The 17-year-old Palestinian terrorist who killed an American-Israeli father of four deliberately targeted him because he was an American, according to a new report from The Times Of Israel. Khalil Jabarin, who stabbed 43-year-old Ari Fuld, a native of Queens, New York, in the back, mortally wounding him, had reportedly repeatedly asked people if they spoke English before his attack.
Hila Peretz, a woman who worked in a local falafel store at the Gush Etzion Junction shopping mall and was targeted by the killer after he stabbed Fuld, said she had served the killer a falafel. She recalled, “After he came inside and ordered his falafel, he asked me two separate times if I spoke English. I told him ‘no,’ and asked him what it was that he wanted.”
Peretz added that Jabarin did not respond. She said she believed Jabarin was trying to discern who was an American. Peretz stated, “It was not as if he didn’t speak Hebrew and had been asking to speak English so he could make his order. We carried out our conversation in Hebrew. There were other people in the area that he could have targeted first, but he chose Ari. But them he didn’t target, he must have wanted an American.”
Peretz said earlier this week that she witnessed Jabarin “pull out this big knife that was glimmering in the sun, and plunged it into [Ari].” She said Jabarin chased her brandishing the knife as she fled and shouted “terrorist.” Peretz told Israel’s Channel 10 TV news, “The terrorist was right behind me. I started running down the stairs but he jumped to try to get in front of me. The man that was killed really saved my life.”
Security camera footage shows Jabarin waiting behind Fuld for nearly a minute while Fuld greeted several people. It also shows that after Fuld had been mortally wounded, with blood pouring down his back, he chased and shot Jabarin as the murderer chased after Peretz. Another civilian also shot Jabarin, who was lightly wounded; Jabarin is being treated in an Israeli hospital.
On Friday morning, after visiting Ari Fuld’s grave, the Fuld family, saying they wanted to “continue in Ari’s way,” returned to the scene of the murder. His father Yonah said simply, “We have grown and will continue to grow as a result of what has happened, and we will choose life. We have learned great spiritual strengths from Ari’s life and death, and despite our private pain, we are filled with pride at Ari’s heroism and the way he chose to end his life.”
Fuld’s daughter Tamar echoed, “Dad would have wanted to show the world that this pride (of his) continues and is now part of us.”