For the second time in three weeks, an Arab bulldozer driver from east Jerusalem rammed his construction vehicle into a city bus and several cars on a central thoroughfare in the capital on Tuesday, wounding 15 people before being shot dead by a Druse border police officer and a civilian passerby.
The early afternoon attack on King David Street was seen as a failed copy of July 2's lethal bulldozer rampage on Jaffa Road in which Husam Taysir Dwayat killed three people and wounded dozens before he was killed.
Facing a series of attacks by Palestinians apparently acting on their own, politicians and security officials demanded Tuesday that the government immediately move to deter future attacks by destroying the terrorists' homes, and some called to reexamine the way Arab construction workers from east Jerusalem are employed in the city.
The latest assault began shortly before 2 p.m. when the tractor driver, Ghassan Abu Tir, a 22-year-old resident of the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Umm Tuba who was working on a construction project on a side street near the King David Hotel, pulled into King David Street and repeatedly crashed his vehicle into a No. 13 Egged bus, which managed to escape, and then rammed into five cars, one of which he overturned, before being shot dead by a motorist who happened by the scene.
The Yeshiva attack was thought to be the work of a lone Palestinian gunman gone mad, the bulldozer attack three weeks ago was again characterized as the work of one political unaffiliated lone crazed Palestinian who just snapped. All of which brings us to yesterday’s attack. Again, a case of a politically unaffiliated Palestinian gone mad with a bulldozer but It is increasingly harder to view these attacks as just the work of the lone crazed psychotic.
Years ago I quibbled that the conflict didn’t need international peacekeepers but a deployment of an international team of psychiatrists wouldn’t hurt – it doesn’t seem like such a glib statement today...so what is to be done? According to the mayor of Jerusalem one should perhaps reconsider the employment of Arabs from East Jerusalem. When the rabbis suggested this months ago; they were condemned for issuing ‘racist’ statements but that was three attacks ago and almost a hundred civilians injured. Ynet News is reporting the Jerusalem police will be scrutinizing Arab construction workers and closely monitor construction sites in the capital. I do not have any real or concrete solutions to offer and as these attacks carry on and mount up and I admit to being reluctantly forced to consider Kahane may have been right.
But kudos to the national religious population of Israel for producing the kind of citizens who rush where to the aid of their fellow citizens in the midst of these attacks and do not hesitate to act decisively. It seems to me the world could use a little more Zion and not less. Ynet News carries a profile on the hero of yesterday’s attack:
Yaacov Asael, a resident of the Susiya settlement in southern Mount Hebron is Tuesday's hero. Asael shot and killed the terrorist who carried out the bulldozer attack in Jerusalem earlier in the day. Fifty-three-year-old Asael is an IDF reserves company commander, a father of eight, grandfather of six, and a teacher.
Ayelet Recanati, Asael’s daughter, told Ynet that her father is “resourceful." "He was a military man in commanding positions in combat units, in the armored corps," she said. “He is a bible teacher and an agriculturalist but has studied judo his whole life. He is a Jewish Israeli who combines the Torah and labor and tremendous politeness," she said. "He grasps things quickly, he has intuition regarding people and he most likely understood what was going on quickly," she added. "He always carries a gun. For as long as I can remember him, he has carried a gun. Nowadays, a gun is needed everywhere, in Susiya, Jerusalem, Hadera and in Tel Aviv. As long as we don't exude strength, we will need means of defense.” The police reported said that the terrorist who carried out the attack injured 18 people before being shot to death.
Who knows – maybe the Jerusalem Police could use a little more Torah and a little less diversity training.
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