Meretz: Jewish Prayer Obviously Causes Massacres, Must Stop

Jerusalem, November 18 – Lawmakers from the dovish Meretz party reacted to this morning’s massacre of Jewish worshipers in Jerusalem by urging the government to promote public safety by banning Jewish prayer everywhere, as it evidently constitutes a dangerous provocation for Palestinians to erupt in deadly attacks on random Jews.

Four people were killed and eight injured when two Palestinian attackers, apparently from the eastern section of the city, entered a synagogue in the western Har Nof neighborhood during morning services and began shooting, stabbing, and hacking. The two were killed by police in an ensuing shootout, but the incident represents the latest in a string of attacks on Jews in Jerusalem, all by East Jerusalem Palestinians, involving knives, guns, or cars, against the backdrop of spiking tensions over Jewish access to the Temple Mount. As a result, Meretz members Knesset called on the Netanyahu government to institute a ban on Jewish prayer everywhere, and not merely on the Temple Mount.

“Jewish prayer clearly constitute a clear and present danger and a menace to public safety,” asserted Meretz delegation chief Zahava Gal-On. “We all see what kind of havoc results from merely the prospect of Jewish prayer in proximity to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, but this morning’s tragedy demonstrates the even greater scale of the hazard posed by Jews praying. They must be prevented from doing so.”

The prevailing rule for Jewish visitors to the Muslim-administered Temple Mount in recent years has been the avoidance of outward indications of prayer, with monitors assigned to every group of visitors to ensure compliance. Jewish activists have been agitating for a restoration of older rules that did not feature such restrictions, while another recent shooting attack seriously wounded a leading activist in that campaign. Other attacks, in which Palestinians drove cars or wielded sharp implements, have wounded and killed a dozen more people, with Palestinian leaders attributing the violence to Israeli “crimes.”

But the targeting of Jews engaged in prayer at the far western edge of the city, several kilometers away from the Temple Mount itself, proves that Jewish worship itself is likely the problem, says MK Nitzan Horowitz. “It’s possible that in essence the provocation only occurs when Jews pray within a certain distance of the disputed compound, but I, for one, am not willing to place public safety at risk,” he proclaimed.

Responding to accusations that such a ban would discriminate against Jews, MK Ilan Gilon conceded that the Meretz delegation had weighed demanding a comprehensive outlawing of prayer, but reconsidered. “Such a demand would, in all honesty, also be taken as a provocation,” he noted. “Anyway, the fact is, our constituency only really has a problem with Jewish worship.”