Jewish teens stone car, injure Jewish toddler, were aiming for Palestinians

An Israeli toddler, 4, was lightly injured on Saturday night when Jewish teenagers, seeking to stone Palestinian cars, threw a rock at the vehicle he was in near the West Bank city of Hebron.

The boy was hurt by glass shards from a shattered window.

The Israel Defense Forces later arrested two Jewish minors from the settlement of Kiryat Arba in connection to the rock attack. The teenagers reportedly told soldiers they had sought to stone Palestinian cars.

The Israel Police said it was taking the case “very seriously” and had launched an investigation.

Since an ongoing wave of Palestinian terror attacks and Palestinian-Israeli violence broke out three months ago, there have been several cases where attackers misidentified the nationality of their victims. On October 13, a Jewish man stabbed and moderately wounded another Jew in a parking lot in Kiryat Ata after mistaking him for a Palestinian. He was later indicted for attempted murder.

On November 23, two Palestinian girls stabbed a 70-year-old Palestinian man in downtown Jerusalem, taking him for a Jew.

In a fatal case of misidentification, Haftom Zarhum, an Eritrean migrant, was shot and beaten to death by a mob that mistakenly believed he was a Palestinian attacker at the Beersheba bus station on October 18. The suspects — two Israel Prison Service employees, an IDF soldier and two civilians — face charges of aggravated assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm for their alleged role in the brutal attack.