Seven Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers were wounded Monday during an operation to arrest a terror suspect in the Palestinian city of Jenin when they came under fire from gunmen in the area.
The Times of Israel reported:
Five Palestinians were killed as heavy clashes broke out between gunmen and Israeli troops in the city of Jenin on Monday morning. An Israeli helicopter gunship carried out rare strikes, the first in the West Bank in some two decades, in order for seven wounded soldiers to be evacuated from the battle zone after a vehicle was hit by an explosive device, the military and local officials said.
In a brief joint statement, the Israel Defense Forces and Border Police said forces entered the northern West Bank city in the early morning hours to detain two wanted Palestinians.
“During the activity, a massive exchange of fire took place between the forces and armed gunmen in the area. Large numbers of explosive devices were hurled at the forces. The forces responded with live fire,” the statement said, adding that several suspects were hit.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an organization backed by Iran, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Palestinian Authority called the event a “massacre,” even though Palestinian terrorists launched the attack.
The term “massacre” has grim resonance in Jenin, as it was used by Palestinian spokesmen in 2002 to spread false information to the worldwide media after an intense fight between terrorists and Israeli soldiers. Israel had entered the city as part of Operation Defensive Shield, launched in response to a Palestinian attack on a Jewish Passover meal at a hotel in the coastal city of Netanya. The United Nations, normally hostile to Israel, investigated Palestinian “massacre” claims and found them to be false, though the lie had already spread around the world. One of the spokesmen who spread the lie was Saeb Erekat, who was the darling of liberal Western think tanks despite spreading the most vicious blood libel against Jews since the Middle Ages.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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