause, as long as the fight does not spiral out of control and drag both sides into a wide-scale armed conflict. 
• "The PA also has a certain interest in diverting the public's anger in the West Bank towards Israel, away from its criticism of the deteriorating economic situation."
• "As expected, members of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip called Tuesday upon residents of the West Bank to start a third intifada in response to al-Hamdiya. At least two mortar shells were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel on Tuesday. All the same, it seems that for the moment the Gazan interest is best served by creating friction within the West Bank rather than Gaza.
• "From the Israeli perspective, a more substantive danger now lies in the West Bank, not the Strip. It is true that a third intifada doesn't seem to be on the horizon, despite hopes from Gaza, but it is impossible to ignore the continuous increase in the number of "populist" incidents (the throwing of rocks and petrol bombs, demonstrations) over the last six months. Ultimately, the gradually accumulating incidence of events means that the West Bank is more turbulent and tense than it has been in recent years.

Today, Thursday, the IDF is said to be bracing for a fresh wave of violence connected with the funeral of the deceased terrorist Maysara Abu Hamdiya in Hebron.

Some of that is likely to have been induced by the overt call to 'bigger and better' terrorism made by one of Amos Harel's Haaretz colleagues who authored an outrageous polemic that was granted maximum prominence by Haaretz editors yesterday. It is entitled "The inner syntax of Palestinian stone-throwing". We have only the slightest hesitation in expressing the hope that it leads to the criminal prosecution of its author, and quickly.

We will not excerpt her hateful, irresponsible and agenda-driven incitement-posing-as-journalism here. We mention it only because of the high likelihood that, in these already inflamed circumstances, there will be more violence, more injuries, more deaths and tragedies. For those of us living in the midst of this, who suffer the consequences, who perceive the intertwining of cause and effect, it's important to be able to see through the cold manipulation and understand where and how the conflagrations emanate. It's almost never accidental.

- - -

UPDATE 2:15 pm Thursday

"Palestinians rioted in the West Bank city of Hebron as thousands of mourners attended the funeral of prisoner Maysara Abuhamdia, who died of cancer while in Israeli custody this week. Dozens of rioters pelted IDF troops with rocks, while Israeli vehicles were stoned along roads in the area. Security forces responded with crowd-control methods, including tear gas... On Thursday, the Palestinian minister of prisoners’ affairs announced that an autopsy conducted on Abuhamdia’s body had revealed that prisoner’s death had been caused by deliberate medical negligence on Israel’s part... A previous autopsy conducted in Israel determined that the cause of death was Abuhamdia’s cancer. The conclusions did not make mention of negligence on Israel’s part." [Times of Israel]

25-Apr-08: Gunmen at work

It's been a busy Friday Passover-week morning in this ongoing war.

Israelis driving their vehicle in the Samaria district were attacked early this morning by Palestinians hurling fire-bombs (home-made weapons in the language of the mainstream media). No injuries, thankfully, but that was not the intention of the terrorists.

In the southern city of Ashkelon (home to 110,000 Israelis), three Qassam rockets fired by Gazan-Palestinian-Arabs crashed this morning. One struck a cemetery on the city's southern side, damaging tombstones.

A fourth Friday morning Qassam rocket was fired into Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, not far from Ashkelon. Fortunately no injuries in any of today's Qassam landings.

In the Nitzanei Shalom industrial park (the name means buds of peace), near the West Bank city of Tulkarem, the outcome of this morning's terrorism was less banal. Two Israelis who worked there as security personnel were shot dead. Terrorists sent by Islamic Jihad infiltrated the industrial zone overnight and shot them dead at close range. Their intent, it appears, was to carry out a larger massacre, but the factories were shut down and mainly deserted for the Passover week. The dead men are Shimon Mizrahi, 53, of Beit Hefer, and Eli Wasserman, 50, of Alfei Menashe. In August 2002, another Israeli, a truck driver working in that industrial park - Shani Ladani, 27 - was killed, shot dead at close range by Palestinian-Arab terrorists in the same place.

It's unlikely anyone from the mainstream media will pay much attention to this aspect of the killings, but the fact is the industrial park at Nitzanei Shalom was one of nine industrial zones established in 1995 by the government of Israel to provide work and economic advancement for Arabs in Judea and Samaria.

 Seven factories are located today in Nitzanei Shalom. They make cartons, plastic parts, exterminator sprays and other items while coping with an ongoing war against them, brought on by the same sort of logic that leads the Palestinian-Arabs of Gaza to repeatedly attack Israeli fuel-transfer points (for transfer into Gaza) and then wail that there's insufficient fuel.

Some 700 Palestinian-Arabs are today employed in the park where today's killings were carried out. The premises are secured by Israelis like the men murdered this morning.

18-Sep-06: Don't Get Into a Philosophical Argument with These People

Here's what happens when you have a philosophical disagreement with Islamic mobs. So imagine what it means to have a really life-and-death existential struggle over land, history, religion, everything.

