White House Opens Tent Of Mourning For Jerusalem Shooter

The family will be represented at the White House Tent of Mourning by the Palestine Liberation Organization’s ambassador to Washington.

Washington, October 10 – The White House moved today to show solidarity with the family of a Palestinian man shot to death by Israeli police yesterday, and set up a mourning venue on the South Lawn to receive condolences on their behalf. The man was shot to death after shooting seven people at a Jerusalem light rail station, killing two.

President Barack Obama ordered the tent be set up after consultations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who declared Monday a day of mourning over the death of the shooter. Visitors will be welcome at the South Lawn today through Wednesday, to allow dignitaries who might otherwise not have an opportunity to travel to Jerusalem personally to convey their condolences and support the family and Palestinian nation during this challenging time.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters that no such venue would be set up for the two Israelis killed in the attack, since as Jews they were asking for it, being Jewish in a place the president doesn’t recognize as part of Israel. “Being Jewish in certain locations is just asking for trouble,” explained Earnest. “It’s a perfectly natural thing to react to one’s problems by trying to hurt and kill Jews, so really they should have seen this coming. It’s sad, but not the same tragedy as being killed while trying to kill the people you want dead for being Jewish.” He noted the Hamas statement following the incident yesterday morning to the effect that the 29-year-old’s shooting spree was a “natural response to occupation.”

The members of the shooter’s family remain in the A-Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem, where they live, but will be represented at the White House Tent of Mourning by the Palestine Liberation Organization’s ambassador to Washington, Maen Rashid Areikat.

“On behalf of Palestine and the family, I welcome this gesture of solidarity, and hope it heralds a new era in Palestinian-American relations,” said Areikat in a statement. “The auspicious beginnings of this flowering could already be seen two weeks ago when President Obama insisted in a public transcript that Jerusalem is not in Israel, and continued with his fury that Jews living in homes beyond the 1949 Green Line might stay beyond that line, in complete congruence with Palestinian sensibilities and in departure from explicit Palestinian agreements with Israel vis-à-vis our respective areas of sovereignty. One can only hope that the president will maintain his steady course of manufacturing tensions with Israel so he has diplomatic cover to endorse a UN Security Council resolution that ignores written agreements, demands unilateral Israeli concessions, and thus encourages Palestinian intransigence.”