BOSTON TEEN STUDYING IN ISRAEL AMONG FIVE KILLED BY PALESTINIANS IN ATTACKS IN TEL AVIV AND THE WEST BANK

By Rich Schapiro

New York Daily News
November 19, 2015

An American teenager was among five people killed in Israel Thursday in twin attacks carried out by Palestinians, authorities said.

Ezra Schwartz, an 18-year-old from Boston who was spending his gap year in Israel, was among three people slain in a wild drive-by-shooting in the West Bank.

Schwartz was on his way to deliver food to Israeli soldiers when he was gunned down, friends and Jewish groups said.

“An 18-year-old American boy studying in Israel before college was murdered today by Palestinian terrorists,” the AJC-Global Jewish Advocacy group posted on its Facebook page.

“May Ezra Schwartz's memory be for a blessing.”

The attack got underway about 4:30 p.m. when a Palestinian gunman opened fire from his car on another vehicle near the Gush Etzion Junction, authorities said

The attacker drove on some 300 meters before slamming into another car. The gunman, after hopping out of his totaled vehicle, was shot by security forces and taken into custody.

Two people died on the scene, and a third succumbed to his wounds in a nearby hospital.

Six others were injured, authorities said.

Thursday’s fresh wave of violence began a few hours earlier when a Palestinian man fatally stabbed two Israelis who had gathered to pray on the second floor of a building in southern Tel Aviv, authorities said.

One witness described seeing a bloodied man stumble into a nearby room.

“He was all slashed and bloody,” said Shimon Vaknin.

“We were in shock. We didn’t know what happened and then someone near the door shouted there’s a terrorist.”

The attack was cut short when a civilian overpowered the 36-year-old assailant and held him for police, the Haaretz newspaper reported.

The attacker, a West Bank restaurant worker, told investigators he entered Israel with a single purpose — to kill Jews.

A Hamas spokesman hailed the stabbing as “an act of bravery,” Haaretz reported.

The spasm of violence marks the latest flare-up in attacks that have claimed the lives of 17 Israelis over the past seven weeks.

At least 82 Palestinians have also been killed — 52 of them, Israeli officials say, were assailants who were shot dead by security forces.

While most of the assaults have taken place in the West Bank, the Thursday stabbing in Tel Aviv rattled Israelis who fear yet another bloody outbreak of violence in their homeland.