The 20-year-old Border Police officer who shot an Arab attacker in Hevron this week is facing death threats. Arab-language websites have published her picture, and social media users are calling for retaliation.
Hebrew media outlets have blurred the soldier’s image.
The female officer fired on a young Arab man who was pointing a gun at a fellow soldier. An investigation found that the 17-year-old attacker’s gun had contained no bullets, but as the officer told interviewers, “I thought that my partner would die if I didn’t act within seconds. There was no time to confirm that the gun was real.”
The incident occurred at approximately 8:00 p.m. local time, when the 17-year-old Palestinian Authority Arab teenager arrived at a Border Police position located the on the road connecting between Kiryat Arba and the Cave of the Patriarchs. As he approached of the officers, he was asked, as is usual procedure, to produce an ID card.
As one of the officers was inspecting the ID card, the boy began to beat him with his fists, knocked him down and pulled out a gun. A female Border police officer who witnessed the incident and saw that her fellow officer was in immediate danger quickly responded and fired two bullets at the teen. He was wounded and died on the way to the hospital.
A police sapper who arrived subsequently to check out the gun determined that it was a fake gun made out of metal.
Comments posted in Arabic on social networking sites blamed her nonetheless. “Your day is approaching,” some users threatened, while others called her “criminal.”
One website displayed her picture next to that of a hand holding a gun and the words, “Your day is close – yours, and all the Zionists.” Another wrote, “Wanted for international justice – we demand to try the murderess in the international court at the Hague.”
Minister of Internal Security Yitzchak Aharonovich called the officer Thursday to offer his praise and support. “You did exactly what you were trained to do, bravely and without hesitation,” he told her. “I respect and honor the [Border Police] activity in this complicated area.”
Source material can be found at this site.
