Attack — Bnei Brak

An armed man rode through the streets of Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox city in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, on a motorcycle, opening fire on pedestrians and motorists before being shot and killed by a police officer who rushed to the scene, himself killed in the exchange.

Among those killed were Ukrainian workers who had come to work in Israel, a fact that served as a reminder that attacks strike indiscriminately at residents and foreign workers alike. Bnei Brak, founded by Polish immigrants in the nineteen-twenties and become the center of Israeli Orthodox Judaism, had never been targeted in such a way: the city, where armed service is a minority practice, found itself without immediate defense.