The maiden and the madman
Hebrew newspapers pay homage to a woman murdered on Jerusalem’s light rail, but are divided on whether to call the killer a terrorist
Ilan Ben Zion is an AFP reporter and a former news editor at The Times of Israel.
The rising crisis over North Korea and the murder of a British student on Jerusalem’s light rail set a dour tone in the Hebrew newspapers on Sunday morning ahead of the concluding day of Passover.
British overseas student Hannah Bladon, 21, was stabbed to death by a Palestinian man with psychiatric issues on Jerusalem’s light rail Friday afternoon. Two days later, the Hebrew tabloids mourn her as a victim of terrorism, with headlines derived from quotes to and from the woman’s friends.
“I’m living it up, don’t worry about me,” reads the headline kicking off three pages of coverage in Israel Hayom, quoting Bladon writing to her parents a few months ago. Yedioth Ahronoth‘s headline quotes Bladon’s roommate’s text message after the attack: “I just read about a stabbing in the light rail… so watch out.” The link that appears in the image of her roommate’s phone is none other than The Times of Israel’s breaking news article covering the attack.
The free daily Israel Hayom’s front page extols her for coming to Israel out of a love for the Bible and “her aspiration to learn and understand life here, the capital and the language.” Both papers quote eyewitnesses saying that Bladon either “turned into a target, apparently because of her good merits,” according to Israel Hayom, or “paid for her life because of her manners and goodheartedness,” per Yedioth Ahronoth, when she gave up a seat for a pregnant woman just before being stabbed.
Whereas Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel Hayom call the attacker a terrorist in their lead sentences, only Haaretz mentions at the top of its coverage that the man had a history of mental illness. Unlike the tabloids, the liberal paper doesn’t hype up the story beyond putting the headline on the front page.
Both tabloids instead offer separate articles about Jamil Tamimi, the killer, reporting that he is an East Jerusalem man in his 50s who had just been released from a mental hospital in northern Israel and had a long history of mental illness. (Haaretz reports that the man was institutionalized in Jerusalem rather than a psychiatric hospital in northern Israel, but doesn’t say where that information comes from.) He told police that he committed the murder because he wanted to be shot dead by security personnel. While these facts are mentioned explicitly, he is nonetheless defined as being a terrorist rather than a criminal.
Israel Hayom runs a “letter to grieving parents,” (presumably those of Bladon who likely don’t read Hebrew), which appears more aimed at stirring up Jewish paranoia and entrenching convictions that Palestinians are all anti-Semites than actually conveying solace to the parents of a murdered woman.
Kay Wilson writes in the Hebrew-language article that the murder of Kristine Luken in 2010 is similar to that of Bladon on Friday. “The two of them came to Israel to learn about us, the two of them came to learn the language and to discover our land — and the two of them were murdered because of mistaken identity,” Wilson says. Luken’s murderers mistook her for an Israeli Jew, Wilson says, jumping to the conclusion that Tamimi must have mistaken Bladon for a Jew when he stabbed her. “Now they will be an indivisible part of our history.”
While the tabloids put Bladon’s murder at the top of their agenda, Haaretz opts to lead with context about the stabbing without introducing the incident itself. (Curiously, Haaretz’s Amos Harel calls Jamil Tamimi a terrorist in his front page reporting on the jailing of Palestinians in the past year for plotting to carry out terror attacks.) The headline to the article informs readers that, in the past year, 400 Palestinians were imprisoned by Israel for “signs that they would carry out terror attacks,” but Harel only gets to that point after hundreds of words of background about the nature of Palestinian terrorism in the past year and a half and the various efforts by Israeli security agencies to thwart individuals determined to injure and kill Israelis.
The paper reports that the IDF and Shin Bet have started scanning the Internet for “a variety of early warning signals for big attacks” and “clues about concrete plans to carry them out themselves.” In the process, in a little over a year, around 2,200 Palestinians have been identified in various stages of preparing for a stabbing or vehicular attack, and over 400 have been arrested by the IDF and Shin Bet, it reports.
North Korea’s flexing of muscle over the weekend also grabs some attention, but only for lack of any local news besides Bladon’s murder due to the holiday. Pyongyang’s missile display at a military parade over the weekend makes a front page appearance in all three Hebrew newspapers, with Yedioth Ahronoth warning of the “winds of war” and Israel Hayom saying that North Korea “fires threats.” US President Donald Trump’s reply, that “Pyongyang is a problem, and it will be taken care of” makes the headline in Haaretz, which relies on wires for its coverage.
