Two civilian employees of the Defense Ministry are recovering from a near lynch attempt on Monday.
The two were traveling to Mount Scopus in Jerusalem when they accidentally made a wrong turn and ended up stuck in a traffic jam between two Arab cars. A crowd of Arab youths then showed up and began throwing rocks at them.
At one point the rock throwers, some of whom were students from a nearby school, approached the vehicle and slammed a large stone into the windshield. The rock struck the driver, Yehuda Attias, in the head. Attias, who was all bloody, hit the gas and the two Israelis then fled toward a nearby hotel. They called security and rescue forces and were taken to the hospital. Attias was since hospitalized several times because of the severe head injuries.
Eliezer Hakshur, Attias’ brother-in-law, told Arutz Sheva that it was a miracle that Attias survived the lynching attempt.
“He is suffering from headaches and has twice been hospitalized with vomiting and chills,” Hakshur said, adding the rock throwers were “probably a group of children from the nearby Arab school who realized the two were stuck, and called their friends who began to throw rocks at them. They smashed the car’s windshield and my brother-in-law’s head. He had deep cuts and his head is full of stitches.”
He added that the whole incident could have ended much differently. “It was a miracle, we have no other words to describe it. Yehuda, whose head was bleeding, fled at the last minute. Only when they came into the hotel did the security and rescue forces arrive.”
In recent months, Arabs have attacked Jewish motorists with rocks, in what is starting to again become a common phenomenon on the roads of Judea and Samaria, as it was in the days of the 2002 Second Intifada.
Rock attacks can be deadly, as they are indeed intended to be, causing the driver to lose control of the vehicle and crash the car. That is precisely how two Jewish residents of the Judean city of Kiryat Arba -- Asher Palmer and his baby son Yonatan -- lost their lives last September.