Life with Arabs in Jerusalem The Har Nof massacre has stripped away the veneer of security, leaving us feeling vulnerable.

Jerusalem has gotten a bit scarier the last couple of months. Israeli authorities are not  officially calling it the third intifada, but living in our nation’s capital is not as tranquil as it used it to be. After a spate of terror attacks by lone drivers (right around the corner from where I live), the horrific massacre in Har Nof’s largest shul, and two men being stabbed by Arab assailants near Jaffa Gate, (five minutes after I walked by that very spot), fear has gripped the city. It’s just been reported that the Shin Bet foiled a Hamas plot to attack Teddy Stadium. There is a shortage of pepper spray (which my wife and kids now carry) and a greater mistrust toward Arabs living and working in the city due to fears that they may be the next terrorist who goes on a rampage.

Terror hits everyone. We are being attacked by an enemy that wants to annihilate the Jewish people and drive us from our homes. And while many Arabs certainly do want peace, it is becoming harder to differentiate which Arab genuinely seeks peace and which Arab is prepared to grab an axe or car to kill innocent civilians. This is not in any way meant as a racist statement. It is the very real concern every Jew living in Jerusalem faces daily. Just take one ride on the Jerusalem light rail to experience what I’m talking about.

This week’s Torah portion gives us some insights in how we as Jews need to prepare to encounter someone who wants to harm us.

Jacob gets word that Esau, his twin brother and foe who he has not seen in over 20 years, is coming to greet him with an army of 400 soldiers. Jacob is afraid, and implements three different strategies in preparation to meet his mortal enemy.

First, hoping to bribe Esau, he sends messengers with an enormous gift consisting of waves of livestock and servants. Then he prepares to do battle with Esau in case his gifts do not appease him. And finally Jacob prays to God to save him.

The order of Jacob’s three-pronged defense strategy is not random. Why did he leave prayer for last? The Jew’s primary weapon is prayer. Shouldn’t praying to God to save him be the first and most significant act of preparation?

Gifts and Confrontation

The Torah is teaching us several important lessons through the steps that Jacob took and their specific order.

Jacob first sends gifts to Esau because if a confrontation can be avoided through bribery, that is the best possible outcome at the least cost. If some gifts can buy peace and avoid bloodshed, that is the preferred route.

Gifts that are not backed up by a clear readiness for confrontation become a statement of capitulation that breeds contempt, not peace.

But a gift alone is a very dangerous strategy. A bribe is effective only if the enemy knows that beneath the velvet cover lays an iron fist. Esau needs to know that if conciliation fails, Jacob is fully committed to waging war and doing whatever it takes to protect his family.

Gifts that are not backed up by a clear readiness for confrontation become a statement of capitulation that breeds contempt, not peace. The enemy smells weakness, and his appetite is only whetted.

This is one of the reasons why the Oslo accords were such a dismal failure. Our Arab enemies realized that the nation of Israel was tired of war. The Israeli government was offering concessions without the readiness to go to war, if need be. As a result, land for peace brought only conflict and escalation. The Arab leaders viewed our concessions as capitulation and as a result they were emboldened to harden their stance and attack Israel.

Prayer: Escape or Responsibility

Jacob’s decision to make prayer his third and final act of preparation teaches us a crucial lesson about the interplay between prayer, relying on God and taking responsibility.

Prayer is appropriate only once we have undertaken as much responsibility as we possibly can.

Trusting God and putting in our necessary effort is a delicate balance. We have to do both. Prayer is appropriate only once we have undertaken as much responsibility as we possibly can. In the absence of assuming responsibility, we can cloak ourselves in self-righteousness and use prayer as an escape from our obligations. This is antithetical to what God wants from us.

Imagine stumbling across a butterfly as it struggles to break out of its cocoon. You look in wonder at the metamorphosis that is occurring right before your eyes, and out of compassion, you break open the cocoon to help the poor butterfly break free. You think you are doing a kindness for the emerging butterfly, but in fact you are harming it irrevocably. The butterfly needs to exert its muscles by breaking out of its cocoon because through this effort it gains the strength to flap its wings and fly.

