Two Muslim terrorists opened fire on a group of Jews praying in the Bnei Torah Synagogue in Har Nof, a neighborhood of Jerusalem, Wednesday morning, killing four and injuring six. The assailants also wounded two Israeli policemen in a gunfight with security forces before being shot dead.
The massacre is a further escalation in a series of attacks, the most horrific in Jerusalem in six years. The last such massacre was a shooting at Merkaz Harav, a religious Zionist seminary in the Old City, in 2008 that left eight young men dead.
Terrorists praised Allah during attack, massacre beyond brutal
The attackers were cousins from East Jerusalem who entered the Har Nof synagogue at around 7 a.m. wielding a gun, a meat cleaver and an axe. They began shooting and stabbing congregants while shouting “Allahu Akhbar,” witnesses said.
Further, the terrorists murdered with extreme brutality, says Yehuda Meshi Zahav, head of ZAKA, whose volunteers arrive on the scene of attacks to identify victims and return their bodies to their families for proper burial. He told Israeli Army Radio “I’ve seen attacks with much higher death tolls, but the scenes this time were worse than any I have seen.”
Photos of the aftermath show bloodied men still wrapped in their prayer shawls and tefillin, ritual morning service garb, in pools of blood, lifeless on the synagogue floor.
Murders praised by Hamas; Netanyahu blames PA, incitement
The People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) took responsibility for the attack, yet Hamas and Islamic Jihad praised the terror attack, calling it “revenge for the murder of martyr Yusuf Ramouni,” a bus driver found hanged in his vehicle Sunday evening. Hamas and other Arab factions and communities continue to claim Ramouni was killed by a Jew, though autopsy reports confirmed Ramouni’s death a suicide.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu immediately lambasted Palestinian leadership, calling the massacre a “direct result of incitement led by Hamas and Abu Mazen, incitement that the international community irresponsibly ignores.”
“We will respond with a firm hand against the cruel murder of Jews who came to pray,” Netanyahu said. US Secretary of State John Kerry called the attack “pure terror,” though at publication time, no wider international condemnation of the attack on the synagogue have surfaced.
Mosques call for day of celebration
Mosques in Gaza called for celebration over the attack on their loudspeakers, naming the terrorists martyrs, while Reuters reports that Gazan youth handed out sweets to large crowds and children in Rafah. Young men waved pictures of the attackers and donned masks while brandishing knives and axes, as children stood beside them.
Three Americans, one British national, among dead
Three of the victims, Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky, Rabbi Kalmen Levin and Rabbi Moshe Twersky, were American Israelis, and the fourth, Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Goldberg, was a British Israeli.