As Israel mourns its first victim since the summer wave of terror, a security source told me that the defense establishment is alarmed by Hamas’s rising support on the Palestinian street.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz told defense correspondents on Monday. “The unusual profile of the attacker on Sunday — a Hamas cleric — and the lack of any current crisis only prove how difficult it is to predict who is a terror threat.”
Those words will do little to console the Kay family for the loss of their son Eliyahu David (Eli) — a former lone soldier who made aliyah from South Africa in 2016 — who was killed in the streets of the Old City on Sunday.
Eli was on his way to Shacharis at the Kosel, where he worked for the Western Wall Heritage Foundation. Having studied in a Chabad yeshivah in Kiryat Gat, he was carrying a Likutei Sichos when he was gunned down by Fadi Abu Shkaydam of the Shuafat refugee camp, in East Jerusalem.
At the Monday levayah, Chief Rabbi David Lau — who lives in Modi’in, home to the Kay family since they made aliyah in Eli’s footsteps a year ago — spoke of the family’s determination to come to Israel.
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