A Wrong Turn In Jerusalem

The hysterical hate of Palestinians for the Jews of Israel was on particular display the other day when, in Jerusalem, a Jewish bus driver took a wrong turn and ended up in Issawiya, an Arab neighborhood. The Arab men and boys in that neighborhood had been having a high old time of it, throwing rocks, fireworks, and Molotov cocktails at the police, who were manfully trying to subdue them. When the bus appeared, and the rioters recognized the driver as an Israeli, they promptly tried to murder him, by firebombing the bus while he was in it. Fortunately, he managed to get out in time and rushed inside a nearby gas station. He suffered from smoke inhalation, but his clothes did not catch fire. More on this display of spontaneous homicidal savagery by the Palestinians can be found here: “Arabs in eastern Jerusalem torch bus that took wrong turn,” JNS, May 10, 2023:

A bus was torched in eastern Jerusalem on Tuesday after its driver accidentally entered the scene of a confrontation between Israeli security forces and Arab rioters in the city’s Issawiya neighborhood.

According to media reports, a group of young Arabs were throwing fireworks and stones at security forces when the private bus took a wrong turn and was set aflame, apparently by a firebomb.

The driver, 72, escaped the scene and was treated for smoke inhalation by a Magen David Adom medical team before being transported to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus.

When we arrived at the gas station, we saw the bus on fire a few tens of meters away from us. The driver told us that he accidentally entered the neighborhood and when they recognized him he was attacked and managed to escape to the nearby gas station. He suffered from mild smoke inhalation and after initial medical treatment with oxygen, he was taken to a hospital in stable condition for further treatment,” MDA emergency medic Shalom Barhoum said.

Clearly the rioters who threw the firebomb had murder on their minds. What did they know of the bus driver? Nothing, except that he was a Jew, and therefore deserved to be burned to death. This time, the Israeli who took a wrong turn that might have, but did not, cost him his life, was lucky.

Other Israelis who have taken a wrong turn into an Arab neighborhood or Palestinian city have not been so lucky. One example from a few years back can be found here.

Palestinian rioters on Wednesday night [Dec. 1, 2021] attacked two Israeli civilians and set their vehicle on fire after the pair stopped in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday night, Israel’s army said.

The two Israelis are Breslov Hasidim. They were attempting to return to their homes in the settlement of Hashmonaim in the West Bank, but after stopping at a gas station, got lost and ended up in Ramallah, at Al-Manara Square. [in the very center of the city] A crowd quickly assembled, surrounded the car, and bayed for the blood of the Israelis inside, when Palestinian security men were able to extricate the Israelis and whisk them away to safety. It was a very close call. The crowd had to be content with looting the car, then setting it on fire, shouting excitedly about their desire to destroy those Jews, and proclaiming, of course, “Allahu akbar.”

The two men were rescued by Palestinian security forces and reached a nearby checkpoint after sustaining minor injuries, before being turned over to Israeli authorities and released.

Ramallah is the capital of the Palestinian Authority. There is a heavy police presence, assigned to protect Mahmoud Abbas, and the other PA leaders, and their well-paid loyalists and relatives who live at the “Diplomats’ Compound” in the city. Those police managed to quickly whisk the Israelis away, prevented the howling mob of maddened Palestinians from murdering them.

Footage of the incident shared online showed crowds of residents surrounding and looting the vehicle before setting it ablaze.

Initial Israeli media reports said the two men had mistakenly entered the city, which is located in the Palestinian Authority-controlled area officially prohibited to Israelis by military order. They were later questioned by Israel Police.

Israel’s N12 news reported the men were Breslov Hasidim, and quoted one as explaining during his interrogation that they had stopped at a gas station and were attempting to drive to the West Bank settlement of Hashmonaim.

Even in the well-policed capital of the PA, a Palestinian mob was prepared to murder two Jews who had taken a wrong turn into the city center of Ramallah.

This incident has prompted me to recall another wrong turn by Israelis that ended in their horrific murder by hate-crazed Palestinians. This atrocity took place on October 12, 2000, at the el-Bireh police station in Ramallah, where a crowd of Palestinians tortured, murdered, and then mutilated the bodies of two Israel Defense Forces reservists.

