18-Aug-18: Friday afternoon Arab-on-Israeli stabbing attack is thwarted by police - who are accused by attacker's family

Screen-cap from the security video

Security camera video has emerged of a stabbing attack on Israeli police keeping order in Jerusalem's Old City on Friday afternoon.

The would-be knifer, identified subsequently as Ahmed Muhammad Mahameed, 30, an Arab resident of the Israeli city of Umm al-Fahm in northern Israel, is seen walking briskly from the direction of the Temple Mount, turning sharply in the direction of a small group of on-duty police, then quickly pulling a knife out and attempting to stab someone. There follows a scuffle which is shown only briefly and then - according to a Times of Israel report - the assailant is shot by one of the police who came under lethal attack and he is killed.

The report goes on to focus on the complaints of the dead attacker's family. They say he was mentally ill and had twice tried to take his own life. They deny that he carried out the attack for nationalistic reasons but fail to offer an explanation - beyond mental illness - for what happened. They also deny that the response of the police was reasonable and say the officer who fired at him was “light with his finger on the trigger.”

“They didn’t have to kill him,” said the assailant’s father, pointing to other instances where police managed to neutralize attackers by shooting at their legs instead of their upper bodies. Mustafa Abu Megged, a friend of Mahameed’s, called his family a “normative” one that would never endorse such conduct. “They could have neutralized him in another way. When it comes to Arabs, they [the police] are easy to pull the trigger,” Megged charged. In addition, the Umm al-Fahm Municipality released a statement Saturday condemning police for what it called the “cold-blooded murder” of its resident.

Members of the family are quoted as well in a Ynet report:

"He suffers from a mental illness and he tried several times to commit suicide. We did not know he was in the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Friday, he never usually goes there,” said Ahmad’s brother Naseem, in an interview with Ynet... "My brother is a mentally ill person who never thought of harming people... We thought at first that he was misidentified. My brother is not a terrorist. Everyone needs to understand his mental state and not jump to conclusion that are so far from the truth," Naseem vented... ["Family of stabbing attack suspect: He has mental illness", Ynet, August 17, 2018]

There's a video embedded in the Times of Israel report that concludes with an officer reassuring the uniformed men on duty that they acted correctly in defending themselves and that doing so was in accordance with police values. It's hard to disagree with him.

Umm al-Fahm is home to more than 50,000 Arabs, overwhelmingly Muslim and almost all of them Israeli citizens.

For the past two decades, its public life has been increasingly viewed as directed by the outlawed (since 2015) Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement whose leading figure, former mayor of the city (between 1989 and 2001) Sheikh Raed Salah, is identified with Hamas. Salah is notorious for inciting under the slogan "Al-Aqsa is in danger":

In 1996, as events surrounding the authorization of a northern exit to the Western Wall tunnels were unfolding (and which led to violent riots), Salah became aware of how to capitalize politically on matters regarding the Temple Mount and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
He started to hold an annual rally titled “Al Aqsa [Mosque] is in danger” in the northern city of Umm al-Fahm. Thousands usually attended. [Avi Issacharoff, "The Islamic Movement’s Northern Branch — long a thorn in Israel’s side", Times of Israel, November 17, 2015]

We may be about to see the flames of that particular kind of incitement being fanned again.

UPDATE August 21, 2018:

The stabber's funeral in Umm Al-Fahm drew hundreds of participants, turning it into yet another sickening mass rally in support of #PalArab terror. The family had committed to the police to limit its scale and may now have to forfeit the bond they posted: https://t.co/PvkHiME34n pic.twitter.com/O7mBY009Yk

— This Ongoing War (@ThisOngoingWar) August 21, 2018

16-Jul-17: The Friday killings: Jordan condemns but pay attention whom

Arabiyat

You can take seriously this report in today's Times of Israel if you like: "Jordan king condemns Temple Mount attack in call with Netanyahu". But note that it is barely re-reported outside Israel and the actual language of the Hashemite king's "condemnation" is hard to find.

