The “silent intifada” about which Hebrew media write is really silent no more. It is roaring at the gates, Harriet, and threatening to bash the door in.
How was it possible for an Islamic Jihad terrorist to simply stand waiting outside the Menachem Begin Center, ask Temple Mount activist Yehudah Glick for his name, and then simply say, “I’m angry with you” and shoot him four times at point-blank range?
Where on earth was the security detail that was supposed to be in place for the Knesset members attending the conference? At least one of those present was a full-fledged minister — that means the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) was on the scene, or should have been.
Worse, the Center employed this recidivist in its restaurant after a ten year stint in the Israel Prison system. Whatever happened to that antiquated practice of “security clearance” that dogged even the most common of job applicants back in the good ol’ days of Israeli basic standards?
There have certainly seemed to be more than enough Israel Police officers on the Temple Mount available to arrest someone for moving their lips — even a bride is considered suspect if she makes the wrong move on her wedding day. They’re always there to whisk someone away “before there’s trouble” with Arab “worshipers” who stockpile stones, firebombs (Molotov cocktails), and fireworks in the Al Aqsa mosque, and threaten non-Muslims on the Mount on a regular basis.
And Israeli police are aces when it comes to drivers using cell phones or texting in their cars, who are pulled over on a regular basis. Motorists who park in the wrong place find their cars magically ticketed by law enforcement officers.
How did we reach this point, where a convicted Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad terrorist, an 11-year graduate of Israeli jails, is hired by a premier center in Jerusalem for politicians and glitteratti and receives security clearance that allows him to get close enough to a guest speaker to shoot him on sight? Not to mention the minor detail that he also could have shot and killed at least three top lawmakers, all of whom were present at the event as well.
It boggles the mind – and raises suspicions.
It also calls up the question of what impact this attack, and those leading up to it over the past several months, will have on the iron grip maintained by the radical Islamic Waqf over the Temple Mount.
The issue is not as simple as it may appear because the Waqf represents the government of Jordan and the Hashemite Kingdom, which maintains a decades-old quiet handshake with Israel. Both sides are loathe to disturb that peace for obvious reasons.
But this attack takes the issue a step beyond the Pale.
Till now, Jews have been harassed on the Temple Mount – Judaism’s holiest site — unmercifully. Yet Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has buttoned his lip. Jerusalemites have lived with months of daily attacks on the Light Rail, hundreds of thousands of shekels’ worth of damage to the line and trauma to Israel’s citizens in order to service Arab commuters in northern Jerusalem and the Jews who live beside them. No track has been laid to bypass the communities where the attacks are perpetrated though surely that would be less costly.
But Yehudah Glick’s life is now hanging by a thread. That may have at last exceeded the patience of even the Israeli government. Such an attack, on a U.S. citizen, the primary Temple Mount activist, cannot be condoned, excused away, ignored with heads turned and eyes closed.
And yet.
Where are the howls? There’s no rage emanating from the White House, no “red-hot anger” over a terrorist attack on an American citizen. Just a deadly silence. Odd, no? Especially in light of the U.S. State Department’s hurry last week to convey its condolences to the family of the young U.S. citizen terrorist-in-training killed by the IDF while attacking Jews.