And again: 'Palestinian' stabs Christian British student to death on Jerusalem tram
A 23-year old Christian British woman was murdered by a 'mentally unstable' (is there any other kind?) 'Palestinian' terrorist on the Jerusalem tram this afternoon. The terrorist was a 57-year old (so much for 'only' letting 'over-50 Palestinians' move around freely) resident of Ras-al-Amud, the area near the Mount of Olives. The stabbing took place as the tram rounded the corner at IDF Square, just outside Jerusalem's Old City.
Another woman, who is pregnant, was injured when the train stopped, and a man was hurt while trying to flee the assailant. They are both lightly hurt, MDA said.
The assailant has been identified as Gamil Tamimi, 57, a Palestinian resident of Ras al-Amud in East Jerusalem who was recently released from a psychiatric hospital, according to the police said.
Probably related to this Tamimi - at least distantly. Israel is holding this paragon of virtue - at least until the next Terrorists for X exchange.
The Shin Bet said that Tamimi had tried to commit suicide by swallowing a razorblade while hospitalized. In 2011, he was convicted of molesting his daughter.
"This is yet another case of a Palestinian suffering from personal, mental or moral distress choosing to commit an act of terror to escape his problems," the Shin Bet says.
So in 'Palestinian society' you can save your 'family honor' by murdering a Jew. Murder a Jew and and molesting your daughter is forgiven.
If you're an American student (or tourist) in Israel, please (a) do not drive anywhere over the green line unless you absolutely know where you're going, and (b) if you think you know where you're going because you're using Waze, please go into the settings and check the box to "avoid roads under Palestinian Authority control." That won't help you in Jerusalem (the 'Palestinian Authority' doesn't officially control, for example, the road leading to the Mount of Olives), but it will help you avoid situations like what has happened this evening.
The kids have all been rescued.
UPDATE 1:07 PM BOSTON TIME
FINAL UPDATE - HEBRON:
- 2 American students wounded
- Car burnt & fire-bombed by local Arabs
- All 5 Americans rescued by the IDF.
It must have been the 'occupation': First Jewish victim of Arab terror was murdered in 1873
The Ministry of Defense reports that the first Jewish victim of Arab terrorism in Israel was Talmudic scholar Aharon Herhsler HY"D (May God Avenge his blood), who was murdered by Arab terrorists in Jerusalem in January or February 1873.
According to an account of his life provided by the official
governmental site for terror victims, Hershler was a haredi yeshiva
student who studied devotedly.
He was born in Hungary in 1850 to a prominent rabbi, Rabbi Yosef
Shmuel Hershler, who served in the rabbinate of the city of Szabad.
After immigrating to Israel, the rabbi was among the heads of the
Ungarin Kolel, a Hungarian yeshiva in Jerusalem.
The Hershler family lived in Mishkenot Shananim, the first Jewish neighborhood built outside of the Old City walls.
The records note that in 1872 there were ample rains, meaning the
Jews were not forced to buy water from the Arab residents of Shiloach
(Silwan in Arabic). In response, the Arab residents evidently decided to
target the Jews, breaking into their homes and robbing them.
Several Arabs broke into the Hershler home on January 1, at which
point Aharon got up from his Torah studies to confront them, managing to
scare them out of the house and proceeding to chase them.
The Arab terrorists, evidently fearing they would be identified,
callously opened fire on Hershler, shooting 12 bullets into his body. He
was brought to the hospital, where he died of his wounds four days
later after great suffering.
Hershler left behind a bereaved wife and daughter, along with his grieving parents and siblings.
Does anyone actually believe that if we give them a 'state' they will stop trying to murder us?
Greetings once again from... London Heathrow, where I've found a hiding place where most of my adoring fans won't be able to find me :-) Yes, I'm on my way home....
Unfortunately, there's been another terror attack in Jerusalem. Luckily, no one seems to have been hurt. Here's the latest:
JERUSALEM - TERROR: 3 fire-bombs thrown by Arabs towards house in Maale Zeitim exploded, no injuries, PD searching. pic.twitter.com/1D4VcU7CxO
— Israel News Feed (@IsraelHatzolah) January 1, 2015
Nice people. Just give them a 'state' and I'm sure they'll stop committing war crimes and let us live in peace. /sarc
By the way, Maaleh Zeitim happens to be adjacent to the Mount of Olives, which is the oldest Jewish cemetery in the world.