On the other hand, Petra, the official voice of Jordan's government, still has its condemnation of Israel in the name of its Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs Wael Arabiyat. 

 He manages to include

• "violations committed by the occupation authorities" 
• "and Jewish extremists against the Al-Aqsa Mosque"
• "Jordan rejects Israel's closure of Al-Aqsa Mosque" 
• [which prevents] "worshipers from praying under any circumstances"

In other words, for the Jordanians and their global audience Israel is the real culprit. As for condemning the shooters, if that's on the Petra site, we haven't found it.

It's a traditional game, played for decades by Jordan's kings and recently the subject of our comments here: "11-Jan-15: Does the king need to fly to Paris to stand with terror victims? He can do it better back in Jordan." Read that and you will realize it's easier and safer for the Jordanians to condemn a jihadist attack inside a French kosher food store than on the grounds of one of their holy places which - did you notice? - is formally under their guardianship:

The Hashemite monarchy, descended from the house of the Prophet Mohammed, who in Muslim belief rose to heaven from the Dome of the Rock, is guardian of the city’s Islamic holy places [i.e. Islamic sites in Jerusalem], by tradition and by the 1994 treaty. Any challenge to the religious status quo in the holy city strikes at the heart of Hashemite legitimacy, in Jordan and throughout the Arab world... ["Jerusalem’s holy places are a minefield for Jordan", Financial Times, November 4, 2014]

Obviously it's orders of magnitude easier for Jordan to blame Israel than to bite the bullet of Palestinian Arab and Jordanian (essentially one and the same) adoration of terror, jihad and killing Jews. It's called speaking from both sides of your mouth at the same time - but it's far, far less dangerous to those doing the speaking.

UNESCO is bound to start calling the Hashemite Kingdom to order any minute now. Not.

UPDATE Sunday July 16, 2017 at 940 am: Turns out, thanks to the alert editors at JewishPress.com that Petra, the official voice of the Jordanian regime, did condemn the shooting attack in the middle of last night - and then, for reasons about which we can and absolutely ought to speculate, removed it.

It's all here.

Here's the Jewish Press report on the part that briefly condemns the terrorist Palestinian Arab gunmen who desecrated an important Islamic sacred site - and then uncondemns them:

The condemnation did not address the details of the attack, and it did not send condolences to the dead and wounded police officers. Instead, the press release said that King Abdullah of Jordan spoke with Netanyahu about the need for “de-escalation” on the Temple Mount. Abdullah then reiterated his generic “condemnation of the attack in Jerusalem on Friday and the rejection of violence in all its forms, especially in holy sites and places of worship.” And of course, Abdullah then demanded that PM Netanyahu reopen the Temple Mount to Muslim worshipers, and warned Netanyahu 

and so on. A screen shot of the full text is at the JewishPress.com link.

14-Jul-17: In the Jerusalem Old City shadow of one of their more sacred sites, an Arab-on-Israeli shooting attack

Image Source: Al Jazeera

There has been an Arab-on-Israeli shooting attack this morning - the Moslem Sabbath - at a location adjacent to the sacred Temple Mount (in Hebrew: Har Habayit) plaza in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Two Israeli victims are reported to be seriously injured with gunshot wounds and were rushed to Hadassah Medical Center's Mount Scopus hospital for emergency treatment.

A third is injured more lightly as a result of being hit by shrapnel and sustaining wounds to the neck, arms and hands. He is being treated at Jerusalem's Shaarei Zedek Medical Center.

The three are described in a Times of Israel report as men in their 30s. (Past experience says the initial guesses are often wrong.)

Police opened fire on the Arab attackers and they are all now dead.

Police believe the armed gang approached the Temple Mount plaza shortly after 7:00 am today when the Temple Mount area is generally starting to be thronged by participants in the Friday prayers. They ran [as this graphic brief video shows] toward Lions' Gate - Sha'ar Ha'arayot in Hebrew - where they opened fire on the Israelis.

