Behind the Camouflage: More Barely-reported Arab-on-Israeli Violence

Photo Credit: flash 90

{Originally posted to the authors’ website. This Ongoing War}

Those sling-shot warriors appearing on self-congratulatory Palestinian Arab incitement posters have been doing more of their vicious and cowardly terror work.

(And yes, we are being facetious. As photogenic as slingshots and their users sometimes look, when it’s terror that’s on the minds of the attackers, they reach for axes, meat-cleavers, motor vehicles for ramming pedestrians, as well as knives, guns and explosive devices. The poster images are pure psychological warfare. Their effectiveness on people with poor understanding of events in our part of the world is significant.)

It’s hard, in fact, not to notice how the pace of those attacks is rising. Here’s a number of relevant attack reports from the past few hours. Most of what appears below has gotten scant news coverage in the news media other than in Israel.

• A knifing/clubbing attack in the Israeli community of Eli (we wrote about it here) some 24 hours ago: the victim has now been released from Shaarei Zedek Medical Center, and the two armed assailants, a pair of Arab males, high school students aged 17 are, as we said yesterday, no longer alive.
• At the perimeter gate leading into the small Israeli community of Har Bracha, two IDF guards manning the security booth were the targets of a knifing attack by a pair of Arabs around 7:00 pm Wednesday evening. The village is home to a small but thriving winery and to some 2,100 residents, mainly religiously observant Jews. Ambulances evacuated the soldiers to Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva. One was stabbed in the shoulder and is in moderate condition, according to a Jerusalem Post report. The second has wounds to the face. Residents had to remain in their homes as the search for the attackers got underway, who have not yet been caught. Reports say the attackers made off with the soldiers’ guns.
• Early this morning (Thursday), responding to the collapse of a tree felled in heavy winds and rain onto Highway 90, a major north-south traffic artery, an officer of the Israel Police arrived to direct traffic safely around the obstacle. This happened in the Arab village of Uja, near Jericho. The village, also known as Al-Awja, straddles the highway. The police officer, a male in his forties, was then stabbed in the shoulder by a female. We have no details of her identity at this stage, though on social media we see claims that she is fourteen years old. (Not confirmed, as far as we know.) Times of Israel says she was promptly arrested “without incident”, and will live to tell of her exploit. The victim was taken by ambulance to Ha’emek Medical Center for treatment of his injuries.
• In the wake of the police pursuit of the Har Bracha attackers (above), a police vehicle came under gunfire attack at Rehelim Junction, near Ariel and south of Nablus, overnight. A police officer is injured. His vehicle sustained damage. The site of the attack has a long history of Arab-on-Israeli violence [Google listing] including shootings, stabbings and bombings. Perhaps sling-shot attacks too, but they tend to have small impact except in poster form.

An analysis by Avi Issacharoff in Times of Israel today [“No longer ‘lone wolves,’ Palestinian attackers pair up”] looks at how a growing number of those misleadingly-labeled “lone wolf” Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks are being carried out by cells of two or three. He refers to other patterns that he has identified – no need for us to publicize them – and to the enabling role of the social media, and Facebook in particular.

But he oddly fails to note, which we think is the key characteristic, that many, probably most, of these armed attacks are done by Arab children and teens. That’s not a random observation but a reflection of the role played by religious and political leaders in weaponizing the most vulnerable segment of their populations. We view this as a plague that is costing Palestinian Arab society more dearly than seems to be recognized in the public discourse that we get to see. There’s very little sign of self-awareness or of where they are being led.