Reporting live from Tel Aviv, Breitbart Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter Aaron Klein stated in a radio interview on Wednesday that stabbings have become the “new normal” in Israel.
“Stabbing is the new normal,” stated Klein, an American citizen based in Israel as a foreign reporter. “Israelis need to contend with this now on an almost daily basis. The question obviously now becomes is there a strategy to defeat this? Can there even be a strategy to defeat this when a lot of it isn’t so coordinated?”
Klein was speaking during his weekly segment on John Batchelor’s popular national radio show.
Click below to listen to Klein’s full segment on Batchelor’s program.
Klein was speaking one day after American veteran Taylor Force was killed and at least ten others wounded, four seriously, in terrorist stabbing attacks perpetrated by the same individual at two locations in Jaffa, the port city located just south of Tel Aviv.
The attacks took place while Vice President Joe Biden was in Jaffa speaking at the Peres Center for Peace, Breitbart Jerusalem reported.
The Jaffa stabbing was just one of three attacks that took place within about two hours of each other. One Israeli was moderately wounded in a terrorist attack in Petah Tikva, located about nine miles south of Tel Aviv. Before that, two Israelis were wounded in a shooting attack near Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate, one of the main entrances to the Old City and the scene of scores of attacks and attempted attacks in recent months.
On Wednesday, two terrorists from Kafr Aqab in eastern Jerusalem carried out a combined vehicular and stabbing attack near the Damascus Gate, one of the main entrances to Jerusalem’s Old City. A Palestinian civilian was seriously wounded in the attack.
The theme of Palestinian stabbing attacks, combined with vehicular assaults and shootings, have become regular occurrences in Israel, with the news media dubbing the Palestinian terrorist offensive the “wave of violence.”
Speaking to Batchelor, Klein outlined several moves the Israeli government is taking in an attempt to curb the largely uncoordinated violence, including occasional closures of the West Bank and some troubled sections of eastern Jerusalem and stepped up antiterrorism operations in those areas.
Israel is also working closely with the Palestinian Authority’s security agencies and has demanded that the PA end the incitement that has been key to stoking the violence.
Klein also referenced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement on Wednesday that the Jewish state will complete construction of the country’s security barrier in Jerusalem and the southern West Bank.
Israel began construction of the security barrier in 2002 at the height of the second Palestinian intifada, a terrorist war of shootings and suicide bombings that targeted Israeli civilians. It was launched after PLO leader Yasser Arafat rejected an Israeli offer of a Palestinian state during U.S.-mediated negotiations in the summer of 2000.
Upon the completion of a significant continuous section of the security fence in 2003, Israel saw a marked decrease in the number of suicide bombers able to penetrate Israeli cities.
About 95% of the barrier consists of a chain-link fence backed up by high-tech surveillance systems and not the concrete barrier routinely shown by the news media.
The concrete barriers are usually only located in areas where the wall intersects with Israeli communities and roads, including areas of previous Palestinian shooting attacks.
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