Stabbing victim: ‘Attacker asked us if we were Jews’
Palestinian dentist saves Israeli father and son after post-appointment attack in West Bank village
A 60-year-old man and his son, 17, were stabbed during a trip to the dentist in the Palestinian village of Azun on Saturday after it became known that they were Jews.
The father, Yosef Peretz, was lightly injured in the arm, and his son was moderately injured with stab wounds in his back by a 15-year-old Palestinian boy.
“We came to the dentist. When we left, [the attacker] asked us: ‘Are you Jews or Arabs?’ We answered ‘Jews.’ And I looked at his hand and saw the pocket knife,” Peretz
told Channel 12.
He spoke with reporters in Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba, where he and his son were treated.
“For a year now, I have been coming to this dentist for treatment and everything was fine. I never thought something like this would happen. The dentist helped us, he jumped on him and held him against the wall and hit him while we escaped,” said Peretz, a resident of Ofakim.
The father’s brother, who was also at the scene but wasn’t injured, told Ynet that “a 15-year-old boy approached us and asked me in Arabic if we were Jewish. I said, ‘No, we are Arabs.’ Then, he stabbed the father and the son, and the dentist came out to help and got us out of there.”
The IDF said troops from the Ephraim Regional Division evacuated the two victims from Azun after they provided first aid to them.
While Ynet quoted Palestinian sources as saying that the perpetrator, a local teenager, surrendered himself to the Palestinian security services, the IDF said security forces are working to locate the assailant, and that they are investigating the circumstances surrounding the attack.
It was the fourth serious West Bank attack in the last month. In Gush Etzion, 18-year-old Dvir Sorek was stabbed to death on August 7. Siblings Nahum, 18, and Noam Navis, 20, were injured in a ramming attack on August 16. On August 23, Palestinians detonated a bomb at a popular water spring near the Dolev settlement, killing 17-year-old Rina Shnerb and injuring her father, Eitan, and brother Dvir, 19. •