Seven dead as gunmen hit Jerusalem "religious school" Deadliest attack in three years is dramatic escalation in conflict
I am posting this not because all the details are correct... but because it seems to be one of the rare articles I can find in English on the net about what happened at least 5 hours ago in West Jerusalem and has been live on all Arab and Israeli TV channels since...
Note: the "religious school" that was hit was a "school" for the very very ultra rightist Jewish settlers or rather terrorists... which end up kicking Palestinians out of their homes and taking them over by sheer force and with arms. These are the settlers that roam around the streets of Hebron terrorising Palestinian citizens on their own land. Israel has already come up with many contradictory statements so far.. which makes the story even more interesting.., but I thought that I'd post something just to 'ring the alarm' as that is an important event.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/06/israelandthepalestinians1?gu...
Seven dead as gunmen hit Jerusalem religious school Deadliest attack in three years is dramatic escalation in conflict
A wounded man is evacuated by Israeli medics following last night’s shooting at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva or seminary in Jerusalem. Photograph: Kevin Frayer/AP
The descent into violence in the Middle East accelerated tonight as at least seven people were killed and dozens injured when gunmen opened fire into a crowd of students at one of Jerusalem's largest religious seminaries, the worst attack in the city for at least three years.
The attackers, who reportedly disguised themselves as Jewish religious students, were armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and opened fire for several minutes into crowds of students who had gathered in a library for a regular monthly celebration. The number of attackers was initially put at two though police later said it could be the work of a lone gunman.
After a prolonged gun battle one attacker was shot dead by Israeli police special forces. Police were tonight still searching the building for more possible gunmen.
"They were still shooting when we got here," Yaron Tzuker, a paramedic, told Israeli television. "We took cover and the ambulance was hit. It's horrible inside - dead bodies and wounded - it's horrific." Another witness said the shooting had gone on for around 10 minutes.
The attack represents a dramatic escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It comes only four months since the relaunching of serious peace negotiations and at a time when the number of Israeli casualties had dropped to its lowest since the start of the second intifada more than seven years ago.
Dozens of students were injured, some seriously, according to the ambulance service. There had been around 80 students in the room at the time and all the victims were believed to be in their 20s. Television footage showed the injured being rushed away on stretchers and some time later the ambulances began to remove the dead bodies. Hundreds of armed policemen and at least 50 ambulances were at the scene.
One student, Yitzhak Dadon, said he shot the attacker. "He came out of the library spraying automatic fire. The terrorist came to the entrance and I shot him twice in the head," he told the Associated Press.
Hizbullah's Manar satellite television station announced that a previously unknown group, the Martyrs of Imad Mughniyeh and Gaza, was responsible for the attack.
One media report said the attacker was a Palestinian from East Jerusalem.
In Gaza, the Islamist group Hamas issued a statement praising the attack. Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said his group "blesses the heroic operation in Jerusalem, which was a natural reaction to the Zionist massacre" - an apparent reference to heavy fighting in Gaza last week.
Israel issued a security alert across the country and set up roadblocks in Jerusalem to track any accomplices of the attackers.
The attack came at around 9pm tonight at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in the Kiryat Moshe district of Jerusalem. The yeshiva, a major institution in Israel, trains students from the national religious school of Judaism, which is a key element in the settler movement.
Large crowds of ultra-Orthodox Israelis gathered outside the building tonight and began chanting: "We want revenge."
I just amended my comment above to be West Jerusalem... Makes the story even more incredible. This would be a HUGE security breach as the shooter (or one of the shooters... as there have been several versions of the story until now) walked through the city carrying the box of amunition in his arms... and no one stopped him...
Do you think it's possible ? I know the Israeli government doesn't like the ultra religious settlers because they don't have to work , or serve in the army, they just get to collect checks from the government.
If a few rockets that ended up killing like 5 people in 5 years gave Israel enough "justification" in the court of world public opinion to turn Gaza into a concentration camp and murder more than a 100 people in 3 or 4 days, imagine what they'll be able to get away with after what happened today.
Very. It was my first reaction on hearing the news.
Israel has never needed any excuse to launch any of its attacks. When Israel wants to attack it does.. regardless of what anyone in the world thinks. Before this last operation in Jerusalem, Israel had already made it amply clear that what it had done in Gaza this last week was only phase 1. The threats to Lebanon have also been abundant.. indirectly but clearly.
In spite of all this, I still somehow feel that Israel will not attack.. nor will the US, unless the US conduct a tiny blitz attack on a specific limited target in Syria for example. But a war..., I tend to doubt.