They then fled towards the Temple Mount complex with Israeli police in pursuit.

Video posted in the past hour shows one of the shooters lying on the ground with Israeli police, guns drawn and surrounding him. He suddenly jumps up, takes a flying leap with a knife drawn clearly trying to wound one of the police officers. He is shot before he can complete the stabbing.

The shooters were armed with two Carlo-style (from Carl Gustav) sub-machine guns and a pistol. A knife was also found at the scene. Photos are circulating on the Hebrew-language social media [link] this morning showing three Israeli photo-identification cards, said to prove that the Arab shooters were all the holders of Israeli citizenship or Israeli residential status.

As scenes of attempted carnage go, the Temple Mount is an especially historical and sacred one. (being frank about this, it's hard to ignore how often murderous attacks of a certain kind happen in synagogues, churches, mosques, sacred places and sacred times. Is there a pattern here?)

Lion's Gate is thought to have that name according to one theory because of the image of leopards - mistaken for lions - two on the left and two on the right - embedded in the wall beside the gate itself. (Another version says they are indeed lions.) It marks the start of the 600 meter long Via Dolorosa along which Jesus walked, according to tradition, on the way to his crucifixion. Fifty years ago, it was the entry point through which Israeli paratroops passed during the 1967 Six-Day War and famously unfurled an Israeli flag above the Temple Mount.

Despite its holy and historical nature, Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks do happen in the vicinity and with growing regularity. We have posted on attacks at or very close to Lions' Gate several times in the past 15 months:

• 03-May-16: On a quiet lane in Jerusalem's Old City, a Monday night terror-by-knifing attack
• 14-Dec-16: In Jerusalem's Old City this afternoon, an Arab-on-Israeli stabbing
• 13-Mar-17: Jerusalem and the (alleged) knife-men
• 13-May-17: In Jerusalem's Old City, a Jordanian stabs an Israeli and the Jordanians are outraged (so are we, for different reasons)

Times of Israel says that in the wake of this morning's terrorist attack, Jerusalem Police chief Yoram Halevi canceled prayers for the day on the Temple Mount for the first time in decades, ordering the complex cleared and the entrances to the holy site closed. Police have also placed security checkpoints at the entrances to the Old City.

Aftermath on the Temple Mount this morning [Image Source]

How did the terrorists manage to bring weapons into the holy site? Normal procedure - perhaps to the surprise of people less familiar with how real life is lived here - is that Muslim visitors to the Temple Mount are subjected to less rigorous security checking than non-Muslim visitors, all of whom are obliged by the Israeli authorities to enter via the Mughrabi foot-bridge.

There's bound to be a high-level investigation since the implications of what happened there today are serious and broad.

Don't expect the Palestinian Arab media to be asking the serious questions. They're still totally stuck in their victim-centric reporting-narrative style - the sort of reporting (referring to the Fatah-controlled and scandalous Ma'an News Agency) that produces this opening line today:

Three Palestinians and two Israeli police officers were killed during an armed confrontation in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem early on Friday morning... ["3 Palestinian citizens of Israel, 2 police officers killed in Jerusalem shooting", Ma'an, today]

Armed confrontation?!

Al Jazeerah's man on the spot offers this insightful gem:

"It is reportedly the first time in years that the compound would be closed for prayers on Friday. Of course this has the potential to increase tensions among the about 10,000 Palestinians who normally pray here on Fridays," Fawcett said. ["Jerusalem: Palestinians killed after 'shooting attack'",  Al Jazeera, today]

Tensions?! The sub-machine guns and the knife don't raise the tensions. The critically injured Israelis don't raise the tensions. The cynical abuse of a site they declare to be holy doesn't raise the tensions. The utter silence of the Muslim religious leadership and their systematic, ongoing failure to condemn Arab-on-Israeli terrorist attacks don't raise the tensions.

