Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Another victim of terrorist incitement and demonization has fallen. It takes a convinced sociopath to walk up to someone in cold blood and put a knife in their chest: 'Terrorist killer was a PA officer'
The terrorist who stabbed an IDF soldier to death at the Tapuah junction on Wednesday afternoon was a Palestinian Authority police officer from Yabed, according to IDF sources.
The IDF soldier was named as First-Sgt. Muhammad Ihab Khatib, 26, from the northern village of Marar. He served as a logistics non-commissioned officer in the Kfir Brigade.
Khatib was waiting in his Sufa jeep in a queue of traffic when he was stabbed in the chest through an open window.
In the soldier's attempt to speed away, the vehicle overturned.
The PA officer, identified as Mahmoud Hattib, was then run over and lightly hurt by a local security officer from the nearby settlement of Rehelim. He was then arrested by police. Defense officials assessed that Hattib worked alone...
Judging from his name, it sounds like the victim was a Muslim, probably a Druze. Note the lack of mention of this in the Israeli press. The guy have his life for the state. That's all that matters.
The IDF Spokesperson has more here and a photo of the victim here.
Update: H/T to Nappy for pointing out that this is right near that recent mosque burning incident and what's shown in this video...remember that nice Rabbi, Menachem Froman, who's been working for conciliation?
Also, I'm not sure if this was in the article earlier, but now it contains this:
...Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad denounced the attack and said it "conflicts with our national interests." He pledged to take steps to prevent such incidents in the future, while endorsing "peaceful resistance" against settlements and the security barrier...
What absolutely weak-ass crap.
The plot thickens. On the John Batchelor show (carried here on 96.9 FM WTKK), Aaron Klein just now said that the roadblocks near the Tapuah Junction were removed recently on the request of the PA as part of setting the conditions for resuming negotiations. Klein also says that the first thing the Israelis did with the murderer—before interrogating him—was to get him the medical attention he needed. Klein confirms that the murdered soldier was a Druze, an Israeli Arab. Both the soldier and the PA cop who killed him in cold blood are both Arabs who coincidentally have the same last name.
Kleain also reports that bombs have been floating on crude rafts kept afloat by barrels toward Israeli beaches. The prevailing currents in the Mediterranean mean that stuff set adrift in Gaza could land in Tel Aviv, so these floating bombs are potentially a serious attack. Many more are thought to be in the water. Two were intercepted at Ashdod, near Gaza. It's suspected that the bombs are of Israeli origin and that Hamas and some "Popular Resistance" committee are saying it's revenge for the death of some Hamas operative or leader. Israel has closed some 25 miles of beach. This should be in the news in the next day or two, at least on Arutz Sheva, YNet and JPost. Nappy would love to be proved wrong about this but doesn't expect the Gray Lady, WaPo, BBC, NPR, PBS or Reuters to spill much ink about this.
Seeing how hard it is to pay close attention to the radio and remember details while typing, Nappy has newly found respect for live translators and for VodkaPundit Stephen Green who heroically drunk-blogged the Obama's SOTU speech a couple of weeks ago.
Unfortunately, we've seen this pattern many times before. Israel puts up roadblocks for self-defense, so that they can screen who comes in. The world screams that the roadblocks are humiliating, degrading, damaging to Palestinian national dignity, and probably contribute to global warming. Israel removes roadblocks as a good-will gesture... and then a Palestinian cold-blooded murderer reminds Israel why the roadblocks were there in the first place.
Israel proclaims: "This is why the roadblocks were justified!" The world yawns... at least, those who hear of the incident at all.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Need I point out that the roadblocks themselves would not be necessary... if the Palestinian areas could provide jobs and livelihoods for their own people? If the Palestinians truly want to "restore national honor", as they sometimes say, no doubt there are many positive ways to promote that. Having an economy largely based on the export of cheap labor isn't one of them.
NHH: Thanks for the additional details. Let me add that providing emergency medical care to apprehended terrorists is also typical... for the IDF, anyway. During my IDF military service, I saw many such people in Israeli hospitals -- under heavy military guard, to be sure, but getting exactly the same care they would have gotten had they been victims, not perpetrators.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
In the run up to the second intifada, Oct. 2000 an Israeli soldier patrolling together with a Palestinian "policeman" was killed by his "partner".
Nappy the explosives have been coming ashore now for at least two weeks.
Nappy agrees with you but points out that roadblocks are not checkpoints. Roadblocks give the IDF a chance to monitor traffic within the territories. Checkpoints are like border crossings, where people and vehicles move between Israel and the territories. There is no question that roadblocks make life difficult for Palestinian Arabs, but that's not their purpose; it's a side-effect. As things have quieted down since the Oslo Terror War Arafat launched in 2000—apologists for terror and fools call it the Second Intifada—it's become possible to remove some of the checkpoints. Removing the checkpoints makes the IDF's presence in the territories less intrusive in the daily lives of Palestinian Arabs.
Israelis long for a day when the checkpoints, roadblocks and separation barrier will no longer be necessary. But that's entirely up to the Palestinian Arabs to make the case for their removal with their behavior.
Nappy thanks you for the cynical update and the reminder of the incident in 2000 but red-faced at being in the dark about the floating bombs. Assassination by sneak attack stabbing has a long history in that part of the world.
Aaron Klein's appearance—is that the right word for an acoustic presence without a visual aspect?—on John Batchelor's program last night was the first Nappy had heard about them. And that explains why neither usual suspects nor WND, Klein's home base, had nothing about them this morning.
Nappy apologizes to Arlene for not including sign language interpreters in the shout out to live-translators and drunk-bloggers. With closed captioning on the TV, there's no longer the little bubble in the corner.
It's fascinating to watch ASL interpreters. Nappy misses them on the tube—does it matter that today's TV sets don't have tubes, not even picture tubes?—and loves seeing them at live events.