If there is a war (a full scale war started by a false flag op), I think that it would be a wrong strategic decision like Iraq... and it would lead to the further weakening of Israel and the US which is an objective desired by many parties.
There are 2 schools of thought on this issue of "war" in the Middle East. Yours and mine. I guess that we will find out. Either way, the situation is very tense and the Israelis will definitely utilize what happened in Jerusalem today against the Palestinians. I for one am a person who supports the Palestinian Resistance as experience has shown for 60 years that Israel has never responded to negotiations only. Even when Israel signed a "peace" treaty with Egypt, it was after a bloody war. It was not as a result of purely peaceful negotiations.
Palestinian have for 60 years consistently lost more and more lands and rights.. and the world community did nothing for them. It is their right to take their destiny in their hand.
I totally disagree with those who say that qassam rockets have no effect. It is not the rocket per say. It is the effect it has on a very cowardly population: the Israelis who are not used to having a bullet fly near them. The fruit of Palestinian Resistance shows in the numbers of immigrants and emigrants from Israel... as well as the numbers of settlers that leave settlements etc...
That's a good point. It makes sense that Hamas is justified to murder some students because some of them were pro settlers. I can't see why anyone would see it as a cold blooded attack on unarmed children. Only Zionists are capable of that.
Zionists don't care about religious jews. This has false flag written all over it, I think.
By the way, have you ever read either of Jack Bernstein's little volumes morality?
http://www.iamthewitness.com/books/index.php?dir=Jack.Bernstein%2F
Do you have any pictures of muslims terrorists beheading civilians in Irak or videos of muslim suicide bombers exploding in markets and mosques killing muslim children and woman?, (as they did yesterday killing another 50 people).
Or videos showing Hamas terrorists torturing and killing fellow Fatach palestinians (350 dead according to Amnesty International Oct 24 2007 Report)?.
Or pictures showing palestinian terrorists barbaric killing of 8 jewish religious shool boys yesterday?.
Muslims killing muslims is OK but when jews kill muslims terrorists fighting back Hamas and Islamic Yihad use their children as human shields.
COWARDS these is not Islam these is insanity.
Yafus
That's right, time to disarm all Isarelis in order to stop this violence.
Why not? That's the call we hear in the US anytime someone goes on a shooting spree and kills a bunch of people in America, so let's apply the same logic to Israel.
Last night, on the odious Glenn Beck show, Alan DIRTBAGowitz was nearly foaming at the mouth about this and other aspects of Israel violence.
What's a matter Alan? Why is it you only get peeved when Israeli's are hurt and not Palestinians?
Oh, that's right, i forgot. Israeli's think they are chosen by their god to be the master race and everyone else, we'll, we're just made to be slaves and cannon fodder for the Master Race, so we don't count.
Based on what I read here, when a Palestinian child gets killed in the war between Israel and Hamas, Israeli's are baby killers. When a Palestinian kills an Israeli child, he is a true hero and if he gets killed in the process, he is deemed a martyr and gets 72 virgins in heaven. If you cannot see how hypocritical your position is, the conversation is not worth having and you can go back to whining and complaining.
As for a story about Iraqi's acting like dogs.... here you are
Atrocity in Fallujah
April 1, 2004 | category: Experts on Iraq • Robert Fisk
By Robert Fisk - 01 April 2004
“The bodies were hanging upside down on each side of the bridge. They had no hands, no feet, one had no head.” My old Iraqi friend had been driving into Fallujah just after the massacre, the stoning, the burning. He was shaking as he told me what he saw. “They were hanging upside down above the highway, on the old railway bridge which bridge, now a road bridge. The people of Fallujah were just driving over the bridge as if nothing was happening, right past the bodies.” The bridge is on the west side of the Sunni Muslim city, across the Euphrates river, and the corpses had been tied to the girders about six feet above the road. “When we left, there were no helicopters, no police, no soldiers, it all seemed quite normal; except for the bodies. They were burnt brown. I couldn’t tell if they were men or women.”
In fact, there were four Western men slaughtered in Fallujah yesterday - all contractors for the Americans, some apparently armed - and they had been dragged from their cars, mutilated, stoned, burnt, beaten with iron pipes. One of them was decapitated, then dragged through the streets behind a car. What the Anglo-American occupation power later called a “particularly brutal” crime - a somewhat restrained comment in the face of such barbarity - was all too real on the videotapes filmed by Iraqi camera crews in Fallujah but which were not shown on Western television stations last night.
