Four Israelis were wounded, three seriously, during two separate Palestinian terror attacks on Monday.
Three people were stabbed on Monday afternoon in the central city of Rishon Lezion, The Times of Israel reported. Two of the victims, a woman in her 80s and a middle aged man, were seriously hurt. The third victim, a 26-year-old man, was lightly injured.
The attacker, identified by authorities as a 19-year-old Palestinian man from Hebron, stabbed the 40-year-old man from behind on a bus on Tarmab Street, got off the bus and ran to the adjacent Herzl Street, where he stabbed the elderly woman and the young man.
As he ran down Herzl, locals realized what was happening and surrounded the man. He entered a beauty products store and stabbed one of the victims inside, then was locked in when a woman fled from the store and closed the door behind her.
After passersby locked the door shut by placing sticks in its handles, police arrived and arrested the attacker. One of the eyewitnesses told the Times, “The terrorist got off a bus, starting running around with a knife. People shouted, ‘There’s a terrorist!’ I and five other people saw him and chased after him. We [caught him] and started hitting him in the face [while he held a knife]. We tried to stop him, but he managed to stab two people.”
Dov Tzur, the mayor of Rishon Lezion, praised the “fast work of citizens and security services, police and Magen David Adom” in stopping and apprehending the terrorist. Partial CCTV footage of the attack is embedded below.
Later on Monday, a 71-year-old man was stabbed and seriously wounded in Netanya by a Palestinian man from the West Bank, according to the Times.
MDA paramedic Raz Levi, who was on the scene, said he saw “a man about 71 lying on the sidewalk, fully conscious with a stab wound in his upper body. He told us he was standing in the street, when suddenly he felt himself being struck in the back. We gave him initial lifesaving medical care in the field and evacuated him quickly to Laniado Hospital in serious but stable condition.”
The Palestinian terrorist was shot while attempting to flee from the scene of the attack. He is reported to be in critical condition. A video from the scene of the attack is embedded below.
The attacks come in the wake of an attempted stabbing on Monday morning, during which two Palestinians tried to attack a soldier at a West Bank gas station. One of the Palestinians was fatally shot, while the other was arrested. No soldiers were injured.
According to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the emergency medical service Magen David Adom reported that Palestinians have carried out 57 stabbings, 5 shootings, and 6 car ramming attacks since the beginning of October. Thus far, eleven individuals have been killed while over 120 have been wounded. Various Israeli security experts and Palestinian activists have attributed the attacks to the inflammatory rhetoric of Palestinian leaders, particularly over the al-Aqsa mosque, as well as incitement on social media. Recent reports by the Middle East Media Research Institute have showcased some of the calls to violence that have been spreading on Palestinian social networks, which range from hashtags such as “Poison the Knife before You Stab” and “Slaughtering the Jews,” to anatomical charts showing potential attackers where to stab their victims.
A report published in The New York Times this October shed light on the role these posts play in encouraging Palestinians to commit acts of terror.
These leaderless assailants live in communities that applaud those who have died, often without any mention of their own violent deeds. They are motivated by social media campaigns — some by Hamas and other militant Islamist movements, many by enraged individuals — replete with glistening blades and how-to guides. Further fanning the flames are viral videos — also broadcast by official Palestinian networks — of Israelis fatally shooting attackers, whose names are immediately added to the Facebook scroll of so-called martyrs. […]
“There’s a viral nature to these attacks: One person goes out, they get killed, then they get glorified, it makes other people want to go out,” said Daniel Nisman, president of the Levantine Group, an Israeli security analysis firm. “You have a significant number of people who are willing to basically commit suicide attacks; they just don’t have access to sophisticated weapons.” […]
One crude cartoon making the rounds on Facebook, including on the official Palestinian TV page before it disappeared late Tuesday, depicts an Israeli soldier as an ape, accompanied by a pig, over a bloodied youth. Another has a close-up of a menacing blade, and is captioned: “This is not difficult. To the closest kitchen, and go in the name of God.”
Micah Avni, the son of Richard Lakin, an American-Israeli teacher and peace activist who died last week after being stabbed and shot in a terror attack two weeks earlier, said that social media companies “have a social responsibility to stop this rampant incitement, and beyond incitement, instruction manuals how to brutalize people.”
[Photo: Flash90 ]