Comment: I watched the news both last night and this AM and found nothing on this.
If a Jew had commited this atrocity on a mosque, it would be 24/7 coverage for days on end.
What blatant spin and double standard. Sickening…….Mary
Eight killed at Jerusalem school
| The gunman entered the school’s dining room and opened fire Attack scene |
Eight people have been killed and nine wounded by a Palestinian gunman who infiltrated a Jewish seminary in West Jerusalem, Israeli officials say. Witnesses said the gunman went into the library at the Mercaz Harav seminary in the city’s Kiryat Moshe quarter and opened fire.
The assailant, who Israeli police said was a resident of East Jerusalem, was shot dead by an Israeli army officer.
The attack is the worst of its kind in Israel for a number of years.
The White House has led international condemnation but the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas called the attack “heroic” while not claiming responsibility.
| When we got in… we saw young, 15-, 16-year-old guys lying on the floor with their Bibles in their hands – all dead on the floor Witness |
However, the 15-strong UN Security Council failed to agree on a resolution condemning the attack because of reservations from temporary member Libya, which sought to link it to Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip.
A previously unknown group called the “Jalil Freedom Battalions – the Martyrs of Imad Mughniyeh and Gaza” claims to have carried it out, according to Lebanese Hezbollah media.
The fact that the school is at the heart of the settler movement in the occupied West Bank may have been the reason why it was targeted, BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen reports.
Many of its students are on special courses that combine religious study with service in combat units in the Israeli army, he notes.
There will be an Israeli response to this attack, our Middle East editor adds – the question is how severe it will be.
‘Horrific’
The gunman entered the library at the Mercaz Harav seminary on Thursday evening, where about 80 students were gathered, and fired an AK-47 rifle for several minutes, witnesses say.
|
MERCAZ HARAV SEMINARY Founded in 1924 by influential Rabbi Avraham Hacohen Kook Some 500 students enrolled in Talmudic study Students mainly high-school age and young adults Graduates serve as rabbis and rabbinical judges in Israel and Jewish settlements School has played a major role in ideology and theology of Israeli religious settlement movement Key figures linked to the school were strongly opposed to Israeli pull-out from Gaza |
One of the students, Yitzhak Dadon, reportedly shot the gunman twice before he was finally killed by an off-duty Israeli army officer, who had gone to the school after hearing gunfire.
“I shot him twice in the head,” he told the Reuters news agency.
“He started to sway and then someone else with a rifle fired at him, and he died.”
Another man told the BBC that there had been “terrible scenes” inside the building afterwards.
“When we got in… we saw young, 15-, 16-year-old guys lying on the floor with their Bibles in their hands – all dead…” he said.
Jerusalem police commander Aharon Franco confirmed there had been only one gunman and said he had hidden his weapon in a cardboard box.
Imad Mughniyeh, a senior Hezbollah leader and military commander, was killed in a car bomb in Damascus on 12 February.
‘Aimed at the heart’
An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said that “terrorists [were] trying to destroy the chances of peace” but peace talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would continue.
|
DEADLY ATTACKS IN ISRAEL 4 Feb 2008: One dies, Dimona suicide bombing 29 Apr 2007: Three die, Eilat suicide bombing 17 Apr 2006: Nine die, 40 wounded, suicide bombing near old bus station in Tel Aviv 30 Mar 2006: Four die, Kedumim suicide bombing 29 Dec 2005: Thee die, suicide bombing near Tulkarm 5 Dec 2005: Five die, Netanya suicide bombing 26 Oct 2005: Six die, Hadera market suicide bombing 12 July 2005: Two die, Netanya suicide bombing 25 Feb 2005: Five die, 50 hurt, suicide bombing outside Tel Aviv nightclub 13 Jan 2005: Six die, suicide bombing at Karni crossing |
Mr Abbas condemned the attack in a statement saying he “condemns all attacks that target civilians, whether they are Palestinian or Israeli”.
US President George W Bush condemned the attack “in the strongest possible terms” and UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband said news of the killings was “shocking”.
“They are an arrow aimed at the heart of the peace process so recently revived,” Mr Miliband added.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also criticised the “deliberate killing and injuring of civilians” in what he called a “savage attack”.
Hamas praise
In the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, gunmen fired into the air after news broke about the attack.
| This heroic attack in Jerusalem is a normal response to the crimes of the occupier and its murder of civilians Sami Abu Zuhri Hamas spokesman |
A loudspeaker in Gaza City reportedly broadcast the message: “This is God’s vengeance”
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the group “blesses the heroic operation in Jerusalem” calling it as a “natural reaction” to Israeli attacks.
Last week, Israeli forces launched a raid into northern Gaza in which more than 120 Palestinians – including many civilians – were killed.
Shortly after the Jerusalem shooting, the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad said four of its fighters had been killed in an Israeli air strike in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis.