The Almighty wants us to exert our muscles, to put in the necessary effort and learn what it means to be responsible. Turning to prayer as a quick fix that sidesteps responsibility runs counter to God’s overall purpose in this world because it robs us of the opportunity to emulate Him by utilizing our free will.

At the same time prayer reminds us that ultimately, everything comes from the Almighty. We must realize that God is in control and trust that He has our back. But prayer is not appropriate until we have demonstrated to God that we are acting responsibly and doing all that is in our power. That is why Jacob prays only after he has completed the other two steps of preparation, and why we need to ensure that we are doing our utmost in being responsible before relying on prayer to save us.

The Har Nof massacre has stripped away the veneer of security, leaving us feeling vulnerable. We must be strong and firm. We must take responsible action, as a nation and as individuals. If you do not live in Jerusalem, that includes coming to visit to demonstrate your solidarity and that you will not give into to terror. (Just last 400 women from around the came to Israel on a JWRP mission. No one cancelled their trip.) And lastly, we must put our trust in the Almighty and turn our hearts to God in sincere prayer, recognizing that ultimately He is the only One who can save us.

Zaka Bentzion Oring speaks about Har Nof Massacre

US Ambassador Prays at Har Nof Shul

A visit of the United States Ambassador to Israel Daniel B. Shapiro and the Founder and President of United Hatzalah Eli Beer after the horrific massacre at the Har Nof synagogue.
- A visit of ambassador Dan Shapiro as the home of the United Hatzalah paramedic Yanki Erlich who was injured while treating the victims of a massacre while running away from the shooting of the terrorists.

True kindness: ZAKA response to sheer evil

TRUE KINDNESS:

THE JEWISH RESPONSE TO SHEER EVIL

Jews in Jerusalem and around the world - from Berlin to Baltimore, from Auckland to Antwerp - are under attack. Brutal, horrific and often fatal attacks. In synagogues. On the street. Sheer evil. In the name of "religion". The Jewish response to such evil is true kindness (chesed shel emet) The ZAKA response.

Please donate now!

Whenever and wherever terror strikes, ZAKA volunteers are there - within life-saving minutes. At the Har Nof synagogue attack, ZAKA paramedics tended to the wounded, while other volunteers helped with forensic identification. For hours, on their hands and knees, ZAKAvolunteers cleared the terror scene of all human remains and blood. To honor the dead in the Jewish way. With care, love and selfless dedication. ZAKA volunteers will always be there to help - however horrific the scene. But your financial support for their holy work is essential. Be a partner with ZAKA and help us honor those who have been killed - just for being Jewish.

Please donate today - so that ZAKA is ready for whatever tomorrow brings.

You are receiving this offer as an Aish.com subscriber.

Amb. Prosor on CNN International - Jerusalem Terror Attack

It Was a Pogrom, Not a Terror Attack: And Why that Matters (Bloomberg View) Daniel Gordis

If this horror cannot be stopped, the promises that Zionism made to the Jewish people -- that the butchery was over -- will be upended. And no Israeli prime minister can willingly allow that to happen on his or her watch.

Click on image to read column There are terror attacks, and there are pogroms. The attack at a Jerusalem synagogue this week that killed four rabbis was a pogrom. It was an attack motivated not by politics but by religious hatred; it was directed not at Israelis but at Jews. The killers were armed with hatchets and guns instead of suicide belts, and they came not to kill Jews but to butcher them. The images are horrific: a prayer shawl in a pool of blood; a prayer book turned crimson, from which one of the victims had been worshiping as he was killed; and more haunting, the hand of a dead man, still wearing his phylacteries, soaking in his own blood. Witnesses said a worshiper's arm, also wrapped in a leather prayer strap, had been hacked off its torso. To Jews schooled in Jewish history, these images are not new; they are the images of a destiny from which Israel had been intended to redeem the Jews. Consider this description of the Kishinev Pogrom in 1903: [One young boy], blinded in one eye from youth, begged for his life with the offer of sixty rubles; taking this money, the leader of the crowd ...  gouged out [his] other eye, saying "You will never again look upon a Christian child." Nails were driven through heads; bodies, hacked in half; bellies split open and filled with feathers. Women and girls were raped, and some had their breasts cut off.  Now it's happening in the Jewish State. What does that mean for Zionism? That is what this column explores.   ... By agreement with Bloomberg View, the entire column can be read online at http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-19/jerusalems-new-holy-war

CBS News Fails, Fox News Shows Palestinian Joy at Terror

Israel Matzav: Tuesday's terror and the Haredim

This comment ought to be read and re-read, because for once someone writing in a publication associated with the Left actually seems to get it. 

