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Three Israeli-American Rabbis Killed in Jersualem Attack; State of Emergency in Ferguson; Interview with Missouri State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal

Aired November 18, 2014 - 09:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the NEWSROOM, a deadly attack in Jerusalem as three rabbis with dual U.S./Israeli citizenship are among those killed when two Palestinians armed with axes and knives storm a synagogue.

Plus, Ferguson on edge as a state of emergency is declared while the community and the nation waits for a decision into the deadly shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer.

And getting paid to go to college? Sounds like a win-win scenario. But this is no after-school job. Let's talk, live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

A terror attack overseas hits home. Two Palestinian men charge into a Jerusalem synagogue and flail at worshippers with knives and axes. Four Israelis are killed, three of them holding dual U.S. citizenship. The fourth, dual British citizenship. All four were rabbis. Alan Dershowitz is well-known for his legal expertise. The Harvard law professor is also the author of the ebook, "Terror Tunnels: The Case for Israel's Just War Against Hamas."

Welcome.

ALAN DERSHOWITZ, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL, EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF LAW: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Thank you so much for being here. First of all, let's talk about the victims, because you knew one of the rabbis that was killed, Rabbi Twersky. Tell us about him.

DERSHOWITZ: Rabbi Twersky grew up in Boston. His grandfather was the great Rabbi Soloveitchik, one of the leaders of Orthodox Judaism. His father was my colleague at Harvard for many years. His mother taught my children in high school. This is a wonderful Boston family.

He moved to Israel to become the head of a very peace-loving Yeshiva. And, of course, they were targeted because they were Israelis. I don't know whether or not the terrorists knew they were Americans, but this is a synagogue and a Yeshiva that caters to Americans and Israelis, because they teach partly in English.

COSTELLO: Jerusalem authorities right now believe that these attacks came at the hands of lone wolves. Do you believe that?

DERSHOWITZ: Well, they must have been acting alone, but they were certainly inspired by Abbas and others who are making this into a religious war. Benjamin Netanyahu was trying desperately to de- escalate what's going on on the mountain top, which is the holiest place of Judaism and one of the holy places of Islam.

COSTELLO: The Temple Mount.

DERSHOWITZ: But, you know, the media bears some responsibility here. They consistently create a moral equivalence between terrorists who butcher innocent people and policies of a democracy like Israel. Even CNN, this morning, talked, without comment, about this being a revenge attack because of a hanging. Well, the hanging was a suicide by a Palestinian, at least according to Israeli officials.

COSTELLO: But that's not what the Palestinians believe.

DERSHOWITZ: I understand that. But they talk --

COSTELLO: And going back to the Temple Mount, right --

DERSHOWITZ: Right.

COSTELLO: Israel's restricting access to certain Palestinians, and that has ratcheted tensions up in the area. : And a lot of --

DERSHOWITZ: But they eliminated those restrictions. But to call it a cycle of violence fails to understand that this is a policy of Palestinian terrorists to attack Israeli civilians. It is not a cycle of violence.

COSTELLO: Even though Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, condemned these attacks on the synagogue?

DERSHOWITZ: He condemned them along with condemning all other attacks. He really won't take the courageous stand of saying, terrorism is always wrong and it's part of the policy of Hamas and we have to stop inciting it and inspiring it. And when the media creates a moral equivalence between the two, it incentivizes violence.

COSTELLO: OK, so what needs to be done?

DERSHOWITZ: What needs to --

COSTELLO: Besides the media needs to tone things down, in your mind.

DERSHOWITZ: Well, in my mind. And what has to be done is we have to de-escalate and we have to make sure that terrorism is treated as terrorism. The reason we have so much terrorism in the world today is because terrorism works. When Hamas attacks Israel, and Israel retaliates --

COSTELLO: So how does Israel respond to these attacks at the synagogue?

DERSHOWITZ: Well, it has to respond, first of all, by finding the perpetrators, finding out if there were any other people, seeing who takes responsibility, taking appropriate actions against those who incite terrorism, and figuring out a strategy, whether that strategy is destroying the homes of the terrorists or other actions, they have to, first, protect their civilians. That's the first instinct. Then, second, they have to move towards de-escalating. And I have to tell you, Benjamin Netanyahu has been doing a wonderful job trying to de- escalate the tensions. We cannot allow this to be turned into a religious war.

COSTELLO: I can't say the tensions have been much de-escalated.

