The far-left B’Tselem NGO has given IDF military police a video from a nearby gas station in the Arab village of Al Ram that purports to show IDF Brigade Commander Israel Shomer chasing a Palestinian Authority Arab who tried to kill him and his passengers in a rock attack.
In the video, IDF Brigade Commander Israel Shomer and other soldiers are seen exiting his vehicle after the car was attacked by an rock-hurling Arab intent on murder who succeeded in smashing the windshield on the driver’s side, directly in front of his face.
B’Tselem claims that in the video, the 17-year-old terrorist appears to have been shot dead after fleeing the scene.
But there are a number of events that are missing from the video and take place off-camera. Because they cannot be seen, their justice or lack thereof cannot be determined.
1. The time period before the attack, where one might or might not see the Arab attackers hurling rocks at other vehicles passing on the road.
2. The Arab terrorist and his position during the shooting, which also took place off-camera.
B’Tselem claims the officers acted improperly in shooting the attacker after their vehicle had already been attacked.
The fact is, rock attacks can and do kill. It is one reason they are the weapons of choice for low-income younger terrorists in Judea and Samaria.
Israel Shomer’s attacker presented a real, concrete and immediate threat not only to the officer and his men who still needed to continue their journey on the road. They would still have been exposed to the potential of another attack by the same terrorist had he not been neutralized. Other travelers on the same road would have faced the same threat as well.
Rock attacks can kill, and are intended by their perpetrators to accomplish that goal. Proof of that fact can be found in the pride expressed in an Israeli court room by the perpetrators of the rock attack that took the life of a young Israeli father and his baby son on Highway 60 near Kiryat Arba just a couple of years ago.
These terrorists are glorified by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority government, which literally devotes an entire department to allocating and distributing funds for generous salaries paid to those who “work” at being murderous terrorist inmates in Israeli prisons.
It is this same government that the United States and European Union is committed to supporting with foreign aid funding, and to which they insist Israel cede large tracts of land — including more than a third of her capital, Jerusalem — as a trusted “peace partner.”