30-Oct-19: A woman, a knife, a holy place

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.

Associated Press gives a characteristically laconic version of the background to this morning's thwarted murder/s, saying that

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.

07-Oct-19: How hard is it to produce 12 year old knife-attackers?

We don''t claim to be 100% sure but a social media post [here]
suggests this is the stabber described in our post.
The world-class treatment he's getting is courtesy of
Shaarei Zedek Medical Center and the government of Israel

With a current news item in mind, here's some insight into how the Palestinian Authority's policy of child weaponization works.

We wrote here a week and a half ago ["27-Sep-19: Weaponized Palestinian Arab children and more Arab-on-Israel stabbings"] about an on-duty female member of the Israel Police being injured in the course of a frenzied stabbing attack launched by a Palestinian Arab boy of thirteen. We were wrong: he was twelve. And it's evident he didn't intend to inflict mild trauma. He was very likely intent on killing.

The boy apppeared in court yesterday.

12-year-old indicted for Jerusalem attack in which officer was lightly injured | Boy charged with terror offenses for attempting to stab police officers in Old City last month; female officer was lightly hurt when barrier fell on her hand during scuffle | Times of Israel | 6 October 2019 | The Jerusalem district attorney on Sunday indicted a 12-year-old boy under terror laws for the attempted stabbing of a policewoman in Jerusalem’s Old City last month.
According to the indictment, on September 26, the day of the attack, the minor attended prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. At the conclusion of prayers, he allegedly walked up to a group of female officers at the Temple Mount’s Chain Gate, above the Western Wall area, pulled out a knife and attempted to stab the officers. During the ensuing scuffle, a female officer, age 34, was lightly injured when a security barrier fell on her hand. According to the indictment, a staff member of the Waqf, the Muslim trust that oversees the site, tried to catch the boy and keep the police from him.
The boy was overpowered at the scene and arrested.
The boy is accused of committing an act of terror in which he unlawfully attempted to injure a person with a knife for religious and national motive. Prosecutors asked that the boy remain detained until the end of legal proceedings.

There's no indication whether the Waqf worker who tried to prevent the police from taking the stabber into custody will face criminal or terror charges. If he's not, that's disturbing.

Here's some of the background that put the boy in the photo above into, first, an Israeli hospital bed and then Israel's juvenile criminal justice system where he's now fated to spend some of what should have been his best years.

First, let's understand the meaning of Waqf, an Arabic term defined [Wikipedia] as "confinement and prohibition" or causing a thing to stop or stand still. In the legal sense, it is said to mean the detention of a specific thing for purposes of "charity of poors [sic] or other good objects".

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan imposed a waqf on Jerusalem after the invasion by its British-led army, and the subsequent two-decade long massively-destructive conquest and occupation, of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the wake of the 1948 Israeli War of Independence.

After East Jerusalem was liberated in the course of the June 1967 Six-Day War, Israel - for pragmatic reasons related to its desire for neighborly relations and respect for Muslim sensibilities - allowed the waqf to re-assert its authority over the Temple Mount, which happens to be Judaism's holiest site.

Jordan's King Abdullah II "currently supplies all of the funding needed to operate the waqf." But as a recent analysis of changes in its structure shows, ["New Waqf Council Managing the Temple Mount", JCPA - Nadav Shragai, Lenny Ben-David | February 28, 2019], the Waqf is poised to do more harm:

The main, most dramatic change in the composition of the Waqf... was the joining of Sheikh Akram Sabri, currently chairman of the Supreme Muslim Council and former Mufti of Jerusalem. Sabri is now identified with the Muslim Brotherhood’s “the northern faction of the Islamic Movement” in Israel, and he follows the orders of Turkey and its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Some also believe that he is close to Hamas. At the beginning of the second intifada, Sabri identified with suicide bombings, and he is known for his extreme pronouncements against Israel... Other new members of the Jordanian Waqf, who Jordan agreed to allow into the new council after it was expanded from 11 members to 18 are mainly affiliated with Fatah and the Palestinian Authority... Until the establishment of the new Waqf, most of its members were pro-Jordanian. Its new composition expresses a united front [among] the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, and people like Sheikh Akram Sabri – and anyone who fears for Jordan’s future status on the Temple Mount. It is a joint coalition against the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.

The weaponization of Palestinian Arab children by the kleptocratic/geriatric Mahmoud Abbas regime that rules them is the result of several concurrent strategies that have been implemented for years by now:

• Large long-term monthly payments to prisoners and the families of dead terrorists by the Palestinian Authority, funded from a deficit budget that is replenished via foreign aid grants to the PA. These Pay-to-Slay payments as they are comminly termed grow with the seriousness of the terror offense. 
• Overt, explicit incitement to more acts of terror by the Palestinian Authority and by terror groups
• The recruiting and training of children to engage in conflict: Special mention to the United Nations UNRWA people responsible these past seven decades for nurturing, preserving, perpetuating and legitimizing the violent discontent of Palestinian Arab schookl children.
• The systematic glorification of Arab-on-Israeli violence throughout Palestinian Arab society
• The deliberate, ideology-driven abandonment of weaponized Palestinian Arab children by the numerous child-protection agencies that raise billions each year on the profoundly dishonest premise that, like DCI Palestine, they are "committed to securing a just and viable future for Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory".

With all these in place, getting to the results they want are not that challenging.

Israel attracts serious criticism for its treatment of child offenders. In large measure, this is dishonest, politically-spun and based on poorly understood data. For instance, as a respected human rights organization based in Israel reported in February 2018 [NGO Monitor] in an essay that contradicts some of what "everyone knows" about Israel's "failures":

• Some 90,000 children aged between 10 and 17 were arrested in England and Wales between April 2015 and March 2016, an average of about 7,500 per month. Adjust these numbers for population and you can make this highly relevant comparison - that minors are arrested in England and Wales (where armed conflict is not currently a major feature of life) 5.5 times more often than Palestinian Arab minors living in the so-called West Bank are.
• In data covering the years since since 2013 (a period of considerable Arab-on-Israeli violence and the massive Arab promotion of terror), the number of Palestinian Arab minors arrested annually in areas under Israeli control was between 800 and 1,000. 
• Of these arrested, how many were subjected to prosecution? About 450-505. Thus on average, in a population of roughly a million minors (quoting Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics data), fewer than 85 such minors are arrested each month and fewer than half of those are prosecuted.
• And this: International law and Article 66 of the Fourth Geneva Convention mandates that Israel must establish military courts as part of its obligation to “take all the measures in [its] power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety.” Moreover, Israel's law and enforcement practices meet all the requirements of “due process,” the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Article 68 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The rules of evidence applied by the Military Courts are the same as the rules of evidence applied in the Israeli domestic criminal justice system.

