Knife-Hunting, Car-Ramming Jews 

"I was standing at the city’s guard post when I noticed the terrorist walking towards me…She was tense, looking around [as though] she was unfamiliar with the place."
"As she approached, she presented her green Palestinian ID card, [but no proper permits]. So I told her she could not enter. While I was talking, I saw her putting her hand in her purse. [When] I asked her why she was [doing that], she took out a knife and managed to scratch me with it."
"It’s adrenaline; it’s pressure. But thank God — I thank God – that it ended the way it did. Today I’m 33, and I can say that I received my life as a [birthday] present."
Yishai Kreitenberger,  security guard, Beitar Illit, West Bank

Video still: Spot check: This security guard asked the woman tries to produce her identification as she approached the city limit

Near a shrine in the city of Hebron Palestinians fired at Jewish worshippers, wounding two people, one seriously. Another Israeli was seriously wounded when he was fired on by Palestinians south of Hebron. Earlier that same day on Friday Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 73-year-old Palestinian woman in Hebron. The news story reporting on that event in a national newspaper in Canada headlined it with the caption: "Israelis kill 73-year-old Palestinian Woman", omitting the signal fact that this woman drove directly and deliberately toward the Israeli soldiers.

These are the insignificant details that unnecessarily complicate an otherwise acceptable story, that a 73-year-old Palestinian woman was killed by members of the Israeli military. That a chaotic atmosphere of hatred, victimhood, vengeance and religious piety which the Palestinian Authority has incited to act on behalf of the Palestinian 'cause' by teens, by women, by adult men, by anyone who can be persuaded that it is their duty as Palestinians to deliver a message to Jews that they are in the wrong place at the right time is really irrelevant to an insightful news story.

Video still: Knife: The woman wearing an abaya and hijab suddenly pulls a large knife from her bag

It's just as well that there are closed circuit video cameras that can be relied upon to give evidence that deadly attacks are taking place and those who are attacked take immediate steps to save their own lives from a menace that takes them by surprise. An Arabic-speaking woman on Sunday approached a security guard, attempting to gain entrance to an all-Jewish settlement just outside Jerusalem of 47,000 people. She was identified as Hilwa Salim Darwish, 22, from Bethlehem, Galilee in northern Israel.


The guard, who had refused her entry to the settlement, asked what she was doing when she withdrew a knife, and when she stabbed at him, he responded attempting to protect himself, pulled out his gun and shot the woman. He was himself only slightly injured, although taken to hospital for medical care. And nor was the woman herself ignored. She was taken by ambulance to Hadassah University Medical Centre, but it is unlikely she survived the security guard's defensive action.

 Israeli medics rush Hilwa Salim Darwish to hospital after she was shot following the stabbing near the West Bank

Hebron has been the recent site of high tension between Palestinians and Israeli Jews. As is typical for Muslims who claim Jewish heritage sites as those of their own, of biblical-era patriarchs whom Muslims claim they too venerate, the presence of Jews is an affront to Islam, inspiring violent reactions from Muslims. Guns and assault weapons, while available and readily accessible in the West Bank on the black market and in militant Palestinian groups' arsenals, don't appear to be the weapons of choice in what is being called a Facebook Intifada.

Knives appear to have great appeal. Which in a sense is counter-intuitive, since with the use of knives one must approach one's victim in intimate distance. On the other hand, if someone is actively seeking martyrdom, that's the way to achieve it, if the victim happens to be possessed of quick reflexes, which a 33-year-old man like the security guard would have. Knives of all descriptions are more readily accessible in any event, so this grass-roots, lone aspiring perpetrator of death-deliverance delivers another message: anyone can give it a try.

And the vehicle driven by Tharwat Sharawi, 73, was seen by the Israeli personnel to slow down, then accelerate toward the soldiers. As the trained troops leaped out of harm's way, they opened fire. Israeli television footage showed bullet holes in the front and back windshields; a certain formula for death. The woman's 52-year-old son, Ayoub was swift to deny his mother would have intended harm to anyone. She was killed on her way for lunch at her sister's house.

Israeli soldiers and police inspect the car of a Palestinian who carried out a terror attack near the Tapuah Junction, south of the West Bank city of Nablus, on November 08, 2015. (Photo by FLASH90)

And then on Sunday, there was another killing spree, with five Israelis injured in two separate terror attacks. When a Palestinian rammed his car into a hitchhiking post at the Tapuach Junction. Four Israeli civilians received injuries; two seriously, one moderately, one lightly. The driver, a 22-year-old Palestinian man from Ramallah, was shot and killed by Border Police forces at the junction. Two hours later was when the 22-year-old woman from northern Israel tried her luck in stabbing the Israeli security guard, to pave her way to Paradise.