What are the odds

"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."

~~Ian Fleming

One of the differences between Amalek and Israel is that Amalek is desribed as "אֲשֶׁר קָרְךָ בַּדֶּרֶךְ" - "Happened upon" us, I.e., Amalek is associated with coincidence, happenstance, "It just happened that way"

Israel, on the other hand believed in Providence - nothing is a coincidence, it is all planned by a Planner.

well...

When I first heard about the terrorist attack earlier this week, one of my first questions was "I wonder who neutralized the terrorist" - the previous three attacks in Jerusalem had all been stopped by civilians (while security forces either got in the way or stood by and did nothing) - would this pattern be continued this time?

I was then curious to find out more about this hero, did he match the profile of the other heroes who were all young men from the Religious Zionist camp? Well not only did he match that profile, but it turns out that he had a direct relationship to the heroes of the past attacks.

Well The Muqata did the homework, and look at this relationship between the latest group of heroes to emerge from the ranks of the religious Zionist camp -

• David Shapira was a passer-by who, along with Yitzhak Dadon, shot the terrorist in the Merkaz HaRav massacre in Jerusalem on the night of March 6.
  
  
• Moshe Plesser, the passer-by who shot the first bulldozer terrorist in Jerusalem on July 2, is David Shapira's brother-in-law.
  
  
• Yakki Asa-el, the passer-by who shot the second bulldozer terrorist in Jerusalem on July 22, was Moshe Plesser's yeshiva high school teacher.
  
  
• And today, we find out that Elad Amar, who shot the terrorist in the attack last night, served in the Paratrooper unit commanded by David Shapira.

(see: http://muqata.blogspot.com/2008/09/call-it-coincidence-or-is-that-just.html )

What are the odds that these people would all be connected, I'm not a statistician, and it could be that the odds are quite high, given that a disproportionate number of people in Jerusalem who carry guns are from the Religious Zionist camp, and almost all people in the Israeli Religious Zionist camp are connected by 1-2 levels of separation, however these connections seem quite close and on the surface it looks improbable.

Maybe G-d does play dice after all...

Comments?