JPost Editorial: Unjustifiable horror
Though Palestinian nationalist movements have always been murderously violent, the most depressing and wretched spectacle of the last decade has been the degeneration of Palestinian nationalism into a theocratic, death-worshiping radical Islamism. Even assassins from the ostensibly secular PFLP, founded by the nominally Christian Palestinian George Habash, now shout Allahu Akbar so that no mistake can be made about the source of their murderous inspiration.At funerals for synagogue terror victims, mourners grieve with 24 orphans from one street
The obscenity of what transpired Tuesday morning in Har Nof’s Kehilat Yaakov Synagogue cannot be explained away by glib terms like “despair” or “occupation.” There are millions of people living between the Mediterranean and the Jordan – Jewish, Muslim, and Christian – who may fall into despair without resorting to heinous crimes like the one perpetrated in Har Nof.
Nor does the murder of innocent civilians advance the Palestinian cause. Religious Jews wrapped in prayer shawls and phylacteries lying in pools of their own blood on the floor of a synagogue is an instantly recognizable image – not just for Jews. It conjures up centuries of violent anti-Semitism and places the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the context of just another example of irrational – and therefore incurable – Jew hatred. It seems to prove to Jewish Israelis that there is really nothing to talk about with the Palestinians, let alone a peace agreement that must of necessity rest on mutual trust.
Thousands of mourners gathered in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood Tuesday evening to pay their last respects to three of the four men killed while praying in their local synagogue earlier in the day in a terrorist attack. A fifth victim, policeman Zidan Saif, who was shot in the head in the shootout with the terrorists, died of his wounds late Tuesday in the hospital.Thousands attend funeral of policeman who died defending worshipers in synagogue attack
The crowd assembled outside the synagogue where Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky, 40, Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Goldberg, and Rabbi Kalman Levine, 50, were killed by two Palestinian terrorists. The three were buried at the Har Hamenuhot cemetery in a joint funeral.
The funeral of the fourth victim, 59-year-old Rabbi Moshe Twersky, took place earlier on Tuesday.
Twersky, Kupinsky and Levine also held US citizenship, and Goldberg held British citizenship.
President Reuven Rivlin arrived at the synagogue to pay his respects to the victims’ families. Shas MK Eli Yishai and a number of other Israeli parliamentarians also attended the funerals.
Thousands of loved ones, neighbors, politicians and well-wishers from across the country made their way to the village of Yanuh Jat in the Galilee on Wednesday, to bid farewell to Zidan Saif, the Druse policeman who died of a gunshot wound suffered at the scene of the terror attack at a Jerusalem synagogue.
The funeral was attended by President Reuven Rivlin, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, National Police Commissioner Inspector General Yochanan Danino, and leaders from the Druse community of Israel.
“We are burying a hero of the Israel police, who laid down his own body to protect the worshippers at the synagogue in Har Nof,” Aharonovitch said in his eulogy. “Zidan was there first and operated with courage. Without hesitation he charged inside, in the face of the horrors there. He followed the principles of the Israel Police and did what is expected of a courageous warrior.”
The minister added that “his heroism cost him his life, but saved the lives of others. Zidan is a source of pride for his family, for the Druse community and for the police and the people of Israel.”