These are not points that the chorus of child-weaponizers and their foreign-government-funders, backers and advocates want us to know.

Nor do they advertise the single most important take-away we can think of: that, given Pal Arab society's massive ongoing investment, it is dead easy to weaponize pre-teen Palestinian Arab boys and girls and turn them into killers.

27-Sep-19: Weaponized Palestinian Arab children and more Arab-on-Israel stabbings

Image Source

From Israel National News, an on-duty Israel Police officer was stabbed in Jerusalem's Old City Thursday afternoon.

The attack on the woman is being treated as a terror attack. Her injuries were relatively mild (for a stabbing); she was brought to Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Medical Center for treatment.

The knifer was apprehended after being wrestled to the ground (not shot, not beaten to a pulp) and taken into custody by other officers at the scene. Israel's Channel 13 News shows a video clip [here] and says the attacker is a Palestinian Arab boy of thirteen.

Thirteen. Yet another weaponized child. A life incomprehensibly cheapened, and in danger of being wasted before it gets underway.

Referring to this child assailant, Times of Israel says he approached a cluster of officers at the Temple Mount’s Chain Gate (in Hebrew: Sha'ar Hashalshelet), above the Western Wall area, around 4:00 pm. He pulled out a knife and in the customary way attempted to stab anyone he could, indiscriminately. Any Jew would do.

We expect he will now become another poster child for the irresponsible human rights industry's pleas for Israel to stop arresting children. Listening, Amnesty?

A day earlier, Wednesday, an Israeli woman of about twenty was stabbed in another act of Arab-on-Israel terrorism near the busy Maccabim/Shilat Junction on Route 443. That's the major highway that runs between Jerusalem and the airport.

The website of i24News reports that the woman was standing at a bus stop which is adjacent to the main entrance to the city of Modi’in. For what it's worth, the bus stop is inside the Green Line which is frequently - and totally misleadingly - called the 1967 border. (It's simply the 1949 armistice line, nothing more.) The Arabb news reports we have seen tell their readers that this was an attack on settlers in some occupied place. It's a powerful form of incitement, too good to skip by troubling themselves with checking the actual facts.

The Israeli victim received emergency medical treatment at the scene and was brought to Tel Hashomer Medical Center in Tel Aviv. Her condition was described as light to moderate in a Magen David Adom bulletin.

We found this security camera footage on an Arab news site (the contents almost certainly originated with an Israeli source):



A 14-year-old Palestinian Arab male was taken into custody at the scene. Yes, 14. Yet another weaponized child. Who says the Palestinian Arab education system produces nothing notable?

Child weaponization by the Palestinian Arab despots of their people's children is a subject that enrages us. That's one reason why we address it so frequently. Click here for some our prior posts on this deplorable and ongoing phenomenon.

[This post, like a number of others before it, has been translated to Polish ("Zamienione w broń palestyńskie dzieci") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.]

UPDATE Thursday October 10, 2019: The stabber in the video above, the attack near Modi'in, turns out to be all of fifteen. Times of Israel reports today

15-year-old Palestinian indicted for stabbing Israeli woman near Modiin
Teen charged with terror offenses for attack at Maccabim Junction on Route 443 last month
October 10, 2019 at 2:18 pm | Prosecutors on Thursday indicted a 15-year-old on terror charges for stabbing an Israeli woman near the central city of Modiin last month. According to the indictment, the teenage boy is accused of carrying out a terror attack, illegal possession of a knife and entering Israel illegally. The prosecution has requested that the suspect be detained until the end of legal proceedings. The 22-year-old woman was stabbed on September 25 at the Maccabim Junction along Route 443. She was treated in a hospital for a stab wound to her upper body. Police said a Border Police officer was also lightly hurt while restraining the suspect. According to police, Border Police officers driving on Route 443 spotted the suspect trying to flee and chased after him on foot. The officers fired a number of bullets in the air, and collared the suspect a few hundred meters from the scene of the stabbing.

31-May-19: Al Quds Day kicks off with double-stabbing attack in Jerusalem's Old City

The Times of Israel caption to this photo: "Israeli security forces 

and medics remove the body of a Palestinian man who had 

stabbed two Israelis in the Old City of Jerusalem, 

on May 31, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

At least two people were injured, one seriously, in stabbing attacks in Jerusalem’s Old City this morning. Times of Israel reports that the suspected terrorist was shot by police officers at the scene. His condition is not currently known (it's 7:20 am here).

But according to the rather laconic Haaretz version, "Israeli police said officers at the scene apprehended the suspect." (It appears now, some hours later, that Haaretz understated the impact on the terrorist. See below.)

Medics were treating one victim in serious condition, an approximately 50-year-old man, near the Old City’s Damascus Gate, which has seen a number of stabbing attacks in recent years. The Magen David Adom ambulance service said a second man was also lightly wounded near the Hurva Synagogue... [Times of Israel]

From Israel National News:

A man was very seriously wounded in a stabbing attack on Friday morning in an area in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem. The man was stabbed in his upper body and Magen David Adom paramedics are making efforts to save his life. A short time later, reports were received about an 18-year-old who was lightly wounded in a stabbing attack in the vicinity of the Hurva Synagogue. An initial investigation into the attack revealed that a terrorist arrived at the Damascus Gate, stabbed a man, and then stabbed another man in the Old City. The attacker was neutralized by police forces... Magen David Adom reported that at 6:31 a.m., a report was received of two men who were stabbed, one near Damscus Gate and the other near the Hurva Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem Post (7:30 am) also believes the two attacks are the work of one knifer:

Israel Police spokesman Superintendent Micky Rosenfeld told The Jerusalem Post that a "terrorist stabbed one person at Damascus Gate, critically injuring him, and made his way into the Old City and stabbed a second person inside injuring him moderately."

We're not yet seeing reports stating the obvious - that it's Al Quds Day:

an annual event held on the last Friday of Ramadan that was initiated by the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 to express support for the Palestinians and oppose Zionism and Israel... [and] also held in several other countries, mainly in the Arab and Muslim world, with protests against Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem.Rallies are held in various cities by both Muslim and non-Muslim communities around the world.

Urged on by Iran [here], there are large-scale Al Quds Day events scheduled for this weekend in Sydney and Melbourne, in London and other locations.

UPDATE May 31, 2019 at 10:00 am: From Times of Israel:

“Around 6:20 a.m., the assailant entered through the Damascus Gate. He stabbed a man inside and began running from the scene. Along the way, he saw [a 16-year-old boy] and stabbed him as well,” police said. The suspected terrorist, a 19-year-old Palestinian man from the West Bank, was shot dead by police officers at the scene, a police spokesperson said.