But decisions by responsible law-and-order authorities, conditioned by long experience to know the nature of the Palestinian Arab mobs and the harm that generally follows (mainly in their own settlements and to their own children) their irresponsible violence - they raise the tensions.

Lethal journalism is what it's called.

UPDATE 12:30 pm Friday July 14, 2017:
Tragically, the two seriously injured Israelis shot by a gang of armed Arab attackers this morning have died of their wounds [Israel National News]. Times of Israel identifies them as two police officers, both from Israel's Druze community: Haiel Sitawe, 30, from Maghar, a mostly Druze and Arab city in northern Israel, who signed up with the Border Guard as part of his mandatory national service in 2012 and served in the unit responsible for securing the Temple Mount ever since; and Kamil Shnaan, 22, from Hurfeish, an almost entirely-Druze village also in Israel's north. Sitawe is survived by a wife, Irin, and a three-week-old son, as well as parents and three brothers. Shnaan was to celebrate his engagement party to his girlfriend in a week. He leaves behind parents, a brother and three sisters. His father, Shachiv Shnaan, served for a time as Knesset member representing, first the Labor party, and later Ehud Barak's short-lived Independence party.

The three dead attackers are all from the Israeli Arab town of Umm al-Fahm, with a population of more than 50,000 Israel's third-largest Arab community and a center of power for Israel's Islamic Movement whose notorious so-called Northern Branch headed by Raed Sallah was outlawed by Israel in 2016 because of its ties to Hamas and the Moslem Brotherhood. The dead gunman are all called Muhammad Jabarin and all are plainly from the same clan: Muhammad Ahmed Muhammad Jabarin, 29; Muhammad Hamad Abdel Latif Jabarin, 19; and Muhammad Ahmed Mafdal Jabarin, 19. The Jabarin clan's home base is Musherifa, a village in the vicinity of Um-al-Fahm.

UPDATE 3:00 pm Friday July 14, 2017
An updated version of the Ma'an news report on the terror attack calls the two proudly-patriotic Israeli Druze police officers who were the victims of the shooting attack this morning "Palestinian citizens of Israel" whose lives ended "during an armed confrontation":

Source

We fear the intention of the Ma'an editorial spinmeisters was not to bring comfort to the families of the fallen Druze police men.

In similar black-is-white fashion, the savages of Hamas and Islamic Jihad have fulsomely praised today's shooting attack with their own public statements. Hamas called the brazen bloodshed at a sacred site "heroic" and a ''natural consequence of a series of crimes''. Not to be outdone in the chase for outlandish similes, Islamic Jihad said the shootings were ''demonstrations of courage by our people against occupying forces that must now beware to cross a red line''.

Whether or not the Israeli side is going to be more cautious about crossing an imaginary Islamist line in the coming days, what's sadly clear (again) is that on a day in which five lives, all of them Arab, were lost in pointless Jerusalem violence, the fat-cats in Gaza are congratulating themselves as they pump the heads of their society's children with self-destructive notions of honor, courage and dying while killing the "occupiers" in the occupiers's own capital city.

28-Oct-15: The Pal Arab passion for knife attacks isn't just for social media: they sincerely mean to kill

Real child, real knife, real savagery
[Source: This video via Twitter]

Two separate Pal Arab stabbing attacks on Israelis have happened in the ancient city of Hebron, south of Jerusalem, on two consecutive days: yesterday (Tuesday) and today.

Both were launched by Arab assailants equipped with knives and in both cases the attackers were stopped and killed by IDF personnel.

Yesterday's attack took place in close proximity to the sacred Tomb of the Patriarchs; today's was in the Tel Rumeida section. Israel National News says today's attacker "did not succeed in harming anyone before being eliminated". The same result happened yesterday.

