JERUSALEM — A 29-year-old American business school student was killed in a stabbing attack in the Jaffa area of Tel Aviv on March 8.
Taylor Force, a student at the Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management, was on a school trip to Israel when he was killed Tuesday evening, the university said. As many as 10 people were wounded in the attack at and near the Jaffa Port, Force’s wife seriously, Ynet reported.
Force and other Owen school students had gone to Israel to learn about the high-tech industry there. No one else on the trip was hurt, the university said.
”This horrific act of violence has robbed our Vanderbilt family of a young hopeful life and all of the bright promise that he held for bettering our greater world,” said Vanderbilt Chancellor Nick Zeppos in an email to students, faculty and staff.
Force was a graduate of West Point and a US Army veteran who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Jaffa attack came less than two hours after terror attacks in Jerusalem and central Israel left a haredi man and two Israeli Border Police officers seriously injured.
Four of the injured are reported to be in serious condition and four others in moderate condition, according to Israels Channel 2. The attack lasted about 20 minutes in three locations.
Police said the assailant was neutralized. He was later identified by the Palestinian Maan news agency and then by police as a 22-year-old man from the Palestinian city of Qalqilya in the northern West Bank. Haaretz named him as Bashar Masalha.
At the time of the attack, US Vice President Joe Biden was less than two miles away meeting with former Israeli President Shimon Peres at the Peres Center for Peace. He was in Israel on a two-day trip.
At the entrance to the Jaffa port, Masalha stabbed two people before running up the promenade, including to near the Dolphinarium Club, according to reports. The port is a popular seaside shopping and dining center for Israelis and tourists in Jaffa, the predominately Arab area of south Tel Aviv.
The Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality vowed to step up security in the wake of the attack.
As of press time, three terrorist attacks had been reported on Wednesday, March 9. Two were attempted stabbings in the West Bank; one in Kedumim, an Israeli community, the other an attack on Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint near Ariel.
In Jerusalem, a Palestinian man was critically injured near Damascus Gate when two Palestinian residents of eastern Jerusalem tried to run over and shoot police officers and civilians at a light rail stop.
On Wednesday, at a press conference held together with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden denounced the attack. “Let me say in no uncertain terms: The United States of America condemns these acts and condemns the failure to condemn these acts. This cannot become an accepted modus operandi,” he said.
”They’re targeting innocent civilians, mothers, pregnant women, teenagers, grandfathers, American citizens,” he said. ”There can be no justification for this hateful violence, and the United States stands firmly behind Israel when it defends itself as we are defending ourselves at this moment as well.”
Netanyahu criticized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for his failure to condemn the violent wave of terror over the last six months.
“Nothing can justify these attacks. Regrettably, President Abbas not only refuses to condemn these terror attacks, but the Fatah movement he leads praised the murder of the American citizen by calling his murderer a martyr and a Palestinian hero,” Netanyahu said.
Tazpit Press Service contributed to this report.
