The Jerusalem Terrorist Attack and the Wages of the Left's War on Israeli Security

Contrary to many of the headlines you'll see, it wasn't a cop who stopped Hosam Dwayyat's rampage through Jerusalem carried out on behalf of a terrorist group named after Hizbullah terrorist leader Imad Mughniyeh. The cop was in the way. The man who stopped the Jerusalem rampage was an off duty soldier named Moshe Plesser, a product of a Hesder Yeshiva who protested the Gush Katif Disengagement and was almost kept out of the IDF and the Golani brigade for it.

(Update 1: Hosam Dwayyat had been jailed for raping a Jewish girl previously. His family on receiving the news cried, "Finally we have a Shaheed (martyr) in our family.")



(Update 2: Makor Rishon: 3 years ago when Moshe Plesser was 17 he participated in protests against Disengagement. While photographing a protest in Ramat Gan from the sidewalk, he was beaten by the police into unconsciousness and arrested. Charges were dropped against him for a lack of evidence but a note was inserted into his file causing him to be refused a place in the Golani. He spent 2 years fighting the military over it until he finally joined the Golani.)

He did it while the police could not, for a simple reason, because the Israeli left, funded primarily by foreign donors such as George Soros and the EU, have spent a great deal of time and effort on undermining Israel's domestic security through legal channels. Backed by an activist judiciary and a Prime Minister whose own wife and daughter belong to left wing groups that are anti-military and pro-arab, they have successfully insured the prosecution of soldiers and civilians who fought back against Arab terrorism.

Last week the Knesset finally approved the "Shai Dromi Bill" which protects the legal rights of people using armed force in their own defense. The bill was named after Shai Dromi, a farmer who shot at an Arab gang on his land, and was in turn incarcerated and dragged through the courts. Dromi was merely one in a long parade of Israelis, both private citizens and civilians, who defended themselves and were dragged through the machinery of the legal system by the left wing.



One of the most notorious was Daniel Pinner, who was attacked by a rock throwing mob and fired into the air. He was charged and convicted of murder, despite the fact that there were radical inconsistencies in both the police claims and the eyewitness testimony, that the witnesses at the trial were his attackers and that no body was ever actually found. But none of that mattered. Foreign money from the EU and from left wing American and European billionaires has swelled the coffers of left wing groups from Peace Now to Machsom Watch, which works to undermine IDF soldiers at checkpoints, to Women in Black, Btselem and Rabbis for Human Rights.

These groups have the goal of undermining Israeli security by attacking all political and security measures taken to fight terrorism. That has meant going after checkpoints and roadblocks, against anti-terrorist actions and against the civilians, soldiers and police officers on the front lines. The goal is to prevent Israel from physically protecting itself against terrorists and forcing it to the negotiating table with its terrorist assailaints.



IDF soldiers already operate under painfully restricted rules of engagement. These rules have seriously crippled the ability of the IDF to fight terrorism, forced retreats, produced the Hizbullah kidnappings and caused soldiers to avoid firing even to protect civilians, because they feared being court-martialed for it. Because they know there are thousands of left wing activists that will begin poring over the incident report and looking for a way to hang them. Little wonder then that the police didn't stop him. Little wonder then that it was an off duty soldier and a security guard who had to do what the police wouldn't. And not just any off duty soldier, but a patriotic Religious Zionist soldier.

Moshe Plesser is the son of Rav Hillel Plesser who runs a children's school, all his brothers serve in the army, one of whom is an officer. Moshe Plesser had to battle to even serve, because he had protested against the forced ethnic cleansing of Jews from Gush Katif. He had to battle to be in the Golani brigade. He had to work so hard because he represented everything the left wing establishment that controls too much of Israeli politics now despises, patriotism, Zionism and a belief in national self-defense. Like his brother in law, David Shapira who shot the Mercaz HaRav terrorist in the Jerusalem yeshiva attack, Moshe Plesser and those like him represent the best hope of Israel. Which is why the left is so driven in its hate against them.



The wave of attacks aimed at Jerusalem are not random. They are the product of a coordinated effort to force Israel to split its capital with the terrorists. On the terrorist side, the killings are planned and executed. On the political side, the international and domestic left cries that there will be no peace until the terrorists receive Jerusalem too. What both the terrorists and the left know, is that to win they have to destroy Israeli security, and more than that, destroy the faith that Israelis and all free people have in their ability to defend themselves. Moshe Plesser's statement represents everything that makes the teeth of left wing activist grind.

He began by calling the attack a "murderous attack on our holy and beloved land, part of the war in which we find ourselves." He then thanked all those who, he said, had a hand in helping him act correctly: "First of all, thanks to G-d, and secondly to the education and upbringing I received, beginning in the Morashah Talmud Torah in Jerusalem, and then the Dimona Yeshiva High School, and then the Yitzhar and Kiryat Arba Hesder yeshivot, and finally to my army training, for helping me act in the way every soldier and citizen should. I also wish to thank my brother-in-law David Shapira for serving as a personal example

There it is God and Country and Civic duty. Everything that the left wing's war on Israeli institutions is working to eradicate. Had the left had its way Moshe Plesser would never have served in the IDF. Had the left had its way there would be no Hesder Yeshivas. Had the left had its way the bulldozer would have continued and gone on killing serving as another "incentive" for Israel to give up Jerusalem.

But the left is far from done. There is no telling how many Moshe Plessers they have kept out of the IDF and how many no longer even bother joining. There is no telling how many terrorist attacks, including today's attack, happened because of their campaign to undermine Israel's security. There is no telling how many more terrorist attacks will happen because combined with Rice's pressure, Israel lowers checkpoints and allows more potential terrorists through into Israel to kill and kill again.



What we do know is that Moshe Plesser represents the ideal of Israel's citizen-soldier, armed with faith and the knowledge that national self-defense is the righteous use of arms. And when the terrorist "cried Allah Akhbar and hit the gas", Moshe Plesser ran after him, took a gun from a bystander and killed him.