Terrorist Kills Two, Endangers Thousands

On Sunday an Arab terrorist who worked in a factory in the Barkan industrial zone in the disputed territories killed two Israelis and wounded a third.

The 23-year-old worker, named as Ashraf Walid Suleiman Na’alowa, managed to smuggle a submachine gun into the factory, where he took 29-year old secretary Levengrond Yehezkel hostage and bound her to a chair before shooting her dead.

He then shot another woman in the stomach, wounding her moderately, before shooting and killing a member of the accounting staff, 35-year old Ziv Hajbi.

CCTV screenshot of the terrorist escaping

CCTV footage showed the young terrorist fleeing the scene of the attack, and the Israeli security forces have launched a major manhunt for him.

His father works in Israel and is quoted as saying that his son is “a quiet guy who didn’t look for trouble … I don’t know what came over him.”

An additional aspect of this tragedy, besides two Israeli families now being plunged into grief and a third into caring for the wounded woman, is that the factory employs around 8,000 workers, many of whom are Arabs.

So this one young terrorist has plunged a large group of his own people, who work peacefully with Israelis, into a very dangerous situation.

Here lies the sinister truth behind the terrorism that has caused so much suffering in and around Israel – it repeatedly endangers peaceful co-operation.

And now a vivid example of that peaceful co-operation has emerged from this latest terrorist attack.

Sarah Vettori, 54, who was wounded in the attack, has told of how an Arab worker saved her life by pulling her under a table, to hide her from the terrorist, and then helping to stop the bleeding from her gunshot wound.

Speaking from her hospital bed on Monday, she said of these two people:

“One is a murderer and the other one saves lives.”

This article was first published on 8th October and updated on 9th October.