A quick scan of Arabic social media, mainly Twitter, shows the attacker is now called "martyr" which strongly suggests the financial future of another Palestinian Arab family has gotten a lot stronger thanks to Al Quds Day.

UPDATE May 31, 2019 at 11:00 am:  No names announced yet but it's reported that the first of the two stabbing victims this morning was a 16-year-old boy, attacked as he made his way from Shacharit morning prayers at a synagogue in the Old City back to his yeshiva.
From Israel National News: 

“On his way back from the Hurva synagogue to the yeshiva, someone jumped him from one of the courtyards,” the victim’s father told Reshet Bet... The victim had been learning overnight at his yeshiva [a tradition on Thursday nights], then went to the Hurva synagogue for morning prayers. “At first he didn’t realize that he had been stabbed by a knife,” his father continued, “he thought he had been punched in the back. His brother was with him, and they started to run towards the Hurva synagogue, and there they called for help.”
During the terror attack another victim, estimated to be about 50 years of age, was also stabbed, leaving him in critical condition. He was evacuated to Shaare Zedek Medical Center. He has been admitted to the hospital’s intensive care ward, and is unconscious and on assisted breathing.
Authorities say the terrorist entered the Old City at around 6:20 a.m. via Damascus Gate, stabbed his first victim on a side street, then fled the scene. As he ran, the terrorist spotted his second victim, stabbing him before being shot to death by Israeli police officers... The terrorist has been identified as a 19-year-old Palestinian Authority resident.

There's no coverage at this point on the scurrilous Maan News Service English-language site. But on its Arabic site, under a headline that calls him "martyr", it says

"Israeli occupation forces shot dead a Palestinian in the West Bank town of Jerusalem... The Israeli occupation forces closed all the doors of the Old City and the Al-Aqsa Mosque and prevented thousands of worshipers from reaching the Al-Aqsa Mosque."

No mention of today being Al Quds Day.

UPDATE May 31, 2019 at 2:30 pm: We have the names of the stabbing victims. One is 16-year-old Yisrael Meir Nachumberg, in moderate condition at the Hadassah Hospital on Jerusalem's Mount Scopus.. The other is Gavriel Lavi, 50, who underwent emergency surgery at Shaarei Zedek Medical Center this morning and is now hospitalized in SZMC's intensive care unit. Israel National News quotes one of the doctors there saying "He arrived at the trauma unit with stab wounds all over his body - scalp, neck, back, chest and legs."

Video of the attack and its aftermath is posted on YouTube and embedded below.



UPDATE June 2, 2019 at 4:00 pm: Times of Israel says Gabriel Lavi who was seriously injured in Friday's stabbing attack is now breathing without the help of a respirator though he remains in intensive care at Shaare Zedek Medical Center. May he continue to a complete recovery. 

11-Apr-19: Two more thwarted terror attacks at heavily-traveled security checkpoint outside Jerusalem

Image Source: Video of the young female attacker
recorded from inside the Arab bus [Source]

Too many observers of what goes on here in Israel talk about terrorism being behind us, finished, defeated. 

It's certainly not so.

A Palestinian woman tried to stab security forces while they were checking a bus passing through the A'Zaim checkpoint next to Jerusalem on Wednesday. Police fired into the air and police detectives who happened to be in the area were able to incapacitate the woman and take away the knife. No injuries were reported. The woman is being interrogated.
On Tuesday, at the same checkpoint, multiple guns and magazines and hundreds of bullets were found in the car of a Palestinian family. The driver's wife, young daughter and days-old son were in the car when it was stopped. [Jerusalem Post, April 10, 2019]

The "Palestinian woman" in yesterday's mid-afternoon attack looks to us more like a girl than an adult woman. Israel National News says she was a resident of Tulkarm.

The video captured from inside the Arab bus out of which she emerged during what we think was a routine security check leaves no doubt that she was armed with and was brandishing a knife. In the specific circumstances, it's clear she was more interested in offense than defence.

A-Zaim (sometimes written Az-Za'ayyem and Al-Zaim; א-זעיים in Hebrew; الزعيم in Arabic) is a busy security checkpoint on one of the roads connecting Maale Adumim with Israel's capital.

A 16 year-old Arab female was intercepted just three months ago ["30-Jan-19: Pal Arab would-be stabber, a 16 year old girl, is stopped before executing an attack near Jerusalem"] at the very same location on Jerusalem's eastern edge. The outcome was far more serious then:

A Palestinian teenage girl was shot dead as she tried to stab an Israeli security officer at a checkpoint outside Jerusalem on Wednesday, police said. According to police, the assailant attacked one of the guards at the A’Zaim crossing east of the capital, in the central West Bank. The Palestinian girl was identified as Samah Mubarak, 16, from the nearby village of al-Ram, the Palestinian Authority’s official Wafa news agency reported... Israeli security officials have said that many attacks by Palestinians, especially women, are driven by personal and domestic issues, more than by ideological considerations. In some cases, Israeli officials have said Palestinians appeared to have carried out attacks or attempted to do so in order to be shot dead by Israeli security forces, as a form of “suicide by cop.” [Times of Israel, January XX, 2019]

Again at A-Zaim, two days ago:

...multiple guns and magazines and hundreds of bullets were found in the car of a Palestinian family. The driver's wife, young daughter and days-old son were in the car when it was stopped. [Jerusalem Post, April 10, 2019]

No one seems to be noting in the news reports (there are very few of them) how appalling it is that a man smuggling a serious weapons cache would use his family, including a new-born infant, as human shields.

12-Mar-19: Arab-on-Israeli attacks edge upwards again

Image Source

It's shaping to be a violent and tense day here in Israel.

Experience suggests this isn't because of some unusual weather pattern. Broadly speaking, violence is something that the Palestinian Arab leadership switches off and on at will. It's clearly on right now.

Some of the more persuasive analysts put this down to the coming together of at least four main factors: Israel's April elections; the expectation of a comprehensive Trump Administration peace agreement proposal; rising tension in the endless jockeying for power and supremacy between the Fatah-controlled Abbas regime and Hamas; and the Palestinian Authority's 's move ["PA Reduces Wages to Employees Israel's payment deduction"] to substantially cut salaries across a wide swathe of the population under its control, unilaterally making an already on-the-ropes economy even more fragile.

Among the acts of violence:

Monday 11:30 pm: Still-unidentified shooters attacked an Israeli vehicle in the northern Samaria district last night (Monday) on a road near the Israeli community of Rehelim (population about 800), south of Nablus/Shechem and located between Kfar Tapuach and Eli. No one was injured, thankfully. But the vehicle was damaged, suggesting the fire could have exacted a heavier toll. Israel National News reports an attempted infiltration this past Friday night just as the Sabbath was being ushered in. The community's "security guards... identified two suspicious figures approaching the town. Rehelim's military security coordinator arrived first, fired a light bomb, and noticed the two suspects running away."