Another man gave a chilling description of how the men were dragged from their car, begging for their lives. “They had gasoline splashed on them and were set alight,” he said.
It was an especially terrible day in Iraq. Five US Marines were killed only 20 miles from Fallujah by a roadside bomb and 15 Iraqis were wounded by a car bomb in the city of Baquba which had been intended for an Iraqi police convoy.
As usual, Iraqi dead were not counted by the occupation powers. But it will be the tapes that will be remembered by all who saw them - and by Arabs who were able to watch most of them, uncensored, on their own broadcasting channels.
They show the two burning vehicles and two men lying beside them. One, clearly a Westerner, is lying on his back, in brown trousers but with his shirt pulled up to his chest, staring at the sky. A tide of burning petrol embraces the corpse and his hands are standing claw-like above his chest. A crowd of screaming civilians - many shouting Allahu Akhbar (God is Great), and “Fallujah will be free” - then use a metal hook to drag another smouldering body from beneath the second vehicle. The youths are making V-signs at the camera as a man picks up an iron pipe and smashes it repeatedly on the charred remains. A second man steps forward to kick the head until it is completely severed from the body.
These were the horrors of Iraq yesterday, pictures which would have reminded the world of the American debacle in Somalia had they been shown outside the Middle East. For the crowd truss up one of the bodies with yellow tape, tie it to a car and then drag it down the main street towards the Euphrates bridge, all the while jumping up and down and laughing.
Cars and trucks can be seen hooting in impatience to overtake this obscene cort?ge as if such horrors were an everyday occurrence. There were many Westerners in Iraq last night who were praying that they would not be. One of the dead men - who were, in the words of one Iraqi in Fallujah, “slaughtered like sheep” - appeared to be carrying military identification tags. An US passport lay next to another. One local civilian said the mujahedin, “holy warriors”, had thrown two grenades at each car before dragging the occupants onto the road.
In the past few weeks, attacks on foreigners have happened almost daily. Two Finns have been killed, along with a British and Canadian contractor, two American aid workers - one a woman - and two US missionaries, including another woman. The Americans have not suffered their current scale of casualties for more than two months.
Only a day earlier, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the American deputy director of military operations in Iraq, was boasting that the US Marines in Fallujah were encountering fewer security problems and were “quite pleased with how they are moving progressively forward.” Even more ironic was General Kimmitt’s extraordinary distinction at a press conference between “terrorists” and “insurgents.” He characterised the violence in Fallujah - the scene of yesterday’s little massacre - as the work of “insurgents”; there was a difference, he said, between “former regime elements, perhaps trained in the Iraqi army” and who attacked soldiers and the Fallujah police station and “terrorists” who went in for “suicidal, spectacular attacks” which attack Iraqi army barracks, hotels, mosques and religious festivals in Karbala and Baghdad. These, he insisted, involved al-Qa’ida, Abu Mussab al-Zarkawi - the latest bogeyman whom the Americans publicised last month - and other groups.
The truth is that most US units have reported no “foreign fighters” in their areas of occupation and, despite General Kimmitt’s claims, the US military largely believes the growing number of attacks in Iraq are being carried out by home-grown guerrilla organisations. It’s the same problem the Americans have faced from the start: explaining how Iraqis whom they allegedly came to “liberate” should want to kill them.
The headquarters of the US administrator, Paul Bremer, is now surrounded by massive walls of concrete and steel, checkpoints of sandbags and iron gates and squads of heavily armed US troops. Yet the palace grounds are hit by mortar fire almost nightly. So what foreigner - or Iraqi for that matter - is now safe here?
I was outside one Western television office in Baghdad yesterday, observing yet another concrete wall being erected around it. Armed Iraqi militiamen stood at every corner of the compound and British security men were on guard inside. If Mr Bremer’s old presidential palace with its triumphal gateway now resembles the seat of the old British Raj, the office I visited was beginning to look like those fading photos of the British residency at Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny. For this is what we have now come to in Baghdad: foreigners on the run.
© 2004 The Independent. UK
Absolutely false flag. Fire up the freelance butchers ("settlers") as the military gears up to slaughter more in Lebanon and Gaza. Work the pity faucets and saturate the news with "death of innocents" tape loop. I'd also look for a financial scam just below the surface but ..
Moralitydude, thanks for the morality check. I'm feeling like totally restored.
www.ussliberty.org
a "religous school" = a breeding ground for radical Jewish extremism. The chosen people's version of a "madrassa" if you will.
Now imagine if the shoe was on the other foot. All of the stories would read" Jewish extremists (notice they don't call them terrorists) attack Islamist run school in the West Bank killing 19."
