Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat vowed to restore order to the city, which has seen a sharp rise in Arab violence since the beginning of the summer.
By RUTHIE BLUMJerusalem residents waiting at light rail stop at Ammunition Hill, October 23, 2014.(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
On Wednesday afternoon, Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi, a 21-year-old resident of Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood, rammed his car at high speed into a group of people standing at one of the city’s light-rail stations.After committing this hit-and-run terrorist attack, which left three-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun dead and eight others wounded, Shaludi ended up crashing into a pole. As he attempted to flee the scene on foot, he was shot by police. He was then taken to Hadassah hospital, where he died.One of his uncles told reporters that Shaludi was a “normative” person who had merely lost control of his car, and was therefore was a victim of cold-blooded murder by Israeli police.But Shaludi’s record shows otherwise.He had spent two stints in jail – one for 14 months and another for 20 days – for throwing rocks at Jews. In addition, he had ties to Hamas. Another of his uncles, Mohiyedine Sharif (known as “the electrician” for his expertise in explosives), was responsible for three major bus bombings. He was killed in 1998 in Ramallah, possibly by rivals in Fatah.In addition, Shaludi had written pro-Hamas posts on his Facebook page, and following Wednesday’s attack Hamas praised him as a proud member and martyr for their cause.Internecine rivalries aside, Fatah also hailed Shaludi as a “heroic martyr” in a poster created for this purpose. The poster, which honors Shaludi for having carried out the attack against “settlers in occupied Jerusalem,” was distributed in Silwan.This is not only the neighborhood where Shaludi lived, but also the site of stepped-up Arab violence due to the recent purchase of a number of homes by Jews. (Though Arabs are free to live anywhere in Israel, Jews are not welcome to reside among Arabs.) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of creating the climate of incitement which led to the attack, one of many incidents of violence in the Israeli capital of late.PA spokesman Nabil Abu Rudaineh responded to the charge by omitting any reference to Wednesday’s attack: “Israeli escalation and incitement and continued occupation of Palestinian lands are the real reason for all the violence in Palestine and the region.”Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat also lashed out at Netanyahu.“Instead of pursuing peace,” Erekat said, “[Netanyahu’s] government systematically violates international law in order to consolidate its apartheid regime in Palestine.”Really? Let us take a look at the “peace pursuing” way in which Jerusalem Arabs reacted to the murder of a Jewish infant. Residents of Shuafat hurled rocks at the neighborhood light-rail station, virtually destroying the stop and two train cars.Residents of Isawiya, near the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, spent Wednesday night and Thursday morning pummeling Police and Border Police forces with rocks.Residents of Wadi Joz held a rock-throwing riot.Residents of Ras al-Amud threw rocks at a Jewish kindergarten on the Mount of Olives.Residents of Jabel Mukaber threw rocks at Jewish pedestrians in the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood.Unidentified Arabs threw rocks at buses driving near Gethsemane.An Arab assaulted an Israeli guard at a checkpoint at the entrance to southern Jerusalem.And the list goes on.Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat vowed to restore order to the city, which has seen a sharp rise in Arab violence since the beginning of the summer.This was when a group of vigilante Jews burned an Arab boy to death as revenge for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers – events which contributed to the launching of Operation Protective Edge.His aim is to crack down on violence, while increasing dialogue with Arab community leaders.In spite of his good intentions, this is not likely to have the desired effect.Though Netanyahu is correct in calling Abbas to task for incitement, and Barkat is right to express zero tolerance for the impossible conditions under which Jerusalemites have been living, there is a bigger picture to take into account.On Wednesday, as Shaludi was racing his car into innocent commuters, a keffiyeh-clad Canadian named Michael Zehaf-Bibeau shot and killed a soldier at Ottawa’s war memorial, before entering the adjacent parliament building and opening fire at everyone in sight. Zehaf-Bibeau, who recently applied for a passport to travel to Syria (undoubtedly to fight with Islamic State), was gunned down by House of Commons sergeant-at-arms Kevin Vickers. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police say that Zehaf-Bibeau had no connection to Martin Couture- Rouleau, a Christian convert to Islam who committed a hit-and-run terrorist attack on two soldiers in Quebec last Monday, one of whom died from his injuries.In spite of the fact that the above acts were technically unrelated, they are all part of the same global jihad against “infidels” everywhere and from whatever creed or religion, including Islam. Muslims who do not hold with the slaughter of Jews and Christians, the subjugation of women, the stoning of gays and the practice of decapitation are also fair game for brutality at the hands of their brethren.It is a contagious form of barbarism that has young people the world over scrambling to sign on. Palestinians are no exception.It is this greater burden that makes peace impossible. Anyone who holds Israel the least bit responsible is as complicit in the spread of Islamist blood-lust as a hit-and-run baby killer.The writer is the author of To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.’
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