Through the photographs of the phylacteries, prayer shawls and Talmudic volumes covered in blood, from the sights that brought us back to times of massacres, pogroms and riots, to the modern blood libel that "Al-Aqsa mosque is in peril" -- a libel that will soon be 100 years old -- the village of Jabel Mukaber, where the terrorists came from, seemed to be the embodiment of Jerusalem-style absurdity. When historians and researchers write the history of the Jerusalem intifada, Jabel Mukaber -- Har Adirim in Hebrew -- will have a major role. Jabel Mukaber's inhabitants fought in the High Court of Justice not so long ago to keep their village on the Israeli side of the separation barrier. Since then, the hill on which the village is located has been sown with hatred, incitement and, mainly, dozens of terrorists who perpetrated terror attacks. Ala Abu Dahim, who killed eight students and wounded nine others at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in March 2008, came from there, and nobody tried to stop him either. Four young men from the village fired at police officers on the main street back in 2001, and a year later Ramadan and Fahmi Mashara, two brothers who lived there, helped Hamas operative Mohammed al-Ghoul commit the suicide attack on Bus 32 near Patt Junction that killed 19 people and wounded 74. The long line of terrorists who came from Jabel Mukaber calls to mind the terrorists who came from the Qawasmeh family of Hebron over many years. The men who shot the security guards and police officers near Jebal Mukaber in 2006 came from Jabel Mukaber, as did Kasem Mugrabi, the first terrorist to use a vehicle to commit a terror attack in September 2008. Mugrabi drove his car into a group of soldiers at Tzahal Square in Jerusalem, wounding 17 of them, before an army officer shot him dead. Four residents of Jabel Mukaber were indicted just last February on charges of planning a shooting attack at a wedding hall in Jerusalem's Bayit Vegan neighborhood. The indictment relates how the four defendants had planned to disguise themselves as haredim and enter the hall from the main entrance together with the rest of the invited guests -- and then shoot in all directions with the Mini-Uzis that they had tried to acquire. A month later, in March, 49-year-old Aziz Awisat, also from Jabel Mukaber, was indicted for attempting to perpetrate a terror attack by cutting gas pipelines in nine buildings in Jerusalem. He took his inspiration from the gas-container explosion in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood in January 2014 that killed a family, wounded several others and destroyed part of an apartment building. He is also accused of attacking Nahum Weissfish, a haredi resident of Jerusalem, with an axe. Three more terrorists from Jabel Mukaber bring up the rear of this dishonorable line. One is Mohammed Na'if el-Ja'abis, who in August 2014 used a tractor to run down Avraham Walz, a member of the Toldos Aharon hasidic community, near a construction site in downtown Jerusalem. The other two are cousins Rassan and Uday Abu Jamal, who killed four worshippers and a police officer in the Kehillat Bnei Torah synagogue in Jerusalem's Har Nof neighborhood this week. Celebrations after terror attacks Gaza and Bethlehem were not the only places where residents handed out sweets to celebrate this week's attack. Candies were also handed out in Jabel Mukaber, and not for the first time. The night that seven soldiers of the Golani Brigade were killed in their APC in Gaza's Shujaiyeh section, a spontaneous celebration that included fireworks, a convoy of drivers honking their car horns and shouts of "Allahu akbar" was organized in Jabel Mukaber. The Jewish residents of the nearby neighborhood of Armon Hanatziv used their cellphones to film the festivities, which lasted several hours, from their windows. After the massacre in the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, an enormous celebration was held in an orchard adjacent to both neighborhoods, and the shouts of "He is a martyr," just like this week, could be heard loud and clear. The residents of Jabel Mukaber have been having it both ways for some years. On the one hand, they receive health, employment and social welfare benefits from the state. Like 300,000 residents of East Jerusalem, they are eligible for allowances from the National Insurance Institute and enjoy the full benefits of Israeli democracy: freedom of movement, freedom of expression and, sometimes, freedom to engage in incitement. Their salary level is also several times higher than that of the Palestinian Authority. On the other hand, the long line of terrorists who have come out of the village in recent years and the residents' public expressions of support for them leave no room