Tuesday 12:45 pm: Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian man as he tried to stab them in the West Bank city of Hebron on Tuesday, the IDF said according to Times of Israel. No one else was injured in the thwarted attack:

IDF soldiers spotted the terrorist armed with a knife as he ran toward them. The soldiers pushed the terrorist back as he tried to run into a nearby civilian building. The soldiers shot the terrorist, thwarting the attack, and he was killed,” the military said... The suspect, armed with a knife, entered the contentious Beit HaShalom building in Hebron, near the Kiryat Arba settlement. A resident of the building, one of the few Jewish-owned structures inside the overwhelmingly Palestinian city, saw and called Israeli security forces to the scene, according to reports from the scene. A video filmed at the scene showed the attacker lying on the ground in the entrance hall of the building with what appeared to be a gunshot wound to the chest. The knife was seen on the ground several feet away from him."

Images of the attacker appear in the Hebrew-language social media, here for instance. The would-be knifer is identified by Palestinian Arab officials as Yasser Fuzi Shuweiki. The Ma'an News Agency site (English language edition) calls him Yasser al-Shweiki and rather enigmatically quotes his father saying the son "was distributing notices from the Sharia Court across Hebron City", presumably trying to deflect any suggestion that he was a knifer looking for Israeli stabbing victims. (An Israeli social media commentator says he was the local mailman.) In the Arabic version of Ma'an's account, but not the English, its editors call the would-be knifer, not surprisingly, a martyr:

Palestinian Civil Affairs demanded that the Israeli authorities hand over the body of Yasser Mohammed Fawzi Shweiki, who was killed by Israeli soldiers [and] who worked as a clerk in the Hebron District Court, where he was working before being shot by Israeli soldiers who claimed he had a knife and attempted to stab Against soldiers.

Tuesday Noon: The Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City was sealed off by Israel Police today in the wake of Arab violence that included a firebomb being hurled at officers, followed by arrests and clashes. Times of Israel says:

"Police quickly deployed across the hilltop compound, scuffling with worshipers in the area as they searched for the assailants. In one video, police were seen wrestling a woman to the ground. Ten suspects were arrested and an investigation into the incident was ongoing, police said... Police said they found flammable materials, firecrackers and Molotov cocktails during a search of the Temple Mount after it was closed... The Damascus Gate entrance of the Old City of Jerusalem was also closed and police were dispatched throughout the Old City and East Jerusalem “to prevent and respond to any attempt to disturb public order in response to the serious incident,” police said in a statement."

The president of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas complained of “dangerous Israeli escalation” and warned of “serious repercussions.”

Tuesday 4:45 pm: Security forces of the IDF took a Palestinian Arab woman into custody who aroused their suspicions near Beit Hashalom (House of Peace), the site of another, earlier Arab-on-Israel stabbing in Hebron (above). They found, after a careful search of her clothing and person, that she had a knife concealed somewhere not yet reported. Times of Israel says she was promptly arrested and is in the hands of the security forces for questioning.

30-Jan-19: Pal Arab would-be stabber, a 16 year old girl, is stopped before executing an attack near Jerusalem

From the police security cam video

In yet another instance of a thwarted attack by a weaponized child, a teenage Palestinian Arab girl launched a stabbing attack on an Israeli officer at the A-Za'im security checkpoint east of the capital between Ma'ale Adumim and Jerusalem today (Wednesday) at about 10:15 am.

An Israel Police statement, quoted by Times of Israel, said

"A rapid response by additional security forces brought about her neutralization with no injuries to the security personnel... Police are investigating where the female suspect came from, and heightened security is continuing in the area."

The same media source speculates that this may be yet another instance of 

attacks by Palestinians, especially women, [that] are driven by personal and domestic issues, more than by ideological considerations. In some cases, Israeli officials have said Palestinians appeared to have carried out attacks or attempted to do so in order to be shot dead by Israeli security forces, as a form of "suicide by cop".

Later in the day, the assailant was identified in Arab media as Samah Mubarak, aged 16, from the nearby village of a-Ram. A different Israeli news source says she was

Samah Zuhair Mubarak, an 11th grade student from Ramallah, whose family was originally from Gaza... [source]

She died of her wounds according to Palestinian Authority health ministry officials.

Video footage released by the police show a female, draped from head to toe in black and wearing black gloves, approaching the security personnel at the crossing. Police also circulated a photo of the knife in her possession - while throughout the Arab media reports we have scanned, it's claimed she was unarmed and executed in cold blood. 

None of the many thwarted Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks of the past three years (at least) has ever credibly been shown to meet that description. And A-Za'im has seen numerous Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks - vehicle-rammings, stabbings and bombings. 

The claim this time is embellished by the assertion, pulled out of thin air as far as we can tell, that the girl was shot after refusing to undress and remove her black robes. This line of explanation plays tragically well in Palestinian Arab circles.

15-Oct-18: Monday noon: Another Arab-on-Israeli stabbing attack in Samaria

The scene of today's attack [Image Source: Hamodia and Reuters]

In the third terror attack to have taken place in Israel's Samaria District over the past eight days, a Palestinian Arab man armed with a stabbing implement was thwarted in his efforts around noon today (Monday).

He was permanently prevented from completing his terrorist mission.

The attack site is a short distance away from the Israeli city of Ariel on the heavily-traveled Highway 5.

As reported by Times of Israel:

A Palestinian man was shot dead by Israeli forces Monday during an attempt to stab a soldier at the Gitai Junction in the northern West Bank, the army said. No Israeli troops were injured in the incident and the Israel Defense Forces said it has opened an investigation. Several hours after the attempted stabbing, the Kan public broadcaster reported that the assailant was a resident of Biddya, the same hometown as a 47-year-old Palestinian mother of eight who was killed late Friday night when a rock was hurled at her car in the northern West Bank.

From Ynet:

A Palestinian would-be terrorist tried to stab a soldier standing at a bus stop at the Gitai Avishar Junction on Highway 5 in the northern West Bank on Monday and was shot dead by soldiers from the Artillery Corps' 55th Battalion, who were on the scene. No Israeli troops hurt. The Gitai Avishar Junction is a busy and central intersection on the highway linking the settlement of Ariel to central Israel. Hundreds of Palestinian workers travel through the junction on their way to Israel to work. The junction was also the site of several attacks in the past, and is constantly guarded by two soldiers, who were the ones to shoot and neutralize the terrorist... An IDF reservist soldier was moderately wounded and a civilian woman was lightly wounded in a stabbing attack Thursday outside the Samaria Territorial Brigade base. The terrorist was able to escape initially, but was captured several days later. Last Sunday, terrorist Ashraf Na'alwa murdered two Israelis—Kim Levengrond Yehezkel, 28, and Ziv Hagbi, 35—in a shooting attack in the Barkan industrial zone. He is still at large.