The citizenship and piety of the victims is largely immaterial—this was simply brutal, ideological murder. But the choice of victims does tell us something about where these murders come from, and what they mean politically.

In recent weeks, the usual hum of low-grade Palestinian incitement has been raised to a fever pitch. There have been allegations of murder and paranoid rumors of Israeli plans to dismantle Muslim sanctuaries. Lone-wolf terrorists have rammed their cars into crowds and stabbed young commuters at bus stops. The Israeli security forces, expert in disrupting networks and intercepting infiltrations, have found themselves helpless to stop it. How do you predict an attack by a single local resident armed only with a car and a kitchen knife?

There is irony in the latest attack. The synagogue was in Har Nof, an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in West Jerusalem. The worshippers lived in internationally recognized Israel and almost certainly never served in the army. They would never approach the Temple Mount, the holy site where recent visits by Jews have supposedly triggered the latest wave of Palestinian violence, because they believe that God’s law forbids it. In other words, these worshippers should be among the least offensive to Palestinians.

This is not to say that, for instance, last week’s murder of 26-year-old Dalia Lemkus was less obscene because it happened near a West Bank settlement. But the senselessness and brutality of the synagogue assault, and the otherworldliness of the victims, lays bare the inadequacy of rational political explanations for terror. No doubt the murderers had their grievances (and some perhaps were reasonable), but the butchery in Har Nof shows that any sense of strategy has been overwhelmed by hate. The murder of non-Zionist Torah scholars is an attack on Jews more than Israel, and explaining it requires an understanding of hatred, not of politics. Perhaps the currentcelebrations throughout the West Bank and Gaza—replete with songs of praise on mosque loudspeakers and the festival-like delivery of sweets to children—goes at least part of the way to providing that.

Rarely has it been clearer: these men were killed simply because they were Jews living in the land of Israel. That they were rabbis killed at prayer is a potent symbol of the attack's senselessess, but their orthodoxy also serves as evidence of how utterly self-defeating Palestinian terrorism is.

Read it all. 

CNN News Coverage of Jerusalem Tragedy

After coming under heavy fire for its initial coverage of Tuesday's attack at Bnei Torah synagogue in Western Jerusalem, CNN issued a public apology.

“As CNN updated its reporting on the terrorist attack on the synagogue in Jerusalem earlier today, our coverage did not immediately reflect the fact that the two Palestinians killed were the attackers. We erred and regret the mistake," CNN said in a statement that was posted on Israeli news websites late Tuesday.

CNN’s initial headline reporting the attack read “4 Israelis, 2 Palestinians Dead in Jerusalem," leading to ridicule for its conflation of victims and attackers.

In a later headline, CNN mistakenly referred to the synagogue in which the killings took place as a mosque:

Internet users were not quick to forget the mistake. Several Facebook users developed memes with victim-blaming headlines: 

CNN wasn't the only outlet to come under fire for its reporting on the massacre.

Piece on the Har Nof Massacre from Rabbi Einhorn

Dear Yavneh Family & Friends:

G-d knows, we have had our share of tragedies before. The explosive decimation of S’barro Pizza in 2001. The tragic suicide bombing of Café Hillel which took the life of Nava Appelbaum and her father on the eve of her wedding in 2003. Yossi Klein HaLevi called that one an “epic tragedy”. The list goes on. Nevertheless, there is something jarring about the slaughter in Har Nof this week that is touching a spot on our nerves that we are not used to. The people: Rabbis are the ones who have a certain connection with G-d. Yes, Judaism believes that all can have an equal connection with G-d but on the whole Rabbis can form a stronger relationship just by virtue of the fact that they’re the one’s who tend to learn more Torah and Torah is the word of G-d.  The time: To compound the depressing theological problem, these were men who were in the middle of Shemona Esrei – the apex of Jewish prayer. The moment where, as Reb Chaim Brisker puts it, we “stand so completely in G-d’s presence”.

