"I heard the shots and immediately ran all the children to the bathroom. The son screamed for an hour. I was also shaking with fear," Yaakov, a 30-year-old Avrach, tells me about the moments of horror on Shabbat night. As a religious person he did an unusual thing and in the middle of the Sabbath he called the police, "And there is a station nearby, but it took them fifteen minutes to arrive. I don't know how long it lasted. We waited in the bathroom until the shooting and screaming ended."
Jacob is talking to me at the "Atarat Avraham" synagogue, at the entrance to which the attack took place.
Silence in the synagogue.
There is no sign of the horror that was here 20 hours before.
Like him, the elders of the neighborhood observe from afar the wide traffic island in the middle of the road.
The Jerusalem light rail will soon pass over it.
Fences designed to prevent entry to the works complex now protect the media teams that came to cover the massacre.
The neighborhood elders are watching.
Neve Yaakov neighborhood after the attack, photo: Yonatan Zindel/Flash90
"And there is a station near here, but it took them fifteen minutes to get there."
The scene of the attack in the Neve Ya'akov neighborhood in Jerusalem, photo: Olivier Fitosi/Flash90
"The blood of our children is not wasted"
The arena itself is well known to me.
I have passed by "Sderot Neve Ya'akov" dozens of times with my children on the way to the neighborhood library.
Now it is filled with the roars of "death to the Arabs" and "death to the terrorists", "the people of Israel live", and "the people of eternity are not afraid of a long journey".
Someone brings a loudspeaker and calls for the terrorists' houses to be destroyed.
Each politician who arrives reignites the youth, who run back and forth along the arena, looking for an outlet for the inevitable pain and rage.
No one deceives himself.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the scene of the attack in Jerusalem, photo: Reuters
Every politician turns on the youth.
Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gabir in Neve Yaakov in Jerusalem, photo: Reuters
"The blood of our children is not wasted" someone hung a sign.
An explosive sound thrown by someone suddenly shakes the place.
Calls against Itamar Ben Gabir, who created the highest expectations to eliminate terrorism, are also heard.
Young people still have hopes.
The adults are more sober about the ability of governments to solve the problem.
Some of them know the history of Neve Ya'akov, which is named after the settlement that was established not far from here 99 years ago and was destroyed by the Palestinian gang and the Jordanian Legion during the War of Independence.
The locals remember the attacks that hit the residents of the northern Jerusalem neighborhood in the second intifada.
No Zionists return to exile
You don't have to go far into the past.
Neve Yaakov is surrounded by Arab-Jerusalem neighborhoods, which are bursting with illegal weapons.
Gunshots and fireworks are commonplace here.
Therefore, most of them were not at all moved by the sounds of the explosion that were heard when the attack began.
The lack of Israeli hands is palpable here every day, hour by hour.
No one here is deluding themselves that "sealing the houses of terrorists", as Netanyahu suggested at the beginning of the cabinet meeting, will prevent the next attack.
After all, every terrorist who sets out is ready to die.
So how many inches of concrete will deter him?
The blood stains in Neve Ya'akov, today, photo: Yori Yalon
Jacob hangs his love in the lofty dwelling.
"He decided who would go and who would stay. It's not up to us," he says in a typical ultra-Orthodox attitude.
No Zionists return to exile.
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