Armed Civilian Shoots Terrorist, Saves Lives in Terror Attack Near Jerusalem

MA'ALEH ADUMIM, WEST BANK - FEBRUARY 22: A Member of the Zaka, Search and Rescue team
Amir Levy/Getty
Joel B. Pollak

Hananya Ben Shimon, 23, an Israeli reservist fresh from military service in Gaza, shot and killed one of three Palestinian terrorists who had opened fire on civilians stuck in traffic on Thursday near Jerusalem, helping to stop the deadly attack.

One man, Matan Elmaliah, 26, was killed in the attack, and several other people were wounded, including a pregnant woman who was shot in the chest and who is reportedly recovering at a nearby hospital; her unborn baby did not appear to have been harmed.

Ben Shimon is a member of a tank unit that was fighting Hamas in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis. Miraculously, no one in the unit suffered serious injury during months of battle. He was armed Thursday on his way to his job as a guard for tourists.

The Times of Israel reported:

A reservist soldier who recently returned from the war in the Gaza Strip shot dead one of the three terrorists who attacked motorists Thursday near a checkpoint between Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement city of Ma’ale Adumim but was himself moderately injured in the exchange of fire.

One person was killed and 11 others injured in the attack.

…

Hananya “fired a first bullet through the window and then he got out, made contact, and took out the terrorist,” the father [Arik] said, calling his son “a hero.”

The successful intervention of an armed civilian is the first such incident since a tragic accident in late November, when an armed civilian intervened in a terror attack in Jerusalem, only to be shot accidentally by reserve soldiers who also killed the terrorists.

National security minister Itamar Ben Gvir said Thursday that Ben Shimon’s successful intervention supported his policy of distributing more arms to civilians to thwart terror attacks. Israeli gun controls have loosened since the Hamas attack October 7.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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