The two Israelis who were murdered that day were Vadim Nurzhnitz, a truck driver, and Yosef “Yossi” Avrahami, a toy salesman. They were both in the IDF Reserve, and had been heading, in Nurzhnitz’s Ford Escort, to an army base near the West Bank settlement of Beit El. They were unfamiliar with the West Bank road system, and drove through the Israeli military checkpoint outside Beitunia and headed – by mistake — straight into the Palestinian town of Ramallah, two miles east of the checkpoint. Reaching a Palestinian Authority roadblock, where previously Israeli soldiers had been turned back, the reservists were detained by PA policemen and taken to the local police station.

An angry crowd of more than 1,000 Palestinians gathered in front of the station calling for the deaths of the Israelis. Soon after, Palestinian rioters stormed the building. The two men were beaten, stabbed, disemboweled, and had their eyes gouged out. A Palestinian (later identified as Aziz Salha) appeared at the second-floor window of the police station, holding up his blood-soaked hands to the frenzied crowd. Another Palestinian appeared at the window, holding up the entrails of one of the disemboweled Israelis. One of the soldier’s bodies was then thrown out the window. The mob, by now whipped into a frenzied bloodlust, stamped on and beat the corpse until it was no longer recognizable as a human being. Then the mob dragged the two mutilated bodies to Al-Manara Square in the city center, so everyone in Ramallah could enjoy the spectacle. And it was there the crowd began a victory celebration.

Police officers confiscated footage of the atrocity from reporters. One was a British photographer, Mark Seager, who attempted to photograph the event, but the mob physically assaulted him and destroyed his camera. After the event, he stated, “It [the lynching] was the most horrible thing that I have ever seen and I have reported from Congo, Kosovo, many bad places…. I know they [Palestinians] are not all like this and I’m a very forgiving person but I’ll never forget this. It was murder of the most barbaric kind. When I think about it, I see that man’s head, all smashed. I know that I’ll have nightmares for the rest of my life.”

What would have happened in December 2021 to those two Hasidic Jews who, like Vadim Nurzhnitz and Yossi Avrahami in 2000, had simply taken a wrong turn, and ended up in Ramallah, had they not been rescued by PA security men? The members of the mob that set fire to the Hasids’ car, cheering at the spectacle and jeering at the Jews inside the car who managed, just, to escape in time, would certainly have been even happier had they managed to torch the car with the Israelis inside. This barbarism has no end.

And just today another such atrocity was attempted, when that Israeli bus driver who ended up in an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem, and crazed Palestinians firebombed his bus while he was still in it. Any Israeli Jew who drives mistakenly – by taking a wrong turn – into an Arab neighborhood or city may well be risking his life.

One final observation: what do you think would happen if the situations had been reversed, and Palestinians had driven by mistake into a Jewish neighborhood in Israel, or into a city or Jewish settlement in the West Bank? Would Israelis firebomb their car? Or would they surround the car and pull the Arabs out, then stab them to death, mutilate their bodies, gouge out their eyes, disembowel them, and hold up bloody hands and bloody entrails to an assembled crowd that would all along have been cheering the spectacle? Of course not. The Israelis would instead provide directions so that the Palestinians could drive to their intended destination. Some Israelis might even accompany them part of the way in another car to make sure they would not get lost again.

Moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians? There is no moral equivalence. One represents civilization, and the other barbarism. Think of the murders, in 2000, of Vadim Nizhnitz and Yossi Avrahami, while thousands cheered, just outside the el-Bireh police station in Ramallah. Think of the close escape, in 2021, of the two Breslov Hasidim, whose wrong turn would almost certainly have led to their being burned alive in their car, or to their being beaten to death beside it, had Palestinian security men not rescued them, in Ramallah. And in May 2023, what if the Israeli bus driver whose vehicle had just been firebombed by a Palestinian mob, had not been so quick to escape from the bus? He would have been another victim of the barbarism that threatens to engulf Israelis, even when all they have done is take a wrong turn.