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The Terror Of One

Mother Slain In
In Her Home, In
Front Of Children

How Israelis are living with the new “lone wolf” terror attacks.

Times of Israel

28 January 21 • 2016

D

Jewish News/Great Britain

T

he news alert flashed across the
iPhone screen on my way to
Kabbalat Shabbat services. Even
though Shabbat was already in, I took
a peek and learned that security forces
had located 29-year-old Nishat Milchem
in the Arab-Israeli village of Arara and
shot him dead.
Our Friday night
services include a part
where congregants
are encouraged to
meditate for a few
moments on events
of the week gone by;
to exhale the past
week and inhale the
Idele Ross
Shabbat. It was a dis-
tinct collective exhala-
tion of relief I sensed among those of us
who knew that the nationwide manhunt
for the Tel Aviv terrorist was over. But
it’s not over.
As I write these words, a Jerusalem
Post alert comes across my screen for
Beit Shemesh, where a police manhunt
is under way for at least one Palestinian
who reportedly stabbed a young Israeli
outside a grocery store after a bus driver
refused to allow them to board.
There’s no resolution to this new kind
of “lone wolf ” terror. In the last few
months, dozens of Israelis have been
killed and wounded in car rammings,
stabbings and, as in the Milhem attack,
shooting at civilian targets. The attacks
take place on streets, in buses, at busy
intersections; in middle-class neighbor-
hoods in quiet suburbs; anywhere and
everywhere. People call them “random,”
but they are not. They are carried out by
Muslims with access to illegal weapons
and weapons of opportunity who set out
to kill Israeli Jews.
It’s the terror of one, and this is very
different from the exploding buses and
suicide bombers of previous decades
carried out by Hamas- and PLO-linked
extremist factions. It differs from the
constant firing of kassam rockets at
communities adjacent to Gaza or the
roadside bombs on the border with
Lebanon.
Intelligence and counter-terror agencies
are finding it difficult to pinpoint and
prevent these unpredictable, ruthless and
hard-to-contain assaults. Understanding
what motivates them to plot and kill —
social media incitement, Jihad ideology,
revenge, a sense of hopelessness or a com-
bination — will take time.

Two people were killed and six others wounded in a shooting at a crowded pub on
Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv on Jan. 1.

The security establishment is also
dealing with a fairly new phenomenon,
we are told. Terrorists such as Nashat
Milhem come from a small group of
Arab Israelis who regard themselves as
enemies of the state and identify with
ISIS. The General Security Service (Shin
Bet) has arrested several suspected cells
of ISIS from villages around Nazareth
and dozens of Israeli Arab citizens have
reportedly gone to Syria to fight with
ISIS.
Israeli officials are urging the public
not to blame the entire Israeli Arab
community while law enforcement and
security experts wonder just how likely
there is another Milhem in in our midst.
Because it is so unpredictable, we
are all potential victims and we are all
vigilant. Our routines are maintained as
best we can in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem,
in Ra’anana and Beit Shemesh, in
Judea and Samaria. We look twice at
construction and road workers, at the
Arabic speakers, guys in hoodies and
burka-wearing commuters on the bus,
the train, even mothers walking with
strollers. I have even heard that people
have stopped shopping at certain popu-
lar supermarkets because they employ
Palestinians.
The unstable situation is a kind of low
frequency hum of the soundtrack of our
lives. We hear one siren and wait, know-
ing if it becomes two or more, we check
our cellphones for alerts, mindful of the

fact that we may need to locate our fam-
ily and friends.
Nevertheless, we go to work, send our
children to school, go to the gym or jog
with pepper spray in our pockets; we
shop and do errands, argue and love,
always with one ear to the radio or an
eye on the smartphone screen waiting
for the alert that we dread but know will
come.
It took a few days, but Tel Aviv came
back slowly to life. The Simta pub
reopened but without music, and a
memorial ceremony was attended by Tel
Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai.
Locals are returning to the neighbor-
hood pub, drinking beer and talking
about “the situation.” One side of the
small bar is still illuminated by candles
lit in the memory of Alon and Shimi,
two of the three victims of the terror
attack who were at the bar on that New
Year’s Day, a Friday afternoon.
A neighborhood resident who
stopped by said he was there to pay his
respects to those who were killed and
to the eight others who were wounded.
“They would all want us to continue to
live life to the fullest,” he said. “And we
will.”

*

Idele Ross, a former Detroiter, lives in Jerusalem.
She is a broadcast journalist with Kol Israel English
News Service and editor with MediaCentral, an
NGO that works with foreign correspondents in
Israel.

afna Meir, who was
stabbed to death in a
terror attack at the West
Bank settlement of Otniel, was buried
Monday in Jerusalem, the day after
she was murdered as she tried to
fight off a stabber who entered her
home in a terror attack.
Meir leaves
behind her hus-
band and four
children, ages 11
to 17, as well as
two foster chil-
dren, both below
the age of 5.
Initial investiga-
Dafna Meir
tions indicated
that Meir wrestled with the attacker
in an effort to protect three of her
children who were in the home dur-
ing the attack. The stabber fled the
scene without continuing the attack
before he could reach the children.
Media reports said her daughter
Renana, 17, witnessed the attack and
described the terrorist to authorities.
Meir’s neighbor, right-wing activist
Yehuda Glick, surmised the terrorist
likely would have attacked the three
children in the house at the time if
not for Meir fighting them off.
“The terrorist tried without a doubt
to hurt the kids, and Dafna, who was
so small and short, fought him,” he
told the Israeli news site Walla.
Meir, 38, worked as a nurse in the
neurosurgery department of Soroka
Medical Center, Beersheba. She was
also a pre-marital counselor for
brides.
As family and friends gathered for
the start of the funeral procession
on Monday, the assistant director of
the Soroka Medical Center, Professor
Yohanan Feizer, said: “Dafna dealt in
saving lives, and her life was plucked
from her in front of her children.”
Overnight on Monday, a 16-year-
old Palestinian male was arrested in
a village less than two miles from the
murder scene. Residents of the village
told security forces of his presence
there, allowing the arrest to proceed
without resistance, Israeli Channel 10
reported.
The arrested teen’s father said
on Tuesday that he was “proud” of
his son for carrying out the attack,
reported Walla, quoting Palestinian
media outlets.

*