Photo Credit: Hadas Parush / Flash 90
Border Guard Police officers check Palestinian Authority Arabs near Hebron, at Halhul.

Hebron resident Muammar Ata Mahmoud, 56, should not have been in Jerusalem Wednesday night.

Had he obeyed the conditions of his release from prison in 2013, he would not have been able to stab a Border Guard Police officer at the Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem.

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Mahmoud, a Palestinian Authority Arab resident of Hebron had no permit to enter pre-1967 Israel.

He and Salah Khalil Ahmad Ibrahim were both convicted of murdering Professor Menachem Stern, age 64, an Israel Prize-winning historian. They also murdered Palestinian Arab Hassin Zaid, a suspected collaborator with Israel.

They were freed in 2013 as part of the caravan of “good will gestures” to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas aimed at keeping him in peace talks that ultimately led nowhere.

Stern was an internationally-acclaimed historian on the Second Temple period. When his murderers were freed, his daughter Meira Stern-Glick protested, saying “A person who murdered in cold blood should sit for life.” As with all other family members who have seen the murderers of their loved ones freed in the cause of “peace with the Palestinian Authority,” her protest was ignored.

Stern was stabbed to death on June 22, 1989 while walking to the Jewish National and University Library at Hebrew University in Givat Ram. The murder took place against the backdrop of the first intifada, led by the Palestine Liberation Organization from 1987 to 1993. It began with false charges of Israeli “atrocities” and incessant instigation from the mosques.

In one week, an Israeli was stabbed, a traffic accident in which four Arabs were killed was transformed by lightning rumors into a “deliberate” provocation, there was mass rioting by Palestinian Arabs and a teen rioter was killed by an Israeli soldier when he hurled a firebomb at an army patrol.

In the four years of the violence, the IDF reported more than 3,600 firebombing attacks, 100 hand grenade attacks and 600 shootings and bombings by Palestinian Arabs. Within that time, 16 Israeli civilians and 11 soldiers were killed; more than 1,400 civilians and 1,700 soldiers were wounded. Approximately 1,100 Palestinian Arabs were killed in clashes with IDF soldiers.

By that criteria, Israel is now well into its third intifada. How many injured and dead will it take before Israel takes steps to end this one?

 

 

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Hana Levi Julian is a Middle East news analyst with a degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from Southern Connecticut State University. A past columnist with The Jewish Press and senior editor at Arutz 7, Ms. Julian has written for Babble.com, Chabad.org and other media outlets, in addition to her years working in broadcast journalism.