Job and his suffering taught us that most of the time tragedy cannot be explained. If we picked up the pieces and carried on after the incomprehensible tragedies of the Inquisition and the Shoah then logic ought to dictate that this attack should not pose us with any greater difficulty in moving on.  But it does. And we are bothered. And maybe we’re not as strong as Job.

Let us explore what we would have liked to see happen. I recall a movie that I watched in my youth: Highlander. It was a film about a certain species of people battling until there was only one left. They had one main rule: there is no fighting on Holy Ground, no matter who deems it Holy. L’havdil, maybe here we would have hoped that these animals would feel a sense of reverence when walking into another religion’s Holy Ground.  There is a parallel in Tanach, in Melachim 1 Yoav ran away from King Solomon. He ran to the mizbeach (altar) to take and find safe haven. But alas themizbeach is not a valid safe haven and the King had him killed. This wasn’t a safe haven for our tazadikkim, we wish it was.

Or no, maybe we would have hoped for another scenario. These terrorists came in with hate, rage and pain. They stormed the doors of the synagogue, burst them open, and ran in on their high horses, weapons aplenty. But at that very moment when they would have seen such sublime beauty – they would freeze right in the tracks, they would witness the majesty of a minyan swaying with kavanna and be converted forever.  They would drop their weapons to the floor because who would harm the most beautiful spot on Earth. No. This too did not happen.

But there is a third scenario, which I like to believe did happen. When we pray, we engage in a transcendent experience, out of body. The Ramchal  (Kitzur Kavannos)says that in prayer we have found a way to shed our earthly clothing, leave our dross behind and connect our soul with its source. Perhaps these Palestinians simply took their shells. Perhaps these kedoshim were already in a place of such sublime majesty, their neshamos were already dancing with Hashem in Heaven as they chanted the words of Shemona Esrei – “U’vYerushalayim Ircha B’rachamim Tashuv”.  Yes, that must be what happened.

Their families will suffer this loss. Their children will struggle in a world without their heroes. But we believe that these titans of Torah are there in their hearts, in their DNA, in the pages of chiddushim that they have written. They will no longer find their bodies. They will no longer take comfort in their voice or their embrace. But they will engage them in the silent conversations of a neshama as the body goes to sleep.
In a class on Faith, given by one of the victims – Rabbi Moshe Twersky he says: I don’t know all the anatomy of the mitzvos and how what we do adds up to what G-d wants. But Hashem asks us to do what we can. That’s it. That’s why we’re here. A person needs to have an ongoing awareness that he’s here to be משמש את קונו – serve his Maker.

Chilling words from a man who lived his life and died while serving his Maker. Hashem asks us to do what we can. In writing this piece I tried to do the best I could. I hope that’s enough.

Rabbi Shlomo Einhorn
Rav and Dean of Yeshivat Yavneh
323-931-5808 ext 102
rabbieinhorn@gmail.com

Video of Rabbi Tendler and Rabbi Sauer addressing the Tehillim gathering at LINK Kollel 11/18/14 about the tragic murders in Jerusalam.

BARUCH DAYAN HAEMES FOUR MURDERED IN HAR NOF

It is with great sadness that we inform the community of the murders of four men during schacharis Tuesday morning in Har Nof Jerusalem.

     

The Rabbis were in the midst of the holiest section of the morning prayers, the Silent Amidah, when their lives were brutally taken by savage terrorists wielding axes, knives, and a pistol.  Left behind are the devastated parents, widows, orphans, and grandchildren.

Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Goldberg z'l, 

68, leaves behind his wife Breina, six children and grandchildren.
 

Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky z'l, 43, leaves behind his wife Yakova, and five children ranging in age from 5 to 16.
 

Rabbi Kalman Ze'ev Levine z'l, 55, leaves behind his wife Chaya, nine children and 5 grandchildren.
 

Rabbi Moshe Twersky z'l, 59, leaves behind his wife Miriam, five children and grandchildren.
 

First Sgt Zidan Nahad Seif z'l, 30, the heroic Israeli-Druze police officer, the first responder to the attack, leaves behind his wife Rinal and four-month old daughter, parents and five siblings. 

