Israel Matzav

Terror in Gilo - a neighborhood in Jerusalem

A 21-year old 'Palestinian' terrorist murdered an 86-year old Jewish man Thursday morning in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo after moderately wounding a police officer. The terrorist was stopped by two police officers for searching and pulled out the knife. He stabbed one of the police officers, then stabbed the elderly man while the terrorist was trying to escape. The police officer managed to shoot the terrorist a number of times in the abdomen despite his own wounds.

Yoav Mizrahi, a passerby who caught the assailant, told Army Radio: "He was shot, but he kept running. After a while he got tired and I caught up with him. I ran after him and caught him, wrestled him to the ground and twisted his arm behind his back."

The civilian was evacuated in critical condition to the Shaare Tzedek Hospital, where he died of his wounds. The policeman and the attacker were evacuated to Hadassah University Medical Center, Ein Kerem.

The policeman was in moderate-to-serious condition after he underwent a two-hour operation. But hospital director Dr. Yuval Weiss predicted that the policeman, an Ethiopian immigrant called Daniel, would be able to function normally and perhaps be discharged in a week or so if there are no complications.

The heroic policeman, who was stabbed in his chest and stomach but still managed to shoot the terrorist, was operated on by a medical team headed by Prof. Avi Rivkind, head of the surgical branch and trauma unit. He was taken to intensive care and is being ventilated. "He will recover," said Weiss. "We believe he will be in much better condition tomorrow."

This was the second terror attack in Jerusalem within a month, and the fourth since July. The terrorist was evacuated from the scene by medics (see picture above).

HonestReporting reports on media bias with respect to this attack.

The BBC's first report of today's incident headlined "Two stabbed in Israeli settlement," later updated to "Israeli dies in settlement attack," describes Gilo as "a Jewish settlement to the south of Jerusalem" and marks Gilo separately from Jerusalem on an illustrative map. To many people, these headlines have the effect of mitigating the incident by describing it as taking place in a "settlement."

Reuters follows suit with "Palestinian kills Israeli near Jerusalem: police," which states that the "incident occurred in the settlement of Gilo, in the occupied West Bank, near Jerusalem."

AFP, in "Israeli killed in Jerusalem knife attack," gets it right that Gilo is located within the city limits but then goes on to describe it as "a Jewish settlement in the Arab east section of Jerusalem."

The majority of Gilo, however, is built on land legally purchased by Jews prior to 1948. In the 1948 war, Jewish lands in Gilo were captured and confiscated by the Jordanian government. From 1948-67, Jewish landowners did not relinquish ownership to their land in Gilo, and when Israel recaptured the land in the Six-Day War, Gilo was built - not because of war victories, but because of longstanding legal land purchases.

Gilo lies within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries and is geographically contiguous to surrounding Jewish neighborhoods that pre-dated the 1967 reunification of the city.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:53 PM