The full horror of the attempted assassination of Temple Mount rights activist Yehuda Glick was revealed on Friday, as he spoke to Arutz Sheva months later about the ordeal.
Glick - who founded and heads the LIBA Initiative for Jewish Freedom on the Temple Mount – was shot in the chest on October 29 outside the Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem.
The shooter, Mu'taz Hijazi, was an Islamic Jihad terrorist who had spent 11 years in jail for terrorism, and an employee at a restaurant in the Center. He pulled up in a motorcycle or scooter and confirmed Glick's identity before opening fire at point-blank range.
Yehuda's wife Yaffi was waiting outside the center in a car for Glick and was on the phone with a friend during the attack, Glick revealed. As soon as she realized that she was in the vicinity of a shooting attack, she told her friend to call an ambulance, and lay on the floor of her vehicle until the shooting was over.
While hiding in the vehicle, Yaffi called the Israel Police's 100 emergency hotline and shouted into the phone, "there has been a shooting just now at the Begin Center in Jerusalem!"
The police officer apparently did not understand the magnitude of the situation and asked, "I'm sorry, ma'am - what is your name? What is your husband's name? Where do you live? What has happened at the Begin - do you mean the Begin interchange?"
Yaffi screamed back that a terrorist had shot her husband at the Begin Center in Jerusalem and to send a patrol car as soon as possible, but the policewoman continued to demand that she answer background questions before addressing the situation, so she hung up.
Calling back, Yaffi's call was handled by another controller, who again began to do an "interview" over the attack instead of sending patrol cars.
Magen David Adom (MDA) medics eventually reached the scene - but only after six long minutes had passed since the shooting.
Israel Police responded to Arutz Sheva later Friday, saying that a mobile police unit had been deployed as Yaffi called the 100 hotline even as the hotline operator attempted to gather details about the attack. Such information, it said, is to get more accurate information about the scene and to coordinate an appropriate police and emergency response.
This is not the first damning case presented against police handling of threats against Glick, however.
Prior to the attack, Glick had been repeatedly targeted in an online hate campaign, and the Jerusalem District Court revealed several months ago that a separate attack on Glick had been planned for October 30 - one day after he was shot.
An expose by Galei Yisrael shortly after the attack implied that the police did, in fact, know about the threats to Glick's life before the attack, despite their denials.