Bulldozer Attack in Jerusalem: “He tried to run over anything that moves” July 2, 2008

The Jerusalem Post today breaks the heart-wrenching news: three people were killed and 66 more wounded (1 moderately, the rest “lightly”) when a bulldozer-driving terrorist, 30-year-old Husam Taysir Dwayat from “Southeast Jerusalem” plowed through downtown Jerusalem. His rampage would crush six cars and overturn others, and would demolish a bus in its wake, and would end upon his being killed by a quick-thinking IDF soldier:

Three people were killed and 66 were wounded - one moderately and the rest lightly - on Wednesday afternoon when a bulldozer driver went on a rampage in downtown Jerusalem.

A half-dozen cars were flattened and others were overturned by the Caterpillar vehicle. A bus was also overturned, and another bus was heavily damaged. The attack, at the junction of Jaffa Road and Sarei Yisrael St., set off a panic in the area and left a large swath of damage in the heart of the capital. Traffic was halted, and hundreds of people fled through the streets in panic as medics treated the wounded.

A car was dragged several meters by the bulldozer before being crushed under the vehicle. A baby was pulled out by a passerby before the vehicle was crushed, with the child’s mother still inside.

The rampage would come to an end at the hands of Moshe Plesser and Eli Mizrahi — Plesser only being 18 years of age at the time — who would shoot a combined five rounds at Dwayat, killing him:

As he began running towards the bulldozer, Plesser said that he shouted out to onlookers for a gun. Together with another civilian, Plesser climbed aboard the bulldozer and began wrestling with the driver. “At one point he [the driver] yelled out “Allah Akhbar” [God is great] and stepped on the gas pedal,” Plesser recalled. “I drew the weapon of the civilian who was with me and shot the driver three times in the head. I think I did what is expected from every soldier and citizen.”

Seconds later, a police officer, Eli Mizrahi, climbed aboard the bulldozer and shot the terrorist again, killing him.

…The policeman, Mizrahi, later told reporters at the scene that he had acted “precisely as we were taught to do.”

Mizrahi said he had been on duty with his partner nearby when word of the attack came through and he sped to the scene on his motorbike. He saw a trail of smashed and crushed cars and wounded pedestrians, he said, cocked his gun and dashed toward the bulldozer in which the perpetrator was driving.

An armed Israeli civilian fired first, Mizrahi said, referring to Plesser, but the tractor was still moving, “crushing a car and heading towards more civilians.”

So Mizrahi climbed up to the driver’s cab. “I fired twice. And he was neutralized.”

Ironically, Plesser is the brother-in-law of of Capt. David Shapira, the IDF officer who killed the terrorist who went on a shooting rampage at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in March.

Three organizations claimed responsibility for the bulldozer attack - Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the militant armed wing of the Fatah movement, the Galilee Freedom Battalion, suspected of being “affiliated with Hezbollah”, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Besides the usual outrage at the horrible loss of life, and my heart going out to my fellow Jews who died in the Holy City — here’s why I feel personally played out, betrayed almost, by this particular terror attack:

My manager, DJ Handler/Diwon, began the Hiphop Sulha project in 2005, bringing together Israeli, Palestinian, and American Jewish and Muslim MCs on stages around the world for the promotion of unity and diminution of divisions. I have been active in this project since its inception, as Jewish-Muslim interpersonal unity is, I believe, paramount to any achievement in the Middle East Peace Process: organizations will not sit at negotiation tables effectively when their members are actively trying to kill each other. When I performed at the Hiphop Sulha in Santa Cruz, California, I hung out after the show with numerous Palestinian MCs, discussing politics, religion, music and worldviews, in a way that may not have been possible without music.

Many of the Palestinian MCs were taking quite a revolutionary step simply by attending, much less performing: they were going against the terms of the Israel boycott in which most of the Arabic-speaking world now participates. Their performing on a stage with Jewish and Israeli MCs would surely be seen as a slap in the face by someone, with a couple of them explaining that the relatively low turnout was due to the fact that people did not want to go against the boycott.

A few of the Palestinian MCs shared an affinity for the PFLP. One explained that he didn’t want to live under shari’a so he would not support any religious party (he said “I’d like to be able to get a beer on my way home from work!” when I asked him about supporting an Islam-based party), one explained that PFLP was advocating a “one-state solution, right of return for both Jews and Palestinians, and everyone living together in peace.” While their website (Arabic) doesn’t necessarily scream “peace & love”, I decided to take their, and other PFLP supporters, words at face value. After all who doesn’t want peace?

Apparently, the PFLP.

Did I expect that the PFLP had changed its ways? No. Did I expect that the PFLP was all of a sudden transformed into B’Tselem? Not at all. But I wouldn’t expect that the same people who would support a hiphop sulha, a movement of musicians coming together to achieve peace, unity, and equality-related goals, would also support this bulldozer terror attack. I would hope that the people who want to crush oppression don’t also want to crush young mothers in their cars. The guys I met surely didn’t seem too different than me — hiphop heads into music and having a good time, pro-peace, pro-unity — and as I don’t applaud murdered civilians, I would assume they didn’t either.

How does driving a bulldozer towards a marketplace benefit Palestine? So now, another terrorist’s house gets demolished, which will undoubtedly be followed by an increased level of security in the Israeli capital. This, in turn, will surely lead to more checkpoints, more searches, more “security measures” (and their unfortunate associated human rights abuses) — more things detrimental to the already struggling Palestinian economy. And all this is assuming Israeli doesn’t pursue military action in the West Bank. How is this pleasing to All-h?

Mr. Dwayat benefitted no one, actions like his benefit no one, and no person or group of people has ever truly emerged “victorious” from a terrorist incident such as this. The only people who will see any positive effect from the carnage in Jerusalem are the propagandists who will use the spilled blood to fuel their mind-control engines, pumping this up in various media outlets as either a “victory” or a “strike at the enemy”. And after Israel buries more of its dead, it will, as so many times before, rebuild, dust off, and daily life will return to the identical state it was in before the attack.

Were the Sulha happening this week, I would hold up today’s Jerusalem Post and ask, “do you support this?” to the PFLP supporters I met. I would ask if a unified Palestine really must come at the expense of young mothers’ lives, if babies really must be thrown to facilitate opportunity for Palestinians. I would ask if such fruitless actions are worth the reality of a newly homeless Palestinian family and almost seventy traumatized Israeli ones.

And I would hope that I would be offered some type of logic.

Because it takes a lot of logic to counteract this much stupidity.

May the souls of the departed have an aliyah.