Sunday, September 23, 2012

23-Sep-12: In Jerusalem this morning

Bethphage, Jerusalem: August 20, 2012 [Image Source]

It's a not-so-unusual morning here in sunny and warm Jerusalem.

An Arab woman from the Silwan neighbourhood of Jerusalem was arrested and will be charged with the attempted stabbing this morning (Sunday) of a police officer in the parking lot of East Jerusalem's Shalem police station. The alleged stabber is said [Ynet] to have been engaging in a form of movie criticism pertaining to a made-in-USA film demeaning the founder of the Islamic religion. The police officer, unconnected to the making of the film (which is actually the work of an Egyptian Copt with a history), managed to fight off the attacker and is unharmed.

A short distance away, and some hours earlier, three firebombs were hurled at Israeli police patroling the Shuafat neighbourhood. Reports say no injuries.

An IDF patrol came under separate firebomb attack during the night (Saturday/Sunday) in the sensitive Ir David (City of David) neighbourhood, just outside the Old City walls. Again no reports of injuries.

None of these attacks is covered at all, as far as we can tell, by non-Israeli news channels. Neither was an attack by marauding Moslem youths (their religion is important to this story) on a Jerusalem Arab housing development last month, and reported just this weekend by CAMERA. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem's newsletter has the details: the attackers were some fifty youths, and their target was a new housing development in Bethphage undertaken by the Franciscans of the Holy Land, and home to 79 non-Moslem Arab families. Windows were shattered, cars were damaged by boulders and rocks, residents were terrorized, and several were injured and required hospitalization. A resident quoted in the report says this was the third such riot in two years. The area is an easy walk from the scene of all the other acts of Arab violence from this morning.

In this ongoing war, Arab-on-Arab violence rarely rates a mention other than in Israeli news channels.

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