Image Credit: BBSNews 2008-03-07.
No Clear Responsible Party Yet for Jerusalem Seminary Killings
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Photo of Al Jazeera reporter and a live shot of the scene from the funeral for eight Israelis killed by a gunman Thursday at Mercaz Harav yeshiva in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood in West Jerusalem.
Image Credit: BBSNews 2008-03-07. |
BBSNews 2008-03-07 -- As more details emerge about the attack by a gunman on a well known Jewish seminary in West Jerusalem it is becoming more clear that the cycle of violence is driven by a dehumanizing hatred of the "enemy" and that there is no clear leadership from any world power equally condeming the horrible violence on both sides.
Jerusalem Chief Inspector Mickey Rosenfield early on said on Al Jazeera that there was one attacker, seven Israeli civilians were killed, an undetermined wounded and "the gunman was killed on the scene." A further witness report put the number of wounded at about 35.
Later as the library scene where the killings took place was processed and a full assessment made, it is now being reported that 8 Israelis were killed and 11 wounded according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In Gaza, where residents are still reeling after Israeli incursions over last weekend killed at least 120 Palestinians with about half of them civilians and about one fifth of that number children, the sound of "macabre" gunfire into the air in celebration at the news of the attack was reported.
Those celebrations were quickly replaced with fear and dread in anticipation of the inevitable retaliation by Israel much like Israeli celebrations of the assassination in Damascus of Imad Mughniyah in February also soon turned to the reality of an expected retaliatory confrontation.
The New York Times reports this morning that "...angry students and local residents lined up behind police tapes, chanting, 'Death to Arabs,' 'Olmert — you are to blame' and 'Who gave them weapons?'" In audio from a satellite feed of the inevitable retaliation the chants and pandemonium outside the Orthodox base of the settler movement the sound of the crowd was similar to a crowd angry with a bad call on a soccer tournament.
It was also reported by AFP that a previously unknown group called "Phalange of Free Men of Galilee -- Groups of the Martyr Imad Mughnieh and Martyrs of Gaza" took responsibility for the attack but Osir Gendleman a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry yesterday said on television that the "terrorist was an East Jerusalem resident and a member of Islamic Jihad."
The attack happened in Merkaz Harav Yeshiva, a Jewish seminary most often associated with the Israeli settler movement and the Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook who has done much to foster the "Greater Israel" movement or "Kookian" philosophy during the 1970's and 1980's where all the land of Palestine is seen as belonging to Israel and none for the indigenous Arab Palestinians in direct contrast to United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. In more recent years, the younger generation has embraced more of a "new age" view of Hasidic belief and were focusing more on spirituality than settlements although there is a strong emotional tie to the old way of armed "reclaiming" of land in the name of religion.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Bakhoum said on satellite TV - after reciting a familiar litany of what many Palestinians and observers around the world see as decades of continued incitement justifying resistance, including extra-judicial assassinations, near daily incursions, the ongoing blockade and the deaths of Palestinian civilians including women and children - that the Israelis should have "anticipated that Palestinians will resist the occupation."
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