A number of blogs and commentators have exposed the deep connections between Barack Obama, William Ayers and "Palestinian sympathizer" Rashid Khalidi.
But here's the smoking gun. It turns out that Rashid Khalidi was much more than a "sympathizer." He was a paid spokesman for the PLO in 1978, when it was exclusively an unabashed terrorist organization, and was of course categorized as such by the United States.
The evidence appears in none other than the New York Times. So why don't others have the story? 1978 archives are not searchable because they are only available on microfilm. It took an intrepid IRIS associate to dig up the article:
If the Israelis had any brains they could neutralize Palestinian irredentism just by giving back the West Bank," asserted Rashid Khalidy, an American-educated Palestinian who teaches political science at the American University of Beirut and also works for the P.L.O. "It would split us."
As detailed in Campus Watch Rashid Khalidi is trying to weasel out of having worked for the PLO:
Mr. Khalidi dismisses the allegation that he served as a PLO spokesman, saying, "I often spoke to journalists in Beirut, who usually cited me without attribution as a well-informed Palestinian source. If some misidentified me at the time, I am not aware of it."
Khalidi and Khalidy are clearly the same person. According to the Columbia Spectator, he was a professor at the American University in Beirut before his first stint at Columbia:
Khalidi came to Columbia in 1985 after teaching at Lebanese University and American University in Beirut. He has taught in political science and history departments.
According to the New York Times, the Columbia Khalidi seems to have known Arafat from that time period:
Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American professor at the University of Chicago who has known Mr. Arafat since the 1970's, said he visited Mr. Arafat recently and found him battered not only by the Israeli siege that confined him to his headquarters here but also by the recent calls for reform.
Khalidi should come clean about his terrorist connections. Here is what Khalidi's employer did a few weeks after his Times interview:
On March 11, 1978 eleven terrorists, again coming from Lebanon with Zoadic rubber commando dinghies, landed at the beach of Kibbutz Ma?agan Michael. They killed an American photographer and a taxi driver and hijacked a bus, whose passengers, including many children, were on a day-trip to the north. The hijackers forced the driver to return to Tel Aviv. Driving on the coastal highway, the terrorists fired on passing cars from the bus.
When the bus approached a blockade set up by the police at an entrance to Tel Aviv, a shootout took place. The terrorists left the bus and fired missiles. The bus burst into flames and most of the passengers were either burned alive or killed by terrorist gunfire.
The massacre left 35 innocent people dead and 100 injured. The terrorists were identified as belonging to Fatah; nine were killed and two captured.
This would explain why Obama mentor William Ayers dedicated his book to Sirhan Sirhan, the Palestinian terrorist who assassinated Robert Kennedy for his pro-Israel views. Ayers was very close to Khalidi and Obama, and was in attendance at the 2003 party in Khalidi's honor in which Obama toasted the PLO spokesman. The Los Angeles Times, which has been accused of partisan support of Obama, is refusing to release the tape of the event. It is alleged that Obama denounced Israel at the event in anti-Semitic terms.
(Hat tip: Michael S.)
Please click the Digg button below to publicize the story, which the mainstream media has so far ignored.
Here is one stunning example of the injustice of sharia law:
A 13-year-old girl who said she had been raped was stoned to death in Somalia after being accused of adultery by Islamic militants, a human rights group said.
Dozens of men stoned Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow to death Oct. 27 in a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators in the southern port city of Kismayo, Amnesty International and Somali media reported, citing witnesses. The Islamic militia in charge of Kismayo had accused her of adultery after she reported that three men had raped her, the rights group said.
Initial local media reports said Duhulow was 23, but her father told Amnesty International she was 13. Some of the Somali journalists who first reported the killing later told Amnesty International that they had reported she was 23 based upon her physical appearance.
Calls to Somali government officials and the local administration in Kismayo rang unanswered Saturday.
"This child suffered a horrendous death at the behest of the armed opposition groups who currently control Kismayo," David Copeman, Amnesty International's Somalia campaigner, said in a statement Friday.
Rape victims are punished throughout the Muslim World. Here's why:
Islamic law still requires the testimony of four male witnesses to establish sexual crimes.
Consequently, it is even today virtually impossible to prove rape in lands that follow the dictates of the Sharia. Even worse, if a woman accuses a man of rape, she may end up incriminating herself. If the required male witnesses can’t be found, the victim’s charge of rape becomes an admission of adultery. That accounts for the grim fact that as many as seventy-five percent of the women in prison in Pakistan are, in fact, behind bars for the crime of being a victim of rape. When the Musharraf government instituted measures removing the crime of rape from the sphere of Islamic law and establishing that it be judged by modern canons of forensic evidence, a group of Islamic clerics were furious.
The previous entry focused on Biden's gaffes and lies in last night's debate from a Middle East perspective, but this whopper is so big, it deserves its own post:
Look, all you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie’s Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me where I spend a lot of time and you ask anybody in there whether or not the economic and foreign policy of this administration has made them better off in the last eight years.
It turns out that Katie's Restaurant closed down fifteen years ago. Talk radio host Curtis Sliwa of WABC dug this information up (audio here). He also got puzzled reactions from Wilmington Home Depots asking if anyone had ever sighted Biden. Think any mainstream reporter will follow up and ask him which Home Depot he frequents? Think any journalist will go to that Home Depot to confirm?
Joe Biden's 1988 presidential campaign shut down due to revelations of egregious plagiarism. He was discovered to have plagiarized in law school. He commits gaffes on a daily basis.
Biden succeeded in the debate by covering up who he really is.
Palin succeeded in the debate by conveying who she really is.
For those who follow the Middle East, such as IRIS readers, Joe 'Foreign Policy' Biden made some serious gaffes, such as on Iran, Hamas' election victory in Gaza vs. the West Bank, and this whopper about Hezbollah being thrown out of Lebanon:
In Thursday night’s vice presidential debate between Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin, Biden said the strangest and most ill-informed thing I have ever heard about Lebanon in my life. “When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.” Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.” [Emphasis added.]
What on Earth is he talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in an alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one.
Nobody – nobody – has ever kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Not the United States. Not France. Not Israel. And not the Lebanese. Nobody.
Joe Biden has literally no idea what he’s talking about.
On Iran he made two blunders:
The first was a denial that the Ahmadinejad threats against Israel are serious given that 'the theocracy' controls the military. Here is the head of Iran's theocracy calling for the extermination of Israel this week. The second was an outright lie denying Obama said he would meet Ahmadinejad without preconditions. Here is the video proof:
One month ago, before anyone knew much about Governor Palin, I made some wild predictions, including the outcome of last night's debate:
Palin will defeat Biden in the Vice President debates in terms of popular opinion, but the mainstream media will declare Biden the winner.
This was written before she had given her convention speech.
Over the next few days, the outcome will become more clear, but there are several key indications that it was a split decision between the public and the mainstream media:
Popular opinion went to Palin:
The four indicators I would use here are: Frank Luntz's undecided focus group, Drudge Report insta-poll and Intrade Market odds.
Luntz focus group of undecideds
The Luntz polling organization gathers a reasonable sample of undecided voters for every debate and polls them immediately afterward. Palin won this group 20-4. This is unprecedented in their experience.
Drudge Report insta-poll
After 416,000 votes cast, Palin has a knockout lead of 70%-28%. It is fair to argue that Drudge's readership skews right, but compared to previous Drudge polls, this was extraordinary.
Intrade Market odds
This is the best single number to see what the general public thinks in terms of who will win the election at any given moment. At the start of yesterday's debate, the odds were heavily in Obama's favor: approximately 69:31 in favor of Obama. In the next 12 hours, the odds dropped sharply, down to 65:35. In the morning trading, Obama has gained some ground, but it is possible that this is due to the mainstream media morning-after effect.
Media pundits called it for Biden:
Although many analysts said that Palin exceeded expectations, that is nothing like saying she won the debate. She had been so pilloried since the Gibson and Couric interviews, this was not much of a compliment. There is no question that a comprehensive summary of MSM scores would show a large margin of victory for Biden.
CNN's report card, for example, gives Biden 3 A's and 2 B's, while Palin received 2 A's, 2 B's and a C.
