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‘Terrorist Drove Unhindered to Scene’, by Shelly Paz, Rebecca Anna Stoil (Jerusalem Post)
Commentary:
According to an updated Jerusalem Post report, since the original report came out on this latest tractor terrorist attack; certain other salient facts regarding the tractor terror attack have come to light:
- The attacker – later identified as Mar’i al-Rdaidah, 26, from the capital’s northeastern Beit Hanina neighborhood – reached the intersection near Teddy Stadium and managed to push the police patrol car for about 30 meters, police said. He pushed the police vehicle into the bus, but his momentum was apparently stopped by the bus and an electrical post pinned between the police car and the bus.
The bus was full of girls dressed in Purim costumes en route to cheer up patients at Hadassah hospital, according to the Zaka rescue and recovery service.
- Rdaidah drove the construction vehicle unhindered through the city to the scene of the attack, Channel 2 reported.
- According to the report, Rdaidah, who lived on the Palestinian side of Beit Hanina and did not have an Israeli ID card, was the owner of the vehicle, unlike in the two previous bulldozer rampages in Jerusalem last year.
Police, Magen David Adom and Zaka personnel streamed to the scene within minutes.
The terrorist was pronounced dead at Hadassah-University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem neighborhood…
Hamas spokesman Munir al-Masri praised the attack.
Jerusalem District deputy police chief Nisso Shaham said at the scene of Thursday’s attack that, following the previous attacks in the capital, police had compiled a list of bulldozer drivers and owners in the city in order to identify possible attackers. But, he said, “this kind of attack cannot be anticipated and therefore it is impossible to prepare for it.”
If Israel’s police and military would spend the amount of time and funding tracking Arab construction workers that they spend in labeling religious and rightist Jews by finger-printing and smart-carding them in Yesha and throughout Israel so as to track them [lest these Jews take part in what the agendized left considers as “subversive activities (sic)”, then perhaps the police would be able to prepare for and protect against such attacks. Deputy police chief Nisso Shaham’s comments are, at best, lame! MB