#JeSuisCouteau Trends On Twitter To Support Assailant After Tel Aviv Bus Stabbing

Hours after a Palestinian man stabbed 11 morning commuters on a Tel Aviv bus, Twitter users supporting the assailant reacted with a new hashtag. Styled after the #JeSuisCharlie hashtag following the terrorist attacks in Paris, #JeSuisCouteau, or “I am the knife,” started gaining steam online Wednesday.

Most of the tweets are in Arabic. Some contain images of knives while others use political cartoons to praise the attack, comment on the Western response to violence in the Middle East or draw a link between the stabbings and the terrorist attacks in Paris where 17 people were killed – including four during a hostage siege at a kosher supermarket on Jan. 9.

“Ten stabs for those who don’t pray for the prophet,” said a caption on one cartoon shared in a tweet. The image shows a masked man holding a bloody knife. A bus in the background bears the Star of David and the number 40, the bus route involved in Wednesday’s attack.

Hamza Mohammed Hassan Matrouk, 23, from Tulkarem in the West Bank, confessed to the stabbings. He said last summer’s Israel-Gaza conflict, tensions at Jerusalem’s Western Wall between Jews and Muslims and jihad videos motivated him to attack, the Associated Press reported.

According to police, Matrouk was on the bus when he started stabbing passengers and the driver, Herzl Biton. Biton used pepper spray and jammed on the brakes to stop Matrouk. After he was stabbed, he opened the bus doors to let commuters flee. Matrouk ran but was chased and shot by prison guards in the area. At least three people were hospitalized in serious condition. Matrouk was treated at a hospital before he was arrested.

"The reality is very clear. There is no sense of personal security,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israel Radio. “Not in Tel Aviv, not in Jerusalem, which is divided by concrete barricades, and not [in the communities] near Gaza. This is a real problem and the citizens of Israel will need to make a decision."