Israel National News reports on an interview with Amar Abu Sarhan, published in the Hamas newspaper al-Risala, in which the veteran terrorist advises Palestinians to escalate the carnage from the current wave of knife attacks by putting poison on their blades.
Abu Sarhan has experience with such attacks, having stabbed three Israelis in 1990. He was imprisoned until Israel released over a thousand terrorists to secure the release of hostage Gilad Shalit in 2011. According to the translation from Israel National News, the Hamas newspaper hailed Abu Sarhan as a pioneer of the “knife intifada,” or uprising.
Abu Sarhan priased knife attacks as a “lone activity that is difficult to thwart, and that it is a more painful way of being murdered than by gunfire,” before recommending Palestinians increase the fatality rate by rubbing poison on their blades. Israel National News recalls the previous use of rat poison on the shrapnel of Hamas nail bombs.
The current leadership of Hamas wants to escalate the violence with suicide bombings, which prompted the Israelis to arrest one of their senior officials, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, on Monday night.
The supposedly more “moderate” wing of the Palestinian government, President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, also called for bombings, although senior official Jibril Rajoub warned that it was better to avoid anything on the scale of bus bombs in Tel Aviv, because that would engage too much world sympathy for the Israelis. Rajoub said he was “proud” of the Palestinian knife attackers and “welcomed” their work.
The Jerusalem Post noticed some Palestinian social media posts calling on aspiring knife killers to “poison the knife before you stab” last week, along with advice to use serrated blades instead of smooth ones, for maximum pain and bleeding. Demonstrations of proper stabbing technique, instructional videos on knife sharpening, and recommendations for where Jews should be stabbed, have also been posted.
“To the heroes of knives who intend to strike at the occupying soldiers: Anoint the knives with a poisonous substance – thus you will cause an infection in the victim and they won’t be able to stitch the wound. Spread this knowledge,” read a Palestinian Facebook post quoted by Ynet News.