According to a Yediot Achronot report, on Tuesday 3 Tammuz, a day before the kidnapping murder of 16-year-old Muhmad Abu-Khadir , “extremist Jews tried to kidnap a different Arab youth from Shuafat”.

Moussa Zalum, 9, told reporters he was walking in the Arab area of the capital when suddenly he was grabbed by the throat. Marks indicating he was choked are still visible on his neck.

“Someone got out of a car and choked me with a rope” he tells the media. “I shouted for my mother who came running and fought him off”. Rami, the child’s father adds his son and his wife were on the main street in the neighborhood after the evening Ramadan meal. The mom suddenly heard her son’s shouts and ran to assist him as she saw someone trying to choke and pull him into a vehicle, he told authorities.

The attacker then began resisting, striking the mother in her head and chest, all the time trying to pull the youth into the car. The boy managed to shake free of his attacker and he fled. He ran into a nearby car wash.

The father added residents came running and the attackers fled and then they called police.

Police explain the father told them the attacker(s) was an Arab, promising to come to the station to give a full statement, but he never came.

On the next day, after discovering the body of the slain youth, police returned to the scene of the first incident to question the father on the attempted abduction.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)