Caught on Video: Alleged Palestinians Attack Historic Jewish Home with Firecrackers and Molotov Cocktails

An Israeli website posted video showing a Jewish home in Jerusalem which is also an historic landmark being violently attacked by alleged Palestinians using firecrackers and Molotov cocktails. Yoni Alper of “Terror Watch” posted the video of the event he says took place Friday night (Hebrew link).

Filmed from a nearby building, the video shows the launching of multiple flaming projectiles toward the house, impacting it with incendiary fury, setting fires through its windows. All this takes place in a crowded Jerusalem neighborhood that is subject to dispute between Arabs and Jews. The Palestinians call it Silwan, while Israel calls it Shiloah.

Shiloah is considered by Jews to hold historical significance to their faith. The location is referred to in the Bible, including in Isaiah (8:6), where it’s written, “the waters of Shiloah go softly.” It was a site that in ancient times facilitated the fulfillment of important Jewish rituals and is believed to sit atop an ancient cemetery holding Judean royalty.

Today, it is populated by Palestinians, who oppose the presence of some 40 Jewish families who have bought homes in the neighborhood to try to gain a foothold on what they consider to be a holy site that sits just outside Jerusalem’s Old City and the holy Temple Mount. Jewish Press explains that because of the threats against them, “Jewish residents are forced to maintain a high level of security in the area, and exercise caution when travelling on the local roads, due to concerns of rock and Molotov cocktail attacks.”

Last year, President Barack Obama was the first U.S. president to say that the 1967 borders should constitute the boundary of a future Palestinian state. If Israel were to heed his words, Jerusalem would be divided into an Israeli and Palestinian city and Silwan/Shiloah would fall inside the Palestinian state.

Israel National News provides more background on the historical Jewish landmark that was attacked:

The Meyuhas House was built by Rabbi Rahamim Nathan Meyuhas, the first Jew to return to the City of David – from which King David ruled Jerusalem – in modern times. Meyuhas, whose family lived in the Old City for centuries, was a livestock butcher who purchased the plot in 1873.

In a letter to his family he wrote: “We are establishing our home from now on in the village of Shiloah near the city. There we will live and there we will have light and breathe fresh air. We will no longer drink murky well water, and we will no longer eat purchased vegetables, but rather our water will be living water from the spring, and with our own hands we will sow vegetables and will partake of them."

In 1885, a group of Jewish immigrants from San’a, Yemen, which had arrived in Jerusalem three years earlier, established Kfar Hashiloah, the first Yemenite settlement in the Land of Israel. During the 1936-1939 Arab riots, the Jews of Kfar Hashiloah were forced to abandon their homes.

No injuries were reported in the firebomb attack, according to Israel National News.

Watch the video here, which Terror Watch obtained from the "Bustan Cultural Center.":