JEWS AT PRAYER – SOME REFLECTIONS by Rabbi Berel Wein

The horrific murders of people at prayer that recently occurred in Jerusalem raises many more questions than answers. The responses to it were varied. CNN saw in it that Israeli police killed two Palestinians. Israeli politicians made their usual vapid comments, promises and revenge statements, all of which in the past have led nowhere. Learned rabbis and savants have attempted the futile task of reading God’s mind, so to speak, to explain what cannot be explained. Redoubled efforts at greater acts of charity and more meaningful prayer services are undoubtedly noble goals but are hardly words and actions of comfort, consolation or explanation. The Torah’s response to inexplicable tragedy is recorded for us in the narrative regarding the death of the sons of Aaron. That response is silence – acceptance of God’s will. It also teaches us that the holy and innocent, people of goodness and erudition, compassion and service to others, are often singled out to be victims of inexplicable tragedy. I will not attempt to explain the causes of these murders. That mystery should be allowed to be shrouded in silence. Only those of faith have the ability to remain silent as to the causes of tragedy. But silence is a more satisfying response than is false certainty and banality.

What can be assessed is the reaction to this massacre of innocents. In Gaza and the West Bank there were great public celebrations. This is the product of decades of incitement, hatred, mind-washing and calculated strategy. Pious declarations about making peace with enemies or having partners amongst the Palestinian Authority for a legitimate settlement of the struggle ring ever more hollow in light of the violence continually perpetrated against Israelis. The shameful conduct of Europe and the UN, the academic elites, the liberal media and the others who always know what is better for us than we do, all are part of the atmosphere that breeds such violence. The public and governmental anti-Semitism that permeated Europe in the nineteenth century created the conditions for the Holocaust of the twentieth century. The blind acceptance by the world’s intelligentsia of Marxism helped create Stalin’s gulag, allowing to the murder of millions. Islamic terror can only be stopped by calling it by its correct name, identifying its perpetrators and supporters and by stopping confusing the victims with the criminals. As long as we search for causes and excuses for murder, violence and unremitted hatred, for moral equivalency and no-fault mindsets, there will be little hope that this tragic incident will be the last one of its kind.

Jews have to raise their voices in support of other Jews. Jews have to raise their voices in support of the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace as a Jewish state. Jews have to continue to pray. Jews have to continue to insist on their rights and rites. No circumcision, no ritual slaughter, no public display of Judaism – all of these European parliamentary laws are anti-Semitism at its sugar coated worst and create the climate that eventually kills Jews at prayer. All of Jewish history proves this pattern to be true.

We have much to pray for. May the Lord hear our prayers and spare us any further tragedies of this type.

Rabbi Berel Win

Abbas' advisor blesses terrorists and their weapons: "Blessed be your quality weapons, the wheels of your cars, your axes and kitchen knives... because [they are being used] according to Allah's will. We are the soldiers of Allah."

Following yesterday's terror attack in which five Israelis were killed by two terrorists with pistols, knives and axes, Abbas' advisor and Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abu Al-Einein praised the terrorists and their weapons on his Facebook page. Continuing the PA policy of justifying the attacks and riots as religiously mandated, he referred to the terrorists as "those who carry out Ribat" (religious conflict/war over land claimed to be Islamic) and stated that "we are the soldiers of Allah."

"Peace be upon you, oh children of Jerusalem. Oh, those who carry out

Ribat (religious conflict/war over land claimed to be Islamic) in the plazas of the first direction of prayer of Allah (i.e. the Al-Aqsa Mosque) in the name of your people and your Arab nation... Blessed be your quality weapons, the wheels of your cars, your axes and kitchen knives. By Allah, these are stronger than the arsenals of our enemy, because [they are being used] according to Allah's will. We are the soldiers of Allah." [Facebook page of Abbas' advisor and Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abu Al-Einein, Nov. 19, 2014]

Both PA Chairman Abbas and Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Abbas' advisor on religious affairs, have stressed that the PA leadership encourages Palestinians perform "Ribat" in Jerusalem. Palestinian Media Watch has shown that Abbas recently stated that "we must all carry out Ribat." Al-Habbash confirmed that this is PA policy by saying, "Yes, we are inciting the people in Jerusalem to [perform] 

Ribat."

