In one of the bloodiest attacks on Israeli citizens since a Palestinian terrorist killed eight students at a Jewish seminary in 2008, four people were killed and several others, including a dual Canadian-Israeli citizen, were wounded when two Palestinians armed with a meat cleaver and a gun stormed a Jerusalem synagogue this morning.
Sadly, this is not the first time places of Jewish worship and their congregants have been attacked by terrorists.
Below is a list of some of the attacks that have taken place over the past 50 years, both in Israel and abroad.
• April 1956: Three children and one youth worker were killed, and five more were injured when terrorists entered the Shafrir Synagogue in Kfar Chabad, a Chabad-Lubavitch village in central Israel, and opened fire on children and teenagers.
• October 1958: The Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple in Atlanta was bombed. No one was injured, but the building sustained extensive damage.
• March 1960: Congregation Beth Israel in Gadsden, Ala., was attacked by a teenaged neo-Nazi who fire-bombed the shul while members attended a Friday evening service. When the windows were smashed, two members rushed out to see what was happening, and both were non-fatally shot by the attacker.
• October 1980: On the eve of Simchat Torah, Palestinian terrorists left a bomb on a motorcycle parked outside a Paris synagogue, Union Libérale Israélite de France on rue Copernic, killing four people. Hassan Diab, a Lebanese-Canadian dual citizen, 60, is accused by French officials of being part of the plot. He was extradited to France last week.
• September 1986: Twenty-two people were murdered by Arab gunmen 
who raided the Neve Shalom Synagogue in in Istanbul.
• April 2002: In Tunisia, the El Ghriba Synagogue was bombed using a natural gas truck fitted with explosives. It drove past security barriers and detonated in front of the synagogue, killing 14 German tourists, three Tunisians, and two French nationals. More than 30 others were wounded.
• November 2003: Two shuls in Istanbul, Bet Israel Synagogue and Neve Shalom Synagogue, were attacked when two trucks carrying bombs slammed into the buildings and exploded. Twenty-seven people were killed and more than 300 others were wounded.
• July 2014: In the midst of the war between Israel and Gaza, a mob gathered outside a synagogue in a Paris, trapping hundreds of Parisian Jews while rioters threw stones and bricks, and screaming screaming, “death to the Jews” and “Hitler was right.”
