What drives the Palestinians who attack Jews

with kitchen knives?

Israelis and Palestinians

have been killed as violence spikes in recent weeks in the region. There is no one
reason for the chaos, but the surge in Palestinian attacks comes down to politics,
personal grievances and religion. (Jason Aldag/The Washington Post)
Object 1

By William Booth and Ruth Eglash-October 20

JERUSALEM Israelis and Palestinians are struggling to understand the minds and
motivations of the attackers who awake one morning to wield a kitchen knife against
Jews.
After three weeks and dozens of assaults with screwdrivers, guns, meat cleavers and
cars, it is becoming clear there is no single, neat profile. Nor is there any single reason
for the growing number of Palestinian attacks.
Instead, there is a list of possible motivations political, religious, personal by
assailants who range from Hamas militants to a Palestinian telephone technician who
used his car as a battering ram against an elderly Jew to a 13-year-old Palestinian
who attacked an Israeli kid with a knife at a candy store.
[The latest developments on violence in Israel]
One relative of a slain attacker believed the root of his anger was simply the
humiliation of occupation.

At the Beersheva
central bus station in southern Israel, police say a gunman killed one person
and wounded eight. A second man was shot by a security guard and beaten
by a mob after being mistaken for a second gunman. (Reuters)
Object 2

The father of an attacker who stabbed to death an ultraOrthodox Jew wheeling his two children in a stroller in Jerusalems Old City said his
son was upset by a viral video showing a Palestinian girl shot dead by Israeli troops at
a Hebron checkpoint and left to die on the street. The attacker was a law school
student.
A relative of another Palestinian assailant said his cousin attacked Israelis because of
threats against the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Asked whether the Palestinian
youth who slashed at an Israeli soldier was a devout Muslim, the relative said, Not
really.
Instead, he explained, the mosque is a symbol of Palestinian pride, and Palestinians
are outraged by provocative visits by Israeli ministers and right-wing members of
parliament, who arrive surrounded by armed Israeli police and say the site should be
shared with Jews who want to pray.
Al-Aqsa is all we have left, said Assad Ali, an uncle of a dead Palestinian assailant.
Some Palestinian parents denied that their sons had done anything wrong at all. They
charge that their children were hounded by Jewish lynch mobs shouting Die! or
gunned down by trigger-happy police or armed Jewish settlers.
[Israel probes mob assault on African bystander ]
The Palestinian leadership has accused Israeli forces of planting knives at the scenes
of shootings and demanded investigations and protection from the United Nations. But
it is undeniable that most of the attacks are real: The wounded and dead Israelis are
proof.
Interviews with relatives of Palestinian attackers, with Israeli police and military

intelligence officers, with Palestinian and Israeli politicians, and with analysts reveal
competing theories, often self-serving and oblivious to the fears of the other.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alternately blames the wave of violence on
incitement by Hamas militants or Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas or
the sheiks at the Islamic Movement in northern Israel.
One thing Netanyahu never mentions is the 48-year military occupation of the West
Bank and the growth of Jewish settlements the realities most often cited as a root
cause of despair by Palestinians. In surveys, a dwindling minority of Palestinians
believe they will ever get a state.
[Opinion: How Israels most fervent peacemaker squandered his best chance]
The Israeli leadership accuses Abbas of incitement for speaking of filthy Jewish feet
and herds of settlers defiling the al-Aqsa Mosque. But young Palestinian men who
attend violent clashes with Israeli soldiers never mention Abbas and, when asked, call
him irrelevant.
Palestinian officials in Ramallah brush off charges of incitement and instead blame an
Israeli killing machine for the escalation, as a leader of the Palestine Liberation
Organization delegation in New York did last week.
Yet in interviews, many Palestinians refer to their own deadly knife attacks blandly as
operations, and in mass funerals they celebrate the dead as martyrs. The Islamist
militant movement Hamas calls them heroes.
Who are the attackers?
Some see the wave of knife assaults as an uprising of disillusioned youths from the
Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, communities living under complete
Israeli control that in the past have taken a back seat in rebellion.
These are Palestinian teens who speak some Hebrew alongside their native Arabic
and take Israeli matriculation exams, whose parents often work for or beside Israelis,
and who are too young to remember the trauma of the second intifada in the early
2000s.
Yet just as analysts were focusing on East Jerusalem youths, the attacks pivoted to
Hebron in the West Bank last weekend.
The latest assailant was a Bedouin Arab Israeli from southern Israel who went into the
Beersheba bus station and was competent enough to wrestle a military rifle from an
Israeli soldier and use it to wound a dozen people.
Israeli police, struggling to establish a profile so they can counter the attacks, report
that most of the Palestinian assailants have no history of previous arrests. They were
unknown to Israels sprawling domestic intelligence agencies as militants or even
members of Palestinian political factions.
Among the attackers are:

