Khaybar Khaybar Ya Yahud

This past Friday I watched as the other shoe dropped. The first shoe dropped a week earlier with the murder of two Israeli police officers at Lions Gate in the old city of Jerusalem. The killers started off from the Al Aqsa compound on the Temple Mount. The correct response was to install metal detectors at the entrances to the mount. Just like the ones in Mecca and throughout the Muslim world. Like the ones at the Vatican. Like the ones at the Kotel. Stopping another attack at a holy site would be the right thing to do.
But for some, I can’t say how many, it was not. As the battle cry, Khaybar Khabar Ya Yahud was shouted by the protestors I knew there would only be one outcome. Khaybar is near Medina in Saudi Arabia. In the year 653 the Jews were massacred there and in 2017 the protestors were threatening Jews with the same fate. So how could things end differently?
The Mufti of Jerusalem refused to recognize the terrorist attack. Al Jazeera news agency called it an altercation. There were no empty words of condemnation from Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority. What was heard from the Muslim leadership was that Al Aqsa must be saved. So tell me, how could it have ended any differently? There were false calls to save Al Aqsa in 1929 too. Jews in Hebron were massacred over a lie.
But it’s the occupation? My father’s entire family was exterminated in the holocaust. Talk about an occupation. My father was left with nothing. No family business, no home. My father did not enter the home of an unsuspecting German family to murder them.
As I watched all these responses I could see the other shoe falling till it hit on Friday evening leaving three Israeli family members dead and a smiling attacker who will now be getting a salary for having killed three Jews in their home.
