Alaa Abu Dhein



Alaa Abu Dhein was a Palestinian man responsible for the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva massacre in Jerusalem, Israel on March 6, 2008. Eight students and Dhein himself were killed. Eleven more were wounded, five of them placed in serious to critical condition. Both Hamas and Hezbollah praised the attack, but Dhein wasn't affiliated with either group. It has been determined that the shooting was an act of lone-wolf terrorism to enact vengeance against Israel for their violence against Palestinian military forces in Gaza at the time.

Dhein, who lived in East Jerusalem, worked as a driver for a private company that made deliveries to the yeshiva, entered the building carrying a box concealing an AKM along with several magazines, later firing as many as 500–600 rounds. He then entered the courtyard of the yeshiva at the main entrance, put down the box and took out the weapon, and opened fire on a group of students from the Yashlatz yeshiva high school and Mercaz HaRav who were standing at the entrance, killing three of them. He then went into the yeshiva library and fired at the students there, killing five and wounding nine, three of them seriously. Seventeen students managed to escape into an adjacent classroom and blocked the door with a heavy table.

Ten minutes after the shooting began, two police officers, one male and one female, arrived on the scene. The policewoman stopped a nearby passenger bus and prevented it from approaching, while the policeman entered the courtyard with a rifle. Dhein noticed him through the glass door of the yeshiva library and shot at him, but the officer, not knowing the precise source of the fire and afraid of harming innocents, did not return the fire and took cover. Immediately after the police arrived, Captain David Shapira, a graduate of the yeshiva and an officer in the Israel Defense Forces who lived nearby but was not on duty at the time, arrived at the scene with his M-16 rifle, while Yitzhak Dadon, a yeshiva student who had a gun, positioned himself on the roof of a nearby building. The police officer in the courtyard warned Shapira not to enter, but Shapira ignored him, and entered the building near the library door and positioned himself in a nearby corridor. Sixteen minutes after the shooting began, Dhein emerged from the library, and Dadon and Shapira opened fire, killing him.