I was sitting in Jerusalem traffic this morning next to a packed bus, thinking about how much the city has changed since the height of the Palestinian intifada, how much more relaxed people have become in their daily lives.
It has been years since a Jerusalem bus was hit by a suicide bomber.
But, today, Jerusalemites experienced a new and unusual kind of attack on public transport when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem went on a road rampage with a bulldozer, killing at least three and sparking pandemonium near the city's central open market.
The front-end loader slammed into one bus and upended another before he was shot dead.
The rampage took place right near one of the main media centers in Jerusalem so reporters from AP, CNN and the BBC were on the scene as the drama unfolded.
One camera man captured the final moments.
Gunmen thought they had stopped the attacker cold and were letting down their guard when the driver lurched forward.
In a scene captured below, two men wrestled with the driver and fired several shots at point-blank range until he slumped in his seat.
The video also shows a policeman shooting the lifeless man at point-blank range, a move that could spark questions from Israeli human rights groups about whether the officer's shot was necessary and if he might have unnecessarily killed the man.
(Though, from the footage, it looks as if the first shots probably killed him.)
A warning that the video below is graphic.
Below is an early report from Al Jazeera English with more:
Was the road he was working on Hwy. 443; the road that was initially approved to be built for Palestinian use, but now is only for Israeli use?
I didn't think it went up Jaffa Street, but the way al jazeera describes the road makes it sound as such.
Posted by: Edie | July 02, 2008 at 02:58 PM
"...whether the officer's shot was necessary and if he might have unnecessarily killed the man"???
Surely you're joking. If anyone needed killing, it was the driver of that front end loader.
Why should anyone risk even the slightest possibility that the driver might not be totally incapacitated? He already had shown precisely what he wanted to do if given the opportunity.
There's now one less specimen of terrorist scum which innocent Israelis have to deal with.
Posted by: Hugh | July 02, 2008 at 05:30 PM
"...whether the officer's shot was necessary and if he might have unnecessarily killed the man"???
Surely you're joking. If anyone needed killing, it was the driver of that front end loader.
Why should anyone risk even the slightest possibility that the driver might not be totally incapacitated? He already had shown precisely what he wanted to do if given the opportunity.
There's now one less specimen of terrorist scum which innocent Israelis have to deal with.
Posted by: Hugh | July 02, 2008 at 05:32 PM
Oops! Sorry for posting twice. Please delete the second one.
Posted by: Hugh | July 02, 2008 at 05:39 PM
As I mentioned in the post, the guy was almost certainly dead when the last shot is fired. But if you watch the tape you can see that the guy is lifeless when the police officer fires the final shot -which is essentially confirming the kill.
Why might police want him alive? So they can determine why he went on the rampage, if he was part of a militant cell, etc. Those questions will now be harder to answer.
Posted by: Dion Nissenbaum | July 02, 2008 at 05:58 PM
He was shot too early: the AP bureau is still standing.
Posted by: Dan Alba | July 03, 2008 at 05:10 PM
Ohh, so your concern was to glean intelligence from this mass murderer, that's nice - How altruistic of you Dion.
You know what I think? I think you are full of crap.
Posted by: saus | July 04, 2008 at 08:18 AM
"... a policeman shooting the lifeless man at point-blank range...could spark questions from Israeli human rights groups about whether the officer's shot was necessary...if he might have unnecessarily killed the man." Well, it certainly raises a question from me: Who the heck decided to put a joke in the middle of a serious story?
Posted by: Dan | July 04, 2008 at 03:25 PM
Where are the mainstream corporate media when the same Israeli bulldozers are used to murder peace activists and demolish tens of thousands of Palestinian homes on Palestinian land in violation of international and humanitarian law?
Oh yeah: the IDF doesn't allow the media to report from the IOPTs on that stuff. The dirty secrets of the Israeli OCCUPATION are kept from our eyes: only hasbaranik-filtered cookie-cutter bureau reports are allowed to leave the OCCUPIED TERRITORIES of PALESTINE.
Dion, you are a rare voice of objectivity and fairness, but I have a very important question for you and your peers:
Why on earth is McClatchy on the Associated Press Board of Directors?
You should tell your CEOs that, for their own good, they should resign from the AP BoD before the War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity trials (a la Nüremberg) begin. It will save them much grief, embarrassment, and perhaps their own necks if they disown the criminal gangsters of AP and its complicit m.o. of "covering" illicit government activity.
Please pass this on to them. I appreciate McClatchy very much: it has been a beacon in a dim world of fraudulent, apple-polishing news media.
We, the readers, are well aware that Alfred Rosenberg and the other Nazis were sentenced to death and life imprisonment for demonizing entire groups of people based on ethnicity or religion, merely parroting illicit government propaganda. The AP and other MSM are doing the same things today, complicit in U.S. and Israeli war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity.
Get out while you still have very little blood on your hands!
Posted by: Dan Alba | July 04, 2008 at 05:39 PM