The Mercaz Massacre -- Three Thoughts

1. Pity the poor police patrolman who was one of the first to arrive at Yeshivat Mercaz Harav but failed to engage the terrorist. The inexperienced cop stood at the Yeshiva’s doorway with his handgun drawn, apparently frozen with fear. What dread he must have felt hearing the hundreds of shots from inside, listening as the terrorist executed his victims one-by-one. Maybe the cop reflects Israel’s national leadership, frozen by fear and inexperience when terrorist rockets fell on the citizens of Israel’s north during the 2006 Lebanon war or as rockets rain down today on civilians in Sderot and Ashkelon.

2. Virginian Tech student Seung-Hui Cho was undeniably mad and deranged. His bloody shooting spree through the halls of the university last April had no rational rhyme or reason. Only rage and madness. For the parents, friends and families of the 33 victims of the massacre, the grief is compounded by the unanswerable question, “Why?”

No one needs to ask why Alaa Abu Dheim massacred eight young Jewish students last Thursday night in Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Abu Dheim apparently went from one wounded victim to the next to shoot them in the head to “confirm the kill.” Unlike the Virginia Tech parents, the relatives of the Mercaz students know exactly why their loved ones were killed: Pure hatred drove Abu Dheim, not madness. Hatred is not a mental disease; nor is it readily curable, especially when it is a decades-old hatred of Jews and Jewish sovereignty fed by poisons imbibed in great quantities in Palestinian mosques, schools, radio, newspapers and TV. We are reluctant to call this hatred “Palestinian mothers’ milk,” but when Palestinian children in nursery school exalt suicide bombers and babies are dressed as bombers, perhaps the description is suitable.

Greg Sheridan, the foreign editor of The Australian, has an important conclusion that few journalists have realized: “In recent months Hamas has shown how willing it is to sacrifice its own people in order to pursue its war against Israel. However, it is wrong to imagine that Hamas is in any sense a mad group. Its strategy is rational. It is also difficult for the Western mind to grasp because of two elements: its genuinely religious foundation, and its willingness to inflict any suffering not only on its enemies, but on its own people.”

It is certainly no “comfort” for the families and friends of the Mercaz eight to know why they were killed, but the knowledge that a determined and murderous enemy is behind the massacre may provide them a fortitude and strength to fight and vanquish the forces of hate.

3. The doors. It always seems like the final defense against terrorists takes place at the doors. Virginia Tech professor Liviu Librescu, an Israeli and Holocaust survivor, blocked the doorway to his classroom to keep the gunman from entering. He died in the struggle, but his students fled out of windows and survived. In 1972 in Munich, Israel’s Olympic wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg and weightlifter Joseph Romano were killed as they bravely fought armed terrorists at the door, thus allowing other Israeli athletes to escape. And on a Friday night in December 2002, 23-year-old Noam Apter was doing kitchen duty in the Otniel Yeshiva when terrorists entered the kitchen. Under fire, Noam ran to the door separating the kitchen from the dining room, locked it and hid the key. By locking himself in with the terrorist he saved 100 students on the other side of the door, but he died in the struggle.

Why was there no fight at Mercaz Harav’s door? Perhaps it was carelessness that there was no private guard stationed at the school. The fact is, however, that hundreds of nurseries and schools in Israel cannot afford to post guards.

So why didn’t the policeman engage the terrorist at Mercaz? Like the planners of the Summer 2006 Lebanon War, maybe he thought the Israeli Air Force would handle the problem.

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