Terrorists on Wednesday evening opened fire from a moving vehicle at a resident of the Shomron (Samaria) community of Havat Gilad (Gilad Farm) , who was driving on the road near the community. The resident was not hurt but his vehicle sustained damage. IDF forces began searching the area in an attempt to locate the shooters. Moments before this attack, Arab terrorists threw rocks at an Israeli vehicle that was traveling near Beit Haggai, near Hevron. There were no injuries in this incident either, but the vehicle sustained damage. In recent weeks, Arab terrorists have carried out numerous attacks in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem . Many of these attacks, which have become “routine”, are usually ignored by the mainstream media unless someone is seriously hurt or killed. On Tuesday, for example, Rabbi Yitzhak Cohen whose son Neria Cohen was murdered in the Mercaz HaRav attack in 2008, was violently attacked by Arab youths as he visited his son's grave on the Mount of Olives. Rock attacks can be lethal, as was the case in an attack in September of 2011 which targeted Asher Palmer and his infant son Yonatan. The two were killed when an Arab terrorist hurled large rocks at their car. In another incident nearly a year ago, three-year-old Adelle Biton was critically wounded in a rock terror attack in Samaria. In November, two-year-old Avigail Ben-Tzion was seriously injured by Arab rock-throwers in Jerusalem. The attackers began by hurling a firebomb into the road, with the aim of causing an accident and to block the path of oncoming traffic, and then proceeded to pelt oncoming traffic with large rocks as the vehicles sped up to escape the ambush.
Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount - the holiest site in Judaism - were shocked on Tuesday to find Muslim youths yet again desecrating the holy site with a game of soccer in violation of the law; their opposition to the illegal act led one of them to be arrested by Israeli police. The Joint Headquarters of Temple Organizations (Joint HQ) reported that a Jew in his early 30s asked police present at the site to stop the soccer game, but that they refused. "The officers who gave a free hand to the criminals, apart from the fact that they acted in breach of the law and in breach of the stated decision of the High Court on the topic - their behavior also is in complete breach of the written declaration of Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich," said the Joint HQ. Video of the incident can be seen here (click to view): As noted, Aharonovich last September made promises to enforce the law passed by the High Court years ago banning the soccer games on the holy site. The Joint HQ noted that Aharonovich responded to questions from MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud) on the topic saying "the officers acted in contradiction to the law and their obligations," adding that the police are indeed required to stop the games. "P olice will from now on conscientiously enforce the law, and I have ordered police commanders to do so. Police are already working through several channels that the sanctity of the site is preserved," promised Aharonovich at the time. "It's not enough that the police breach the law on the Temple Mount, when they don't carry out their duty to prevent desecration of the site of the Temple and the harm to the sensitivities of Jews on the Temple Mount," wrote the Joint HQ. "The police have gone further by giving criminals cover, and arresting the harmed Jews." The organizations called on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu "to stop the alienation of the Temple Mount, and to order the police to protect the law, and to defend the Jews on the Temple Mount." Chances of that are in doubt, as Netanyahu recently made numerous overt pledges to Jordan's King Abdullah II promising to continue the discriminatory status quo on the site, by which the Jordanian Waqf has forbidden Jewish prayer and the police have submitted to their directives despite Israeli law guaranteeing religious freedom of worship. Indeed the Temple Mount has been plagued by various forms of criminal activity, be it the destruction of Jewish archaeological finds by the Waqf, illegal Muslim construction , or violent rioting by Islamist gangs funded by Hamas.