DERSHOWITZ: Well, they ended the restrictions of access to the top of the mount. What has to be made sure is that this is not --

COSTELLO: Why did they put the restrictions on in the first place?

DERSHOWITZ: Because there was violence. And you always put restrictions. Look, in Ferguson, there are restrictions on access. We do that in the United States. It was in an attempt to try to prevent further escalations.

Even if you think it's a mistake, that's a tactical mistake, but you cannot turn this into a religious war because there's no rational solution to religious war. This has to be resolved as a civil conflict between competing interests.

COSTELLO: Alan Dershowitz, thanks for coming in. I appreciate it.

DERSHOWITZ: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, a state of emergency in Missouri as the town of Ferguson and much of the nation awaits a decision by the grand jury in the shooting death of Michael Brown. Stephanie Elam is in Ferguson this morning.

Good morning.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

Will this state of emergency help keep things calm in Ferguson or actually rile up protesters? We'll take a look at that, coming up.

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COSTELLO: All right. I want to take you back to east Jerusalem to take you inside that synagogue where that terrible attack happened earlier today. Four Israeli civilians killed in a stabbing, an ax attack inside that synagogue. All of them were rabbis. And I wish we would have held off in showing this so I could have warned you because this is very graphic video, as you can see. And it was a very violent attack. Police say this attack came at the hands of two Palestinian men. Ben Wedeman is in Israel this morning. Ben, what do we know, first of all, about the four rabbis who were

killed? Because three of them had dual U.S. citizenship, and also these two Palestinian suspects.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, three of them had dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship. One was a British-Israel dual citizen. And they were all rabbis. They were there. It was just before 7:00 in the morning. They were there for morning prayers. Apparently, we understand from Israeli media reports, that there was normally more people in the synagogue than there would be at that time.

So, what we understand is, these two Palestinians from Jabal Mukabar, which is in east Jerusalem, I should stress the synagogue, of course, is in west Jerusalem. Apparently one of the two Palestinians, they were both in their 20s, they're cousins, worked in a store just up the street from there. So he's familiar with the neighborhood, with the patterns of life there. They burst in. They had knives, they had axes, according to the Israeli police. But we see from the pictures that they were also carrying meat cleavers. One of them had a handgun, a pistol as well, a 9 millimeter pistol, according to the Israeli police spokesman.

And what followed is obviously what you see in this horrendous pictures. It was a bloodbath. Four people killed. At least six people wounded. One of the wounded, critically wounded, is one of those police who rushed to the scene. They made it to the scene within just seven minutes where they confronted and, of course, killed the two Palestinian attackers.

But, obviously, this attack really enflames an already tense situation. Jerusalem has been tense, as we've seen, since June when -- following the kidnapping of those three Israeli teenagers who were subsequently found dead. And, of course, that was followed by the kidnapping and murder of a Palestinian teenager from east Jerusalem. So this is really just the latest in a long line. But it's the bloodiest in a long line of attacks, counter attacks, that have occurred here in Jerusalem since June.

Carol.

COSTELLO: And it is terrible that such a violent attack took place in such a peaceful place, a synagogue. One of the dead, Rabbi Twersky, is from the Boston area.

DERSHOWITZ: Yes.

COSTELLO: Alan Dershowitz is with me now. And he knew the rabbi. Tell us about him.

DERSHOWITZ: Well, I know his family. Rabbi Rabbi Soloveitchik is one of the greatest scholars of Jewish history and his son-in-law, the father of this young rabbi who was killed, was my colleague at Harvard for many, many years.

But, you know, even Ben Wedeman illustrates the problem. He talks about the cycle of violence. You remember that Israel, every Israeli condemned the killing of the Palestinian boy, and yet Hamas and many others praise the killing of Israelis. There is no moral equivalence. Individuals may kill, but it's how the government and the people in charge react. And that's where the moral equivalence ends.

Israelis constantly condemn when individual Israelis, on occasion, will take revenge. And they put them in jail. And they throw the book at them. But Hamas makes martyrs out of them. And Palestinian leaders make martyrs out of the killers. So there is no moral equivalence.

COSTELLO: I want to go back to Ben Wedeman, because I think he's one of our finest reporters, frankly. And, Ben, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, condemned this killing, correct? But Hamas did not?

WEDEMAN: Yes, that's correct. He did come out and condemn it. He said any attacks against civilians, he is opposed to. He did, however, go on to add that Israel has to do more to try to stop Jewish worshippers or -- to going into the compound of the Aqsa Mosque, which of course has been a flash point in recent weeks.

