Officials Decided Not to Arrest Bulldozer Terrorist

Caroline Glick documents how Israel's interlocking network of left-wing government and senior officials have systematically enabled Arab enemies of Israel to flout the law. One example is that the Jerusalem bulldozer terrorist should have been arrested for his public celebration of the Merkaz Harav yeshiva terror. The police, as usual, turned a blind eye and let hundreds of Jerusalem jihad-supporters continue their activities unmolested:

Government and police spokesmen would have us believe that the carnage in Jerusalem on Wednesday was unavoidable. Husam Taysir Dwayat, the convicted rapist, burglar and drug dealer turned jihadist who mowed down innocent people with his bulldozer on Jaffa Road was not suspected of links to terrorist organizations. The sociopathic, violent criminal who had "returned" to Islam over the past month raised no red flags. There was nothing to be done. No one is to blame.

If the protestations of the government and the police that nothing could have prevented Dwayat from using his bulldozer to murder three people sound familiar, it is because they are. Immediately after Ala Abu Dhaim entered into Mercaz Harav yeshiva on March 6 and massacred eight students, government and police spokesmen said the same thing. There was no way to prevent the attack. No one is to blame.

These statements are no more than easy excuses for incompetence. While it may be true that neither Dwayat nor Dhaim were members of a terror group, it is certainly true that both of these Jerusalemite terrorists operated in an atmosphere that engenders both radicalism and lawlessness. Their decisions to murder innocent people were products not only of their own evil natures, but of an atmosphere of permissiveness that naturally intensifies any latent desire to cause death and mayhem. If they had been operating in a different environment, it is possible they would have behaved differently.

Four months ago, Dhaim was able to enter Mercaz Harav by dint of his job as a driver for the Jerusalem Arab-owned transport company HaPnina.

HaPnina had a city contract to transport school children. Dhaim, who arrived at the yeshiva in a company van, aroused no suspicion when he entered the yeshiva with a large box where he hid his rifle.

After Dhaim committed his massacre, the municipality immediately tried to abrogate its contract with HaPnina. HaPnina sued and the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court issued a temporary injunction requiring the city to continue using HaPnina until the judge ruled on the case. When Judge Hagit Mack-Kalmanovich finally decided in the municipality's favor on June 13, she noted that that the company had ignored a court order to provide documentation showing that its drivers had no criminal records and were qualified to transport children.

If the municipality were more vigilant in overseeing its contractors, it could have discovered that HaPnina was employing criminals well before the massacre. Perhaps then Dhaim wouldn't have been able to enter the yeshiva.

It is a criminal offense to praise acts of murder. When hundreds came to pay their respects for Dhaim and proclaim him a hero, the police could have arrested and interrogated all of them. Among those who arrived at the Dhaim's mourning tent was Wednesday's terrorist, Dwayat. If he had been arrested then, it is possible that police would have discovered that this convicted rapist had recently become a jihadist. It is also possible that Dwayat himself would have been intimidated.

But rather than enforce the law, the police did nothing. Rather than arrest the hundreds who came to praise Dhaim, the police excused their inaction by bemoaning the fact that the due process rights of Jerusalem Arabs made it impossible to destroy the homes of Arab terrorists in the capital without proper legal authorization. That is, they justified their decision to do nothing by complaining that they can't do everything.

The police's permissive behavior is nothing new. In Dhaim's and Dwayat's Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem, as in the Beduin settlements in the Negev and the Arab cities and villages in the Galilee, the police simply refuse to enforce the law. They do not patrol the streets. They do not arrest religious, educational and political leaders who solicit terrorism or incite hatred. They do not enforce building laws. They do not protect state and privately owned land from squatters. Today some 90 percent of Arab construction in Israel is carried out without permits. Whole towns in the Negev have been built on stolen state land. And the police do nothing.

As a consequence of police inaction, thieves, smugglers, terror solicitors and other dangerous criminals are allowed to operate in the open. Fearing the wrath of human rights groups on the one hand and Arab rioters on the other, the police simply do not enforce Israeli law in the Arab sector.

This police passivity manifests itself not only in times of relative calm but also in emergency situations. For instance, at both Mercaz Harav and on Jaffa Road, the police were inexcusably passive. In both attacks the terrorists were only stopped by citizens who took the initiative when the police failed to act.

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