24 Jewish orphans were created today. Family of murderers call attack ‘normal thing for every man belonging to Islam,’ residents promise more attacks; police seal neighborhood.

The families of cousins Uday and Rassan Abu Jamal in Jerusalem’s Jabel Mukabar celebrated wildly on Tuesday, after learning that the two had murdered four Jews and wounded eight others with hatchets, knives and guns in a synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood.

“We responded with shouts of joy when we received the news about their deaths,” Ala’a Abu Jamal said of his cousins to Yedioth Aharonoth. “People here distributed candies to guests who visited us, and there was joy for the martyrs.”

Trying to justify the horrific attack using the situation on the Temple Mount, where Jews are forbidden from praying and Muslim visitors riot on a near daily basis, he continued by calling the attack “a normal thing that can be expected from every man who has courage and a feeling of belonging to his people and to Islam.”

“The attack was a surprise for us, we didn’t expect that it would occur,” claimed Ala’a Abu Jamal. “The two killed (terrorists – ed.) were regular workers and weren’t associated with any organization. One of them was married with three children. Thank Allah, someone who dies as a martyr, that’s a great thing.”

Despite his claims the two were not affiliated to any group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attack, which was also praised by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah.

Regarding the wife of the terrorist, Interior Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) announced Tuesday he would immediately act to cancel her permits to be in Jerusalem. The woman, a resident of the Judea and Samaria region, was allowed in as the spouse of an Israeli resident. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu also ordered for the homes of the terrorists to be demolished.

Another resident of Jabel Mukabar told the Hebrew-language site “we are proud of the two martyrs who carried out the attack. …We have many more youths who have nothing to lose. They are ready to attack Jews, everything for Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

The families of the terrorists did not have too long to celebrate with guests however, as Palestinian Arab Ma’an News Agency reports police detained 12 of the relatives. Brief clashes between police and local residents ensued.

Likewise, the site reported that police sealed off the entrance to the neighborhood with cement blocks, in a similar move to that which was recently done to Issawiya following constant violent riots and terror attacks.

Regarding the families of the terrorists, Deputy Minister for Religious Affairs Eli Ben-Dahan (Jewish Home) on Tuesday said that they should be expelled, “even this very day.”

The two terrorists held Israeli residency and the privileges entailed by it, and reportedly one of them worked in a grocery store next to the synagogue they attacked.

As the four victims of this morning’s massacre at the Kehillat Bnai Torah Yeshiva Synagogue in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood were laid to rest Tuesday afternoon, Israelis are still in shock at the depravity of the attack on unarmed worshipers as they prayed.

The four victims – Rabbi Moshe Twersky, Rabbi Kalman Levine, Aryeh Kupinsky, and Avraham Shmuel Goldberg, hy”d – leave behind grieving widows and 24 orphans between them.

Terrorists Ghassan and Uday Jamal stormed the synagogue early Tuesday morning armed with knives, a meat cleaver and a pistol, inflicting horrific wounds on their victims, which also included eight injured – four of them seriously.

The terrorists were finally killed in a shootout with police.

More and more details are now emerging from eyewitness accounts and photographs from the scene of the slaughter. Israel’s government press office has released shocking pictures from the immediate aftermath, showing murdered worshipers still draped in their prayer shawls and wearing tefillin (phylacteries).

“One of the worshipers came out full of blood, and said: there was a massacre,” a witness told IDF Radio. “Police took only 11 minutes to arrive and paramedics arrived five minutes later.”

Sarah Abrahams, a horrified resident, described scenes of carnage.

“I was going for a morning walk and passing by on the road above the synagogue,” she said.

“Someone told me not to go any closer and that there was something big going on, but I walked down to see.

“There were people running from the synagogue, and a man sitting on the pavement covered in blood, it looked like he has been stabbed,” she said.

“The police were already there, and when one of the terrorists emerged from the synagogue they shot him on the steps.

“Two people came out with their faces half missing, looking like they’d been attacked with knives.”

As she spoke, medics brought out four bodies one by one, each wrapped in white plastic, and loaded them gently into ambulances.

Grisly images from inside the synagogue showed prayer books and traditional white prayer shawls drenched in blood, and a wide arc of blood splattered across walls and bookshelves.

Fighting back tears, Moshe Eliezer said he had narrowly avoided being at the scene after oversleeping.

“This is a yeshiva community. Ninety percent don’t serve in the army. We’re not violent,” he said.

Even Israeli emergency workers, who are no strangers to the bloody scenes of terrorist attacks, were shocked by the sheer scale and brutality of the slaughter

Moti Bukchi who went inside to help the wounded described scenes of horror.

“The scene inside was harrowing, with a lot of blood,” he told AFP.

“Inside the synagogue some people were wounded by gunshots, others had chopped off limbs caused by a meat cleaver,” he said.

“We have seen things here for the first time – a man goes in with a meat cleaver and starts to attack people and chop off their limbs? That is something new.”

Another emergency worker and local resident, Eli Pollak, described what he saw as “one of the cruelest scenes I have ever witnessed.”

Speaking to Arutz Sheva, Yehuda Meshi-Zahav said what he saw resembled images from the holocaust.

“I don’t remember seeing a disaster scene as shocking as this, (the victims) were wrapped in talit (prayer shawls) and tefilin (phylacteries),” he said, describing “puddles, rivers of blood throughout the entire synagogue, siddurim (prayer books) thrown all over the floor – a sight that we only recognize from the Holocaust, from the period of the Holocaust.”

“These are Jews who got up early in the morning to pray to the Creator of the World, and in the middle of their prayers – in the middle of a religious act, of an act of faith, not of conflict – were attacked…I do not know what ismore shocking than this.”

In Gaza and Bethlehem revelers handed out candies and celebrated with passersby, while in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabel Mukhaber, where the two terrorists behind the attack lived, family members gleefully celebrated their “martyrdom.”

“We responded with shouts of joy when we received the news about their deaths,” Ala’a Abu Jamal said of his cousins Ghassan and Uday Abu Jamal to Yedioth Aharonoth. “People here distributed candies to guests who visited us, and there was joy for the martyrs.”

The party didn’t last long for the Abu Jamal’s though; police raided the neighborhood and arrested 12 people, including several family members. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has ordered the demolition of the terrorists’ homes, and Interior Minister Gilad Erdan announced he will be expelling the wife of one of the killers from Jerusalem.

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