Four injured in a mass stabbing in Israel, suspect is an American permanent resident.

 

The wine bar where the attack happened. BBC/Reuters.

Four people were injured in a mass stabbing attack committed by an American permanent resident. BBC. The attacker was a citizen of Morocco but was a permanent resident of America in Israel on a tourism visa. He was shot and killed by Israeli police. The suspect being in the country is brewing into a large scandal as border and immigration services objected to the man entering the country but the Shin Bet security service approved it. This is the second mass stabbing attempt in Tel Aviv in four days, with an additional incident ending with an armed civilian putting down the attacker after he had stabbed one person. 

My Comment:

This is a fairly minor story but I thought I should cover it because of the implications it has for both the Israeli and United States border control policies. Not only should this attacker have never been in Israel in the first place, he probably should not have been in the United States either. 

It is fairly shocking that the Shin Bet allowed this man into Israel in the first place. The border and immigration service objected but they were overruled. It's unclear from the reports I have read as to why they objected but it's even more unclear what Shin Bet approved him. They did do a check but didn't find anything, which begs the question, why not?

It's possible that the attacker was actually smart and didn't tell anyone what he was about to do. That isn't outside of the realm of possibility, but if he was that smart he'd be in the top 10% of terrorists and if that was the case you would have thought he would have had a better plan that just stabbing people. I am guessing there probably was a paper trail that the Shin Bet just missed. 

It does show how easy it is to pull off a mass stabbing. This guy was there on a tourist visa and was in one of the more secure countries in the world under an active terror threat beyond most countries and he was still able to stab four people before getting killed. Thankfully nobody was killed but it just shows that any idiot can do this. 

It's also notable that the other attack mentioned in the article was put down by an armed civilian. Lots of folks in Israel carry weapons for pretty obvious reasons and that might have been the difference between the two stabbings. Police had pretty good response to the most recent one but nothing is faster than an armed civilian that happens to be there. It's a good argument for concealed weapons. 

As for Israel itself, it just goes to show that things won't really be peaceful there even as the Gaza war (and the Red Sea conflict with the Houthis) winds down. In addition to these mass stabbings, Israel itself launched a major raid into the West Bank, which was largely unaffected by the Gaza war. Peace in the Middle East is still a long ways away.