Video: 'Palestinian' terrorists attack Jewish day care center in Jerusalem
This video was shot earlier today near the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. The apartment at which these 'Palestinian' terrorists are throwing stones serves as a day care center for Jewish infants and children who live in the area.
Let's go to the videotape.
More here (link in Hebrew). Fortunately, it seems that no one was hurt.
There is a protest at the Ger section of the Mount of Olives cemetery at 4:00 pm today.
New Yorker misses father's burial due to 'Palestinian' rock ambush
A New York woman missed her father's burial on the Mount of Olives on Friday afternoon after her car came under attack by 'Palestinian' rock throwers near one of the cemetery's two entrances, and it was too close to the Sabbath to wait for her any longer.
Richler, 59, drove to the funeral Friday afternoon in a car with her sister, her brother-in-law and her young nephew, reports Israel Hayom.
Near the church of Gethsemane, however, about ten Arab youths ambushed
the car and pelted it with rocks and cinderblocks – an action that has
become a favorite local Arab pastime in recent years, as Israeli
deterrence has weakened.
Richler was in a state of shock following the attack and the car was
disabled for a long time.
The funeral organizers were left with no
choice but to conduct it without Richler and the other relatives who
were with her, because the Sabbath was about to begin.
"I never dreamed that my father's funeral would look like this,” she told Israel Hayom.
“I came especially from New York, thousands of kilometers away, to take
part in it. When the attack upon us began, I was in a state of total
shock. I heard shouting, booms and thuds on the car. I have heard
sometimes that people were attacked with rocks on the way to the Mount
of Olives, but I never thought something like this would happen to me.”
The My Israel movement intends to launch a media campaign this week,
to pressure the Jerusalem Police and the Minister of Public Security to
improve the security situation in Jerusalem. “The entire region has been
completely forfeited and we intend to put pressure on the decision
makers,” said movement chair Sarah Haetzni Cohen.
Jerusalem Councillor Yael Antabi told Arutz Sheva that
cameras need to be installed wherever violence is rife. She said that
cameras placed around the Mount Scopus university campus have helped
female students there feel less threatened by the Arabs of Issawiya, but
noted that another trouble spot is the Light Rail, where there is daily
Arab-Jewish violence that goes unreported.
Vandalism (and assault) at the World's oldest Jewish cemetery
JPost is spot-on in this editorial about the World's oldest Jewish cemetery: The Mount of Olives.
It is not difficult to imagine the deafening outcry that would have arisen had
Jewish stone-throwers attacked Arab mourners and visitors to a major cemetery.
The chorus of condemnation would have become shriller yet, had the attacks not
been isolated but daily harassment and outright physical endangerment.
It
is safe to assume that the violent assailants would have been castigated as
despicable racists and that all-out manhunts would have been mounted to
apprehend them.
But as it happens, the assailants are Arab while the
mourners and visitors are Jewish. Hence there is no outcry, no condemnation, no
manhunts and the word “racist” is on nobody’s lips. No one talks about the
regular predations on Jews trying to reach Jerusalem’s ancient Mount of Olives
Cemetery, regarded by many as the second holiest Jewish site anywhere.
It
is almost as if brutal onslaughts and lynching attempts against Jews are only to
be expected and even accepted as the norm.
It is a sad testament to an
even sadder state of affairs that Diaspora Jews feel obliged to take action to
preserve the world’s largest Jewish cemetery, while successive Israeli
governments serially fail to stem lawlessness, vandalism and neglect
there.
Lincoln's Secretary of State: Jews double any other group and more than all others combined in Jerusalem in 1871
So much for the claim that Jews were intruders in Jerusalem. President Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward, visited Jerusalem in 1871 and attended Friday evening services at the Churva synagogue in Jerusalem's Old City. It was at least Seward's second visit to Israel. He first visited here in 1859, and his visit aroused a desire in President Lincoln to visit Israel (Lincoln was assassinated in 1865). Here's an interesting tidbit from Seward's writing about his trip.
June 13, 1871--"Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generation following." [Psalms]
We have done so, and we have found it neither a short nor an easy promenade. The city occupies two ridges of a mountain promontory, with the depression or valley between them. The walls of the modern Turkish city have been so contracted with the decrease of the population, as to exclude large portions of the, ancient city. Jerusalem is now divided according to its different classes of population. The Mohammedans are four thousand, and occupy the northeast quarter, including the whole area of the Mosque of Omar. The Jews are eight thousand, and have the southeast quarter. These two quarters overhang the Valley of Jehoshaphat and the brook Kedron. The Armenians number eighteen hundred, and have the southwest quarter; and the other Christians, amounting to twenty-two hundred, have the northwest quarter, which overlooks the Valley of Hinnom.... [Emphasis added. Note the Jewish population was double any other group in the Old City.]
