Soldier dismissed from elite unit for not stopping his stabber

An IDF soldier who was wounded by a Palestinian teenager in a stabbing attack is dismissed from his elite combat unit for failing to stop his attacker, the army says.

On June 1, a Palestinian teenage girl approached the soldier, who served in the Maglan unit, as he was standing outside the Mevo Dotan settlement in the northern West Bank. She took out a knife and stabbed him, lightly wounding him.

The girl then ran from the scene, with another uniformed soldier and an off-duty soldier in pursuit.

The second uniformed soldier “eliminated the threat,” the army says, shooting the teenage assailant and fatally wounding her.

After an investigation of the incident, the commander of Maglan decided to dismiss the soldier from the unit for “not working to neutralize the terrorist as expected of him as a combat soldier in the IDF,” the army says in a statement.

— Judah Ari Gross