Canadian attempts knife attack on Israel security unit, is shot dead, authorities say

Israeli soldiers and police secure a road as rockets are launched from southern Lebanon in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights on July 9, 2024. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 22 July 2024
Follow

Canadian attempts knife attack on Israel security unit, is shot dead, authorities say

  • Israeli military said the suspect “exited his vehicle and threatened with a knife members of the community’s rapid response team operating in the area”

NETIV HAASARA: A Canadian citizen attempted to attack an armed civilian security unit with a knife in southern Israel near the Gaza border and was shot dead, Israeli authorities said on Monday.
The incident took place at the entrance of Netiv HaAsara, a town where security has been intensified since Hamas-led militants killed around 20 people there during the Oct. 7 rampage in southern Israel that triggered the Gaza war.
The Israeli military said the suspect “exited his vehicle and threatened with a knife members of the community’s rapid response team operating in the area.”
“The rapid response team responded with fire and neutralized the suspect. No injuries to the security forces were reported,” the military said.
A police spokesperson said the attacker was a Canadian citizen.
Reuters television footage showed a dead body, apparently of the suspected attacker, being taken to an ambulance. 


Palestinian NGO condemns Israeli act of ‘revenge’ after prisoner abuse video

Updated 58 min 14 sec ago
Follow

Palestinian NGO condemns Israeli act of ‘revenge’ after prisoner abuse video

  • A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military priso

RAMALLAH: A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison.
Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Ben Gvir held a tour of Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Channel 7 reported.
In footage filmed on Friday and broadcast by the channel, around 20 police officers are seen storming a hallway leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades.
They then pull five detainees from their cells, their hands tied behind their backs, forcing them face-down onto the floor.
The operation took place as a bill proposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Israeli parliament.
“This is all part of ongoing displays meant to take revenge on Palestinian detainees,” Abdallah al?Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, told AFP on Saturday.
“Everything Ben Gvir and the far?right government are doing affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in detention camps — it also impacts the global legal and human rights system,” he added.
Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the most hard-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
“It is simply a source of pride — arriving at a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the vilest of the vile, seeing them like this,” Ben Gvir said in the video.
“I want one more thing: to execute them — the death penalty for terrorists,” he added.
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Saturday said the remarks were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.”
International rights groups have repeatedly warned of alleged abuse and mistreatment inflicted in Israeli prisons since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, it has become a de facto abolitionist country, with the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann the last person to be executed in 1962.