The Jews throughout the world, not merely as pilgrims, but in anticipation of death, come here to be buried, by the side of the graves of their ancestors. As we sat on the deck of our steamer, coming from Alexandria to Jaffa, we remarked a family whom we supposed to be Germans. It consisted of a plainly-dressed man, with a wife who was ill, and two children--one of them an infant in its cradle. The sufferings of the sick woman, and her effort to maintain a cheerful hope, interested us. The husband, seeing this, addressed us in English. Mr. Seward asked if he were an English man. He answered that he was an American Jew, that he had come from New Orleans, and was going to Jerusalem.
We parted with them on the steamer. The day after we reached the Holy City we learned that the poor woman had climbed the mountain with her husband and children, and arrived the day after us. She died immediately, and so achieved the design of her pilgrimage. She was buried in this cemetery [on the Mt. of Olives]. She was a Jewess, and, according to the Jewish interpretation of the prophecies, the Jew that dies in Jerusalem will certainly rise in paradise.
National Defense College to move to Mount of Olives
On Monday, the Interior Ministry approved relocating the National Defense College to a new building on the Mount of Olives in 'east' Jerusalem. Israel's Left has gone ballistic over it, but so far, the 'international community' does not seem to have noticed. Give them a day or two for Israel's Leftists to rile them up.
The Interior Ministry gave its initial approval for the construction of facilities for a military college in east Jerusalem on Monday, which will be located on the Mount of Olives.
The 42,000-square-meter structure of the National Defense College is planned for an open area between the Beit Orot Yeshiva and Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus, within a few hundred meters of the Old City and with a commanding view of the Temple Mount.
Left-wing groups slammed the approval.
“This is a crazy plan to build a military college in one of the most sensitive areas under dispute,” said Hagit Ofran, who oversees Peace Now’s Settlement Watch division.
“This will inevitably harm the status of the State of Israel and the IDF in the world... People in the world respect our army as part of our sovereignty, but to put this in a very sensitive area, you’re inviting them to boycott the Israeli army.”
The area was originally earmarked for the new Supreme Court, which was eventually built in the Government Quarter near downtown Jerusalem.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat has touted the college in the past as a way to attract young, working people to the city.
This is just preliminary. Full approval will take another year.
According to Jerusalem firefighter spokesman Asaf Abras, after a number of people started throwing rocks, the firefighters tried to reverse their direction but the “rain of stones” continued while a crowd formed at the scene.
Firefighters left the scene after the rocks smashed the windshield and other rocks damaged the sides of the firetruck. The firefighters filed a complaint of the incident with security forces.
Abras told The Jerusalem Post that when the security situation is unstable firefighters sometimes will face violence when responding to calls in east Jerusalem, including attempts to damage the firetrucks, puncture the tires, or attack firefighters.
In January, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Ahronovitch announced that Jerusalem police would open a new police station on the Mount of Olives with 25 police officers in mid-February. The police station will not open until the end of March at the earliest, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben- Ruby said on Saturday.
A recent Knesset hearing two weeks ago focused on the deteriorating security system at the Mount of Olives, which has seen a number of attacks in recent months.
Maybe the next time they should let a few 'Palestinian' homes burn down.
Giulio Meotti reports on the lack of security at the Mount of Olives cemetery.
But Israeli authorities share a large responsibility, since fences, surveillance and cameras have been never installed. Many people fear going there.
At police request, there were Jewish families who did not accompany their deceased loved ones for burial because the police feared rock throwers or worse. The family waited at home for a call alerting them that the body was interned and it was okay to begin the shiva period of mourning. It happened that Jews had to abandon the corpse on the ground, while they all scattered away under terror attacks. They called the police and couldn’t return until policemen came to secure the area that is synonymous with the holiness of Jerusalem.
Armored vans have been used to reach the site. Mourners have had to be hospitalized after attacks. A US Congressman and Malcolm Hoenlein of the American Conference of Presidents were pelted by rocks there. There is no one to take care of the old and ancient graves. Tombstones, many of them centuries old, disappear or disintegrate.
