Blinken Condemns ‘All Those Who Celebrate’ Terrorist Attacks
Following a weekend marked by jarring celebrations in Palestinian areas over the murder of seven Israelis near a Jerusalem synagogue, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on arrival in Israel on Monday that the U.S. condemns those who celebrate “acts of terrorism that take innocent lives.”
“To take an innocent life in an act of terrorism is always a heinous crime, but to target people outside their place of worship is especially shocking,” Blinken said on arrival at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv. “For every faith, the house of worship is hallowed.”
Blinken condemned both the Friday night attack in the Neve Yaakov neighborhood in the north of Jerusalem, and another shooting in the city on Saturday in which a father and son were wounded.
“And we condemn all those who celebrate these and any other acts of terrorism that take innocent lives, no matter who the victim is or what they believe,” he said. “Calls for vengeance against more innocent victims are not the answer and acts of retaliatory violence against civilians are never justified.”
Blinken noted that the attack targeting Jewish worshippers took place “on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a day when we mourn the six million Jews killed in the Shoah and dedicate ourselves anew to rooting out the hatred and dehumanization that makes such unspeakable crimes possible, to ensure that history never repeats itself.”
Five men and two women, ranging in age from 20 to 70, were killed in the Friday night shooting near the synagogue, as Shabbat prayers ended. The shooter, a 21-year-old Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, was shot dead after opening fire at police officers pursuing him, according to police.
As news of the attack – the deadliest of its kind in the city in 15 years – spread, crowds of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and some West Bank towns took to the streets in celebration, honking car horns, handing out candy and sweet pastries, lighting bonfires, letting off fireworks, and chanting Allahu Akbar (“Allah is greater.”)
Calls of Allahu Akbar were also broadcast from mosque loudspeakers, and celebratory gunfire could be heard.
Video clips of celebrations in Jenin, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Gaza, and elsewhere, were posted on social media, by Palestinian media outlets among others. The Gaza news site al-Resalah posted a series of photographs under the heading, “Celebrations in the streets of Gaza City to celebrate the Jerusalem operation.”
Describing the images as “disgusting,” Israeli ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan tweeted, “On the day that the world remembers the horrors of the Holocaust, Palestinians are celebrating the murder of innocent Israelis in Jerusalem with fireworks and dancing. This is the result of decades of Palestinian incitement and hate that the world ignores.”
“There is something deeply broken in a Palestinian street culture that honors violence against innocents, a culture in which some were filmed dancing in the streets and handing out candies after the 9/11 terror attacks,” Bassam Eid, a veteran Palestinian rights advocate, wrote in a Forward op-ed.
“It is this: Multiple generations of Palestinian young people have been taught to hate Jews and Israel’s allies, and to equate attacks on civilians to attacks on military targets.”
“Too much of the Western world has coddled this perverse cycle,” Eid wrote. “Enough is enough.”
Abdul-Latif al-Qanou, the spokesman for Hamas – the U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization (FTO) that controls Gaza – issued a statement hailing “the heroic operation of Jerusalem,” which he said came “in response to the crimes of the fascist settler government.”
Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas convened a meeting of top officials on Saturday morning, but a statement released afterwards was silent about the attack near the synagogue. It accused the Israeli government of being “fully responsible for the dangerous escalation that the situation has reached due to its crimes.”
A day before the attack in Neve Yaakov, an Israeli security operation targeted a Palestinian Islamic Jihad cell in Jenin which the Israeli military said was planning to launch “multiple major terror attacks.”
Two Palestinian civilians, one of them a woman, were killed during the shootout, along with seven armed terrorists. According to their groups – all U.S.-designated FTOs – four were from Hamas, two from Islamic Jihad, and one from a militant group attached to Abbas’ Fatah faction.
Blinken is scheduled to meet with Abbas in Ramallah on Tuesday.
Source: cnsnews