Now, the U.S., the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, has been trying to get all sides -- the Palestinian Authority, the Israelis, the Jordanians, who have responsibility for the Temple Mount -- to try to do all they can to lessen the tensions. But the problem on both sides is that there are extremists who have their own agenda. And that seems to be the problem, in that their agenda, whether it's Hamas or Jewish extremists, are driving the situation and the tensions are getting worse and worse. And, of course, you have incidents like this today that really just compound an already absurdly complicated situation. Carol?

COSTELLO: Is Israel on the brink of a religious war, Ben? Is that a real possibility?

WEDEMAN: Well, what people are worried about, and I think on both sides, is that this conflict, which really goes back to who controls the land, is changing in character from a sort of dispute over land to a more fundamental existential conflict over religion. And it takes on increasingly religious tones.

And you just have to look at the wider Middle East, where you have ISIS and other groups like al Qaeda that certainly are changing the whole nature of the conflict to something where you can't really come to a settlement between conflicting visions of existence, as opposed to differences over borders and who controls what territory. Carol?

COSTELLO: So, so what should happen, Alan? How do you control that?

DERSHOWITZ: Well, it has to be removed from the religious context. And the problem is that many of the Islamic religious extremists will not compromise. They will not accept the nation state of the Jewish people if it was the size of a postage stamp. That's the basic problem. Even Abbas refuses to say that he accepts Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. And there has to be pressure put on the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian leaders to recognize --

COSTELLO: Pressure from where?

DERSHOWITZ: From the United States, from the United Nations, from the international community, to accept Israel permanently as the nation state of the Jewish people and to remove the religious elements in this.

Israel is a secular society. Hamas is not a secular movement; it's a religious movement. So it's a clash between religious leaders on the one hand, and secular leaders on the other hand -- and a few religious extremists within Israel who have no power within the government.

COSTELLO: OK. We have new pictures that I'd like to show our viewers of the funeral. These pictures are from Reuters. Funeral processions are taking place right now for at least three of the rabbis and I'm sure the fourth too.

But going back to our discussion about taking religion out of the equation, I would say that'd be impossible.

DERSHOWITZ: I don't think it's impossible. Israel is a more secular country than the United States. There are fewer people who strongly comply with religious rules. Jerusalem is very important, both in a secular and religious way.

But, you know, for years, Islamic extremists have tried to make this into a religious crisis. It started with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem back in the 1920s; the first terrorist attacks were on Jews praying at the Western Wall. And the Israeli attacks tend to be against military targets. And it is not seen as a religious war in Israel.

So there is no moral equivalence on that side either, and I think the international community has to try to eliminate the religious elements. Because, as Ben Wedeman says, you can't settle a religious dispute; that has to be settled by a higher authority and that higher authority hasn't been doing such a great job.

COSTELLO: All right, Alan Dershowitz, Ben Wedeman, my thanks to both of you.

Again, for those viewers just joining us, four Israeli civilians killed in a horrible stabbing attack inside a Jerusalem synagogue. All four were rabbis; three of them held dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship. The other rabbi had dual British-Israeli citizenship. Two Palestinians, police say, were responsible for these attacks. They were killed by Israeli police. We'll have much more on this in the hours to come on CNN.

I'll be right back.

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COSTELLO: The Missouri governor Jay Nixon says he hopes and expects peace will prevail after a grand jury decision in Ferguson comes down and that his state of emergency declaration is a precaution against potential unrest. But more than 100 days since that fatal encounter between unarmed teenager Michael Brown and Officer Darren Wilson, unease is growing in the Missouri town as that critical grand jury announcement could come any day now.

CNN's Stephanie Elam live in Ferguson this morning. Good morning.

ELAM: Good morning, Carol. It does imply that we are probably getting closer to hearing what the grand jury has decided about the fate of Officer Darren Wilson, but some saying that the idea that the National Guard is going to be moved in here is actually just inciting stiffer relationships between police and protesters.

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CROWD: Hands up, don't shoot.

ELAM (voice-over): Protesters in St. Louis braved frigid temperatures, taking to the streets, ahead of Missouri's governor declaring a state of emergency.

Governor Jay Nixon anticipating expanded unrest if the grand jury decides not to indict Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed unarmed teen, Michael Brown, on August 9th.

Governor Nixon activating the National Guard to assist the county police with securing Ferguson, bypassing the Ferguson police department. The mayor of St. Louis agreed with the decision.