We’re not talking about the Gaza Strip. We’re talking about the most holy Jewish cemetery, overlooking the Temple Mount. Is that area to become “Judenrein” like Joseph’s Tomb? If Israel is abdicating the Mount of Olives, then she is abdicating Jerusalem.
Israel is literally entombed in that history. Since the Mount of Olives is the resting place for prophets, writers, rabbis, prime ministers and simple Jews murdered in the riots and buried in mass graves, it should be the pride of Israel and not one of its forgotten backyards.
As you might recall, I was at the Mount of Olives two weeks ago. The biggest problem is that you cannot gain access to the areas where the more recent graves are located without going through Arab neighborhoods. And you find yourself sitting ducks sitting in traffic there. The cemetery itself is less unsafe, particularly in groups.
But he's right. Don't hold your breaths waiting for the government to do something.
Two US Congressmen attacked by 'Palestinians' on Mount of Olives
Two US Congressmen - Elliot Engel (D-NY) and Jerold Nadler (D-NY) - were attacked by 'Palestinian' stone throwers as they visited the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives on Friday afternoon.
A rock throwing Arab mob attacked on Friday, in front of a mosque in the Ras Al-Amud neighborhood, a group that included Congressmen Elliot Engel and Jerald Nadler. The two legislators from New York State were on tour of the Mount of Olives Cemetery, along with Executive Vice Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Malcolm Hoenlein, and Rabbis Abraham and Menachem Lubinsky, founders of the International Committee for the Preservation of Har HaZeitim. Their tour, which included some 40 Jewish American leaders, was guided by JewishPress.com Managing Editor Yishai Fleisher.
Earlier, following Friday prayers, hundreds of worshippers hurled rocks at the Mughrabi Bridge at the entrance to the Temple Mount, and dozens gathered inside the Al-Aqsa mosque. Israeli police forces entered the plaza and attempted to stop the violent protest. Several policemen were injured.
Jerusalem District chief Nisso Shaham blamed the ongoing Friday’s riots on a poster announcing a Temple Mount visit by Likud member Moshe Feiglin, which was originally scheduled for ten days ago. The poster itself was a fake
Muslim leaders have been actively inciting their followers over the past month to “protect Al-Asqa”.
In response to the attack, Malcolm Hoenlein said he will be launching a campaign to “retake the Mount of Olives cemetery for the Jewish people.”
But I'm sure that if we give them a 'state,' they'll stop doing things like that.
Video of vandalism at World's oldest and largest functioning cemetery
Here's video of an Arab vandal at the Mount of Olives, the World's oldest and largest functioning cemetery.
Let's go to the videotape. More below the fold.
This took place on November 29, and the Arab, who was caught red-handed, was sentenced to three months in jail. He admitted that he was paid NIS 1,000 to commit the vandalism.
Avrohom Lubinsky, the founding Chair of the International Committee for the Preservation of Har Hazeitim, wasn't surprised by the footage, as the vandalism has been going on for some time already.
“This video clip is only one example of the rampant vandalism that continues to plague Har Hazeitim", explains Lubinsky, "It was the first time that such vandalism was captured by some of the new surveillance cameras installed on Har Hazeitim. Unfortunately, these acts as well as the frequent stoning of mourners and visitors continue in areas where there are still no cameras and points to the urgent need of deploying a police garrison immediately."
"This is not a freak occurrence", added Charley J. Levine, adviser to the Preservation Committee in Israel, "This sort of vicious vandalism and desecration occurs at Har Hazeitim every single day, some orchestrated and some spontaneous. It is a shame of enormous proportion that this takes place at the oldest and largest Jewish cemetery in the entire world!"
The International Committee for the Preservation of Har Hazeitim serves as a watchdog group urging the powers that be to implement and maintain positive, sustainable measures regarding a wide range of issues plaguing Har Hazeitim, the oldest and largest Jewish cemetery in the world. "We are urging the Knesset to urgently pass legislation calling for stiff mandatory sentences for crimes committed in cemeteries", says Lubinsky, "The criminal in the clip was paid NIS 1,000 for his actions and sentenced to only three months in prison. In most Western countries and in a majority of the United States there is specific legislation mandating stiff jail sentences for desecrating a grave. For example, in New York State the sentence would have been 2 ½ - 4 years. In Florida up to 15 years. The total disregard for law, including the illegal expansion of the Ras al Amud Mosque, must stop.” Top leadership of the International Committee for the Preservation of Har Hazeitim includes Malcolm Hoenlein, the heads of major American and Israeli-based Jewish organizations, and an active Jerusalem-based Steering Committee (Israel branch of the ICPHH).
