A Palestinian who worked for the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva entered the library area, took out a weapon and began blasting away until eight young Jewish youths lay dead and 11 others wounded. The terrorist was caught and killed as he tried to escape. The head of the Yeshiva, Rabbi Yaakov Sapira compared the slaughter to Arab killing of Jews in the 1929 Hebron massacres. The children are dead, but questions also remain as to how will the Arab world react to these killings. It appears the killer’s family is already hanging flags of Hamas, are they being hung as a gesture of sorrow or to celebrate the death of Jews?
Most probably, many people in Gaza will celebrate death and few leaders of Hamas will ever express regret at the killing of innocent children– unless, of course, they are Muslim children who got killled. One of the tragedies of the constant killing of people during the Israel-Palestinan conflict is the loss of a sense of humanity. If people kill for years, they lose sight of their own religion’s values and cease viewing the enemy as a person. If there are celebrations for this brutal act of terrorism in Gaza or elsewhere in the Arab world, it reflects a loss of belief in the Islamic faith much more than it reflects a triumph over Israel. The killer believed in death, not God.