From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, June 20, 2023
Wounded Israeli recounts shooting, killing gas station terrorist
An Israeli who shot and killed one of the terrorists who attacked the gas station near the West Bank settlement of Eli, and was wounded in the gunfight, recounts his experience.
“I ran to the car — I rushed to the gas station,” Morel Nikel, a member of the settlement’s civilian security patrol, tells reporters from his hospital bed.
“I saw one of the terrorists. There was a gray Subaru. A man was sitting inside and that beast sprayed gunfire at him,” he says. “We started to fire at each other. I hit him; he hit me, to my sorrow.”
Asked if he realized he was hit during the gunbattle, Nikel replies: “I realized. The truth is it didn’t hurt that much. I felt it. Obviously, I realized I’d been shot. Hit by a bullet. Great. A bullet in the leg, a bullet in the shoulder,” says Nikel.
“I kept firing at him until he fell. He was still moving. Those beasts apparently have more than one soul. I fired one more [bullet] and he stopped moving. Thank God I’m fine. Nothing serious was hurt,” he says.
He notes that one of the doctors who treated him was an Arab and links it to an incident yesterday where soccer fans jeered a player from the national team and called him a terrorist.
“I’m fine. I got [excellent] treatment here. One of the people who treated me was called Mohammed. Yesterday, there was a soccer match [between Israel and Andorra]. One of the [Israeli] players, Mohammed Abu Fani, got all kinds of [abusive] jeers [from parts of the Israeli crowd]. We must understand, these are not our enemies. These Arabs are not our enemies. They can be our friends,” he says.
“But to my sorrow, there are many, many, many — and I’ve not checked this statistically — I think it’s the majority — the majority are our enemies, they hate us and want to kill us, and do kill us. The next attack will come,” he says, calling for preemptive strikes against the terrorists.
“You don’t need to wait until someone picks up a gun and kills people, and then kill him. Nobody [who our enemies want to kill] should be hurt or scratched… This is our country… including Judea and Samaria… They are slaughtering us… Why do we have to wait?” he asks.
“If they had killed six IDF soldiers in Jenin [where eight IDF soldiers were injured in clashes on Monday]… They want to kill us. They’ll do everything to achieve that. We have to kill them before they do,” he says.