But I'm sure that if we gave the 'Palestinians' control of the Mount of Olives, this kind of vandalism would stop, wouldn't it? Not likely....
Elad is mapping graves on Har HaZeithim (Mount of Olives), the oldest active cemetery in the World.
The goal is to photograph every grave, map it digitally, record every name, and make the information available online. That is supposed to allow visitors to find their way in the cemetery, long a bewildering jumble of crumbling gravestones and rubble surrounded by Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem. Beset for many years by neglect, it is among the oldest cemeteries in continuous use in the world.
Around 40,000 graves have been mapped so far by the team, which began work in 2008. They expect to finish recording all of the intact gravestones -- an estimated 100,000 in total -- by the end of next year. The rest are either so old they are unrecognizable or lie underneath later layers of burial.
Mappers look at aerial photographs, consult handwritten burial records dating back to the mid-1800s, walk along the rows of graves and dig through piles of dislocated tombstones, noting names and dates.
"This place has been used for burial since there have been signs of life in Jerusalem," said Moti Shamis, a member of the mapping team. "The cemetery is a mirror of the city -- in wartime, we see more graves. When new groups of Jews reach the city, the names on the graves change."
...
Jews began burying their dead on the hill that later became known as the Mount of Olives about three millennia ago. It was a convenient site a short walk from the city walls. Over the centuries, burial here became linked to a prophecy in the Book of Zecharia according to which the Messiah would approach Jerusalem from the mount, splitting it in two. Those interred on the hill, this belief posited, would be the first to be resurrected.
The mount became, and remains, a sought-after place to be buried for Jews in Israel and abroad.
"As a place of burial it differs from almost every other on earth, in being, as no other is, a witness to a faith that is firm, decided and uncompromising until death," wrote Norman Macleod, a missionary, after a visit in 1864. "It is not therefore the vast multitude who sleep here, but the faith which they held in regard to their Messiah, that makes this spectacle so impressive."
Read the whole thing. It understates the contempt with which the Jordanians treated Jewish graves on the Mount during the period in which they occupied the eastern part of Jerusalem.
Coincidence? Last week, one of my children was telling me that his rebbe (teacher) said that his grandfather's grave had been lost between 1948 and 1967.
Here in Jerusalem, I attended the funeral and burial of a friend's 20-year old daughter on the Mount of Olives on Friday afternoon. As we were burying the girl (may God have mercy), what sounded like gunshots rang out. I asked one of the coroners if they were gunshots or firecrackers. He said they were teargas grenades. In the valley below, I noticed smoke rising from what seemed to be just south of Silwan.
Huckabee attends groundbreaking for new Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem
Republican Presidential front-runner Mike Huckabee was the guest of honor at the groundbreaking for a new Jewish neighborhood on the backside of the Mount of Olives on Monday.
During a visit to the Mount of Olives for a cornerstone-laying ceremony in a Jewish east Jerusalem neighborhood, likely US presidential candidate Mike Huckabee asserted that Israelis should be able to live "anywhere in Israel they wished to live."
"It is inconceivable in many ways that we would have to even argue and debate whether or not Israelis could live in Israel, not just in parts of Israel but anywhere in Israel they wished to live," Huckabee added. "I cannot imagine as an American being told that I could not live in certain places in America because I was Christian, or because I was white, or because I spoke English. I would be outraged if someone told me that in my country, I would be prohibited and forbidden to live in a part of that country, for any reason."
The new neighborhood will not be large – only 24 units – but will mark the expansion of the Jewish residential presence to new parts of liberated Jerusalem. The site, currently home to Yeshivat Beit Orot, a hesder yeshiva, is located just off Mt. Scopus.
The new neighborhood is a bane for those who wish to see clearly delineated borders between Jewish and non-Jewish areas in Jerusalem, which they feel will make it easier to negotiate a settlement for the division of Jerusalem. Those who oppose such a division, therefore, welcome a Jewish return to all areas of the Holy City, as this will render more difficult its negotiated division.
Actor Jon Voight, a longtime dear friend of Israel was also there on Monday (Hat Tip: Memeorandum). Huckabee and Voight also met with Prime Minister Netanyahu.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