Why do these predictions matter? Because political analysis is like science. Theories that cannot explain unknown data are not worth much. In politics, the unknown data are future events. Many of them are unknowable, but a great deal are predictable from valid hypotheses.
Joe Biden's 1988 presidential campaign was aborted due to the discovery of his egregious plagiarism of a British politician's stories (complete with adoption of his biography) and reports of plagiarism in law school. Now the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee is making 'gaffes' on a daily basis, including claims that he was 'shot at' in Iraq and that his helicopter was 'forced down' in Afghanistan. For good measure he told a coal miner's group that 'I am a hard coal miner' and said that 'hundreds of thousands of people' drove from his boyhood home town of Scranton, PA to support his bid for the Delaware Senate.
"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube last year. "Number one, you take all the troops out - you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."
But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."
The senior senator from Delaware went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.
"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."
The rest of the press ignored the flap at the time because Biden was viewed as having little chance of ending up on the Democratic presidential ticket.
"If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where Bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Senators Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.
"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Please click the Digg button at the bottom of this post to expose the truth about this.
Governor Sarah Palin has given two mainstream media interviews. In both, she made multiple statements about the importance of multilateralism in foreign policy. In both, these comments were deleted by the news organizations.
After both interviews, a furor has broken out afterwards because of her hawkishness.
At two points in the video (2:58 and 5:39), segments have been removed from the official transcript.
Here are the missing pieces of the transcript:
(2:58) Couric: What, specifically, in your view, could be done to convince the new government in Pakistan to take a harder, tougher line against terrorists in that country?
Palin: At a time when new leadership comes in, that is the opportunity to forge better, tighter, more productive relationships and that’s what we’ll take advantage of with new leadership in the US and in Pakistan. And I’m sure that President Zardari, too, will agree with us as we commit to the support that Pakistan needs, that other nations in the region need, in order to win this war on terrorism. (3:32)
(5:39) Couric: But what lessons do you think you have learned as you’ve watched this unfold in terms of implementing the democracy and the challenges inherent in that goal?
Palin: Well, one is that America cannot be counted on to do this solely, to be the savior of every other nation, but we need friends and we need allies and we need this nation-building effort and we need to forge new alliances, and that is what a new election will provide opportunity to do.
Couric: What happened if the goal of democracy, Governor Palin, doesn’t produce the desired outcome, for example in Gaza, the US pushed hard for elections and Hamas won.
Palin: Especially in that region, though, we have got to protect those and support those who do seek democracy and do seek protections for the people who live there. And you know, we’re seeing today, in the last couple of days here in New York, a speaker, a President of Iran, Ahmadinejad, who would come on our soil and express such disdain for one of our closest allies and friends—Israel—and we’re hearing the evil that he speaks. And if hearing him doesn’t allow Americans to commit more solidly to protecting the friends and allies that we need, expecially there in the Mideast, then nothing will.
If Americans are not waking up to understand what it is that he represents, then nothing is going to wake us up and we will be lulled into some kind of false sense of security that perhaps Americans were a part of before 9/11.(7:25)
What do each of these three Palin answers have in common? They portray her as a foreign policy moderate who seeks multilateral coalitions with allies and who advocates for human rights, caring about better lives for Middle Easterners.
Katie Couric clearly hasn't learned much from the previous CBS News scandal, Rathergate.
Technical note: There may have been further editing of each of the two interviews. In both instances, we only know about the modifications because of sloppy editing. In one, the transcript is the smoking gun for the discrepancies; in the other it is the video.
Here's an analytics perspective on the deletions:
In the Gibson (ABC News) interview:
7 instances were deleted of "allies"
5 instances were deleted of "countries"
5 instances were deleted of "democracies"
In the Couric (CBS News) interview:
4 instances were deleted of "allies"
3 instances were deleted of "democracies"
3 instances were deleted of "friends"
3 instances were deleted of "nations"
(A few word variants were included.)
Please click the Digg button below to expose the truth about this.
