Home > Olives & Thorns > Archives > 2008 > July > 22
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Attack in Jerusalem near Obama’s hotel
Kenny Lerner, 67, had never witnessed a terror attack before and neither had his wife, Sandy, 65. They’re originally from the Bronx, N.Y. and they’ve lived in Israel for the past 11 years.
“I can still see that man lying on the ground, his leg bleeding,” said Sandy, recalling today’s tractor attack, the second such incident this month in Jerusalem.
They were having lunch at Rosemary’s. It’s a fish and dairy restaurant and they were having fish. They parked farther away than they would have liked, as it turns out a good thing.
Their meal was interrupted as their waiter shouted for them to follow him outside. A yellow front-end loader had left a construction site and was careening down King David Street (coincidentally, very close to where Senator Barack Obama is scheduled to stay tonight on his Middle East tour). It smashed a bus and three cars, leaving four people injured, one seriously.
“We started running after it. That was my first reaction. To stop it. I didn’t know how,” Kenny said.
A civilian shot dead the driver, identified as a Palestinian from East Jerusalem.
It was eerily similar to an attack on July 2, when a Palestinian rammed the front-end loader he was driving into several cars on a busy Jerusalem street, killing three Israelis, before an off-duty soldier shot and killed him. The driver was also a Palestinian from East Jerusalem.
The 250,000 Palestinians who live in Jerusalem carry IDs allowing them to work and travel freely in Israel, unlike Palestinians who live in the West Bank.
“My question is what did we learn from the first bulldozer attack? How did he get access to the bulldozer? Was he brainwashed? Was he acting alone? You can’t just say one crazy guy did this. This is the second time,” Kenny said.
Jewish West Jerusalem is undergoing a building boom and Palestinians fill most construction jobs.
“This is a tragedy for all communities,” Kenny said. “I know there are people in the Arab community who are against it. It hurts them, too.”