“When is enough enough? No country in the world would stand idly by while its citizens are systematically attacked and murdered. Yet Israel is expected to do just that,” says Zionist Council of Victoria President, Sam Tatarka.

The latest news of an attack on a 32-year-old Jewish man who was stabbed in the back with a screwdriver by an Arab suspect on a central Jerusalem Street near the Old City on the weekend is yet another bloody example of attacks aimed at Israeli civilians. It seems anything goes in the terror that is being unleashed against Israelis and nobody is immune. Not three-month old Haya Zissel-Brown who was killed in a deliberately targeted run-over car attack in Jerusalem, nor 20-year-old Sgt Almog Shiloni in Tel Aviv who was fatally stabbed near the Haganah train station.

Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority he leads bears responsibility for his reckless calls to defend the Temple Mount from imagined attacks by Jews and then adds fuel to the fire by treating the killers he inspires as martyrs. His coalition partner, Hamas praises stabbings and other attacks on Israeli civilians.

ZCV, President, Sam Tatarka says: “Cars, knives, screwdrivers and guns seem to be the order of the day and innocent Israelis appear to be fair game. These incidents are terror attacks. Attacks aimed at civilians undermine all rules of morality and law. Specifically the intentional killing of civilians is considered a “grave breach” of international humanitarian law and a war crime. Whatever the circumstances, such acts are unjustifiable.”

“The fundamental principle of international humanitarian law dictates that civilians are to be protected from the consequences of warfare, and any attack must discriminate between civilian and military targets. This principle is part of international customary law; as such it applies to every state, organisation and person, even those who are not party to any relevant convention, and this includes Hamas and its coalition partner, the Palestinian Authority,” says Mr. Tatarka.