What could be more innocent than a young child on a bicycle? Surely any child should be safe to cycle down the road in his home town. Any parent in the world would demand that basic security for their child.

So put yourselves in the shoes of the parents of the 13-year-old Israeli boy who on Monday was riding his bike when he was suddenly set upon by two Palestinian boys – one 17, the other also 13. They stabbed him, leaving him critically wounded.

The current horror for my country is that attacks such as this are a regular occurrence. Before they stabbed the boy, his assailants had made an equally random attack on an Israeli man walking down the street – one of several similar incidents on Monday. Every day since, more have followed: Palestinians suddenly turning on Israeli civilians who were simply minding their own business, using whatever weapon they could to kill or injure.

I’ve spent the last week in Jerusalem, where, as the minister of public security, I have witnessed first-hand what an explosive device, a knife or even a screwdriver can do in the hands of a Palestinian intent on murdering civilians. More than 100 Israelis have been injured in the past two weeks; some have died from their wounds, murdered by terrorists as they were walking down a street or riding a bus.

Some speak of “lone wolf” attacks when describing this wave of terror. But these attacks are being fuelled by violent incitement on social media, on official Palestinian radio and in sermons delivered in Gaza’s mosques. When Hamas posts an “instructional clip” on YouTube teaching viewers how to murder Israeli civilians, when Palestinian radio plays songs of praise to the “martyrs”, and when preachers in Gaza stand at the pulpit with a raised knife to demonstrate how to stab an Israeli, then we shouldn’t be surprised that young people decide to take a knife and commit murder.

Read the article in full at The Guardian.