PM Netanyahu at scene of Jerusalem Truck Ramming Attack.
Photo by Kobi Gideon / GPO
A large truck rammed into a group of Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem on Sunday, killing four and wounding more than a dozen more people before the terrorist was shot and killed. The incident brought to mind the vicious ISIS vehicular attacks in Nice and Berlin last year, and that was more than coincidence according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The spokesman for Netanyahu’s office, Ofir Gendelman, posted to Twitter that the Israeli leader believes the terrorist was actually linked to ISIS, at least in motivation.
“The Palestinian terrorist who perpetrated the ramming attack in Jerusalem is an ISIS sympathizer,” Gendelman tweeted Netanyahu as saying. Meanwhile, Hamas celebrated the ISIS-look-alike attack. On Twitter, the Palestinian terror group posted in Arabic that they “bless the heroic and courageous Jerusalem truck operation.” A press release posted to the group’s Arabic page called the terrorist a “martyr.”
The incident was certainly no accident. The IDF Spokesman’s Twitter feed posted a video interview with the Israeli soldier, Cadet T., who shot at the terrorist. The cadet said they saw the truck drive onto the sidewalk and hit the pedestrians. “First we thought it was an accident, but when the driver didn’t stop, we understood that it was a terror attack,” said the cadet in the video, who then fired his gun at the attacker.
The Israeli paramedic group Magen David Adom (MDA) posted to their Twitter feed that in addition to the four killed, three were severely injured in the attack as part of the dozen-plus that were wounded. MDA said the four killed were all aged in their 20s, while IDF Spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said on his Twitter page that they were three IDF officer cadets and an officer.
In comments released by his office, Netanyahu called it an “unprovoked terrorist attack, a murderous attack.”
Said the Israeli leader, “This is part of the same pattern inspired by ISIS, that we saw first in France, then in Germany and now in Jerusalem. This is part of the same ongoing battle against this global scourge of the new terrorism. We can only fight it together, but we have to fight it, and we will.”
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, January 8, 2017)