Yesterday, Al-Einein immediately praised the terrorists who killed four Jewish worshippers and a policeman in the attack on a Jerusalem synagogue. He haspraised terrorists who have killed Israeli civilians numerous times, including the terrorists who ran over and killed Israelis and the shooter of Rabbi Yehuda Glick.

Members of US Congress have condemned Al-Einein for similar statements and glorification of terrorists in the past, and demanded Abbas dismiss him. However,Abbas defied this demand.

On Nov. 18, 2014, two Arab terrorists, Ghassan and Uday Abu Jamal, from East Jerusalem, entered a synagogue in Jerusalem and attacked worshippers with guns, knives and axes, killing 5 and injuring 7, 3 of them seriously. The terrorists were killed in an exchange of fire with Israeli Security Forces that arrived on the scene.

The War on the Israeli Home Front Tuesday’s massacre and other recent Palestinian attacks in Jerusalem have been intimate, the terrorism of neighbors. By YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI

On the morning of Feb. 25, 1994, the Jewish holiday of Purim, Baruch Goldstein, a far-right activist living in the West Bank town of Kiryat Arba, entered the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and gunned down 29 Muslim men at prayer.

The horror within Israeli society was overwhelming and unequivocal. Speaking from the Knesset podium, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin excommunicated Goldstein from the people of Israel. The country’s two chief rabbis denounced the attack as a desecration of God’s name, the ultimate Jewish sin. The official publication of the West Bank settlement movement, Nekudah, denounced Goldstein, a settler, as a stain on its camp. Only a radical fringe sought to justify and explain the massacre as a response to Palestinian provocations.

Tuesday’s massacre by two Palestinian terrorists of four Jews at prayer in a Jerusalem synagogue is the Palestinian Baruch Goldstein moment. Yet rather than respond with shame to the murder of those Jews, as well as of an Israeli police officer, the Palestinian reaction has ranged from reluctant condemnation to outright celebration. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, reportedly after being pressed by Secretary of StateJohn Kerry, condemned the attack—even as he cited Israeli “provocative acts.” Less equivocal was Mr. Abbas’s adviser on religious affairs, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who said of the terrorists: “We are behind them. The leadership is with them.” Palestinians cheered in the streets of Gaza.

Since 2000, when the Oslo peace process collapsed, Israel has been fighting one long war, interspersed with prolonged cease fires. In this war, the primary targets on the Israeli side are not its soldiers but its civilians. The first phase of this new unnamed war—and what might be called the war of the Israeli home front—were the four years of Palestinian suicide bombings on Israeli buses and in cafes, ending with Israeli victory in 2004. Then came the Lebanon War of 2006, when the Lebanese terrorist militia, Hezbollah, fired missiles into towns and villages in northern Israel. At the same time, thousands of missiles fired by Hamas from Gaza were falling on Israeli communities in the south.

Now a new phase of this open-ended war against the Israeli home front has begun, concentrated in Jerusalem as it has been in the past. But this latest wave feels different. In recent weeks, terrorists in Jerusalem have twice driven their cars into crowds of Jewish pedestrians and on another occasion stabbed a Jewish passerby with a screwdriver. The synagogue attackers, who were killed by police, wielded axes in the murders. This is not the impersonal terrorism of suicide bombers and rocket launchers. This is an intimate war. The terrorism of neighbors.

As the madness intensifies, the argument for dividing Jerusalem as it had been before the Six Day War in 1967, when Israel assumed sovereignty over all of the city, will be revived. “Separating” Palestinians and Israelis will take on a new urgency. Initially, the argument is compelling: If these two populations cannot coexist, then why not redivide the city?

But an Israeli withdrawal from parts of Jerusalem might well result in a Hamas takeover of those areas. Hamas, after all, is far more popular among Palestinians today than Mr. Abbas’s corrupt regime. For all the agony of the status quo, the alternative of “sharing” Jerusalem with Hamas is far worse.