Israel says the recent military offensive has been designed to stamp out frequent rocket fire by Palestinian militants.
Rocket attacks have hit deeper into southern Israel, reaching Ashkelon, the closest large city to the Gaza Strip.
Yes indeed. Where is the outrage?
Dated: March 3rd, from the Jordan News Agency:
“The total number of Palestinians who have been killed since Wednesday stood at 116 including 22 children and 12 women, Director of Emergency at the Palestinian Health Ministry Muawyeh Hasanain said. Hasanain told Jordan News Agency that three hundred and sixty Palestinians where also injured during the Israeli operations. He added that medical teams were able to recover the bodies of three Palestinians including a rescue man after the Israeli forces withdrew from east Jabalia in the Gaza Strip.”
That’s a HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN people killed by the Israeli armed forces in 5 days. The 22 children and 12 women, of course, were terrorists.
Where is the outrage indeed? Not in the United States, not in any of it’s crony states, and certainly not in god’s own land of Israel.
How do you people sleep at night, after pimping a brutal occupation and aparthied regime, and even trying to sound sanctimonious at the end of it all?
If the deaths of Palestinian children do not concern you, the death of eight Israeli students do not concern the rest of the world too. Look around. Dropping a 200 lb bomb from an F-16 into the world’s most crowded refugee camp is terrorism too.
Thanks for your comment, and I sleep just fine, thanks.
I deplore the lost of any human life, but that does not change my post one bit.
We must never take snippets of information that we are spoon-fed by the media and leave them contextually hanging in the wind devoid of understanding of the entire picture. The left leaning media/Arab apologists have an unfortunate history of not telling the entire story or taking responsibility for their own plight. If it weren’t for the continual historical revisions by Arabs who say incredible things like, ‘there is no evidence there was ever a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount in Israel”, or, “Joseph (the patriarch) was a Muslim”, or how about the biggest ‘threat’ of all that hangs over the Israeli’s heads daily- “Israel must cease to exist”, spoken of by Ahmadinejad and other terror mongers every other day? And if Palestinian terrorists didn’t use their youth as human bombs, then perhaps a civilized conversation could take place. As someone once said, ‘there will be no peace in Israel until the Palestinian people learn to love their children more than they hate the Jews.”
I stand by my original post. I said that if a Jew had launched an attack on a Muslim school, the whole world would be calling for an international invasion of that little country, and holy jihad would bring us all to the brink of World War 3. But you won’t see that happen. Israeli responses to continual threats to their existence are always tempered. What people who have been seduced by the liberal anti-semitic/pro Arab media don’t seem to get is that there is a double standard in all reporting concerning Israel. Protesting and throwing other statistics out to dodge that issue does not change what I said. Political correctness rears it’s ugly head in many forms and is a form of fascism in and of itself.
Does Israel not have a right to defend itself? Israel is a tiny nation that has been granted the right to exist among the nations. There is abundant Arab land for any ‘misplaced’ Arabs to go and live in peace, yet they are envious and jealous over that small piece of property that meant nothing to them before 1948. Who drained the swamps and made it habitable, planted it and brought prosperity to it’s people? The Jews, of course. And yes, I have been there several times and seen this for myself. Unlike many Westerners, I am not afraid to visit there because I know Who owns the land, and Who has been strong on the Israeli’s behalf, and I am not ready to just let the media tell me which end is up regarding the Middle East.
We must remember to what extent the Palestinian people themselves created their own refugee problem when they fled Israel back in the early days of independence, thinking that an Arab victory over the Israeli Army was imminent. I suggest you read “Myths and Facts: The Refugees” By Mitchell Bard at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf14.html#c
Joseph Farah, an Arab American and head of World Net Daily wrote back in 2003:
“If you believe what you read in most news sources, Palestinians want a homeland and Muslims want control over sites they consider holy. Simple, right?
Well, as an Arab-American journalist who has spent some time in the Middle East dodging more than my share of rocks and mortar shells, I’ve got to tell you that these are just phony excuses for the rioting, trouble-making and land-grabbing.
Isn’t it interesting that prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, there was no serious movement for a Palestinian homeland?
“Well, Farah,” you might say, “that was before the Israelis seized the West Bank and Old Jerusalem.”
That’s true. In the Six-Day War, Israel captured Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. But they didn’t capture these territories from Yasser Arafat. They captured them from Jordan’s King Hussein. I can’t help but wonder why all these Palestinians suddenly discovered their national identity after Israel won the war.
The truth is that Palestine is no more real than Never-Never Land. The first time the name was used was in 70 A.D. when the Romans committed genocide against the Jews, smashed the Temple and declared the land of Israel would be no more. From then on, the Romans promised, it would be known as Palestine. The name was derived from the Philistines, a Goliathian people conquered by the Jews centuries earlier. It was a way for the Romans to add insult to injury. They also tried to change the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina, but that had even less staying power.
