Jewish terrorist Eden Tzuberi kills 4 on Shfaram bus
Jerusalem Post ^ | 8-4-05 | MATTHEW GUTTMAN, YAAKOV KATZ AND JPOST STAFF
 

In what police are calling an incident of Jewish terrorism, a Jewish man dressed in IDF uniform opened fire on a bus in the northern town of Shfaram Thursday evening, killing at least 4 people and wounding nearly a dozen more.

The shooter, Eden Tzuberi, 19, was also killed when he was assaulted by a mob of furied bystanders and witnesses. A crowd of thousands gathered around the site of the attack and surrounded the bus, where the attacker's body still lay.

Hundreds of police were dispatched to the northern town. Some forces were delayed in arriving on the scene owing to the large numbers mobilized over the past few days in and around Ofakim to guard against the infiltration of anti-pullout activists into Gaza.

Former OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. (Res.) Yom Tov Samiyah said the shooting attack should not be isolated from the pending disengagement. He linked that attack to attempts by radicals to target different sectors of the public to divert security forces from the evacuation of settlements.

The suspect was a resident of the West Bank settlement of Tapuah and was well-known to police for extremist views. He was a member of the outlawed ultra-Right-wing Kahane Chai party. An IDF soldier, Tzuberi had been tried in the past for refusing orders linked to the disengagment plan, and had been reported AWOL from the IDF 77 days ago - still in possession of his army-issued firearm. During his short army career he served time in military prison on two occasions.

Sources in the Shin Bet said that they had received no warning of plans by Jewish extremists to attack Israeli Arabs. Far-right activists told The Jerusalem Post that they had seen the shooter at anti-disengagement events.

Ikutiel Ben Yaacov, the founder of the far-right Jewish Legion group based in the West Bank settlement of Tapuah, shared police suspicions that such an attack might be aimed at derailing Israel's plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.

"We hope that Eden's death will not have been in vain," said Ben Yaacov, and added that "his murder will derail this sadistic disengagement plan."

Furious mob surrounds bus

A furious mob of the neighborhood's residents stormed the bus in order to neutralize the shooter, trapping him inside. Police forces gathered inside and near the bus to guard the suspect from the mob, but owing to the crowds, could not evacuate him from the bus.

As darkness fell, residents of other towns joined the angered crowds while police worked to maintain calm.

An enraged witness to the incident said, "If this attack had occurred in a Jewish neighborhood and the attacker was Arab, he would have been killed immediately. The police came and they didn't do anything!" he said. "The police didn't even shoot the attacker – they were holding him alive in the bus."

Hadash MK Muhammad Barakei, who had joined the mobs in Shfaram, blamed the attack on what he said was a campaign of incitement by Jews against Arabs. "This is not the act of a single individual extremist," Barakei said. "It comes from a culture of incitement."

The attack: Tzuberi opens fire on bus 165

Tzuberi opened fire on bus 165 from Haifa to Shfaram as the vehicle reached the town's Druse neighborhood.

Shfaram is a mixed village made up of roughly 50 percent Muslims as well as Druse and Christians.

Among the victims were two adolescent girls and the driver of the bus. The shooter also directed his fire outside the bus, and the casualties included pedestrians and bystanders.

Sixteen victims wounded in the shooting were evacuated to Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Carmel Hospital and Bnei Zion Hospital. All were in light to moderate condition, ZAKA officials reported.

The six Magen David Adom ambulances that answered the alert had difficulty reaching the scene of the incident to evacuate additional victims because of the crowds that had gathered at the site.