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Times Exclusive: Deranged Arab in bulldozer attacks NY Times's Isabel Kershner at her pedicure. Reporting live from the scene still in her curlers and with her beautician at her side, Kershner gives a minute-by minute account of the horrifying moment when the bulldozer crashed through the pedicure's windowfront crushing the nail on her little toe. "My friends in the Catskills just won't believe it," she said. "A smashed toe nail. How can Israelis live with so much anxiety?" Related stories: Israeli bulldozers obliterate 10,000 Palestinian homes. Go to page 40 of the Fashion section. Bulldozer Strikes Israeli Bus, Killing Two 07.03.2008 | The New York Times By ISABEL KERSHNER JERUSALEM — The Palestinian driver of a huge yellow tractor went on a deadly rampage along a central Jerusalem thoroughfare on Wednesday, crushing several cars and ramming into buses and pedestrians before an off-duty soldier and a police officer clambered up to the cabin and shot him dead. At least three people were killed by the lurching vehicle, and more than 40 were wounded, Israeli officials said. The police were treating the incident as a terrorist attack, and said the driver, aged about 30, was a resident of Sur Baher, an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem that was conquered, then annexed, by Israel after the 1967 war. “There is no doubt at all that this was a terrorist attack,” Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said at the scene shortly after. Mr. Rosenfeld added that the authorities were investigating whether the driver, identified by acquaintances as Hussam Dweikat, had acted alone or on orders from an organization. The victims were not immediately identified. The fact that the driver was a Jerusalem resident, with free access to all parts of the city, was likely to raise tensions here. Less than four months ago another East Jerusalem Palestinian, Ala Abu Dhaim, gunned down eight students at a prominent Jewish seminary in West Jerusalem, triggering calls for harsh action such as the demolition of the attacker’s family home. Police officials said that the driver had a criminal background, but that there had been no prior intelligence information to suggest that he would perpetrate an attack. Three Palestinian groups claimed responsibility including Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a group affiliated with the mainstream Fatah movement led by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. But it was not clear if any of the claims were credible. The Israeli chief of police, Dudi Cohen, said later on Wednesday that the attacker appeared to have been acting spontaneously, and alone. Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, and that recently agreed to a temporary cease-fire with Israel there, said it did not carry out the attack but nevertheless praised it, according to The Associated Press. Witnesses said they saw the Caterpillar end loader set off close to midday from a building site at one of the busiest intersections in the predominantly Jewish, western half of the city, between the central bus station and the popular Mahane Yehuda market. The hulking vehicle turned into Jaffa Road, a main artery that runs through the city’s commercial downtown area, immediately slicing through the drivers’ cabin of a small white van and flipping a silver Chevrolet on its side. Continuing along Jaffa Road, the driver used the end loader’s massive serrated scoop to overturn a bus from the Egged public transport company and leave a swath of tangled wreckage about 300 yards long, mowing into several other cars and colliding with a second bus. The police believed the driver may have intended to plow his vehicle into the crowded market. “It could have been a lot worse,” Mr. Rosenfeld, the police spokesman, said. Police officials contended that it was necessary to kill the driver to stop him. An initial police investigation indicated that at least four security personnel had tried to stop him, without success. The off-duty soldier shot him but failed to kill him. An officer from a special anti-terror police unit who sped to the scene on a motorcycle finally ended the episode. The officer, Eli Mizrahi, told reporters that he had climbed up to the driver’s cabin “when he was still driving like crazy and trying to harm civilians,” and said that he fired twice. Much of the incident took place directly below the windows of an office block housing several foreign television networks. The tractor finally came to a halt outside the Israel Broadcast Authority building, a car completely flattened beneath it. In the first moments, witnesses said, they thought the vehicle was involved in a road accident but that it soon became apparent the driver was on the attack, sowing panic. “People started running for cover into stores and buildings,” said Yuri Gudkovich, a security guard at an apartment block on Jaffa Road. A crowd of passers-by also began to chase the end loader, desperate for a way to stop it. “We started to run after it, shouting to find someone with a gun,” said Moshe Oren, who works in a store-front transport company along the road. Mr. Oren, 58, said he looked into the face of the driver and saw “an expression of madness. It’s hard to define,” Mr. Oren continued, “but he also seemed cool headed. He looked crazy and calculated at the same time.” Spare diapers, a toddler’s pink jacket and a bottle of fruit juice were scattered on the bottom of the overturned bus. There was blood on the bonnet of a car whose roof had been ripped off. Residents of the area were incensed. Sara Nagani, 48, who was watching the emergency services work, said the driver’s neighborhood “has to be wiped out.” She said she had come to Jerusalem with her family from India at the age of 3. “I’ll live and die here,” she said, “but not like this.” Caterpillar equipment has a special resonance in Israel. Human rights activists have lobbied the company to stop selling its heavy vehicles to the Israeli military out of concern that they have been used to demolish Palestinian homes, uproot orchards and construct Jewish settlements in occupied land. Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem and Alan Cowell from Paris. Myra Noveck contributed reporting. SHARE THIS POST:     |
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Video: On the place of civility in academic life (10.18.2007) Finkelstein's talk at the academic freedom conference Tenure Denial Letters (June - November, 2007) On How Actual Survivors Were Cheated by Jewish Organizations:
Communication for Middle East Journal. (02.19.2006) Alleged Errors in Beyond Chutzpah. (2005) MEMRI NAZIS (again) (10.23.2006)  New evidence of old lies (2005) Under the heading DIABOLICAL PLOTS, I stated in Beyond Chutzpah...    Articles and Reviews Related to The Holocaust Industry  Preface to German edition of The Rise and Fall of Palestine Postscript to German edition of The Rise and Fall of Palestine The Dershowitz File:
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