The Jerusalem Massacre

Warning: Graphic images

Hat tip Nancy from Act for America

I just received this from my colleague Nancy at Act for America and I am passing it along. It concerns the massacre of four Jewish rabbis in a synagogue yesterday in Jerusalem.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is a must read piece of solid logic, documentation and compassion by a wonderful analyst/journalist, Arlene Kushner in Jerusalem.  

Please  share it with our elected officials and all the clergy you know.

Don

November 18, 2014

“Without Words”

Sometimes a situation is so horrific that it renders one speechless.  Such was the attack by Israeli Arabs on innocent Jews praying in Jerusalem this morning.  And so, I’m going to start with photos, which provide greater impact than my words alone would. 

Once I would have apologized for provided such graphic illustrations.  No more. The world must “get the picture,” figuratively as well as literally.

Credit: preoccupiedterritory

~~~~~~~~~~

Jews went to pray this morning in a major synagogue connected to a yeshiva on Aggasi Street in Har Nof, a largely ultra-Orthodox neighborhood on a hill in western Jerusalem. 

Two Israeli Arabs entered, bearing guns and meat cleavers and knives.  Calling “Allahu Akbar,” they proceeded to massacre those who were praying.

Please note the fact of meat cleavers.  This is about more than “just” killing Jews.  For that guns would have sufficed.  How do I – struggling for adequate words – convey to the world what is going on?  How do I get people to understand what we are dealing with here?

Credit: Kobi Gideon/GPO/FLASH90

~~~~~~~~~~

ZAKA is an Israeli organization that, among other things, gathers tissue and blood from attacks, to be interred with the deceased according to Jewish law.  A member of ZAKA today commented that he has been at scenes where more people had been murdered, but he had never seen a bloodier or more gruesome scene than the one today.

Some worshippers were lying in blood on the floor with their tallitot (prayer shalls) and tefillin still on.

Credit: GPO

~~~~~~~~~~

In the end, four were killed:

Rabbi Moshe Twersky, 59, Rosh Kollel for the Torat Moshe yeshiva and grandson of the great Rav Soloveitchik; Rabbi Kalman Levine, 55; Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky, 43; and Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Goldberg, 68. Rabbi Goldberg had dual Israeli-British citizenship; the other three were American-Israeli.

May the Almighty avenge their deaths.

At least eight others were injured, including two police officers.  Four are serious to critical.

~~~~~~~~~~

All four of the victims lived on Aggasi Street. “On one street, four widows and 24 orphans were left," the head rabbi of the community, Yitzhak Mordechai Rubin, said at the funeral of Rabbi Twersky.

Credit: JPost

Rabbi Twersky’s funeral, the first held, was attended by thousands. The other three funerals, also heavily attended, were held shortly thereafter.

~~~~~~~~~~

The two terrorists were shot dead by police.  They were Rasan and Oudai Abu Jamal, cousins from the problematic Arab neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber in eastern Jerusalem. They are reportedly related to terrorist Jamal Abu Jamal, who was released from prison as part of a “gesture” to Abbas and subsequently re-arrested.  As I’ve indicated before that terror is often a “family affair.”

According to various reports I’ve picked up, one of the terrorists worked in a small grocery store (a makolet) just next door to the synagogue.  (More on the significance of this below.)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Three of the victims held US citizenship. Is it not time for our government to stop all aid to the Palestinian entities until this killing stops?