Israeli security forces have launched a manhunt to find the Palestinian man who fatally stabbed Dafna Meir, a 38-year-old mother of six, at the entrance to her home on Sunday, The Times of Israel reported.
The terrorist broke into the Meir family home in the West Bank community of Otniel, near Hebron, just after 5:00 PM. He struggled with the victim, who had three children at home at the time, before stabbing her and fleeing the scene. Meir’s 17-year-old daughter Renana witnessed the attack and described the assailant to authorities.
The killer is thought to have escaped to a nearby Arab village. Security forces have set up checkpoints in the area and advised residents to stay indoors as they search for the fugitive.
Yehuda Glick, an activist who was shot in a 2014 assassination attempt by an Islamic Jihad operative, praised Meir for struggling with her killer. “The terrorist tried without a doubt to hurt the kids and Dafna, who was so small and short, fought him,” he told the Walla news site.
Meir was a nurse at the Soroka hospital in Beersheba. In addition to her four biological children, ages 11 to 17, she and her husband Natan had taken in two foster children, ages four and six.
“I didn’t just lose a mother, but also my best friend,” said Reanana at her mother’s funeral at the Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem on Monday, where some 1,500 people arrived to pay their respects.
“My Dafna is one in a million, who grew up in a house that wasn’t a home and still managed to rehabilitate,” said Natan of his wife, who was in the foster care system in Israel until she was 13. “She decided to give back grace to the world, and she did.”
Also on Monday, a pregnant Israeli woman was stabbed and injured in the community of Tekoa in the Etzion Bloc in the West Bank. The 15-year-old Palestinian attacker was shot and wounded.
Israel’s emergency medical service Magen David Adom reports that “29 people have been killed (including a Palestinian and a foreign worker), and 289 people injured – 25 of them seriously – in terrorist attacks” since September 13.
Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy Minister Gilad Erdan presented the latest Palestinian Authority incitement index on Sunday. The findings, which show that incitement against Jews and Israel by the PA is on the rise, illustrated the effects that violent rhetoric has on youth.
Ministers were presented with examples from children’s and youth programs on the official Palestinian Authority television channel featuring – inter alia – children calling for the murder of Jews, incitement by Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen encouraging terrorism, and incitement in new media.
Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy Ministry Director General Sima Vaknin noted that approximately 37% of terrorists are under 20, 39% are 21-25 and the remaining 24% are over 26.
[Photo: Yonatan Sindel / Flash90 ]