This week, Adiel Kolman was murdered on Hagai Street in the Old City of Jerusalem, very close to the police station that opened there 27 years ago to protect the passage to the Western Wall after the murder of Elhanan Attali. Attali was killed while on his way to visit his teacher and mentor, Hanan Porat. Not one of the locals rushed to his aid.
Eventually, when Porat became an MK, he was the author of the law named after the biblical precept "thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor" (Leviticus 19:16), which legally obligates people to help anyone they see in "serious and immediate danger." Porat explained at the time that it was obvious that this biblical law should be entered into the laws of Israel and apply to everyone – Jews and Arabs.
This week – not for the first time – the Arab denizens of Hagai Street avoided helping a victim of terrorism who was attacked right in front of them. Six of them were arrested. They allegedly saw what was taking place. They saw Kolman's murderer pullout a knife and stab his victim to death, but turned their backs. It took 34 seconds – too long – before the police officers arrived. If someone had intervened, Kolman might still be alive.
Two and a half years ago, Adelle Bennett experienced the same nightmare when a terrorist from A-Bira attacked her, her husband, Aharon, and their two children with a knife as they were walking back from the Western Wall. Aharon was killed. Adelle was seriously wounded. The events are etched on her memory. She managed to escape and call for help, but the Arab passersby and shopkeepers turned their backs on her distress. Some even mocked her and said they hoped she'd die. Rabbi Nehemia Lavi heard her cries and ran out of his home holding a gun to try and help. He was also stabbed to death. On the eve of Passover last year, when Ahmed Razal, a 17-year-old from Nablus, stabbed a pedestrian to death in the same place, shopkeepers turned a blind eye. Razal, like Kolman's killer, was shot to death, but not before he managed to wound another three Jews.
Since 1967, when Jerusalem was reunited after the Six-Day War and Jewish worshippers once again gained access to the Western Wall, seven Jews have been murdered on Hagai Street and its offshoots. Dozens more attempted murders and terrorist attacks have taken place in the immediate vicinity. The street is home to a Jewish community whose members were expelled in the 1929 riots and returned after 1967 and which includes dozens of families and Torah study institutions. At the turn of the 20th century, thousands of Jews lived outside the Jewish Quarter along Hagai Street and its alleyways. They included notable figures such as Dov Frumkin, who founded the newspaper Havatzelet; David Cohen, the grandfather of author Haim Beer, who lived in a courtyard off Shaar Hashalshelet Street; the reviver of Hebrew as a spoken language Eliezer Ben-Yehuda; Yehosef Schwartz, one of the most prominent researchers of the history of the land of Israel; Rabbi Yosef Navon, the grandfather of Yitzhak Navon, the fifth president of Israel, who ran a soup kitchen nearby. Reuven Rivlin, a student of the Vilna Gaon and the grandfather of President Reuven Rivlin, who is named after him, also lived close by.
Many of the murders that took place in the area have become milestones in the history of renewed Jewish life in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City and have helped give it strength. After the murder of Haim Karman, Jews living in the Muslim Quarter populated the Herod's Gate compound and another spot on the Via Dolorosa. In October 2015, after Lavi and Bennett were murdered, members of the Ateret Cohanim organization took up the option on one of their more important real estate acquisitions and moved into Beit Hanof near Herod's Gate. Now Jews in the quarter are demanding that construction on a two-dunam (half-acre) residential complex, also near Herod's Gate, be expedited. The government purchased the land from the Russian Orthodox Church years ago. The plans have been making the rounds of the various planning committees for years now, but have been held up for political reasons. Maybe this time the plan will move ahead because of the murder.
This week, a baseless rumor was going around that the murderer who committed the latest killings on Hagai Street was a Turkish citizen. The report was refuted, but it wasn't random. The area around the Temple Mount is a hive of political activity and ideology on the part of the triad of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Turkey. The outlawed Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement is involved there, too. Kolman's killer, Abd al-Rahman Bani Fadel, from the village of Aqraba near Nablus, also lived in a Hamas environment. Hamas called his action "effective" and put out an obituary.
Hamas' biggest ally today is Turkey. In recent months, the alliance has grown stronger. Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official from the Gaza Strip, testified to this in an interview to a Turkish news agency only a few days ago. The Shin Bet security agency has exposed several Hamas plots with ties to Turkey. The latest, in which at least one terrorist who was freed as part of the deal to free captive soldier Gilad Schalit, involved a money trail that led to Umm al-Fahm. Security officials believe that dozens of Hamas members are working from Turkey, both as part of what is called the group's "civilian branch" and by directing terrorist cells throughout Judea and Samaria from abroad, mostly with the help of Hamas in Gaza and other prisoners who were freed in exchange for Schalit.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made it clear that he sees Israel as a terrorist state, but not Hamas as a terrorist organization. Turkey, as this newspaper has already revealed, allows Turkish nonprofit groups, some of them government-sponsored, to funnels tens of millions of dollars into the Old City as part of a real estate battle for religious control around the Temple Mount. Erdogan himself uses every available platform to encourage "Al-Aqsa tourism." Tens of thousands of Turks are being sent here to "help protect Al-Aqsa." Some have taken part in incitement on the Temple Mount. In recent months, Erdogan has slipped into using blatant Hamas terminology and has employed the "trees and the rocks" hadith about the Judgment Day battle between Muslims and Jews. He quoted the sentence: "Then the trees and the rocks will say, "O Muslim. He who worships Allah. A Jew is hiding behind me. Come and kill him." There is no way of knowing whether the murderer from Hagai Street this week heard Erdogan's words, but he definitely implemented them.
Erdogan has also helped the Palestinians in another way. A new report from the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center unveils the extent of Turkish aid to the Palestinian Authority when it comes to fighting for land ownership. It seems that Turkey handed over to the Palestinians copies of an archive that document land ownership and purchases in the land of Israel as a whole and Jerusalem in particular during 400 years of Ottoman rule.
This is a move of immense importance. It could help the Palestinians in their fight for control of the Old City, including Hagai Street, a particular hotspot in the real estate war between Muslims and Jews. The Palestinians could draw valuable information from the archive to use in their legal fight for ownership of land and property in Jerusalem, and it will be harder for Israel and the Jews to fight them.
