Here’s the horrifying story: “Two Israelis Attacked, Car Set on Fire After Driving Into Ramallah,” Algemeiner, December 1, 2021:
Palestinian rioters Wednesday night [Dec. 1] attacked two Israeli civilians and set their vehicle on fire after the pair stopped in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday night, Israel’s army said.
The two Israelis are Breslov Hasidim. They were attempting to return to their homes in the settlement of Hashmonaim in the West Bank, but after stopping at a gas station, got lost and ended up in Ramallah, at Al-Manara Square. A crowd quickly assembled, surrounded the car, and bayed for the blood of the Israelis inside, when Palestinian security men were able to extricate the Israelis and whisk them away to safety. It was a very close call. The crowd had to be content with looting the car, then setting it on fire, shouting excitedly about their desire to destroy those Jews, and proclaiming, of course, “Allahu akbar.”
The two men were rescued by Palestinian security forces and reached a nearby checkpoint after sustaining minor injuries, before being turned over to Israeli authorities and released.
Ramallah is the capital of the Palestinian Authority. There is a heavy police presence, assigned to protect Mahmoud Abbas, and the other PA leaders, and their well-paid loyalists and relatives who live at the “Diplomats’ Compound” in the city. Those police managed to quickly whisk the Israelis away, which prevented the howling mob of maddened Palestinians from murdering them.
Footage of the incident shared online showed crowds of residents surrounding and looting the vehicle before setting it ablaze.
Initial Israeli media reports said the two men had mistakenly entered the city, which is located in the Palestinian Authority-controlled area officially prohibited to Israelis by military order. They were later questioned by Israel Police.
Israel’s N12 news reported the men were Breslov Hasidim, and quoted one as explaining during his interrogation that they had stopped at a gas station and were attempting to drive to the West Bank settlement of Hashmonaim.
This incident has prompted me to recall another lynching that took place on October 12, 2000, at the el-Bireh police station in Ramallah, where a crowd of Palestinians murdered, and then mutilated the bodies of, two Israel Defense Forces reservists.
The two Israelis who were murdered that day were Vadim Nurzhnitz, a truck driver, and Yosef “Yossi” Avrahami, a toy salesman. They were both in the IDF Reserve, and had been heading, in Nurzhnitz’s Ford Escort, to an army base near the West Bank settlement of Beit El. They were unfamiliar with the West Bank road system, and drove through the Israeli military checkpoint outside Beitunia and headed – by mistake — straight into the Palestinian town of Ramallah , two miles east of the checkpoint. Reaching a Palestinian Authority roadblock, where previously Israeli soldiers had been turned back, the reservists were detained by PA policemen and taken to the local police station.
An angry crowd of more than 1,000 Palestinians gathered in front of the station calling for the deaths of the Israelis. Soon after, Palestinian rioters stormed the building. The two men were beaten, stabbed, disemboweled, and had their eyes gouged out. A Palestinian (later identified as Aziz Salha) appeared at the second-floor window of the police station, holding up his blood-soaked hands to the frenzied crowd. Another Palestinian appeared at the window, holding up the entrails of one of the disemboweled Israelis. One of the soldier’s bodies was then thrown out the window. The mob, by now whipped to an insane bloodthirsty madness, stamped and beat the corpse until there was very little left for their families to bury. Then, the mob dragged the two mutilated bodies – their eyes gouged out and their entrails pulled out –to Al-Manara Square in the city center, so everyone in the city could enjoy the spectacle. There the crowd began a victory celebration.
Police officers confiscated footage from reporters. One was a British photographer, Mark Seager, who attempted to photograph the event, but the mob physically assaulted him and destroyed his camera. After the event, he stated, “It [the lynching] was the most horrible thing that I have ever seen and I have reported from Congo, Kosovo, many bad places…. I know they [Palestinians] are not all like this and I’m a very forgiving person but I’ll never forget this. It was murder of the most barbaric kind. When I think about it, I see that man’s head, all smashed. I know that I’ll have nightmares for the rest of my life.”
What would have happened this November to those two Hasidic Jews who, like Vadim Nurzhnitz and Yossi Avrahami in 2000, had simply taken a wrong turn and ended up in Ramallah, had they not been rescued by PA security men? The mob that set fire to their car, cheering at the spectacle and jeering at the Jews, would certainly have been even happier had they managed to torch the car with the Israelis inside. This barbarism has no end.