A 33-year-old father of three who had worked for an Israeli phone carrier for a
decade. Last week he drove his company car into a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews in
Jerusalem and emerged swinging a meat cleaver.
A 13-year-old Palestinian boy who, with his cousin, stabbed a Jewish 13-year-old at
a candy store. His father said he had no idea his son was carrying a knife and said
he had gone out to buy video games. The boy told Israeli investigators, essentially,
My cousin made me do it.
A 30-year-old mother, Asaraa Abed of Nazareth in northern Israel, who was shot in
the legs after brandishing a knife in Afulas central bus station, in what police initially
described as a stabbing attempt. Now Israeli officials suspect she may have suffered
from mental issues.
They cant stand the humilitations
Unlike past popular uprisings, this spasm of Palestinian violence and popular
resistance both the knife attacks and violent demonstrations that end with Israeli
troops firing live rounds at alleged rock throwers appears to be waged with little
direction from above.
He was part of a new generation who sees there is no political solution with the Jews
and all the negotiations have been in vain, said Shafeek Halabi, the father of
Muhannad Halabi, a 19-year-old Palestinian law student who stabbed a well-known
rabbi and an off-duty Israeli soldier to death in the Old City of Jerusalem before being
shot to death himself.
What these kids are doing is a reaction. It is in their hearts, Halabi, who works as a
plumber, said of his son.
On his Facebook page, Muhannad Halabi wrote that Palestine was like an orphan girl
adopted by an evil man, Israel, and that Palestinians, especially women, were
subjected to humiliation and abuse.
Rage, rage, rage, Halabi wrote. Wake up from your long sleep. Let the revolution
burn.
Israeli military officials blame a Hamas-affiliated cell for an ambush attack three weeks
ago in the West Bank that was a harbinger of the violence to come. A mother and
father were shot and killed in a drive-by shooting in front of their four children who
were sitting in the back of the car and were physically unharmed.
But the families of the dead Palestinian attackers are struggling to explain the precise
motivations.
The uncles of Mohammad Said Ali gathered last week in a small alley in the Shufat
refugee camp outside Jerusalem. A widely circulated video shows their 18-year-old
nephew pulling a knife from the back of his waistband, stabbing at an Israeli Border
Police officers head and then being shot dead.
He was a popular boy, no problems, a good social life, a good family life, we have no

money problems, his life was good, said one of the uncles, Assad Ali.
He always had the best clothes, the newest sneakers, said another uncle, Mahmoud
Ali. He was handsome, sweetnatured, helped his mother with housework, left his home to go to the barber and
stabbed an Israeli.
What set him off? The uncles and cousins debated.
The first and second intifadas were political, with leaders, with direction, Assad Ali
said. This is a pure personal intifada fueled by the continuous incitement of a crazed
hostile government of Netanyahu. The spark is al-Aqsa Mosque, but the wood that
burns is the occupation.
This new generation, they cannot stand the humiliations, Mahmoud Ali said. They
say the Jews are going to kill us all anyway, no matter what we do, so why not strike
out at them first?
Ala Abu Jamal, 33, was a model employee for Israels national phone company,
Bezeq. His family said he spoiled his children and liked to take them to the swimming
pool. Last week he was seen on a gruesome viral video smashing the head of an
elderly ultra-Orthodox Jew with a meat cleaver.
Of course I saw the video, said his cousin, Moaweyah Abu Jamal. What set him off?
What happened prior to the incident? He swore his cousin wasnt a Jew hater.
His nephews, however, include two men who last year laid siege to a synagogue in
Jerusalem, where they killed four worshipers and a police officer. The cousins also
used meat cleavers. Israels intelligence agency said Abu Jamal had posted online
support for the Islamic State. Hours before Abu Jamal went on his rampage last week,
Israeli authorities had demolished the homes of his cousins in a move to punish and
perhaps discourage more attacks.
Sufian Taha contributed to this report.
Posted by Thavam