After deadly attack, supermarket owner defends security at site

Rami Levy, the owner of a West Bank supermarket where a deadly stabbing attack took place last week, insisted Sunday that security arrangements at the site were adequate, and that the terrorist act had not been prevented only due to extreme bad luck.

“We have done just what police required of us… We receive instructions from the police and we do as they say,” Levy told Army Radio. “[The attack] was just sheer bad luck.”

Levy, whose eponymous supermarket chain has a major presence in the West Bank as well as inside Israel proper and is popular with both Israelis and Palestinians, brushed off speculation that his chain had been specifically targeted and urged the public to be resilient in the face of terror.

“Unfortunately, all of Israeli society has become a target,” Levy said. “It has happened in Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem, in every place in Israel… the [terrorists] want to disrupt our routine, but we cannot surrender to terror.”

Tuvia Yanai Weissman, 21, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Michmas, died of wounds sustained during a stabbing terror attack Thursday at the supermarket in the Sha’ar Binyamin Industrial Zone, southeast of Ramallah in the West Bank. He was stabbed and critically injured while shopping with his wife Yael and four-month-old daughter Neta.

Police said after the attack that lax security was partly to blame for the incident, and appeared intent on making an example of the store in order to pressure other businesses to increase their vigilance.

Investigators found that the two Palestinian teens who stabbed Weissman to death and seriously wounded another man were able to bring knives into the store without being inspected by the security guard at the entrance.

Officials said the store would be shuttered until serious security flaws were remedied. The chain may also face a forced closure of all its West Bank stores unless security is boosted across the board.

A senior police official told Channel 2 news the move was intended mainly a deterrent to other businesses.

Weissman, an IDF soldier, was on a week-long leave from the army when he was attacked, and so was without a firearm.

Omar Rimawi and Ihad Sabah, both 14 from Beitunia near Ramallah, were identified as the two attackers. They were shot by an armed civilian who rushed to the scene after hearing screaming. Sabah died of his wounds. Rimawi remains hospitalized.

Israeli police released photographs from the supermarket showing blood splattered on the floor of an aisle stocked with laundry detergent on display near a shopping cart.

Security footage from the attack showed that three Palestinians sought to enter the supermarket. A security guard turned one away, but allowed the other two in without a physical check.

Thursday’s attack was the second to occur in a Rami Levy supermarket in recent years. In 2014, two Israelis were moderately injured in an attack at a branch of the discount chain in Mishor Adumim, an industrial zone east of Jerusalem.

Since October 1, 2015, some 30 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians in knife, gun and car-ramming attacks. More than 160 Palestinians have been killed, some 115 of them while carrying out attacks, and others during clashes and demonstrations.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.