The usual Arab channels are publicizing the attacker's name and portrait. His face can be seen here. One Arab source [here] names him as Elias Saleh Yassin from Biddya, and says he was 22 years old. It refers to him as "martyr".

Praise from Hamas was not long in coming:

"The martyrdom of Elias was a response to the crime of the settlers against the martyr Aisha Al-Rabi of the same town. It affirms the right of our people to defend themselves and resist the occupation that assaults humans and land with American support and international silence." Hamas tells "the resistance" to "continue this path that the enemy does not understand... the shortest way to liberate from occupation and to acquire the rights and the building of our Palestinian state." [Arabic source]

The propaganda-centric Ma'an News Agency headlines the English-language edition of its report on today's failed stabbing attack with this: "Palestinian shot dead after alleged stabbing attack near Salfit". Its Arabic edition by contrast is more expansive and less shy: "A martyr tried to stab soldiers north of the West Bank".  The use of the word "martyr" in Arabic-language reporting is a core element in the ongoing Arab incitement to more and worse Arab-on-Israeli terrorist violence.

It is unconscionable that Ma'an's work is funded by European governments [see "09-Jul-15: When incitement to murder is financed by foreign aid, where will the accounting come from?"]

11-Oct-18: In Israel's Samaria district, an Arab-on-Israeli stabbing this afternoon

There's been another Arab-on-Israeli stabbing attack today.

Two Israelis are injured, one in serious condition, after an attacker, evidently a Palestinian Arab, standing at an Israeli bus stop near the IDF's Shomron Regional Brigade headquarters close to the community of Itamar, pulled a "huge knife" (according to an Israel National News report) at about 1:30 pm. He stabbed an Israeli reservist of about 30 and then fled from the scene. He has not yet been apprehended.

(We wrote about another stabbing attack at what sounds like the same spot in January 2016 - see this post.)

Times of Israel says IDF soldiers at the scene opened fire in the attacker's direction:

Shrapnel from the shots struck the woman in the leg. The stabber may have fled in a waiting car nearby, Hadashot TV news said.

The woman caught in the cross-fire is reportedly 26 and her leg injuries are not life-threatening. Both victims were taken to Rabin Medical Center/Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva for emergency care. (It's the largest ER facility in Israel.)

Many Arab-on-Israeli stabbings over the past two years have involved the knifers aiming for the upper parts of their victims' bodies, and so it was this afternoon. The male victim suffered stab wounds to the face and the upper torso. He was conscious when brought to hospital.

Consistent with the shabby, unprofessional way it reports on Arab-on-Israeli terror, the European-funded Ma'an News Agency 'knows' ["Israeli soldier, settler injured in stabbing attack, suspect flees", today] that the woman victim is a "settler". In fact, her identity and certainly her home address, remain unpublicized. Calling her a settler is a knowing act of incitement to terror; for the practitioners of Maan-style lethal journalism, all Israelis are "settlers".

One report ["Israeli Army Reservist Wounded in West Bank Stabbing Attack", Haaretz, today] says the knifer fled toward Huwara, a Palestinian village near Nablus. It says the IDF has set up dozens of roadblocks around the town and soldiers were carrying out checks, causing "large traffic jams" in the area.

The alleged stabber is taken into custody on Thursday
night [Image Source]

UPDATE 12:05 am Friday October 12, 2018: Times of Israel says the attacker has been apprehended. He is un-named at this stage but reported to be a 19-year-old male from the Muslim village of Jamma’in (population about 7,000), about 16 km south of Nablus in Samaria. He is currently helping the Israeli security authorities with their enquiries. Hamas, according to Wikipedia, is the dominant political force in the town. A Hamas announcement [here in Arabic] says Thursday's stabbing attack at a bus stop is "a slap to the occupation and failure of its security system... the operation comes in the context of our people's response to the arrogance of the occupation and its continuous violations against our people and our holy sites".

UPDATE 12:30 pm Friday October 12, 2018: A Palestinian Arab source names the arrested suspect as Muaz Qassem Hussein, age 19. They publish his photo here.

UPDATE 11:15 pm Monday October 15, 2018: From Ynet:

The IDF released footage from the security cameras showing the stabbing terror attack at the bus stop outside the Samaria Territorial Brigade base in the West Bank, which last Thursday left an IDF reservist moderately wounded and a civilian woman slightly hurt. In a video released Monday, the reservist, who is reported to be in his thirties, is seen standing on the side of the road next to a civilian, when the terrorist suddenly emerges from behind and proceeds to chase after the soldier with a knife. After a struggle between the two, which lasts several seconds, the civilian at the bust stop is seen escaping the area and two other soldiers arrive at the scene and aim their weapons at the fleeing terrorist.

The video is here.

19-Sep-18: Kol Nidrei night stabbing attack at entrance to Jerusalem's Old City

A Palestinian Arab launched a stabbing attack on a Jewish pedestrian outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls on Tuesday evening, the night of Yom Kippur. Times of Israel quotes an Israeli police statement reporting “an attempted stabbing attack” near Damascus Gate, saying “a police unit at the spot neutralized the suspect.”

The Palestinian Authority’s health ministry said the attacker was shot dead by Israeli police.

The thwarted attacker is said to be a 26-year-old male from Qalandiya on Jerusalem's north side. Haaretz names him as Mohammed Yusuf Sha'aban Alian and says he was in Israel illegally. It refers to a screwdriver as the attack weapon and the location as Jerusalem's Hanevi'im (Prophets) Street which leads to the square outside Damascus Gate. Israel National News has post-attack police camera footage here.

The reliably-despicable Ma'an News Agency ["Israeli forces shoot, kill Palestinian for alleged attack"] spells the knifer's name Muhammad Youssef Shaaban Elayyan and reveals that

"Israeli authorities sealed off the street in the al-Musrara neighborhood surrounding the scene for several hours, preventing local residents from accessing it. The Israeli authorities then transferred Elayyan's body to an unknown location after holding his body at the scene for about three hours."

This may seem like a parody but it's representative of how the European-financed Ma'an routinely reports Arab-on-Israeli terror.

We're searching for announcements in the Arab media of the attacker being formally elevated to martyrdom.

UPDATE Thursday September 20, 2018 12:05 am - We didn't have to wait long. The Arabic version, but not the English of course, of the Ma'an news report is headlined "Video and photos - A martyr shot by the occupation in Jerusalem". Other Arabic reports praising the thwarted stabber as "martyr" are all over the web - see http://archive.is/nCaKJ . An Arabic tweet from Palestine Information Center announces that in the Kafr Aqab and Qalandia "refugee camps" they were going to hold strikes Wednesday to mourn "the martyr".]

