Photo Credit: Yonatan Sindel / Flash 90
Aftermath of vehicular terrorist attack at the light rail station near Ammunition Hill, Jerusalem, Oct. 22, 2014.

On Wednesday evening, Oct. 22, an Arab resident of the Silwa neighborhood of Jerusalem, a member of the Hamas terrorist organization, deliberately plowed his car into a crowd of Israelis waiting for the light rail. The attack injured eight people, and a three month old baby, Chaya Ziso HY”D, died from the injuries she sustained in the attack.

The terrorist, later identified as 21 year-old Abdur Rahman Slodi, a Hamas member who has been jailed for terrorist activity, was shot at by police as he attempted to flee the attack scene. Initial reports were that the terrorist was killed. In fact, Slodi survived and underwent surgery at an Israeli hospital.

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But, in one of the best – if most pathetic – examples of man bites dog, the Palestinian Arab news source Maan described the incident in a very different way. This was Maan’s headline: “Palestinian ‘shot dead’ by Israeli police in Jerusalem.”

Really.

Despite a video plainly showing the white car which Slodi (whose name as reported in the Arab media is Abd al-Rahman al-Shaludi) was driving veer off the road and directly into a crowd of people waiting for the light rail, Maan described what happened as al-Shaludi having “lost control of his vehicle and it hit commuters standing nearby.” Those pesky murdering cars.

But how to explain that the Hamas member tried to flee the scene? Maan creatively explains: “al-Shaludi had exited his vehicle after striking the pedestrians, at which point he was shot in the back by the guards.”

Shot in the back, of course, suggests that the perpetrator did not pose an immediate threat. Why, he was just minding his own business, walking away after his evil car had misbehaved.

The Arab news source quoted unnamed “eyewitnesses,” who “stressed that the incident appeared to be an accident, not a terrorist attack, as had been reported by Israeli media.”

Maan failed to explain why Hamas leadership acknowledged the deed, attributing it to the evils of the “occupation.”

This is a natural response to the crimes of the occupation and invasion of our land by the Jews, particularly on the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” said Hamas spokesman Hossam Badran on Hamas television. 

Al-Shaludi, incredibly enough, had been unlucky before. Apparently he was, according to Maan, “previously a prisoner in Israeli jails and was held for 16 months before being released on Dec. 22, 2013.” Imagine that. A prisoner for all that time, and apparently for no reason, at least none worth mentioning. And then, shazam! It happened again. Al-Shaludi “was re-arrested in February for a month.”

What bad luck.

But Al-Shaludi is in an Israeli hospital, while baby Chaya is dead.

Maan was not the only media outlet to shift the wrongdoing from an Arab terrorist on to the Israelis. The initial Yahoo! News headline for the story, taken from the Associated Press, was “Israeli Police Shoot Man in East Jerusalem.”

No doubt the U.N. will condemn the Israeli police. Or Al-Shaludi’s car.

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Lori Lowenthal Marcus is a contributor to the JewishPress.com. A graduate of Harvard Law School, she previously practiced First Amendment law and taught in Philadelphia-area graduate and law schools. You can reach her by email: [email protected]