Terrorist Wounds Police Officers In Jerusalem Stabbing Attack

Police on Thursday (15th) detained five family members of the terrorist who perpetrated a stabbing attack in the Jerusalem Armon Hanatziv neighborhood on Wednesday night (14th), wounding several officers.

Police units raided the terrorist’s house and made the arrests on Thursday morning, after having immediately arrested the terrorist the night before at the scene.

The stabbing attack took place at the entrance to the Oz Police Station in south eastern Jerusalem.  Police said the attacker climbed over a fence at the police station, approached a 50-year-old border policeman who stood at the entrance and attacked him in the head with a knife.

Several other policemen were injured in the struggle with the terrorist.  Another police member shot the 20-year-old man and neutralized him. Border Police Commander Yaakov Shabtai told the stabbed policeman: “You managed to spot the terrorist and identify him as a suspicious person and acted with determination, and along with the other policemen who came to the scene – the terrorist was neutralized.”

Shaare Zedek Medical facilities said Thursday morning that six Border Policemen had been treated and released from the hospital during the night. The terrorist remains hospitalized.

Last week, IDF soldiers foiled two stabbing attempts in Kiryat Arba and Kfar Adumim, when terrorists tried to stab soldiers but were neutralized before they could hurt anyone.

(jpost.com)

 

PA Suspends Hebron Police Chief For Helping Israeli Soldiers

A local Palestinian Authority police chief was suspended after pictures of him helping IDF soldiers replace a damaged tire in the Hebron area were widely shared on social media.

PA police chief Hazem Atallah suspended Hebron police chief Ahmed Abu al-Rub and ordered an investigative committee to look into the incident in the Hebron area, PA police spokesman  Louay Zreikat told The Times of Israel on Thursday (15th).

The pictures shared on Twitter and Facebook showed Ahmed Abu al-Rub, who serves as PA police chief in the Hebron Governorate, kneeling down on a dirt road beside a small group of Israeli soldiers and a military vehicle.

One of the pictures also showed Kamal Makhamra, the secretary-general of a local Fatah branch, standing adjacent to Abu-al-Rub and the soldiers.

Makhamra told Ma’an News, a Palestinian news site, that a group of Fatah, Palestinian and humanitarian officials, including himself bumped into the soldiers after providing aid to Palestinians in Susya, a village south of Hebron Hills.

“On Sunday (11th) we were undertaking an aid mission in Susya with several official and humanitarian bodies,” he said.  

“After we finished providing the aid, we tried to leave the area, but there was a vehicle belonging to the occupation army blocking the road.  It then became clear to us that the vehicle‘s tire had been damaged. So the soldiers asked us for equipment to change the tire and we gave them tools.  They seemed to need help so police chief Ahmed Abu Al-Rub approached the soldiers and offered to help. He replaced the tire and after that we left” said Makhamra.

While Police chief Ahmed Abu Al-Rub was suspended for helping the soldiers, the police department will not comment on the incident until an investigation is completed .

On Wednesday (14th), many Arab and Palestinian social media users who posted photos of the  chief helping the soldiers, blasted him and said the act was “shameful” and “scandalous.”

(maannews.net; timesofisrael.com)

 

A Ceasefire In Gaza – Editorial

→For Israel to rely solely on its Iron Dome to intercept rockets is to normalize the terror coming from Gaza.  The missile defense system has an 86% rate of efficacy, but rockets still make it through and kill and wound civilians.  In Israel, towns like Nahal Oz, Sderot, Beersheba, and Ashkelon, civilians live a fair proportion of their lives in bomb shelters.  The young are raised in constant fear of rockets.

→Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire, but it will not last.  Palestinian militants do not believe in Israel’s right to exist.  For them, ceasefires are strategic, not substantive, and could be broken any time.  This one will be broken too.

→Was not the clandestine Israeli operation inside Gaza a provocation that led to the hostilities?  In reality, no. Gaza is run by militants who dream of the destruction of the Zionist entity, as they call Israel.  It is worth noting the lightning-fast speed with which rockets filled the skies once Hamas gave the word.

→Gaza is perpetually ready to shed the blood of its neighbor’s civilians.  That Israel runs furtive operations inside Gaza will only shock those who think it is an easy thing to protect civilian lives against the imminent threat of carnage.

→What the Palestinians need most is to acclimate to the reality of the neighboring Israeli state.  That won’t happen until the Palestinians find a leader willing to renounce the honor-cult of Jew-hatred and to seek peace and prosperity in earnest.

(weeklystandard.com)

 

Iranian Immigrant Raising $1 Million For Pittsburgh Congregation

Iranian immigrant Shay Khatiri created an online fundraiser for the victims of Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha synagogue in Pittsburgh after waking up on his Jewish friend’s couch to the heartbreaking news that 11 mostly elderly Jews were shot dead by an armed gunman who entered during weekly Shabbat services on Saturday, October 27th.

“She told me what happened, and she was just broken,”Khatiri told CNN.  “Seeing how upset she was, I wanted to donate to the congregation.”

“I thought to myself, I could donate $18 or $36 – something like that.  But that wouldn’t make a huge impact,” he said. “If I did something like this, maybe it could go viral.”

As of Monday afternoon (12th), the 29-year-old graduate student’s GoFundMe campaign had raised $639,281 out of a $1 million goal.

Shay said he was surprised that within 48-hours, 11,000 donations had poured in.

(worldisraelnews.com)

 

Einstein Letter Warning Of German Anti-Semitism Sells For Nearly $40,000

A 1922 letter in which Albert Einstein confided his fears of the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany, more than a decade before the Nazis took power, sold at an Israeli auction on Tuesday (13th) for $39,360.

“Here are brewing economically and politically dark times, so I’m happy to be able to get away from everything,” wrote the 43-year-old physicist to his sister, Maria, after leaving Berlin for a location that goes unmentioned in the letter.

Einstein, who went on to win the Nobel Prize three months later, had departed the German capital after far-rightists assassinated Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau, a friend and fellow Jew prompting police to warn him that he could be next.

“Nobody knows where I am, and I’m believed to be missing,” Einstein wrote.  “I am doing quite well, in spite of all the anti-Semites among my German colleagues.”

The handwritten and previously unknown letter refers to a journey Einstein planned to Japan, suggesting that he penned it while waiting to sail out of the northern port of Kiel.

When the Nazis took over Germany in 1933, launching a campaign of anti-Jewish persecution that would culminate in the Holocaust, Einstein was on a lecture tour abroad.  He renounced his citizenship and eventually settled in the United States.

“What is special in this letter that Einstein really forecast, is that he’s seeing in advance,10 years in advance – what Germany is going to be like,” said Meron Eren, co-founder of Kedem Auction House in Jerusalem, which sold the artifact to an unidentified bidder.

(israelhayom.com)