Jerusalem Massacre Was The Blood Libel In Action, So They Say
An Israeli rescue worker navigates the scene of a shooting attack in a synagogue in Jerusalem, Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2014. Two Palestinians stormed a Jerusalem synagogue on Tuesday, attacking worshippers praying inside with knives, axes and guns, and killing four people before they were killed in a shootout with police, officials said. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)
THE murders of four praying Jews and a Druze policeman in Jerusalem would be a massacre, or the work of seriel killers. The two men who armed themselves with an axe, knives and a pistol to slaughter Jews in a synagogue would be presented as being dangerous, mentally negligible nutjobs, like the killers of drummer Lee Rigby. But this is Israel. The rules are changed.
Anorak rounds up a some veiws:
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked an incredibly loaded term to condemn what he says was Palestinian incitement to violence. The Israeli premier said the latest killings were the result of a “blood libel” against Israeli Jews, a phrase that carries with it the stigma of centuries of anti-Semitic persecution…
A Hamas statement praised the action, claiming it was revenge for the recent death of a Palestinian bus driver in the city. Israeli authorities say the man committed suicide, and conducted an autopsy to prove it, but some Palestinians are convinced he was murdered by an Israeli mob.
Netanyahu and some of his political allies jumped on this and used the moment to also condemn Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. “Yesterday, a bus driver in East Jerusalem committed suicide. The autopsy report proves this beyond a doubt,” Netanyahu is quoted saying by Haaretz. “This didn’t prevent the dissemination of a blood libel that he was murdered by Jews. This incitement contributed to the despicable massacre…”
“Blood libel” is a particularly incendiary phrase. Its roots date back to antiquity, when violence against communities of Jews was justified with false rumors of Jews stealing Christian babies, eating a gentile’s entrails, participating in various grisly, sordid blood rituals. There is a long history of this,
The Guardian says the killed men were “rabbis”. That puts religion at the heart of it.
Yoram Cohen, the head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s top secret security service,cautioned against Netanyahu’s sweeping rhetoric, insisting on Tuesday that Abbas “is not interested in terror and is not inciting to terror.”
The i has “terror in the temple”.
Is Netanyahu right?
Synagogues in the UK are cvoered in barbed wire. As a matter of routine, guards are outside.
Following the deadly attack on a Jerusalem synagogue and the stabbing of a Jewish man in Belgium, the security unit of British Jewry advised vigilance around Jewish institutions.
The Community Security Trust issued the warning Tuesday in a security bulletin that contained nine instructions to Jewish institutions, including a call to “ensure visible external security patrols take place to deter and detect hostile activity” and immediate reporting to police of any suspicious behavior.
“This is an attack on all of us,” said Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, who leads Ohev Sholom Synagogue in Washington. “Any terrorist attack is a horror. But to attack people while they are engaged in prayer, are talking to God, is a new low.”
CNN:
But relatives of the terrorists told The New York Times the men were motivated by Israel’s recent closure of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary compound, a site holy to both Jews and Muslims.
The site has since been reopened, but the dispute has fueled small-scale attacks by Palestinians that have killed six Israelis in recent weeks.
In the United States, the horror of Tuesday’s terror attack unified Jews across the political spectrum, even those who sharply disagree with Netanyahu’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
In an editorial, the Jewish Daily Forward said the frustration of Palestinians “living under occupation” is understandable.
But killing innocent men at prayer is morally indefensible, the newspaper said, noting that the synagogue is in West Jerusalem, not in “contested territory.”
It’s about killing Jews:
“This was an attack by Palestinian terrorists of pure evil and would have been utterly deplorable wherever, whenever it had occurred,” said Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former chief of rabbi of Britain.
“But for this terrorist attack to occur in a synagogue, deliberately targeting innocent Jews deep in prayer, is something that strikes at the soul of Jewish people around the world.”
The BBC reports that the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, says it carried out the brutal attack at a Jerusalem synagogue this morning…
The PFLP is a Marxist-Leninist organization that some on the anti-Zionist Western Left, who consider Fatah a sellout and who are uncomfortable with the reactionary nature of Hamas, support enthusiastically.
Posted: 19th, November 2014 | In: Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