Then all of the Zionists would defend Israel saying the school that got attacked was a "madrassa" and all the students were future terrorists being taught how to hate and kill Jews.
I didn't. not one.
only a bunch of pics of what they tell us are dead bodies of teens killed at the school, some bullet ridden glass and some kids wailing.
I'll believe it when i see it with my own two eyes.
Not before.
---------------------------------------
"Money" has no value - people do.
Perhaps Al Jazeera is making the story up and taking fake photos of the event. We all know Al Jazeera is a reputable news organization located in Doha Qatar. Front Page you will find a nice picture of a dead Israeli child. The Palestinian attacker shot the Israeli child right in the attack of settler activity I'm sure.
Israelis bury Jerusalem victims
Police said the attacker entered through the school's main gate before opening fire in the library [AFP]
Thousands of mourners turned out on the streets of Jerusalem to pay their last respects to eight students killed by a Palestinian man at a Jewish religious school.
The attacker, identified as an East Jerusalem resident, was shot dead after he opened fire with an automatic weapon in the library of the Merkaz Harav Jewish religious school.
The shooting has led to a security clampdown across Jerusalem and the West Bank, and follows a series of Israeli raids in the Gaza Strip which left more than 130 Palestinians dead.
Hamas praised the "heroic operation" while thousands of Gazans poured onto the streets to celebrate.
Al-Aqsa restrictions
Israel has deployed thousands of police and set up road blocks across Jerusalem on Friday, Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman said.
Police were also limiting Palestinian access to the al-Aqsa mosque due to fears violence could break out in the Old City as both Jews and Muslims gathered for prayers.
The Israeli military, meanwhile, sealed off the occupied West Bank until Saturday night.
Thousands of Israelis gathered at the school where the attack took place to participate in open-air funerals for the victims, aged 15 to 26.
It was the bloodiest attack on Israelis in two years and the first such in four years in Jerusalem.
"The time for us has come to understand that an external struggle as well as an internal struggle are raging," Rabbi Yaakov Shapira told mourners outside Merkaz Harav seminary.
Shapira, who runs the well-known centre for Jewish studies linked to those leading the Jewish settler movement in the occupied West Bank, called for "stronger leadership" in Israel.
The seminary serves some 400 high school students and young Israeli soldiers, many of whom carry arms.
Thursday's shooting could further complicate US-backed efforts to broker a deal for the creation of Palestine by the end of 2008.
It followed a visit to the region by Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, who persuaded Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to resume peace talks he suspended over Israel's attacks on Gaza.
Washington has tried to pressure Israel to ease some travel restrictions on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, but the attack makes that far less likely to happen soon.
Condemnations
Abbas condemned the Jerusalem attack.
Saeb Erekat, an Abbas aide, said: "President Mahmoud Abbas condemns the attack in Jerusalem that claimed the lives of many Israelis and he reiterated his condemnation of all attacks that target civilians, whether they are Palestinians or Israelis."
East Jerusalem residents identified the
attacker as Ala Abu Dhaim [Reuters]
Mark Regev, spokesman for Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, said Abbas must go further and rein in Palestinian armed groups.
He said: "They have clear obligations to act against terrorist cells, to act against the infrastructure of terrorism.
"While we understand they have limitations on their capabilities today, we believe that they could be doing much more and it is incumbent upon them to do so."
Israel has yet to meet its own commitments under a long-stalled peace "road map" to halt all settlement activity and to remove Jewish outposts in the West Bank.
A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry said that those responsible for the shooting were "killing chances for peace" and vowed to "continue our fight against terrorists".
But Arye Mekel added that Israel would carry on with the negotiations.
The US and Israel blamed Libya for the failure to pass a UN resolution against the attack, which said it wanted to link any condemnation of the shooting to its own resolution pressing for censure of Israel over its deadly land and air assault on the Gaza Strip last week.
While not claiming responsibility for the attack, Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, said "this heroic attack in Jerusalem is a normal response to the crimes of the occupier and its murder of civilians".
Attacker's identity
Israeli defence officials said the attacker came from east Jerusalem, the predominantly Arab section of the city which Israel captured and occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.
In contrast to Palestinians in the West Bank, those in Jerusalem have Israeli identification cards, allowing them relatively free movement inside Israel.
Police said the attacker, believed to be in his early 20s, worked for a private transport company but did not elaborate.
Residents of East Jerusalem named the attacker as Ala Abu Dhaim.
Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesman, said Dhaim walked through the seminary's main gate and entered the library, armed with an assault rifle and pistol.
At least six empty bullet clips were found on the floor, Rosenfeld said.
Israeli police have arrested more than 10 relatives and friends of the Palestinian suspect, including his father who was released hours later.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
and the verbatim lift from mainstream media outlets.
show me the images.
---------------------------------------
"Money" has no value - people do.
These evil zionists deal in illusions and one of the basic of illusion is to get the victim to take certain parts of the illusion for granted.
The zionists will lie whenever they think they can get away with it. Remember the Liberty.
Those subhumans are masters of deception. They could easily just put make up and somebody and have them pretend to be dead. Then their brethren in the mainstream media can parade those images around the world to remind everybody how the Chosens are always the innocent victims.
and btw anyone notice how they kept using the term "students" to describe the alleged victims ? They're trying to give everybody the idea that they were 12 year olds, but instead they were much older. About college age or older. But when college aged Palestinian civilians are murdered, they're just written off as militants or adult human shields.
That have splattered onto my retina in regards israeli killing,invading,settling,cleansing ,walling,jailing,Raping that if any of the things israeli's say are true nobody has any proof to say so.
Lies are a national security rule in israeli family circles much like the South Africa thing.
The math is simple.
5,000,000 of them 6,000,000,000 Plus of us.
Palestine is not up for negotiation in ANY way israeli's. Palestine is for Palestine.
First you take D.C. Then you take New York
"Free Palestine" I agree that photos can be created. So why should we believe the Palestinian ones? Qrswave, I am shocked that you think Al Jazeera is a news organization sympathetic towards the Zionist movement. Which news organization do you recommend and what makes them credible?
Masher,
Those are staggering numbers! Thankfully, most of the world's Arabs and Muslims desire peace and harmony and are unlike Hamas. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates and Oman all coexist with Israel in the Middle East and no babies from those countries are injured. I wonder why? If your charter calls for the destruction of a Nation and you continually attack that nation, you should expect return fire. You can't then cry foul when you get hit.
"If your charter calls for the destruction of a Nation and you continually attack that nation, you should expect return fire. You can't then cry foul when you get hit."
- - - - - -
Oh I absolutely AGREE.
Now we finally see eye to eye my little dehydrated bat!
Since "israel" has stolen more land, chunks here and there over a 60 year period, from Palestinians, since "israel" has continually attacked Palestine's people, massacred Her children over 60 years, since "israel's" charter has always been for the calling of destruction of economy and education of Palestine's people...INDEED..."israel" should expect return fire from the resistant group Hamas...INDEED..."israel" shouldn't cry foul when it gets hit.
"israel" with all its big fancy powered-up death toys.... "israel", a big fat bully-punk with israeli-zionist-powered MEDIA to protect it through all its sickening massacres of the Lebanese and Palestinians.
INDEED..."israel" reminds me of a pedophile...take away the means to get little boys and the pedophile cries foul.
I just couldn't agree with you more!
:-)
An important question has been posed above... and in my surfing today I didn't find an answer for it. WHERE ARE THE BODIES OF THE DEAD??? Or for that matter, the injured.... Real looking injuries... WHERE IS THE BODY OF THE "TERRORIST" THAT WAS SHOT BY "2 DIFFERENT PEOPLE"??
DID ANYONE FIND A BODY YET??
This article from the Los Angeles Times verifies that there was only one gunman:
So does this article published today on the New York Times website.
But, the above article posted by Cherifa says this:
and this:
So the gunman was shot twice in the head by an Israeli student that just happened to be packin' heat in a Jewish seminary, but still managed to live for long enough to be shot dead by Israeli police? Someone's bullshitting.
You dont need pictures of dead jews. If you want to know if there is any israeli murdered by a palestinian terrorist just watch the palestinian TV and you will see thousands of palestinians dancing in the streets of Ghaza and shouting Alla hu akhbar!!!...
Tell me about any other nation in the world who behaves in such a sick way?.
Yafus
Yafus.. Yafus.. are you that pedophile wanted by the NY police who performs at children's b'day parties as Yafus the Clown?
When a certain group of people have a vast and well known history of constantly lying and deceiving others, I don't think it's that bad of an idea to not believe them. On the other hand, if somebody has a history of honesty than I will believe what they say.
You broke Zionist rule number 1
1. Don't ever refer to Palestine as a country, and if you must make sure to indicate that you're being sarcastic by putting quotation marks around it, and or preceding it by the term "so called".
Example : The so called "Palestinians" all deserve to die.