The Jerusalem district attorney’s office submitted an indictment on Wednesday to the district juvenile court in the city, charging a 16-year-old terrorist from Jabel Mukaber in the southeast of the capital with attempted murder and possessing a knife.
The terrorist conducting a stabbing attack last Sunday in the southeastern neighborhood of Armon Hanatziv, located adjacent to Jabel Mukaber, lightly wounding one man waiting at a bus stop.
Earlier that Sunday, according to the indictment, the terrorist watched footage on TV of the bodies of terrorists being returned to their families and greeted heroically as “martyrs,” and decided at that moment to go out and stab a Jew to death.
In the afternoon hours he took a knife from his kitchen, hid it in his coat, and went out to Armon Hanatziv. For several long minutes he waited at a bus stop in the neighborhood, alert for the approach of a Jewish victim.
At a certain point a man approached and the terrorist identified him as a Jew, before proceeding to whip out the knife and trying to stab him in the upper body with the intention of murdering him.
The Jew reacted swiftly and tried to defend himself, and as a result the knife strike hit his shoulder – miraculously, the lethal blade bent upon impact, and did not penetrate the victim’s body.
After the Jewish man shouted for help, the terrorist threw aside the knife and fled back to Jabel Mukaber, and the following day he turned himself in to the police.
The attorney’s office asked that the terrorist’s arrest be extended until the end of legal proceedings.
The case brings to the fore concerns over the effect of returning the bodies of terrorists. The Security Cabinet issued a decision calling not to return the bodies as a deterrent measure, but that decision has been ignored by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon (Likud).
At the funeral in the northeastern Shuafat neighborhood of Jerusalem for one terrorist whose body was returned early last week, thousands of Arabs waving knives and machetes took part, and hundreds of armed Hamas terrorists fired automatic weapons in the air, further highlighting the problematic nature of the policy as well as security defects in the capital.