FRANCIS SLAY, MAYOR OF ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI: We don't know what's going to happen or when it's going to happen, or, you know, what the decision is going to be, or what the reaction is going to be. I think we need to make sure that we are prepared.

BENJAMIN CRUMP, ATTORNEY FOR MICHAEL BROWN'S FAMILY: Michael Brown's parents have asked that everybody who supports them do so in a nonviolent, peaceful constructive way.

ELAM: For more than three months now, this entire area has been on edge.

(on camera): Are you worried about violence becoming an issue again?

MAX PETERSON, DEMONSTRATOR: I'm not really. By civilians or by police?

ELAM: Whatever concerns you.

PETERSON: I mean, the biggest concern is that something very small will happen, like a water bottle and that will lead to teargas or gunfire.

ELAM (voice-over): Last week, a law enforcement source says the FBI issued a bulletin to police across the nation, warning officers to be vigilant about possible violence related to Ferguson.

Over the past few months, community leaders have complained that outsiders have instigated much of the violence.

(on camera): So when the grand jury comes out with its decision, what do you think is going to happen?

LARRY FELLOWS III, DEMONSTRATOR: I honestly can't say. I can just speak about what we're going to continue to do as protesters until we get what we deserve, which is justice.

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ELAM (on camera): Now the protesters telling me they plan to be out here no matter what the decision is from the grand jury. They're saying that this is an issue larger than just what happened with Mike Brown and that there needs to be reform in the way that that police interact with people of color in this country, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Stephanie Elam reporting live from Ferguson, Missouri, this morning.

With me now, Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a Missouri state senator who represents Ferguson. Welcome.

STATE SEN. MARIA CHAPPELLE-NADAL (D), MISSOURI: Good morning. How are you, Carol?

COSTELLO: I'm good. Thank you so much for being with me.

Governor Nixon has declared a state of emergency and has activated the National Guard. A good move in your mind?

CHAPPELLE-NADAL: Well, you know, I wish he paid attention to what was happening in Ferguson 102 days ago and I am a little bit concerned because he is indeed inciting the community I represent. In August, I sent a letter to the White House saying to the president, hey, listen, if we're going to have the National Guard, I trust the federal government to have authority over the National Guard rather than the state. Already the governor has had so many fumbles and we just can't afford any more of his mistakes.

COSTELLO: If the federal government is in charge of security, though, wouldn't that incite things further?

CHAPPELLE-NADAL: Well, the governor at every single chance he gets and every -- basically every time he opens his mouth, he's inciting the community that I represent. And so I do have more faith in the federal government under President Obama than I do my own Democratic governor.

So, yes, if we had federal oversight over our National Guard, we'd be doing much better. And, frankly, my constituents agree. They do not want Governor Nixon to have the authority over the National Guard at this point because they simply do not trust him.

COSTELLO: Well, the governor is in a tight spot, as are local police agencies in the State of Missouri. There's this FBI bulletin out and frankly it's pretty scary when you read it. It says "law enforcement agencies across the country may be targeted by extremists who could be armed with bladed weapons, guns, gas masks, and bulletproof vests." So is it unreasonable that the governor is taking these steps in Ferguson?

CHAPPELLE-NADAL: That is not what our peaceful protests look like at all in Ferguson. The people who I have been lining up with side by side, we don't have guns or gas masks. It's the law enforcement that has all of that. And they're the ones who have --

COSTELLO: But there are outside agitators who come in. There was also a bulletin posted that -- it was online by a black separatist group. It offered a $5,000 bounty for the location of Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson. There are agitators that could be present in those protesters, and police have to be on guard.

CHAPPELLE-NADAL: Absolutely. So one of the things that we have done as protesters is to self-police. It's one of the fastest, easiest ways to get these outside agitators out.

And we have been successful. When we learned that people were coming from out of the state to agitate, we started buckling down. We do not want violent people in our protests whatsoever. They are not welcome whatsoever. And we're going to continue to do self-policing in our crowds just to help out our law enforcement.

COSTELLO: Are you talking about making citizens arrests?

CHAPPELLE-NADAL: We've done that already. From day one we were doing that. When there were people who were saying things in the crowd that they should not have said, or have done things, we literally put hands around them and told them to leave. And if they came back, they would be escorted out by someone or some people

So we've been doing self-policing for a while now. But we have to maintain that effort.

COSTELLO: Missouri state senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal, thank you so much for your insight this morning. I appreciate it.

CHAPPELLE-NADAL: Thank you so much, Carol.

COSTELLO: The news hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts now.

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