‘I am Islamic State,’ yelled Jerusalem man before soldiers shot him

Simcha Hodedatov, a Jewish man who was shot to death in Jerusalem Wednesday night by soldiers who thought he was a terrorist, yelled “I am Daesh,” the Arabic acronym for Islamic State, before he was shot, some witnesses said.

However, according to another account, when soldiers asked him to identify himself, he asked, “What am I? Daesh?”

Military police investigators on Thursday joined the investigation into the shooting, which took place on a bus near the western entrance to the capital. The soldiers fired on Hodedatov during a physical altercation, apparently brought about by his suspicion that the soldiers were themselves terrorists.

According to an initial investigation, Hodedatov, 28, an immigrant from Dagestan, was a student in a yeshiva in Jerusalem. He had previously served as a soldier in an ultra-Orthodox IDF combat unit and after his discharge worked as a security guard in a kindergarten.

One of Hodedatov’s friends in the yeshiva said that he was introverted and hot-tempered, in addition to not being fluent in Hebrew. “He was a bit lacking in judgment; I don’t know how capable he was of carrying a gun,” the friend said.

A security guard who worked with him said he had significant trouble expressing himself in Hebrew. “He is completely unintelligible. I suppose his looks, the way he spoke and his short fuse made tempers run high all around,” the guard told Ynet.

Other friends said Hodedatov used to engage in sports and martial arts back in Dagestan. “He was hot-tempered and was involved in several violent incidents in the past. One time we saw that he left his handgun on his books [at the yeshiva],” a friend said, apparently referring to the licensed firearm he carried as a security guard.

The soldiers told investigators after the shooting that they believed Hodedatov was trying to grab their rifles during the scuffle, which took place on a bus on Yirmiyahu Street in the capital’s Romema neighborhood, at the tail end of a day that had seen several attacks against Israelis.

According to police, Hodedatov got into an argument with the two soldiers, apparently thinking they might be terrorists. When Hodedatov asked them for identification, they, in turn, demanded that he submit to a search. Soon, a scuffle broke out, during which Hodedatov tried to grab a rifle from one of the soldiers, police said. During the melee, the driver of the bus tried to tase Hodedatov in an effort to subdue him. Meanwhile, a security guard who witnessed the incident rushed to the bus and shot at him. Then the soldiers, thinking Hodedatov a terrorist, shot him again.

Hodedatov was pronounced dead at the scene. He did not have a knife on his person, as was initially reported.

“The initial investigation concluded that the gunfire came from a soldier,” the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said Thursday. The soldier’s involvement has led to the launching of an investigation within the IDF, the army said.

“The details [of the incident] are under investigation within the security services. The circumstances are being examined,” the statement said.

“The soldiers had high suspicions that he was a terrorist,” Israel Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said Thursday.

The incident occurred during an especially tense day. Earlier Wednesday, a female soldier was stabbed and critically injured by a Palestinian at Adam junction just north of Jerusalem, a vehicular assault in the West Bank wounded five soldiers, and a man rammed his car into a checkpoint near the settlement of Ofra, injuring a policeman.