In ideologically-zealous corners of the anti-Israel news industry, yesterday's frustrating of a more-tragic terrorism outcome is described as "extrajudicial executions". It's hard not to notice that the narrative offered up by those groups never manages to identify any actual terror-motivated attacks. The Arab men and women with the knives or meat-cleavers or pistols in their hands, and with Israeli backs on their minds, are somehow invariably caught up by mere chance in the wrong place and at the wrong time.

That's of course for the English-speaking media. The Arabic-language media unabashedly celebrate their martyrdom and heroic attempts at 'resistance'.

Also today, around the same time as the Tel Rumeida attack, an Israeli woman was stabbed in the back in the manner that numerous Palestinian Arab men have carried out stabbing attacks on defenceless Israelis in the past month.

This afternoon's attack took place at the entrance to the Rami Levy supermarket in Gush Etzion, on the road leading to Alon Shvut. It's the store that has been in the news repeatedly because of the management policy of employing Israelis alongside Palestinian Arabs, and encouraging the custom of Palestinian Arab consumers. The embodiment of a form of peaceful and productive co-existence, in other words. And therefore poison in the minds of the Palestinian Arab terrorists and their backers.

Daddy behind the camera is proud

Today's victim was conscious at the time that rescue personnel reached her at the scene. An ambulance paramedic says he found her inside her car:

Initial reports indicate the victim was moderately wounded and received medical treatment from Magen David Adom (MDA) crews at the scene. She has since been evacuated to Shaare Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem - with the knife still embedded in her back, according to reports... “When I arrived to the scene, I saw an approximately 40-year-old woman sitting in her vehicle,” MDA paramedic Wally Wolfstahl said. “She was fully conscious and suffering from a stab wound to the upper body. People on the scene told me they put her in the vehicle after she was stabbed by a terrorist. We gave her medical care with the help of IDF medics that arrived on the scene. After giving her first aid in the field, we sent her to the hospital. She is in moderate and stable condition,” he said. [Israel National News]

The attacker fled the scene after carrying out the stabbing. He was intercepted a short time later by police and is in their custody now. His victim is in hospital in nearby Jerusalem.

Seems like a good time to mention yet another online video clip doing the social media rounds at the moment. This one [see it here via Twitter] appears to have been filmed by a proud father as his daughter, probably no more than 4 years old, brandishes a deadly-looking knife, waves it in the air, attacks a piece of fabric, and indicates that its purpose is to allow her to kill her some Jews. We're all accustomed to scenes like this sickening one to the point where it's accepted that this is what passes for normal in Palestinian Arab society.

Who's the knife for? "Yehudi" - Arabic
for Jews - the little girl shouts

For people like us, it's essential to help others realize there's a direct line connecting little children and their perverted fathers/mothers/leaders/teachers with acts of murder and attempted murder taking place every few hours on Israel's streets. This is the face of a society in the full grip of an addiction to savagery with no red lines. None.

Also in today's battles with terror, six Israeli residents of Tira, a city of some 23,000 people, almost all of them Arabs, were arrested today (Wednesday). They are being charged with hurling firebombs at vehicles traveling on Route 6, Israel's main north-south express road. An investigation by Israel Police and the Shin Bet uncovered their terrorist activities.

Tira, along with Umm al-Fahm, is in the region colloquially known by Israelis as The Triangle. We mentioned it two weeks ago in the context of the rising levels of terrorist activity emanating from those communities.

That the urge to kill Israelis is not restricted to the margins of Palestinian Arab society is made clear yet again today.

As the Jerusalem Post reports, the Palestinian Authority controlled by Mahmoud Abbas has just decided to honor Muhannad Halabi by naming a street after him. Halabi is the 19-year-old murderer of two Jews killed close to the Old City's Lion's Gate on October 3, 2015 in a stabbing and shooting "operation" that took the lives of Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi and Aharon Benita and seriously injured Benita’s wife, Adele, and their two-year-old son.