For reasons related to the time of year and pressures at home, we have not yet written about the shocking murder-by-stabbing this past Sunday of Ari Fuld Hy"d by a Palestinian Arab eleventh-grader in the Gush Etzion Mall. But iy"H we will.

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

11-Jun-18: A young woman is a multiple-stabbing victim in Afula; the assailant fled and is caught [Developing]

Video still shows the moment the alleged stabber,
still in possession of his knife, is shot and
stopped [Source video]

Local news reports starting just before noon today (Monday) said there had been a serious stabbing incident in the Israeli city of Afula. The victim is a still-unnamed young woman in her late teens (that's an estimate by the medical personnel) and the attacker, who feld the scene and was then caught by security personnel, is a Palestinian Arab from Jenin.

Not surprisingly, the suspicions being raised at this hour in the media point to this being a terror attack. But no official statement to that effect has issued yet.

As told by Israel National News

An Israeli teenager is in serious condition after being stabbed multiple times in the northern city of Afula Monday afternoon. The incident occurred outside of the local Aroma cafe at around noon on Monday. The 18-year-old woman who was stabbed was treated by MDA emergency first responders dispatched to the scene. Medical teams then evacuated the victim to HaEmek Medical Center in Afula in very serious condition. Police have opened an investigation into the stabbing incident, and are currently investigating if the attack was in fact terror-related...

Her condition when this was first reported is defined as moderate-to-serious and she is getting emergency treatment at HaEmek hospital in  Afula.

Times of Israel says

Police arrested her suspected attacker, who had fled the scene, after a brief manhunt. The suspect was identified by police as a Palestinian man in his 30s from the northern West Bank city of Jenin. “Police shot the suspect in the leg after calling upon him to stop,” a police spokesperson said. “The suspect was arrested with a knife in his possession.” Police said they were working to determine the motive for the stabbing. Videos of the suspected terrorist’s arrest were quickly posted to social media by bystanders.

Here for instance.

More details when we know them.

01-Mar-18: Rachel's Tomb: Yet another Pal Arab female teen with a knife

The concrete walls that today secure ancient Rachel's Tomb [Image Source]

There was another of those utterly pointless attempts around the middle of this morning (according to this Hebrew social media report) to harm Israeli security personnel. Once again this was by (a) a teenage (b) female (c) Arab (d) attacker armed with a knife. The armed assault was fortunately thwarted, the attacker is in the hands of the Israeli security forces for interrogation and no one was injured.

Today's failed attack took place at the Rachel Crossing on the northern edge of Bethlehem. The ancient tomb of the Jewish matriarch Rachel used to be, 25 years ago when we last visited it, just an historical site on the road leading from Bethlehem to southern Jerusalem. 

Then after a series of shooting attacks on Jewish worshipers, the simple tomb became a complex surrounded by thick, high walls and with secure stations for the IDF personnel who do guard duty there. It's a major attraction:

Judaism's third-holiest site, has been the scene of prayer and pilgrimage for more than three thousand years... Rachel, the beloved wife of the third Patriarch, Ya'acov (Jacob), died in childbirth on the way to Hebron returning to his family's home... She was buried on the road to Efrat -- now Bethlehem....
Ya'acov buried Rachel at this spot, rather than a the family burial plot at the Cave [Tomb] of the Patriarchs in Hebron, because he foresaw that his decedents would pass this site during the the forced exile to Babylon in the year 423 BCE [Source: RachelsTomb.org]

Why the IDF places security personnel there, day after day, was brought home again today:  

Female terrorist arrested near Bethlehem | A female Arab terrorist aged 18, a resident of Bethlehem, arrived Thursday morning at the Rachel Crossing near the city, and threatened to attack policemen and soldiers stationed there. Border Police officers subdued the terrorist and found a knife in her bag. She was arrested and taken for questioning... [Israel National News, today]

The Jordanian version raises doubts:

Palestinian girl arrested for alleged stabbing attempt | Ramallah, March. 1 (Petra) -- Israeli occupation forces arrested an 18-year old Palestinian girl for allegedly trying to stab Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint north of the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Radio Israel said on Thursday. The radio said that Israeli troops at the military checkpoint arrested a girl, whose identity wasn't disclosed, for allegedly attempting to attack Israeli soldiers with a knife. [Jordan News Agency/MENAFN, today]

Family and friends outside Rachel's Tomb in 1991 when access was
directly from the Jerusalem/Bethlehem road. The massive
security walls hadn't been constructed and weren't needed

The scurrilous Ma'an/Palestinian Arab version is even more doubtful - but it's their standard pose:

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces detained an 18-year-old Palestinian girl for allegedly attempting to stab soldiers at Checkpoint 300 in northern Bethlehem city on Thursday, in the southern occupied West Bank. Israeli media reported that soldiers at the checkpoint detained a Palestinian teenage girl who was “carrying a knife and attempted to attack soldiers.” The girl was reportedly taken in for questioning. Though her identity remained unknown, the girl was reported to be a resident of Bethlehem 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. [Ma'an News Agency, today]

Depending on decisions to be taken by the IDF and the military prosecution, this young woman may qualify under the PA's Rewards for Terror scheme with monetary benefits flowing to her and her parents, so there's that.

07-Feb-18: In Gush Etzion's Karmei Tzur, another Arab-on-Israeli knifing Wednesday morning

The secured entrance to Karmei Tzur this morning [Image Source]

At the secured entrance to the Israeli community of Karmei Tzur (an hour's drive south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem via the Tunnels Road) in Gush Etzion, a Palestinian Arab equipped with an attack knife stabbed one of the security people inside the booth at around 6:30 this morning (Wednesday). Times of Israel says a second security person shot the assailant and killed him.

The Israeli who suffered knifing injuries, said to be a male of about 34, was treated at the scene by Magen David Adom paramedics. He was then rushed to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital, fully conscious, for emergency care.

We're evidently in the midst of one of those periodic upticks in Arab-on-Israeli knifing attacks.

