There goes the fear

Fear and defiance may be opposites, but anyone living through Israel’s latest terror wave will tell you that they seem to be there constantly, lurking behind every news bulletin announcing a fresh stabbing and in the thought process of every person who says they won’t stay home and let the terrorists win, turning the country into a big ball of bipolar boldness and frustration.

That interplay is on full display on Sunday’s front pages, which feature photos showing both violence and patriotic (or jingoistic, depending on your viewpoint) displays by blue-and-white bleeding, flag-waving Israelis. (Tellingly, reports on an attack in which a Jewish man stabbed three Arabs and in which a mob attacked an Arab man in Netanya are nowhere to be found anywhere near any of the front pages.)

All the Israeli flags in the world won’t cover up the horrifying scene pictured on page one of Yedioth, though, which show an attack right before it happens, as a photographer for a local annex of the paper happened to be walking by.

Being at the scene of the stabbing probably means you’re at the wrong place at the wrong time, but for Tzipi Malka, it turned into a rare series of pictures of an attack as it occurred, featuring an angry-looking young man drawing his knife near Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate, stabbing a man, and then being shot to death.

Her workaday description of coming upon the scene by chance is eerily normal, at first describing his fashionable sneakers, skinny jeans and sweatshirt, until it’s frighteningly chaotic, as the attacker pulls a knife.

“I froze in place. For a second I thought maybe I was the target, but the guy had different plans,” she writes. “He moved like a panther stalking its prey, jumpy and cocked. After a few seconds, he saw a Jewish Haredi man in his 50s, likely returning from the Western Wall. He jumped on him and knocked him to the ground. The Haredi man started to scream ‘In heaven’s name, what did I do to you. God, spare me!’ but the kid was determined, and plunged his knife in.”

Despite the pictures, Haaretz’s Nir Hasson reports that area vendors and others believed the stabber did nothing wrong and was shot to death for no reason.

“What I saw was Israeli troops shooting and killing a little kid. I don’t believe it, show me the knife,” he quotes a witness saying.
The attack was one of several violent incidents that occurred over the weekend, including other stabbing attacks or attempts in Jerusalem and Afula, and rioting in the West Bank and at the Gaza border fence.

Tabloid Israel Hayom leads off with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest plan to crack down on the terror threat, namely dispatching 13 more battalions of border police to Jerusalem and around the country.

Calling Netanyahu’s move “a good start,” the paper’s Boaz Bismuth urges a massive call-up of troops, what he calls an “Iron Dome against lone wolf attackers” which will have the same effect as the storied anti-missile system that saved the Gaza area and rest of the country from hundreds of rocket strikes last year.

“The Israeli citizen wants peace, wants cheap Milky, but mostly he wants security. That’s his basic right. The country was founded, among other things, just for that. It didn’t take us a long time to understand that the Middle East and peace are oxymoronic, and wars and clashes are expected in life here in Israel, but we have also realized that Middle East and security together are indeed possible,” he writes. “What’s needed now is a different type of Iron Dome, which will ensure our security against the lone wolf terror threat. It’s possible. It doesn’t need technology or engineering or even a big budget. It just needs the massive presence of army and police in the field. This other Iron Dome needs to treat every attacker as if it were a rocket.”

In Haaretz, analyst Amos Harel takes note of the violence along the Gaza border Friday, which left several Palestinians dead, as well as rocket attacks, and surmises it might not be long before the actual Iron Dome starts working overtime again, drawing parallels between the summer of 2014, when violence started in the West Bank and spread to Gaza, and today.

“The question now is what exactly is the interest of Hamas in Gaza? Ever since last year’s war, the organization has largely avoided stepping on toes, so as not to get involved in another clash with Israel. The population of Gaza has not yet recovered from the damage inflicted on them by the last war,” he writes. “Now, Hamas might loosen the leash on Islamic Jihad and the radical Salafist groups. In the background is Iran, which sponsors the Islamic Jihad in Gaza and has a good deal of influence over its activities. Rocket fire from the Strip over the next few days is a reasonable scenario. But the magnitude of the fire, the targets that are chosen and, of course, whether it leads to casualties – those are the factors that will decide whether Gaza, too, will be dragged into escalation.”

Alongside all the doomsday scenarios, though, there remains resilience. Yedioth runs the headline “Jerusalem will not give in” alongside pictures of Israelis jamming with reggae star Matisyahu and watching Israel’s soccer team lose to Cyprus Saturday night despite the tensions.

“We aren’t more scared than usual,” a 9-year- old soccer fan from Herzliya is quoted telling the paper from the stands in the capital’s Teddy Stadium. “The security at the game is supposed to be tighter than in Herzliya. And anyway, the crowd is the 12th man, and it doesn’t make sense for a player on the national team not to come to the game.”

In Israel Hayom, Yoav Limor also counsels putting things in perspective and not getting carried away with fear.

“At this point, Israel and the Palestinian Authority are content to deal with the incidents and keep the violence from spreading as much as possible. Contributing to this effort is the Israeli order not to harm West Bank Palestinian day-to-day life as much as possible (work permits in Israel are continuing as normal, and roads remain open) and minimizes their participation in riots. In reports it may seem sometimes as though there’s a real war raging between troops and protesters, but in actuality, these are relatively small disturbances of between 100 and 200 people, compared to thousands in the past – and the IDF, in conjunction with Palestinian security forces, have managed to deal with them relatively easily.”