The assailant was shot dead by police at the scene. Palestinian Media Watch reported several days ago that the Palestinian Bar Association has already grotesquely bestowed an honorary law degree on the deceased stabber/shooter/attacker. Now the municipality of Surda/Abu Qash, in the suburbs of Ramallah, will name a street for him "to emphasize the national role played by Palestinian municipalities."

Can a society ever be rehabilitated from pathologies as deep and all-pervasive as theirs?

11-Oct-15: Sunday night attack by car and knife

Scene of tonight's attack near Kibbutz Gan Shmuel [Haaretz]

There has been yet another knifing attack on Israelis this evening. And again it turns out to be the cruel and sadistic work of an Arab citizen of our country.

As Times of Israel reported tonight (Sunday) around 7:00 pm,

Four Israelis were wounded Sunday evening in a knife attack on Route 65 at the entrance to the kibbutz of Gan Shmuel, near the northern city of Hadera. One of the four, a 19-year-old woman, is in serious condition. [Times of Israel, October 11, 2015]

An Israeli Arab man, said to be about 20, from Umm al-Fahm ("mother of charcoal" in Arabic, a reminder of the forests that used to be part of the nearby landscape), a city of some 50,000, virtually all of them Arabs, and almost all holding Israeli citizenship, carried out the attack. His city is part of the region Israelis call the Wadi Ara Triangle, and usually just The Triangle, Hameshulash. Other major communities in the Triangle are Kafr Qara, Ar'ara, Baqa-Jatt, Qalansawe, Tayibe, Kafr Qassem, Tira, Kafr Bara and Jaljulia.

The terrorist's attack vehicle

Tonight's barbarism began with him driving his car - a low-slung, bright yellow vehicle of the sort often associated with young men in this country - into a small cluster of Israelis standing at a bus shelter on Route 65, hitting an as-yet-unnamed 19-year-old woman, and running her over. (There are reports she was wearing army uniform - presumably because like most youngsters of her age she was in the midst of her national service.) He emerged from the car then with a knife, and launched a vicious stabbing attack on the injured woman and on three other waiting commuters. The young woman is now in Hadera's Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in serious condition with multiple injuries including stab wounds to the head (!) and upper part of her body.

His other victims also reflected a carefully articulated political statement. In order to show how much, how really much, he and his fellow believers want freedom, respect, dignity, empowerment, he attacked a 14-year-old girl, now suffering from moderate (but unspecified) injuries; a 20-year-old man - possibly also in IDF uniform - now with light (but unspecified) injuries; and a man of 45 with wounds to his hand.

There were some initial reports that a second terrorist was involved and that he had fled the scene with a weapon belonging to one of the victims. Police have now confirmed that no weapon was taken, and there is no second suspect.

Life in the Triangle has been fraught for some time, and especially in the past few days as eruptions of passion for the acts of shooting and stabbing executed by Arabs in other parts of Israel appear to have captured the imagination of the locals:

[This past] Friday night was marked by widespread rioting in solidarity with Palestinians, and due to anger at the shooting a female terrorist across Arab towns in the north, Galilee, and the triangle area. Dozens of youths, some masked, set fires to tires and threw rocks at security forces in Nazareth, while large quantities of police were deployed to the scene. Multiple arrests were also reported in Sakhnin, while youths reportedly threw stones and clashed with police forces in Kfara Kanna.
A Police vehicle which arrived in Taybeh late on Friday was met with a hail of rocks and angry rioters. [Ynet, October 9, 2015]

Gan Shmuel Mall

Kibbutz Gan Shmuel was established in the early 1920's (when Um Al-Fahm had about 2,000 inhabitants) and has prospered [some history], particularly in export markets. A shopping mall now stands near the entrance to the kibbutz, attracting shoppers from the area and the highway.

Haaretz reported in the past half-hour (it's now 10:30 pm) that the attacker is Ala Raed Zyud, a 22-year-old resident of Umm al-Fahm.

Incitement of Arabs to attack Israelis by means of their cars and knives has been evident for months.