Meanwhile the narrative-spinning of the Palestinian Arab news media continues in its customary manner:

HEBRON, February 7, 2018 (WAFA) – A Palestinian was shot dead by an Israeli security guard on Wednesday following an alleged stabbing attack at an illegal settlement north of Hebron, Palestinian and Israeli reports said. The Israeli army said a Palestinian stabbed a security guard at Karmi Tsur settlement near Halhoul, north of Hebron, before another guard shot him dead. The stabbed guard was taken to hospital where he was reported in light condition. The Palestinian coordinating office identified the alleged attacker as Hamzeh Yousef Zamaareh, 19, from Halhoul. Palestinians said Israeli soldiers raided the Zamaareh home following the incident. WAFA correspondent said residents of the area where the Zamaareh home is located clashed with the soldiers. No injuries were reported. ["Palestinian shot dead following alleged stabbing attack north of Hebron", WAFA, this morning]

Martyr-style portraits of Zamaareh (or Zamareh) are already circulating in the terrorism-friendly parts of the social media. Here's one that suggests he worked in a pizzeria. His family will now become eligible for payments from the terrorism-encouraging PA Martyr's Fund ("Rewards for Terror"). This however will not be mentioned in any mainstream media reports.

Halhoul appears frequently in our blog posts. No prizes for guessing why. The most recent murderous attack emanating from Halhoul that we reported is this one: "17-Nov-17: Ramming/stabbing attack Friday morning at entrance to Efrat"

05-Feb-18: [UPDATED] The victim of today's Arab-on-Israeli stabbing barbarism, a teacher and a father of four young children, has died of his injuries

Tragedy in Ariel: The Ben Gal family, destroyed by today's
murderous terrorist attack [Image Source: Ynet]

Israeli society is having to confront another extreme-bigotry-driven murder today and the tragic burden which has landed on a young family ill-equipped to deal with its weight.

Today, Monday afternoon, just outside the entrance to the Israeli city of Ariel, at about 2:30 pm, an Israeli man, standing on the sidewalk at a bus stop that also serves as a hitch-hike point, became the victim of an unprovoked stabbing attack. 

The knifer, a Palestinian Arab whom the security camera captures crossing the road and approaching his unsuspecting target from behind, fled the scene after plunging the knife into the victim's chest several times. He the object of an ongoing manhunt as we write this.

We know now that the man who came under attack is Rabbi Itamar Ben-Gal, 29, a father of four young children who settled with his wife and family in the Israeli community of Har Bracha, a short distance from where the attack took place. He was given emergency care at the scene by a Magen David Adom ambulance team and army medics. Times of Israel reported that he was taken to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikvah but died of his wounds. He will be buried in Har Bracha tomorrow (Tuesday) morning.

Israel National News says Rav Ben Gal was an educator who worked with 8th graders at the Bnei Akiva Yeshiva in Givat Shmuel, a Tel Aviv suburban community, and taught as well in the Har Bracha Yeshiva.

Ynet says this about the suspected murderer now being tracked down:

The terrorist, investigators found, is 19-year old Israeli-Arab resident of Jaffa Abed al-Karim Adel Assi, a son of an Israeli mother and Palestinian father from Nablus... Despite being hit [by an Israeli motorist] al-Karim was able to escape with the help of an unidentified driver who picked him up near the scene of the incident. IDF forces are currently spreading out in the region in an effort to locate him. The terrorist's backpack was found on the scene containing a change of clothes and his Israeli ID card. The bag also contained a comb, hair gel, a lighter and a charger... Large concentrations of IDF forces entered the village of Kifl Haris, according to Palestinian reports, in their search of the terrorist.

Kifl Haris is a Palestinian Arab village which, according to some Jewish traditions, is the site of the graves of the Biblical figures Joshua, Caleb and Joshua's father Nun.

According to Ynet, the Islamist terrorists of Hamas issued a message from Gaza welcoming today's murder and asserting that it "is proof that the Al-Quds intifada continues".

UPDATE Tuesday February 6, 2018 at 2:00 pm:
According to a Times of Israel report today, the terrorist attacker who stabbed to death Rabbi Itamar Ben Gal yesterday has been advised to

Today's funeral for Rabbi Itamar Ben Gal [Image Source]

turn himself in to security forces, his mother tells Israel’s Channel 10 television news. Abed al-Karim Assi, 19, is suspected of stabbing to death Rabbi Itamar Ben-Gal, 29, at the Ariel Junction in the northern West Bank. Assi holds Israeli citizenship and lives in Jaffa, defense officials said late Monday. He managed to evade capture following the attack, even after an IDF officer hit him with his car while in pursuit. Assi’s father lives in Nablus and his mother in Haifa. She tells Channel 10 she “hasn’t seen my son in a long time.” She says his actions “are unacceptable.” “What he did just ruined his life. He has no right to take a life,” she says.

Listening to his mother is good advice though probably hard for the stabber. Listening to Miriam, the mother of Itamar Ben-Gal's orphaned children, might be good advice too but in the current circumstances a lot harder for both sides.

UPDATE Wednesday February 7, 2018 at 9:30 am: There's a disturbing update report from Times of Israel -

The suspected terrorist behind the killing of a rabbi Monday was detained by soldiers in a confrontation at the scene a day before the attack and then released, the Ynet news site reported Tuesday night. According to the report 19-year-old Arab Israeli Abed al-Karim Assi arrived at the junction outside the settlement of Ariel on Sunday — a day before he is believed to have fatally stabbed 29-year-old Rabbi Itamar Ben-Gal at the same spot — and swore at soldiers stationed there. The soldiers are said to have detained him and examined his identification, then allowed him to go on his way... The military said a preliminary investigation showed soldiers had acted appropriately in accordance with the suspect’s behavior. Israeli security forces were still searching for Assi on Tuesday night. In the evening clashes broke out in Nablus as troops searched the West Bank city... ["Ariel killer was briefly detained by soldiers a day before attack", today]

The pursuit of Abed al-Karim Assi who video cameras "allege" stabbed to death Rabbi Itamar Ben Gal Z"L at the entrance to Ariel on Monday goes on. A report from i24news this morning says a Palestinian Arab was shot dead and five others, perhaps more, are critically injured as the IDF continues to search for the stabber in Nablus/Shechem. Reporter Khaled Abu Toameh says (via Twitter) says the injuries tally stands at 47.

UPDATE Sunday March 18, 2018 at 9:30 am Times of Israel reports

Israeli forces on Sunday arrested a suspected terrorist who is believed to have stabbed to death Rabbi Itamar Ben-Gal near Ariel in February, following an extensive manhunt, the Shin Bet security service said. On February 5, 19-year-old Abed al-Karim Assi, an Israeli citizen, is believed to have attacked Ben-Gal, 29, at a bus stop outside Ariel, a West Bank settlement. Assi fled the scene, leading security forces on a month-long manhunt that ended with his arrest in the predawn hours of Sunday in the West Bank city of Nablus, the Shin Bet said. The security service said he was found inside a house in the city. According to the Israel Defense Forces, Assi was injured during the early morning arrest raid and received treatment from army medics. The military would not elaborate on how he sustained his wounds... In addition to Assi, a number of people who were with him at the time of his arrest were also taken into custody, the service said...  Assi had been thought to have been hiding out in Nablus, where his father lives, since the attack. Before the attack he had used his Israeli citizenship to spend time on both sides of the Green Line, including with his mother, who lives in Haifa. He had received social service assistance from Israeli authorities, including at the Shanti Home in Tel Aviv for at-risk youth...