For at least the time being, the status quo will remain sustainable. By far the majority of Palestinians in Jerusalem have rejected violence. Even as the region has disintegrated, the mixed city of Jerusalem has maintained, almost unnoticed, its civility and common decency. Most Palestinians I know in Jerusalem have tacitly accepted the status quo. East Jerusalem Palestinians have equal access to Israeli social services; Jews and Arabs routinely mix, as patients and doctors and nurses, in the city’s hospitals.

Not that Palestinians aren’t angry at Israel for inequities in allocating resources, and especially building permits. For many Palestinians, though, the alternative to Israeli control over united Jerusalem has seemed worse, given the disarray in the Palestinian national movement.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government needs to continue reaffirming the status quo on the Temple Mount, a site sacred to Muslims, Jews and Christians but long administered by Muslims. Many religious Jews are deeply pained by that status quo, which denies them the right to pray at Judaism’s holiest site. Still, nothing threatens Jerusalem’s peace more than a change in the Temple Mount status quo. For that reason, Islamist extremists have been claiming falsely for decades that Israel intends to permit Jewish prayer there. And Palestinian spokesmen are now repeating that lie to justify the synagogue massacre.

In an era of moral madness, in which much of the world judges Israel more harshly than it judges Hamas, this must be said: Nothing Israel does or doesn’t do is responsible for provoking young Palestinians to hack to death Jews in prayer. The provocation is Jewish prayer itself, the right of the Jewish people to live in its land.

One image from the synagogue massacre will haunt Jews for a long time to come. According to a medic on the scene, terrorists severed an arm wrapped in the straps of tefillin, the phylacteries in which religious Jews recite their morning prayers. That terrible image has reinforced the prevailing sense within Israeli society that the war against the state of Israel is only the latest phase of an old war against the Jews.

Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: The big Palestinian question: Do they mourn or celebrate the terrorists?

Mosques in the neighborhood of the terrorists who attacked a synagogue this morning announced three days of mourning - for the murderers.

This is being reported by the Shehab news agency.

This happens at the same time that Arabs are celebrating the murders with candy.

Indeed, some of the commenters to that post say that it is inappropriate to mourn the heroic martyrs who are being welcomed to Paradise at this very moment.

In fact, when Shahab reported the pretend "condemnation" by Mahmoud Abbas of the attack, readers were most upset. One wrote repeatedly "I am a Palestinian, Mahmoud Abbas does not represent me." Another wrote that he hopes  that, Allah willing, they kill "Rabbi Mahmoud Abbas" next.

In addition, they are calling the rabbis who were murdered "dogs" and hoping they go to hell.

Shehab also showed a photo of what they said were sweets being handed out by British Muslims. 

They have congratulatory messages from people and politicians all over the world, including Tunisia, Bahrain, Jordan, Syria, Libya and Mauritania.

Shehab also reproduces this poster celebrating the attack, saying "This is the way from now on."

It looks like the consensus is to celebrate the murder of Jews praying.

These are the moderate peace partners that the EU and the West never threaten with sanctions. No, that's reserved for the nation that is trying to survive these attacks.

CBC Must Apologize for Disgraceful Headline in Jerusalem Terror Attack Coverage

“CNN ran a headline stating that four Israelis and two Palestinians were killed in the attack, failing to note that the two Palestinians were the terrorists.  Later, CNN apologized for the headline, writing: “As CNN updated its reporting on the terrorist attack on the synagogue in Jerusalem earlier today, our coverage did not immediately reflect the fact that the two Palestinians killed were the attackers.  We erred and regret the mistake.” 

Israel Matzav: CNN called attacked synagogue a mosque

No, those aren't photoshops. They're actual screen shots from CNN's coverage of Tuesday's 'Palestinian' terror attack.

This is Tom Gross. 

As Bret Stephens once wrote about the New York Times When one carefully examines the New York Times’s corrections column, one can see that in all cases the mistakes were made against Israel. “In a more normal world,” wrote Stephens, “a newspaper’s mistakes, particularly in its political and diplomatic reporting, would more-or-less be randomly distributed... Yet while a search of NYT corrections over the past two years discloses the usual measure of forgivable bloopers, not once has the paper erred on the side of Israel. A pattern of bias, maybe?”

Indeed. 

Israel Matzav: 'A blessed operation'

Some 'peace partner.'