AP/Washington Post
Palestinian Muslims Attack Five Christian Churches - Ali Daraghmeh

Palestinians wielding guns and firebombs attacked five churches in the West Bank and Gaza on Saturday, following remarks by Pope Benedict XVI that angered many Muslims. The attacks left church doors charred and walls pockmarked with bullet holes and scorched by firebombs. At least five firebombs hit Nablus' Anglican church and firebombings left black scorch marks on the walls and windows of Greek Orthodox churches as well. Later Saturday, four masked gunmen doused the main doors of Nablus' Roman and Greek Catholic churches with lighter fluid, then set them afire. They also opened fire on the buildings. In Gaza City, militants opened fire at a Greek Orthodox church. Explosive devices were set off at the same Gaza church on Friday.
George Awad, a cleric at the Greek Orthodox church in Nablus, said he and other Christians have apologized for the pope's remarks and urged Muslims to use restraint. "There is no reason to burn our churches," he said.

Nun killed after Pope's speech

The attack may have been in response to the remarks. Meanwhile, the pope says he is sorry for the anger he sparked.
Associated Press and Los Angeles Times
MOGADISHU, Somalia - An elderly Italian nun who devoted her life to helping the sick in Africa was shot dead by two gunmen at a hospital Sunday in an attack possibly linked to worldwide Muslim anger toward Pope Benedict XVI and his recent comments on Islam.
Sister Leonella, 65, was shot in the back four times by pistol-wielding attackers as she left the Austrian-run S.O.S. hospital. Her bodyguard was also slain.

Shots fired at Oslo synagogue - police

17 Sep 2006 09:45:29 GMT
Source: Reuters
OSLO, Sept 17 (Reuters) - Norwegian police said gunshots were fired at a synagogue in Oslo early on Sunday, the national news agency NTB reported.
It said armed police had sealed off the area around the synagogue in central Oslo. It did not report any injuries from the incident at around 2.30 a.m. (0030 GMT).
"We have searched the area with police dogs to secure any evidence, but we have still not found the perpetrator," police official Bjoern Oelstad was quoted as saying by NTB.
Norwegian police were not immediately available to comment.
The Mosaic Religious Community, which owns the synagogue, had asked for better protection of its property following threats and after the site was vandalised in early August.

Gazans warn pope to accept Islam

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Citing the words of the Prophet Muhammad, Muslim religious leaders in the Gaza Strip on Sunday warned Pope Benedict XVI that he must "accept" Islam if he wanted to live in peace.
The warning, the first of its kind, came as many Christians in the West Bank expressed anger over a spate of attacks on churches in protest against remarks made by the pope about the Muslims and the Prophet Muhammad.
Two more churches in the West Bank were targeted on Sunday in protest against the pope's remarks, bringing to seven the number of churches that have been attacked over the past three days.
In Tulkarm, arsonists set fire to the only Orthodox church in the area, causing heavy damage to the 150-year-old structure. Local residents said the attack occurred shortly after 4 a.m, when a number of assailants forced their way into the church and tossed several fire bombs into the building.
Some Christian families said they were living in fear because of the attacks and called on the Palestinian Authority to do its utmost to protect churches and Christians.
At a press conference in Gaza City, a number of Muslim clerics said the pope's statements were "the result of his hatred for Islam and not the result of ignorance."
One of them, Dr. Imad Hamto, called on the pope to "repent and ask for forgiveness." He added: "We want to use the words of the Prophet Muhammad and tell the pope: 'Aslim Taslam'" Aslim Taslam is a phrase that was taken from the letters sent by the Prophet Muhammad to the chiefs of tribes in his times in which he reportedly urged them to convert to Islam to spare their lives.
Some Muslim scholars, however, have endorsed a more moderate interpretation of the term, arguing that its real meaning was that those who surrendered to the will of God would find peace.
Hamto and his colleagues accused Christians of "resorting to the power of the sword in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine."
They also called on the pope to direct his words to the Jews who, they claimed, were "spreading corruption and destruction."

Islam Peaceful, Pope Deserves Reactions (Turkey)

Who says we're violent?

By Karina Dunger and Andrew Carswell
September 18, 2006 12:00
The Daily Telegraph
MUSLIM fanatics burned an effigy of the Pope, a Catholic nun was shot dead and terrorist organisation al-Qaeda called for holy war as protesters against Benedict XVI's comments linking Islam with violence resorted to just that.
Elderly Italian nun Sister Leonella was shot at a children's hospital in the Islamist-controlled Somali capital in an attack linked to the Pope's comments last week linking Islam to violence.
Two gunman entered the Austrian-funded SOS Hospital in Mogadishu's Huriwa District on Sunday and ambushed the nun, opening fire with pistols before killing a Somali bodyguard and escaping in the ensuing confusion, witnesses said.
In the Shi'ite city of Basra in Iraq, about 150 demonstrators demanding an apology by the Pope burnt his effigy. The agitators also burned German, US, and Israeli flags.
"No to aggression! We gagged the Pope!," the angry crowd chanted. The protest was organised by supporters of hardline Shi'ite cleric Mahmoud Al Hasani, who demanded the Pope and the Vatican be put on trial under UN Security Council resolutions.

As the Telegraph says: Who says they're violent? Anyone who says they're violent gets a bullet in the head, so shuddup already.