There's a video clip here of his being taken into Israeli custody:

He's alive and evidently in good shape. His victim's family - the young widow and her children - could be forgiven for wondering where the justice is in that.

04-Feb-18: The embarrassing violence of Ahed Tamimi and its fig-leafers

Nariman, Bassem and Ahed Tamimi of Nabi Saleh
[Image Source]

We have more than the regular amount of interest in the in-your-face bigotry and incitement-to-extreme-violence of the loathsome Tamimi clan of Nabi Saleh. We have explained why over and again in past posts.

But for anyone fresh to this blog or to us - the parents of Malki Roth - or to the news industry's sickening and highly-selective fixation with the media-centric doings of the Tamimis, we suggest to start here:

• 24-Dec-17: Nabi Saleh, the media and a Tamimi child's journey
• 19-Dec-17: Uncovering some of Nabi Saleh's hideous buried secrets
• 01-Sep-15: A tale of two villages: one devoted to non-violence, another that actually exists
• 29-Aug-15: Revisiting a Palestinian Arab village and its monsters
• 17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns

With the background in mind, think now about the stream of news articles during the past six weeks that have delivered up softball versions of Tamimi analysis, driven by yet another in a long series of reports of what are in reality self-engineered "clashes" with the IDF. The central player is, invariably and as always, Ahed Tamimi.

Today she's a young woman of seventeen (born January 31, 2001) who, as we sit here writing these lines, is being held behind bars in an Israeli prison while a phalanx of publicists, reporters, TV presenters and politically-active non-governmental organizations calls with rising urgency for her unconditional release. 

We leave to readers to figure out for themselves why she was arrested and whether and on what terms she ought to be let loose.

Our concern here is to cover matters that one high-profile news article after another in the past month and a half have simply ignored: what are her actual values? Where does she stand on the subject of real, physical Arab-on-Israeli violence of the lethal kind? (Given the obvious confusion about this in the media, the questions have surprisingly clear-cut answers.)

Our comments are prompted by an egregious case, the latest in a depressing series, of superficial and thus second-rate reporting, this time from a serious source: "Meet 17-year-old Ahed Tamimi, the new face of Palestinian resistance" [Derek Stoffel, Middle East Correspondent for CBC, the Canadian national broadcaster, February 4, 2018]. It's simply too painful to quote from. The link is there for anyone patient enough to read the same re-hash of Tamimi PR hand-outs.

It's not the poor reporting per se that is so enraging but the absence of two key elements that if disclosed would have put a fully-justified violent frame around (gritting our teeth) the charming portrait of a blonde girl with curls:

• The connection between Ahed Tamimi and her idol, Ahlam Tamimi with whom she is related closely and in multiple ways and at whose 2015 wedding (to Ahed's cousin) little Ahed danced and gazed worshipfully at the bride for the cameras.
• The terrorism-rich personal credo that the adorable Ahed recently recorded for her mother's video camera and which no reporter should ever dare to ignore in telling news-consumers the things worth knowing about this not-exactly-new "new face of Palestinian resistance".

Ahed Tamimi captured by her mother's video camera, responding to her
mother's request to share "a message to the world", December 15, 2017
[Source: YouTube]

The historian and analyst Petra Marquardt-Bigman has followed the violent Tamimi clan for some years and does an unparalleled job of providing a context to the often-context-free promoting that passes for journalism in much of the news industry.

Here's a small and highly relevant part of what she knows but CBC's man does not:

As reported by media around the world, Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian teenager, has been charged by Israeli authorities with assault, after she was filmed by her family kicking, punching and slapping Israeli soldiers in mid-December.
Nariman Tamimi, Ahed’s mother, live-streamed the incident and its aftermath on her Facebook page. About seven minutes into the video, when the soldiers Ahed had attacked – supported by her mother and a cousin – had left, Ahed was asked by her mother to send a “message to the world.” As you can see in this subtitled clip, Ahed seemed embarrassed for a moment, but then she responded by dutifully repeating the slogans she had grown up with.
“I wish that everybody would participate in demonstrations because that is the only way for us to get results; because our strength is in our stones; and I wish that everybody all over the world would unite so we can liberate Palestine, because Trump must bear responsibility for the decision he took for any Palestinian reaction – be it stabbings, martyrdom-seeking operations [i.e. suicide bombings], throwing stones – everyone must do something. So we can unite this way, so we can get our message across in the required way and get this result, that is the liberation of Palestine, Allah willing.”
As shocking as it is to hear a girl who is just approaching her 17th birthday (on January 31) to casually list “stabbings” and “martyrdom-seeking operations” among the actions she wants others to take in support of her cause, there is no doubt that Ahed’s mother was pleased to hear her daughter express exactly the views she had been taught throughout her childhood. [From "Advocates for Terror: Why Ahed Tamimi and Her Family are No Heroes", Petra Marquardt-Bigman for The Tower, January 5, 2018] 

The entire video "message" in Arabic with English subtitles is here on YouTube.

June 16, 2012: Ahed Tamimi on stage in Amman, Jordan, gazes longingly at
her role-model cousin and Nabi Saleh's pride and joy, the boastful and
confessed murderer-who-got-away-with-it Ahlam Tamimi. The occasion
is the wedding of the Tamimi woman with another Nabi Saleh
murderer (who is also the bride's cousin as well as little Ahed's cousin),
Nizar Tamimi, the male in the photo. Everyone in the
picture is a blood-relative of everyone else. [Image Source]

There's another aspect to the journalistic wrong done by the Canadian: the absence of background. How did we get here? What caused this innocent child to develop her ideas, her attitudes, her fists?

The reality is that Ahed Tamimi has been groomed, trained, weaponized, hardened and massively exposed for years - and by the same manipulative pair of people the whole way: Mummy and Daddy. This is all a matter of the public record that remains just as public when reporters who ought to know better choose to ignore the record.

So Mr Stoffel, and the CBC people who oversee your work-product, please thumb through what we published here: "24-Dec-17: Nabi Saleh, the media and a Tamimi child's journey" And the excellent piece by Shoshana Keats Jaskoll that Forward published a month ago: "Why Is No One Talking About Ahed Tamimi’s Call For Stabbings?"

Articles like these and like the post you are browsing now are unlikely to get you to see things more clearly or very differently. But ignoring them turns your article into a shallow piece of cheap, amoral flim-flammery.