A gunman stormed into the Yeshivat Mercaz Harav complex in west Jerusalem on March 6, mowing down students who had gathered in the library for the traditionally intensive pre-Shabbat classes.

The gunman was killed by a police SWAT team, according to Israeli media reports.

Eight boys – seven of whom were aged 15 to 19 and one aged 26 – were killed and nine more wounded when the gunman entered the yeshiva in Jerusalem’s Kiryat Moshe neighbourhood and opened fire in the library. Three of the wounded were in critical condition.

Seven of the students injured were still hospitalized at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem and at Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem, as of last weekend.

As of the weekend, the condition of the three students at Hadassah Ein Karem had improved, but one was still in intensive care for observation. A hospital spokesperson said all of the students had multiple gunshot wounds.

Hamas initially claimed responsibility for last Thursday’s attack, but later retracted it.

Ala Abu Dahim, 25, from the village of Jabal Mukhbar – a neighbourhood where Palestinian residents hold Israeli ID cards that give them freedom of movement in Israel – was shot and killed during the massacre.

Several residents of Jabal Mukhbar said he had been a driver at the yeshiva he attacked. His family set up a mourning tent last Friday and hung green Hamas flags outside their home.

As of Monday, eight people had been arrested by the Israeli authorities on suspicion of abetting Abu Dahim.

Mercaz Harav is the ideological seedbed for Israel’s national religious movement, which combines Orthodox piety with pioneering Zionism. Many of the yeshiva’s alumni have gone on to top posts in politics and the military.

Witnesses reported blood splashes on the pavement outside the seminary, where anxious relatives milled among ambulance staff and security forces.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the yeshiva shooting. Meanwhile, Israel said it would continue U.S.-backed peace talks with the Palestinians despite the attack.

In Canada, Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier offered condolences to the victims’ families and to the Israeli government.

“Canada condemns this terrorist act in the strongest possible terms. It does nothing to advance the Palestinian cause,” he said. “Canada calls on all Palestinian leaders to reject such atrocious terrorist acts, which are contrary to the peace process.”

Calling it a “senseless tragedy,” Liberal opposition leader Stéphane Dion extended his sympathies to those affected and said that his party “joins the international community in condemning such deplorable acts of violence.”

Montreal Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, who recently was asked to head a new international coalition to combat anti-Semitism, addressed the House of Commons the day after the attack and called for the “culture of hate” in the Middle East to end.

“It is this state-sanctioned hate and incitement that leads to Hamas missiles targeting Israeli civilians in Sderot and Ashkelon, and terrorist attacks in Jerusalem,” he said.

On its website, the NDP called the loss of life “tragic” and said the party “condemns all violence against civilians and calls on all sides to categorically reject using violence against civilian populations.”

North American Jewish leaders also decried the attack.

Speaking to The CJN last Friday, Moshe Ronen, chair of the Canada-Israel Committee, urged the government and the people of Canada to understand the “toxic theology of hate” that’s being inculcated by extremists in Israel.

“After this horrific attack, there’s a need for Canadians to understand what Israel is faced with… the ongoing attacks and the culture of terror we have to struggle with,” Ronen said. “Wanting and encouraging a peace process is one thing, but a [real] understanding of the situation Israel is faced with has to be the framework that the government and opposition uses to engineer their [policies].”

In the United States, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations – the central co-ordinating body for American Jewry – called the attack “barbaric”and said it demonstrates “the need for Israel to take whatever measures are necessary to prevent, deter and destroy those who perpetrate such heinous crimes.”

For some members of the Jewish community in Canada, the tragedy hit close to home.

Nadav Eliyahu Samuels, a 15-year-old boy who holds Canadian, British and Israeli citizenship and is a student at Mercaz Harav, was shot several times in the legs and chest.

The National Post reported that he was placed in intensive care at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital, and although  he was in stable condition last week, he was breathing with the help of a ventilator.

Nadav, whose father is a Toronto native who moved to Israel in 1983, made annual trips to Toronto with his family to visit his grandparents, Sandra and Laurie Samuels.

York University Professor Martin Lockshin, who studied at Yeshivat Mercaz Harav for four years from 1970 to 1974, has fond memories of his time there.

“The years that I spent at Mercaz Harav were some of the richest years of my life from an intellectual and religious perspective,” Lockshin told The CJN in an e-mail from Jerusalem, where he is on sabbatical.

“This was a cowardly attack on defenceless teenagers who were just trying to study Torah and develop their minds.”

Meir Buchnick, a 24-year-old from Hashmonaim, a city between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, is currently spending a year at Kollel Torah MiTzion in Montreal studying and teaching there.

He said he studied at Yeshivat Mercaz Harav as part of a high school program that gives students the opportunity to study there for days and even weeks at a time.

Buchnick said that when he first heard the news, he was shocked.

“Because I live in Israel… this one hit really, really close. For anyone who lives in Israel, he knows how big and important this yeshiva is. It is the core of all the seminaries in Israel. To hear that something like that happened… I was in total shock,” he said.

“I know a few people who still study there. Thank God, none of them were killed or injured. One of the first things I had to do yesterday was make phone calls to find out and hear if, God forbid, something happened to a friend. Thank God none of them were hurt.”

Buchnick added that in spite of continued attacks on Israelis, they must stay strong.

“Mercaz Harav was founded by Rav [Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen] Kook and it was Rav Kook’s inspiration and guidance that taught us that no matter what, even with all the hardships and with all the pain, we still have to continue going on. The terrorists want to break our spirit and we can’t let that happen.”

Rabbi Reuven Tradburks of Toronto’s Kehillat Shaarei Torah has three children currently living and studying in Israel.

As he does each week, Rabbi Tradburks sent out a mass e-mail to his congregation last Thursday with Shabbat announcements and his thoughts. Last week, he wrote about the young victims of the attack.

“The first thing I think of is my own children. Knowing they are not in danger is a relief. But reading the news is not easy. I have been in Mercaz Harav. When they say the terrorist entered the library, I think they mean the beis midrash. There can be hundreds of people sitting and studying there.  It is not hard to visualize the helplessness of these high school boys, the chaos.”

Rabbi Tradburks told The CJN that his daughter, who lives about a 20-minute walk from the yeshiva, heard the ambulances and immediately called home.

“She called our other kids and within minutes, they called us, hoping it was before we had heard the news, just to tell us everything was OK,” he said.

“My son, Elie, is at Yeshivat Hakotel and one of the boys who was killed was the son of one of the teachers at Yeshivat Hakotel. Yochai Lipschitz was one of the boys.”

He said that his other son, Yosef, who studies at the Mir Yeshivah near Meah Shearim, learned about the massacre when  another student announced that he wanted to recite psalms for the dead.

Rabbi Tradburks said that his three children attended the funeral for the eight victims at Mercaz Harav before the families of the victims went their separate ways for the individual funerals.

Jerusalem bore the brunt of the Palestinian suicide bombing campaign of 2002 and 2003, but since then, effective Israeli countermeasures have largely stemmed the bloodshed in the capital.

Many Jerusalemites have voiced exasperation at the slow pace at which the West Bank security fence is going up in the city due to bureaucratic holdups and legal challenges by Palestinians who stand to lose land to the project.

“This tragedy shows the enormous need to attend to the fence,” said Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski.