Armed Israeli Civilian Shoots and Kills Knife-Wielding Palestinian

Reuters is reporting that 3 Palestinians were shot dead trying to stab Israelis. One of the incidents occurred near Hebron where an armed Israeli civilian shot and killed a Palestinian terrorist coming at him with a knife.

There were contradictory accounts of one of the shootings, near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank city of Hebron. Israel said a Palestinian attempted to stab an Israeli civilian, who was carrying a gun and then shot and killed the attacker.

But a Palestinian man told Reuters that his daughter, a high school student, witnessed the shooting and said it happened when Jewish settlers attacked an unarmed Palestinian.

Is there any other context except Palestinian vs. Israel where a reputable news source would use a third hand account of an incident? A “Palestinian man’s” daughter said…Sheesh.

In a neighbourhood around East Jerusalem, Israeli border police had stopped to question a 16-year-old Palestinian walking in “a suspicious manner”, a police spokesman said. The teenager drew a knife and tried to stab the officers, who shot him dead, the spokesman said.

Also in Hebron, a Palestinian woman stabbed an Israeli border policewoman, cutting her hand, a police spokesman said. The policewoman shot the attacker, he said.

The Palestinians killed in the last two weeks have included knife-wielding assailants and protesters shot by Israeli forces during rock-throwing confrontations. The seven Israelis have died in random attacks in the street or on buses.

The violence has mostly occurred in Jerusalem and the West Bank but it has also erupted along the Gaza-Israel border. On Saturday Israel’s army defused a rocket it said had been fired by Gaza militants overnight, landing in an open area.

The street violence, some of the worst in years, has been intensified by conflicting witness accounts and amateur video that has been interpreted in different ways. In some cases, witnesses gave accounts that were later shown by video footage to be false.

Israel says it is keeping the status quo at the holy compound, which is also revered by Jews as the location of two destroyed biblical Jewish temples.

Peace talks collapsed in 2014 over Israeli settlement-building in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas Palestinians seek for a state, and after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas angered Israel by reaching a unity deal with the Islamist group Hamas in Gaza.

The response to Israelis defending themselves has been entirely predictable. The fact that Israeli police and civilians shoot people coming at them with a knife and murder in their heart is being criticized by the familiar cast of Palestinian apologists. Perhaps they think it would be better if the Israelis held their fire. Or maybe, if you’re into that “proportionate response” thing, they should be armed with spears.

One headline caught my eye: “Israelis gun down alleged assailants in new attacks.” “Gun down” is a pejorative, intimating that the Palestinians were unarmed and the Israelis shot them in cold blood.

The CBS report is biased as well:

I suppose it’s too much to ask that the press cover this new intifada by showing the sheer fanatical will it takes to commit suicide by running toward armed police with a knife. But that would necessitate explaining why the Palestinians hate the Jews — and we can’t have that in covering this story.