A Palestinian bull dozer operator used his tractor as a weapon today, attacking pedestrians and vehicles in downtown Jerusalem, killing three people and injuring thirty, before being shot dead by a member of the IDF and an Israeli police officer.
It's a scene that sounds like it could have come from a horror movie, but it happened on the crowded streets of downtown Jerusalem around noon Wednesday. A Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem was operating his bulldozer at a construction site, and suddenly turned his tractor into a weapon, attacking nearby pedestrians and vehicles, killing three women and injuring some thirty other people, overturning two transit buses in the process.
The driver, who reportedly had a criminal record and was the holder of an Israeli (blue) identification card, was shot dead by a SWAT officer near the old Shaare Zedek Medical Center. The terrorist was identified as 31-year-old Hossam Dawiath, a father of two from the village of Tzur Baher.
The terrorist continued on his killing spree, but a short while later a soldier and a SWAT officer jumped on top of the vehicle. The officer then shot the terrorist in the chest and leg and killed him.
The attack came with no warning; there was no indication that the man was going to go on the rampage today that took three lives. The dozer was from a nearby construction site for the Jerusalem Tram system.
I know that there are those who feel that Israel has badly mistreated the "Palestinians" in the period since the reformation of the nation of Israel. I know that there are those who believe that the nation of Israel has no right to exist in it's present incarnation simply due to the fact that Israel had not existed as a nation for nearly 2,000 years. Their claim is that Palestine has every right to oppose Israeli occupation of the region because they had secured the area and made it their own. But yet and still, there was never an established nation called Palestine. Since the diaspora of 136 AD, the region had gone without having an established governmental structure until the mass return of the Jews from around the world in the last century.
The Palestinian "problem" exists as much at the fault of the Arab nations as it does anyone else for not allowing their fellow Arabic people to do anything but live in refugee villages between nations, a position Palestinians found themselves in for the early on terrorist activities against the newly formed Israeli regime.
But Palestinian apologists won't hear any part of this, because they don't think the Israeli's should be back in their traditional homeland to begin with.
Let me take a moment to point out the hypocrisy in this mindset; I have heard the same people who will not allow for a the notion of a return for the Nation of Israel to their homeland turn around in the same conversation and demand that white Americans make apologies to blacks for slavery.
In any event, an attack upon an unarmed civilian populace is an act of cowardice, in my estimation. I sincerely hope that this isn't the beginning of a new trend of terrorist tactics to be employed by terrorist organizations.
