Graphic, disturbing video out of Jerusalem, where fears of a "third intifada" are mounting in the wake of a string of stabbings and other violent acts over recent weeks. This
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A Palestinian terrorist drove his vehicle into a group of several people waiting at a bus stop. He then exited his car with a meat cleaver and began attacking the wounded and others with the implement. Rabbi Yeshayahu Krishevsky, 60, was killed, apparently both from the vehicular attack and the axe wounds while two other people were seriously injured. Shimi Grossman, a paramedic from the Zaka voluntary emergency response service and a resident of Geula, was one of the first on the scene. He saw the vehicle stuck inside the bus stop that the assailant had struck and was told by eye-witnesses that the man had got out of his car with the axe. The terrorist was shot and critically injured by police officers who arrived swiftly at the scene.
Depressingly, this ghastly scene depicts the second-deadliest terrorist attack...of the day:
Two Jewish men were stabbed to death, and three others seriously wounded in a gun and knife attack on an Egged bus in the capital’s Armon Hanatziv neighborhood, located next to the flashpoint Arab neighborhood Jabel Mukaber...Trails of blood could be seen inside and outside the vehicle, as hundreds of anxious residents gathered to watch the chaotic scene...“One of the terrorists shot at passengers from the outside while his accomplice entered the bus and stabbed five passengers, killing one,” said [a police spokesman].
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Bret Stephens' latest Wall Street Journal column takes the international media to task for its craven coverage of the recent spate of bloodshed, routinely conflating deliberate, hate-fueled attacks against civilians with Israeli military reprisals. Consider the climate of constant, random threats under which Israeli Jews now live:
If you’ve been following the news from Israel, you might have the impression that “violence” is killing a lot of people. As in this headline: “Palestinian Killed As Violence Continues.” ...Such was the media’s way of describing two weeks of Palestinian assaults that began when Hamas killed a Jewish couple as they were driving with their four children in the northern West Bank. Two days later, a Palestinian teenager stabbed two Israelis to death in Jerusalem’s Old City, and also slashed a woman and a 2-year-old boy. Hours later, another knife-wielding Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli police after he slashed a 15-year-old Israeli boy in the chest and back. Other Palestinian attacks include the stabbing of two elderly Israeli men and an assault with a vegetable peeler on a 14-year-old. On Sunday, an Arab-Israeli man ran over a 19-year-old female soldier at a bus stop, then got out of his car, stabbed her, and attacked two men and a 14-year-old girl. Several attacks have been carried out by women, including a failed suicide bombing
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Stephens quotes Palestinian leaders and clerics exhorting and "blessing" the murderous rage, noting that tired media tropes explaining the surge of terrorism aren't readily applicable to current conditions. The Palestinian Authority operated in a unity government with Gaza-based terrorist group Hamas for years, and its leader recently unilaterally withdrew from the Oslo Accord's mandates, "which created the foundation for the Middle East peace process." Much of the media seems content to approach the new wave of terror as just the latest developments in the endless "cycle of violence," for which "both sides" bear responsibility, offering on sparse, cliched coverage. Watch this chilling clip of several perpetrators' family members evincing pride over their loved one's homicidal sprees and resulting "martyrdom" (content warning):
I'll leave you with a stark assessment from Commentary's Jonathan Tobin: "While the narrative about this latest outbreak of violence from critics of Israel is that it is all about the sins of the 'occupation' and Israel denying hope to the Palestinians, what we hearing from them is a very different story. Read any of the accounts of the motivations of the people going into the streets to stab random Jews they encounter or the mobs in the West Bank who are seeking to set off confrontations with Israeli troops, and you don’t hear much about frustration about the peace process. The same applies to clips from Palestinian television that Palestine Media Watch provides. What you do see are accounts of Muslim religious fervor that is drenched in the fever of martyrdom and faith-based hate. This is significant and not just because most of the popular notion that the violence is caused by the failure of Israel to make enough concessions in negotiations to bring peace. If Palestinians are engaged in an intifada that is, at its core, a religious war rather than a protest movement about Israeli policies or a desire for a Palestinian state, then everything that the Obama administration and even many of Israel’s American supporters think they know about the conflict is just plain wrong."
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