Tharwat Ibrahim al-Sha'rawi (Um Ayoub) (Twitter, November 6, 2015)
1. On November 6, 2015, a 72 year-old Palestinian woman tried to run over an IDF soldier standing under the Halhul bridge (north of Hebron). IDF soldiers stationed at the roadblock saw a vehicle racing towards one of the soldiers under the bridge. They shot at the vehicle. The driver was wounded and evacuated to a hospital, where she died. There were no IDF casualties. A knife was found in a bag inside the car.
2. The terrorist was Tharwat Ibrahim al-Sha'rawi (Um Ayoub), 72, mother of five. She was the widow of Fouad al-Sha'rawi, a terrorist operative who was killed by IDF fire in the region of Hebron in 1988 during the first intifada. Tharwat al-Sha'rawi's daughter Ihlam is married to Jamal al-Natshe, a Hamas-faction member of the Palestinian Legislative Committee in Hebron, currently imprisoned in Israel. Hamas issued a death notice for Tharwat al-Sha'rawi. Ismail Haniya, deputy head of Hamas' political bureau, spoke to the family and expressed his condolences (PALDF forum, November 7, 2015).
The Hamas death notice for Tharwat al-Sha'rawi (Facebook page of the Islamic Movement in Nablus, November 6, 2015).
3. It was recently reported that two weeks before her death, Tharwat al-Sha'rawi wrote a will and spoke with her daughter Ihlam. She said the following: "I think I am going to die soon… If I die, oh, Allah, let me die as a shaheeda and not in my bed" (Shasha.ps, November 8, 2015). Writing a will and her words to her daughter strengthen the IDF report that she carried out a vehicular attack and was not, as the Palestinians claimed, "executed" by IDF soldiers.
4. Tharwat al-Sha'rawi's son claimed his mother was not a terrorist. He claimed that she had gone to pray at a mosque and was on her way to visit her sister in Ras al-Jura. He claimed she had gone to a gas station to get gas. He claimed there was a large number of IDF soldiers at the time, and that they shot her.
5. The Palestinian media also claimed that the IDF had "executed" her for no reason. Hamas-affiliated Facebook pages claimed she had not tried to carry out a vehicular attack and that security camera footage could not prove she had tried to run over one of the soldiers (Facebook page of the Islamic Movement – Nablus, October 6, 2015; Facebook page of the Islamic Bloc at Hebron University).
| 6. One of the characteristics of the Palestinian responses to the current wave of terrorism is the sweeping denial of the fact that the terrorists were killed while carrying out terrorist attacks. Official Palestinian spokesmen (including Palestinian Authority figures) and relatives of the terrorists who carried out vehicular and stabbing attacks repeatedly claim Israel carried out "executions" and that the Palestinians killed were innocent. However, evidence on the ground and information from the Palestinian media repeatedly indicate that the events were terrorist attacks carried out by male and female Palestinian terrorists. It has also become apparent that in several instances (like the one involving Tharwat al- Sha'rawi), the terrorists who carried out the attacks had left letters or posted their intentions on their Facebook pages.[1] Such terrorists are represented to the Palestinian public as shaheeds who carried out acts of heroism and subsequently become role models for other terrorists. |
[1] Another current example is Risha Muhammad Ahmed Awissi, 23, from Qalqiliya , who carried out a stabbing attack at the Eliahu crossing near Alfei Menashe. She had a suicide note in her bag explaining the attack as "defending the homeland."
