Dheim carried out the attack Thursday evening while students celebrated a holiday in Jerusalem’s “Mercaz Harav” school and studied religious texts in the school library. In addition to the eight who were killed – seven teenagers and a 26-year-old – nine others were wounded. Several of the dead and injured held American, Canadian, French and Ethiopian citizenship. [4]

The dead included Avraham David Moses, 16, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen whose parents immigrated to Israel in the 1990s; Segev Peniel Avihai, 15, a French citizen; and Doron Meherete Tronoh, 26, who held dual Ethiopian-Israeli citizenship. [5]

The seriously wounded included Naftali Sheetrit, a U.S. citizen and Nadav Eliahu Samuels, a Canadian citizen. Another of the injured, a 14-year-old, had been sent to Jerusalem from the Israeli town of Sderot for a respite from the almost daily rocket attacks out of Gaza. [6]

The family of Dheim, 25, erected a mourning tent outside their home and flew green Hamas flags and a yellow Hezbollah flag outside. [7] 

The glorification of terrorists and terror activity is rampant throughout the World Wide Web. All major terrorist organizations maintain modern Web sites, where they proudly communicate the details of their attacks against civilians. [8] Another Facebook group, for example, is dedicated to glorifying Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah is the leader of Iran-backed Hezbollah, which forced Israel into a defensive war in July 2006. That Facebook group boasts 3,315 members. [9] 

Iran-backed terrorist groups such Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah publish their own sites, many of which link back to the Islamic Republic of Iran, which provides hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to the groups, as well as weapons and terrorist training. [10]

The terrorist groups’ Web sites are:

• Hamas’s Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades: http://www.alqassam.ps/
• Palestinian Islamic Jihad: http://www.qudsway.com/
• Hezbollah: http://www.moqavemat.ir/

In addition to glorifying the students’ murder, the Facebook page dedicated to Dheim refers to him as a “martyr” and links to a page that calls Jews “pigs” and calls for the closure of Israel’s embassy in Jordan, a country with which Israel has maintained diplomatic relations since 1994.

In the picture that was posted on the group’s site as of March 11, the Arabic text superimposed on the photo translated to:
“The Heroic Jerusalem Act” (first line); “Witness that there is no God but Allah” (second line); “Mohammed is his prophet” (third line). [11]

Said The Israel Project Founder and President Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, “Facebook should be a safe space for people to network, not a recruitment and glorification tool for terrorists. It is sad and cynical that there are those who are using a site geared to connecting young people around the world to celebrate the murder of young people in a school.”

The Israel Project has its own Facebook group as part of its efforts to work for peace.