One final observation: what do you think would happen if the situations had been reversed, and Palestinians had driven by mistake into a West Bank settlement? Would Israelis surround them, stab them to death, mutilate their bodies, gouge out their eyes, disembowel them, and hold up bloody hands and bloody entrails to an assembled crowd, cheering the spectacle? Of course not. The Israelis would instead provide directions so that the Palestinians could drive to their intended destination, perhaps even accompanying them part of the way in another car to make sure they were headed in the right direction.
Moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians? There is no moral equivalence. One represents civilization, and the other barbarism. Think of the murders, in 2000, of Vadim Nizhnitz and Yossi Avrahami, while thousands cheered, in Ramallah. Think of the close escape the other day of the two Breslov Hasidim, whose wrong turn would almost certainly have led to their being burned alive in their car, or beaten to death beside it, had Palestinian security men not rescued them, in Ramallah.
Siddi Nasrani says
And the world thinks that Islam is a “Religion of Peace” ???!!!
Go tell me another.
Michael Copeland says
Remember also that, after this “murder of the most barbaric kind”, a frenzied member of the crowd made a spectacle of EATING part of one victim. This was reported by Raymond Ibrahim.
gravenimage says
You aren’t wrong, Michael. Just horrifying.
Infidel says
The news in this story was Pali security men rescuing them so that they could get back home
gravenimage says
Yes–credit where it is due. Brave and decent men–in this case, certainly.
Westman says
That was the good part. The bad part is the PA has no influence but the use of force. What would have happened if Hamas was first to arrive?
Fitna says
These are the so-called ‘peace partners’? Sure give them a state, turn the ‘West Bank’ into another terrorist enclave.
Would Biden or the Europeans ever take these people to be their neighbors? Yet they persecute Israel for building a few apartments for their own people and try to force them to give more of their own land away to these savages.
We hear all this BS about how Muslims are not monolithic or hold the same views, yet everywhere you look where Islam is dominant, Muslims behave like monsters, Pakistan, Nigeria, West Bank, Syria, etc.
I don’t know what it will take to get the world to wake up and deal with this death cult, but we are allowing them into our nations at our own peril.
Anjuli Pandavar says
“Would Biden or the Europeans ever take these people to be their neighbors?”
—-
They welcome them as immigrants. “They are not dangerous. They are in danger.”
Anjuli Pandavar says
Two things struck me about the lynching of October 2000: the first was the frenzied barbarism of the Palestinians; the second was what British photographer Mark Seager, who witnessed the Palestinians doing this, said afterwards: “It [the lynching] was the most horrible thing that I have ever seen and I have reported from Congo, Kosovo, many bad places…. I know they [Palestinians] are not all like this and I’m a very forgiving person but I’ll never forget this. It was murder of the most barbaric kind. When I think about it, I see that man’s head, all smashed. I know that I’ll have nightmares for the rest of my life.”
“I know they [Palestinians] are not all like this”??????? Is he saying that he was hallucinating? Is he saying that “they” were not Palestinians? This is what scares me the most: when the facts can make no inroads into what you already *know* to be the case. He KNOWS the Palestinians are not what he *sees* they are right before his eyes. It is generally not understood that a mind impervious to reality is as much an element of totalitarianism as the barbarism for which it is better known.
Fitna says
He KNOWS the Palestinians are not what he *sees* they are right before his eyes. It is generally not understood that a mind impervious to reality is as much an element of totalitarianism as the barbarism for which it is better known.
Well said, it’s cognitive dissonance. He’s been fed a pile of lies that the Palis (Muslims) are all kind decent people and only a few are radical. Then he sees this barbaric behavior, reality doesn’t match up, is incongruent with his mental image of ‘the Palestinians.’ Human psychology-he thinks he’s seeing an aberration rather than the norm.
I learned a long time ago to treat people as they are, not what they (or others) tell you what they are, esp. when it comes to Muslims. As the cliche goes ‘action speaks louder than words.’
Infidel says
Now that they’re safe, here’s the other question: don’t those settlers have Waze or GPS in their cars?
gravenimage says
In Ramallah, Two Israelis Take a Wrong Turn, Maddened Muslim Mob Tries to Murder Them
……………
Just horrifying–and this sort of thing has happened before.
Just glad–and surprised–that “Palestinian” security actually saved these Israelis from the Muslim mob. Kudos to them for doing the right thing, and at some danger to themselves.