for doubt as to where they stand. This Jerusalem absurdity is illustrated by explicit statements that Shin Bet security agency officials wrote in a paper about the situation in East Jerusalem before the latest terror attack. "The terrorists from Jerusalem take advantage of their intimate knowledge of the attack site and the freedom of movement that they enjoy by virtue of their status as city residents. The type of terror attacks, which are usually perpetrated by a lone terrorist or by local [terrorist] infrastructure, take the form of shooting, vehicular assault, stabbing and physical assault." "In the past," the paper continues, "the East Jerusalemites served as an ancillary link in the commission of terror attacks, usually by guiding infrastructures who had come from outside (the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria). Palestinian terrorism made use of the East Jerusalemites' advantages, such as freedom of movement and access to any place. They also used their familiarity with the terrain and with the population. Therefore, the residents of East Jerusalem served as accomplices who engaged in intelligence-gathering in preparation for terror attacks, acquisition of arms and materials not sold in Judea and Samaria, and as the ones who transported the attackers to the site where the attack was to take place." Shin Bet officials say that the change took place several years ago when the residents of East Jerusalem, tired of playing second fiddle and wanting a starring role, began to perpetrate terror attacks themselves. Residents of southern Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods, particularly Jabel Mukaber, played a major role in those incidents. In the paper, which was written before the latest terror attacks, Shin Bet officials recommended "reinforcing the deterrent measures, including the demolition of terrorists' homes, tightening the sanctions on the terrorists' families, working to strengthen the Israeli security presence in the city's eastern portion and prosecuting crimes of weapons trafficking and possession to the fullest extent of the law." The document also recommended that policymakers "develop administrative tools such as handing down indictments, including for planning a terror attack, even before any concrete plans were made." Many months after these statements were written, against the backdrop of the Jerusalem intifada that began almost five months ago, the political echelon is making decisions and adopting quite a few of its recommendations. Toeing Hamas' line Can any commonalities be found between the terrorists and murderers who operated in Jerusalem and those who preceded them? Security officials say yes. Almost all of them were devoutly religious. Many of them were close to Hamas or were affiliated with it, but were not linked with it on an organizational level. Some of them are relatives or neighbors of past terrorists and of security prisoners who were released in various prisoner exchanges, and almost all of them were directly or indirectly affected by the harsh incitement about Al-Aqsa mosque. For example, Mohammed Shuman, who stabbed a woman soldier on Jerusalem's light rail last March, told his interrogators that he felt he had a religious duty to take action against the Israeli occupation. Mohammed Shawish and Adnan Rajbi, who attacked an Israeli civilian with a knife near the tomb of Shimon Hatzaddik in the spring of 2012, told their interrogators that the motivation for their attack was the arrest of their comrades in the group Shabab al-Aqsa, a group affiliated with Hamas that sought to keep the mosque as exclusively Muslim territory. The teenagers from Abu Tor who vandalized cars owned by Israelis in recent months and the operatives of the Democratic Front from Isawiyah, like the youths from the Shuafat area, recalled during their interrogations how much the incitement about the Temple Mount had influenced them. Meanwhile, the incitement continues. Nan Jacques Zilberdik and Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch reported this week that in recent weeks Mahmoud al-Habash, Mahmoud Abbas' adviser on religious affairs, has adopted the terminology and religious belief of Hamas, which portrays peace with Israel as a violation of Islamic law. A video on the Palestinian Media Watch website shows Al-Habash saying on official Palestinian television that according to sharia, the system of Islamic religious law, "All of Al-Aqsa mosque, including its plazas, stone benches, prayer niches and walls, -- all these are waqf to us [an inalienable religious trust in Islamic law]. All this is waqf and kharaj land [land belonging to Muslims], and no one may ever sell it or negotiate over it or forfeit it. It is ours and will remain ours. The occupation