Palestine has never existed — before or since — as an autonomous entity. It was ruled alternately by Rome, by Islamic and Christian crusaders, by the Ottoman Empire and, briefly, by the British after World War I. The British agreed to restore at least part of the land to the Jewish people as their homeland.
There is no language known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture. There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc. Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of 1 percent of the landmass.
But that’s too much for the Arabs. They want it all. And that is ultimately what the fighting in Israel is about today. Greed. Pride. Envy. Covetousness. No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough.
What about Islam’s holy sites? There are none in Jerusalem.
Shocked? You should be. I don’t expect you will ever hear this brutal truth from anyone else in the international media. It’s just not politically correct.
I know what you’re going to say: “Farah, the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem represent Islam’s third most holy sites.”
Not true. In fact, the Koran says nothing about Jerusalem. It mentions Mecca hundreds of times. It mentions Medina countless times. It never mentions Jerusalem. With good reason. There is no historical evidence to suggest Mohammed ever visited Jerusalem.
So how did Jerusalem become the third holiest site of Islam? Muslims today cite a vague passage in the Koran, the seventeenth Sura, entitled “The Night Journey.” It relates that in a dream or a vision Mohammed was carried by night “from the sacred temple to the temple that is most remote, whose precinct we have blessed, that we might show him our signs. …” In the seventh century, some Muslims identified the two temples mentioned in this verse as being in Mecca and Jerusalem. And that’s as close as Islam’s connection with Jerusalem gets — myth, fantasy, wishful thinking. Meanwhile, Jews can trace their roots in Jerusalem back to the days of Abraham.” (www.worldnetdaily.com)
I suggest you get a hold of the video “Farewell Israel” which is a thorough treatment of the roots of the current trouble in the Middle East, going back to when Islam became a world religion. You just might be surprised at what you learn.
And, this being a Bible prophecy website, I would be remiss if I did not mention that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has a lot to say about what we can expect to take place in His land just prior to the glorious return of Jesus. The existence of the nation of Israel is a fulfillment of prophecy (read Ezekiel 36-39). Zechariah 12:3 tells us, “And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.”. Make no mistake, God will have His way with the peoples of the earth, and He will pour out His Spirit on His people the Jews once again. Funny, the world does not revolve around the West, on the contrary, Israel is at the center of the nations (Ezek. 5:5) and the time for the fulfillment of all things is at hand.
Take some time and study the Bible if you REALLY want to understand what is going on in the Middle East, there is much to learn of the spiritual battle that is at the heart of this sad and tragic chapter in humanity. And yet God holds it all in His hand. Let God be true and every man a liar.
“Take some time and study the Bible if you REALLY want to understand what is going on in the Middle East”
Thank you for putting that line in.
Made me realize whom I was trying to have a rational conversation with! Please excuse my naiveté…
Also didn’t realize this was a ‘Bible prophecy website’. Came here through a CNN link…my bad!
So I take it you have no interest in what the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has to say on the matter, and you believe that those who are interested in such things are irrational. I wonder who convinced you of that, in light of the irrationality of those who actively seek Israel’s and the West’s destruction. Perhaps the definition of ‘irrational’ is relative in your eyes, but not in mine.
In the day when God intervenes in Middle East affairs, many things will become abundantly clear. In the meantime, I encourage you to think for yourself on eternal matters before your last earthly day. We all stand before God alone, no spinmaster will be holding our hands or pleading our case before a just God.
Let God be true and every man a liar.
I don’t know if Shubho despises your response mary, or just plain didn’t care what you had to say after his/her own response, but the last comments of shubho were disconnected with your issue and in my eyes seen as unneccessary jabs to a researchable knowledge you presented him or her.
This brief and weak debate shubho has challenged you to (so far) has made me realize that many people aren’t questing for facts. I don’t feel i’m knowlegable enough for this debate myself, but even I knew that Isreali operations were provoked by continual rocket attacks on the nation. Actually, i think Isreal is being a little too nice to the palestinians that are apart of a force that wants to erase isreal by any means, Including making the country look bad by killing women and children.
I’ve read in multiple news sources including Arab, that these women and children are forcibly put in harms way of known targets to make Isreal look bad. Yet every time Isreal is attacked including nonstop rocket attacks by the palestinians, mainstream media rarely covers it unless Isreal takes action against it. When Isreal does take action, they give their enemies sufficient time to restrain or recess. But they don’t stop… they put in best light their words and point fingers at Isreal while they continue launching thier missles on the Isreali innocent who are either killed or traumatized.
Isreal is a country that is surrounded by hatred, and all i see is the nation defending itself. I don’t know if Isreal ever started a war or battle without a cause, but i never seen them initiate attack without a cause since i started covering news. I sense the scary thing is that if shubho had been any other pro-palestinian, they would still throw similar senseless bashes at the issue. And I’ll never understand why!