Europe will likely turn Muslim much quicker than demographic forecasts suggest. White flight will accelerate as more incidents like these occur:
A forty-year old homeless man almost died when he was beaten up in Brussels by a man and his father, both Muslims, because he was drinking beer during the Ramadan. Rachid, the 19-year old culprit, beat his victim Serge with an iron bar with nails.
A few days ago Serge had an appointment with a doctor in a policlinic in Blaes Street. He arrived early and, since he had to wait, Serge opened a can of beer. At that moment an elderly Muslim who lives above the policlinic came downstairs. He objected to Serge drinking a beer in public during Ramadan, the Muslim fast. Things escalated when his son Rachid came downstairs, too.
Father and son beat up Serge. They threw him out of the building on a pile of rubbish bags. Amidst the rubbish Rachid found an iron bar studded with nails. He seized the bar and smashed it in on Serge. The tramp tried to protect his face with his arms, but could not prevent the bully from hitting an artery on his legs. Blood poured from the wound.
An eye-witness called the police. Meantime a group of youths had joined in beating up Serge.
'Youths' is a common euphemism for Muslims.
The victim was immediately taken to hospital. He had lost two liters of blood. The doctors confirm that it is a miracle that Serge survived his ordeal. The police arrested Rachid. His father tried to take his place, but that did not happen.
Before Governor Sarah Palin made her historic speech at the Republican convention, I studied her background and made some bold predictions. Among those was probably the only published source that accurately predicted that the speech would be "wildly successful." Additionally, I called that "she will turn out to be Israel's best friend since the founding of the state." (I write this not to brag, but only as a way of demonstrating credibility for the rest of what is written on this blog.)
She has started to make good on that prediction, writing the strongest possible case for Israel now, a speech on the threat by Iran to inflict a nuclear Holocaust.
As you likely heard, the invitation to give that speech was rescinded in one of the most ignominious decisions by the American Jewish establishment in recent memory.
But first, consider that Obama has spoken out against sanctions when the Senate was applying them, saying "now is not the time for saber-rattling towards Iran." Also consider that Iran has endorsed Obama's National Security Advisor, the anti-'AIPAC' Zbigniew Brezezinski.
American Jews have good reason to be ashamed and angry today. As Iran moves into the final stages of its nuclear weapons development program - nuclear weapons which it will use to destroy the State of Israel, endanger Jews around the world and cow the United States of America - Democratic American Jewish leaders decided that putting Sen. Barack Obama in the White House is more important than protecting the lives of the Jewish people in Israel and around the world.
On Monday, the New York Sun published the speech that Republican vice presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would have delivered at that day's rally outside UN headquarters in New York against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and against Iran's plan to destroy Israel. She would have delivered it, if she hadn't been disinvited.
The rally was co-sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the National Coalition to Stop Iran Now, The Israel Project, United Jewish Communities, the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Its purpose was to present a united American Jewish front against Iran's genocidal leader and against its genocidal regime which is developing nuclear weapons with the stated intention of committing the second Holocaust in 80 years.
Palin's speech is an extraordinary document. In its opening paragraph she made clear that Iran presents a danger not just to Israel, but to the US. And not just to some Americans, but to all Americans. Her speech was a warning to Iran - and anyone else who was listening - that Americans are not indifferent to its behavior, its genocidal ideology and the barbarity of its regime. Rather, they are outraged.
After that opening, Palin's speech set out clearly how Iran is advancing its nuclear project, why it must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons and why and how the regime itself must be opposed by all right thinking people - not just Israelis and Americans - but by all people who value human freedom.
PALIN'S SPEECH was a message of national - rather than simply Republican - resolve against Iran's nuclear weapons program and its active involvement in global and regional terrorism. She made this point by quoting statements that Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton has made against the Iranian regime.
The speech detailed Iran's past and current attacks against the US, beginning with its bombing of US servicemen in Lebanon in 1983 and continuing with Iran's proxy war against US forces in Iraq and against Iraqis who oppose its intention of taking control of their country.
By discussing Iran's role in Iraq she not only made a convincing case for why an American victory there is essential for defeating Iran. She also made clear that Iran is actively making war against the US, not just Israel.