is the one that will leave." It should be noted that Al-Habash spoke almost entirely in the language of Hamas, which defines all of Palestinian land as waqf in Article 11 of its charter. To this we should add the statements that several high-ranking Palestinian Authority officials made after the massacre in the Har Nof synagogue this week. Although Mahmoud Abbas condemned the attack, his adviser, Sultan Abu al-Aynayn, quickly praised it as a "heroic act," called the terrorists "martyrs" and posted disturbing photographs of the puddles of blood and the victims' bodies on his Facebook page. Jamal Tirawi, Fatah's spokesman, issued a statement in the name of the Fatah faction of the Palestinian Legislative Council that the party "gave its blessing to the action in Jerusalem ... gave its blessing to the martyrdom-seeking action in Jerusalem and escorted the martyrs of the Abu Jamal family [referring to the two men who perpetrated the attack] to Paradise." Fatah, the movement that Mahmoud Abbas heads, hurried to celebrate the massacre. On its Facebook page, it reported the "distribution of sweets in the cities of the West Bank out of joy over the action in Jerusalem, which was done in retaliation for the execution of the martyr Yusef al-Rumani [the bus driver who was found dead, and whose death was ruled a suicide after the autopsy] and in response to the violations in the Al-Aqsa Mosque." "Al-Aqsa mosque is in peril" Col. (Res.) Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, former senior adviser for policy planning at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, a former head of the army's Palestinian Research Department and currently a senior researcher of the Middle East and radical Islam at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, noted recently that Fatah's military wing, Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, has gone back to armed struggle. In an article published on the JCPA's website on August 20, 2014, Halevi recalled that on July 26, 2007, Mahmoud Abbas ordered the disbanding of "all the armed militias and irregular military or paramilitary groups" in Palestinian Authority territory. The order included Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades as well, but the situation changed because of the fighting in Gaza. Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades has already taken formal responsibility for more than 30 terror attacks, some of them in Jerusalem or in the surrounding area, such as the gunfire aimed at Israeli troops near the Qalandiyah checkpoint, the shooting of the soldier near the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus and shooting at the Gush Etzion junction. Halevi writes: "It is not known whether Abbas has given his consent to the reestablishment of the Fatah military wing and to its official return to terror activity." The residents of Jabel Mukaber did not concern themselves with such niceties this week. The village, whose eastern portion borders the Jewish neighborhood of East Talpiot (Armon Hanatziv), is steadily cutting itself off from the peaceful coexistence with their Jewish neighbors of former times. The Jews did their shopping in Jabel Mukaber many years ago, but this has not been the case for quite some time. Abdullah, a construction worker from Jabel Mukaber, said this week that what interests most of the village residents is keeping their jobs and their financial grants from the state. "Hamas is influencing the atmosphere, and what's happening in Al-Aqsa is driving us crazy," he said. I asked him, as I asked other residents later, whether it was possible that they were being lied to. I told them that Israel was doing all it could to protect Muslim holy sites and that the government was sticking with the decision not to allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount. Abdullah and his friends dismissed that possibility out of hand. "Al-Aqsa is definitely in danger," they said, and Israel was about to allow Jewish prayer there. They sounded utterly convinced. Many of the murderers who come from Jabel Mukaber were convinced of that, too. There is a Jewish tradition that Har Adirim -- the Hebrew name of Jabel Mukaber -- is the place where the Patriarch Abraham's servants stayed with the donkey while Abraham and Isaac went on to Mount Moriah, the Temple Mount, where Abraham had been told to sacrifice his son. There is also a Muslim tradition that when Umar ibn al-Khattab, who arrived in Jerusalem in 640 C.E., saw Jerusalem from the Jabel Mukaber mountain ridge, he prostrated himself, crying out, "Allahu akbar -- God is great!" When the murderers also shouted "Allahu akbar" in Har Nof this week, for a completely different reason, they raised the conflict a notch higher on the religious scale.
