At 7:00 on Tuesday morning, 18 November 2014, two terrorists entered the Kehillat Bnei Torah building on Harav Shimon Agassi Street in the ultra-Orthodox Har Nof neighborhood in Jerusalem, which includes a synagogue and yeshiva, wielding a gun and butcher knives. They began attacking worshippers, stabbing them before opening fire. About 30 worshippers were in the midst of the morning prayers, wearing prayer shawls and phylacteries.

Police who arrived at the scene shortly after the attack began shot and killed the two terrorists.

Police confirmed that four people were killed immediately in the terror attack and eight wounded, three seriously and one critically, including two policemen. Despite efforts to save him, the critically wounded police officer succumbed to his wounds.


  Copyright: GPO/Kobi Gideon


The victims has been identified as:
Rabbi Moshe Twersky, 59, head of the Torat Moshe Yeshiva in Jerusalem, elder son of Rabbi Isadore Twersky of Boston, and a grandson of Modern Orthodox luminary Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. The three other victims are Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky, 43, Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Goldberg, 68, and Rabbi Kalman Ze'ev Levine, 55, all residents of the same street in the Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem.
Druze police officer Master Sergeant Zidan Nahad Seif, 30, of Yanuh-Jat, mortally wounded in the attack, died of his wounds overnight.

Following security consultations, Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered the demolition of the homes of the terrorists who perpetrated the recent attacks and directed that enforcement against those who incite toward terrorist attacks be significantly increased. A series of additional decisions have been made to strengthen security throughout the country.



US Secretary of State John Kerry strongly condemned the attack:
"People who had come to worship God in the sanctuary of a synagogue were hatcheted and hacked and murdered in that holy place in an act of pure terror and senseless brutality and murder. I call on the Palestinian leadership at every single level to condemn this in the most powerful terms. This violence has no place anywhere.”
"To have this kind of act, which a pure result of incitement,” is unacceptable, Kerry said, adding that Palestinian leaders “must begin to take serious steps to restrain any kind of incitement that comes from their language, other people’s language and exhibit the kind of leadership that is necessary to put this region on a different path."

Hamas said on its official Al-Aqsa TV: "The attack in Jerusalem is a reaction to the crime and execution of the martyr al-Ramouni and a reaction to the crimes of the occupation. The Hamas movement is calling for more revenge attacks." Yusuf Hassan al-Ramouni, employed as a driver by the Egged bus company in Jerusalem, was found hanged at a bus terminal on Sunday night. Contrary to claims published in the Palestinian media that al-Ramouni was murdered, official autopsy results confirmed the police's suspicion of suicide.

Hamas spokesman in Gaza Mushir Al-Masri labels the Jerusalem terror attack "heroic", claiming it is an act of revenge and a natural reaction to Israel's "crimes":