From Iran's war against Israel, the US, and freedom loving peoples worldwide, Palin's speech turned to the regime's war against its own people. She attacked the regime for its systematic repression of Iranian women. She applauded the extraordinary bravery of women like Delaram Ali who risked their lives and their families to demand basic rights for Iranian women. Ali, she noted, was sentenced to 10 lashes and three years in prison for having the courage to speak out. An international outcry has temporarily suspended her sentence.
Then Palin returned to Iran's nuclear weapons program and its support for terrorist groups pledged to Israel's destruction and to the destruction of the US. She returned to Ahmadinejad's calls for Israel's annihilation. She reiterated Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain's solemn promise to work with Israel to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and she joined her name to his promise to stand side by side with Israel to prevent another Holocaust.
IF PALIN had been allowed to deliver this speech at Monday's rally, she would done just what the organizers of the rally, and what the Jewish people in Israel, America and worldwide need to have done. She would have elevated the imperative of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the implicit moral and strategic imperative of overthrowing the regime in Teheran to the top of America's national security agenda. Given the massive media attention she garners at all of her public appearances, Palin's participation in the rally would have done more to steel Americans - across the political spectrum - to the cause of opposing Iran than 10 UN Security Council sanctions resolutions could do.
It was a remarkable speech, prepared by a remarkable woman. But it was not heard. It was not heard because the Democratic Party and Jewish Democrats believe that their partisan interest in demonizing Palin and making Americans generally and American Jews in particular hate and fear her to secure their votes for Obama and his running-mate Sen. Joseph Biden in the November election is more important than allowing Palin to elevate the necessity of preventing a second Holocaust to the top of the US's national security agenda.
Stanley Kurtz has pored through archived documents and has written an explosive piece today on Barack Obama's only executive experience. But first, here is a short video to place this in context:
Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.
The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.
The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.
The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago's public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.
The CAC's basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.
One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.
The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.
In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.
Law professor Stephen Diamond also went through the document archive and claims to disagree with Kurtz's conclusions. He wholeheartedly agrees that Obama and Ayers were "comrades in arms" for years, but that their organization was "authoritarian," not only "radical." Here is how Diamond puts it:
Thus, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was far more than just a chance for Ayers to engage in "radical" efforts to raise the political consciousness of young students. It was that but it was much more - it was a front in an important battle for control of the Chicago Public School system. In fact, according to the Ken Rolling, Daley himself tried to wrest control of the Annenberg grant money away from Ayers and Obama.
The Challenge was radical, but not the right wing's simplistic view of "radicalism." Rather it represented an authoritarian and bureaucratic agenda - a desperate attempt to use parents to control teachers through a politically correct curriculum, yes, but more importantly to use them as canon fodder in the battle to control teachers and administrators. This authoritarian approach is entirely consistent with Ayers' long held political views as he has consistently sided politically with the most undemocratic regimes available, including most recently that of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
And at Ayers' side the entire time during this battle was his comrade-in-arms, Barack Obama, who served as President and Chairman of the board of directors of the Challenge.
Yet again, a jihad terror attack is ended because of an armed populace:
An Arab driver rammed his car into a group of pedestrians at a central Jerusalem thoroughfare late Monday night, wounding 15 people, before being shot dead, police and rescue officials said.
It was the third such attack in the city in recent months.
The 11:00 p.m. attack at the city's Kikar Tzahal near Jaffa Gate ended quickly after the Arab assailant was shot and killed by passersby, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.
Two of casualties were seriously hurt.
The area in question is adjacent to east Jerusalem and the Old City of Jerusalem.
The assailant, who was driving a BMW, crashed into pedestrians on the sidewalk, where his car came to a grinding halt.
The casualties were rushed to Jerusalem's Hadassah-University Hospital at Ein Kerem, and the city's Sha'are Tzedek Hospital.
The attack comes after two back-to-back bulldozer attacks in Jerusalem in July which left three Israelis dead and dozens wounded.
Update: The terrorist was an Arab resident of East Jerusalem, as were the perpetrators of the last two attacks were. Most of the injured were part of a group of off-duty soldiers touring the Old City. The attacker was shot dead "within seconds by an off-duty IDF officer who was touring the city with his unit."
