"A tractor plowed into a police squad car on Menachem Begin Boulevard in Jerusalem on Thursday. The driver was apparently also trying to hit a nearby bus, but missed.
Two police officers were in the car when it was hit and both sustained mild injuries. [An Israeli civilian taxi driver shot the terrorist, and then...] Other police officers patrolling nearby shot the terrorist.
Magen David Adom emergency services were immediately dispatched to the area. The paramedics treated both the injured officers and the tractor driver, who reportedly sustained severe injuries.
One of the police officers and the terrorist were taken to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem. The other police officer was taken to the capital's Shaare Zedek Medical Center. The tractor driver was later pronounced dead." (ynetnews)
This is tractorattack #3 in Jerusalem in the past year, plus a car ramming attack near Jaffa street and the Merkaz Harav terror attack. In all of the above cases, civilians actively took part in neutralizing the terrorist.
My question is, how is the taxi driver related to the other civilian heroes who killed the terrorists? Did he drive them somewhere? Did he study with them? Who will be the first to find the terrorist-killing Jewish Geography link with the taxi driver hero?
Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד
Yes, after yesterday's terror attack at Kikar Tzahal, everyone was asking, "who is connected to who?"
Well, of course the terrorist came from the same neighborhood as the previous Jerusalem terrorists: Jabel Mukhaber.
And the IDF officer that killed him?
Hold on to your chairs.
Lt. Elad Amar who killed the terrorist is a graduate of the Pirchei Aaron Yeshiva High School in Haifa, and his former commander in the Paratrooper unit where he served before moving over to artillery was none other than... David Shapira - the hero of Mercaz Harav. Source
For those not familiar with the details behind the last four major terror attacks in Jerusalem, the incredible nature of the coincidence that Joe is describing might not be entirely obvious. In each one of these four incidents, the bloodshed was ended by the brave action of a quick-thinking person who happened to be present at the scene of the attack. And in each case, the hero was a dati leumi (religious Zionist) person. That itself is a statistical improbabilty. But the full proportions the improbabilities here only start to become clear once one realizes the direct, single degree-of-separation connections beween each of these four people. Here is a brief connect-the-dots guide:
David Shapira was a passer-by who, along with Yitzhak Dadon, shot the terrorist in the Merkaz HaRav massacre in Jerusalem on the night of March 6.
Moshe Plesser, the passer-by who shot the first bulldozer terrorist in Jerusalem on July 2, is David Shapira's brother-in-law.
Yakki Asa-el, the passer-by who shot the second bulldozer terrorist in Jerusalem on July 22, was Moshe Plesser's yeshiva high school teacher.
And today, we find out that Elad Amar, who shot the terrorist in the attack last night, served in the Paratrooper unit commanded by David Shapira.
I'm not going to attempt to present an explanation of this incredible triple confluence. I will simply note the obvious: That the likelihood of it being random has got to be infintessimally miniscule.
Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד
Six-month-old Efrat Onterman is left motherless after the murderous terror attack on Wednesday evening in Jerusalem. From the time her mother Batsheva Onterman was crushed to death right next to her during the terrorist’s tractor rampage, Efrat was already placed in the hands of a foster family “that first and foremost embraced her.” Afterwards, she was placed in her aunt’s care.
This heart-wrenching story started with the trampling of one of the vehicles during the terrorist’s lethal massacring campaign. Batsheva did not survive, but small Efrat who was by her side was miraculously left untouched.
The 33-year-old mother from Jerusalem will be laid to rest on Wednesday night at 11:30 pm at the Har HaMenuchot cemetery in the city. Elizabeth Goren Friedman, 54 from Jerusalem will be buried there as well. Another person was killed as a result of the malicious attack and dozens of others were injured.
The deadly terror attack in Jerusalem on Wednesday claimed the lives of three people and wreaked havoc on countless families. But perhaps the most touching, and tragic stories remains that of the five-month old baby girl who lost her mother in the rampage.
Eyal Zehavi, a Magen David Adom paramedic who rushed to the scene with his wife treated both the girl and another infant.
“Someone passed the baby to me and screamed, “I just saved her from the car in which her mother was killed,” said Zehavi.
“It took me a minute and a half to check her, I did an extensive examination of her body, looked for broken bones, wounds and breathing difficulties but thankfully she was fine and I transferred her to the ambulance which took her to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.”
Zehavi and his wife, who is seven months pregnant and also in the medical field, helped move the body of the baby girl's mother so it could be evacuated. (YNET)
The Bulldozer of Death
This video shows the path the bulldozer took, including footage showing the terrorist being killed from different angles.
Yet who exactly is this brave soldier?
On IDF "Galei Tzahal" Radio this morning, Orit Struk was interviewed as head of "Human Rights for Residents of YESHA" (West Bank), where she recounted how she knows this particular soldier quite well.
Before the Disengagement, when the pro-settler demonstrations were taking place, this teenager was assigned to film the demonstrations, as testimony to police brutality. While filming from the sidewalk, policemen beat him till he lost consciousness, he was then arrested, denied medical treatment and charged with, "attacking a police officer."
Over the following months, Orit's organization helped the teenager with legal and moral support. The case was eventually dismissed, due to "lack of sufficient evidence", but that is enough to keep a criminal record in Israel, "open". From there his problems only because worse.
When he was of draft age, he tried to enlist to elite units, yet the IDF wanted nothing to do with potential soldiers who had demonstrated against the Disengagement. He was sent to see the "Kaban", the IDF psychological evaluations officer to see if he was "fit" to serve, and was sent to him over and over again, as well as to other committees. He did not give up, and insisted he wanted to fight in Israel's elite IDF units. After close to a year of "bucking the system", he was allowed to join the elite "Egoz" unit. Orit added that this is currently the situation for hundreds of teenagers who demonstrated against the Disengagement.
We clearly see that this brave soldier is truly worthy of being in an elite unit, and its a shame the system tried it's best to discourage him.
Over the past few months, we see more and more "soldiers on leave" who have stopped terrorists. Maybe if we had more soldiers on leave, the country would be a safer place?
Warning: Semi-graphic picture ahead....
And who is this smiling gentleman?
It's the terrorist who drove the bulldozer. His family is complaining that he shouldn't have been shot.
The lawyer representing the family of bulldozer driver Hossam Dawyyat of east Jerusalem, who murdered three people and injured dozens during a killing spree in Jerusalem on Wednesday, said Thursday that had the police cuffed the terrorist's hands and legs and removed him from the vehicle, the incident would have ended at once and "life would have been spared."
The terror attack's third victim, Jean Relevy, 68, of Jerusalem, was laid to rest on Thursday afternoon.
Issam, the terrorist's brother, said the Dawyyat family refused to believe that their son carried out a terror attack.
"My brother did not belong to any organization. He wasn’t even a religious person. After terror attacks he always used to say, 'What is this nonsense? Why do we need this?'"
According to the brother, the incident may have been a road accident which had gone wrong. "Any person responsible for a road accident is alarmed and afraid. This can happen to anyone, and this could have been a road accident. It's possible that my brother was scared when people started chasing him and shooting," he told Ynet.
However, Issam did not rule out the possibility that his brother had lost control and gone on a rampage under the influence of drugs. "It was easy to irritate him. He had a criminal record for violence offenses and he was punished for this." (YNET)
This is what was taken away.
Why do we give up bodies of terrorists for burial? Let our enemies beg us for them.
Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד
