Uncle of suspected stabbers says they didn’t do it

The uncle of the two adolescent suspected attackers in a Jerusalem light rail stabbing earlier in the day says that he does not believe the police claim that they were involved in the incident.

“We heard that they were part of the stabbing attack but I will tell you the truth, we have no faith in the police. We have already seen in other cases, in Hebron and even in Jerusalem, they make up stories and even killed a Jew they suspected of being an Arab,” Sheikh Abdullah Alkam says, referring to the shooting death of a yeshiva student during a confrontation with troops last month. “Maybe they planted a knife on them, I don’t know. We want to to first check what happened. I’m their eldest uncle and I was to check everything carefully.”

He says the boys studied at the same school and lists their ages as 11 and 13, not 12 and 13 as has been reported in Israeli media.

Despite expressing doubt that they were the stabbers, he seems to justify attacks by young Palestinians living in poverty in East Jerusalem.

“They see how soldiers act at checkpoints, they see how nice it is in Pisgat Ze’ev and French Hill,” he says, referring to two Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. “And what do they have? There isn’t even a garbage truck. The streets look like hell. A hundred thousand people without normal services living in harsh conditions.”

— Avi Issacharoff