Insane: Turkish terrorist who attacked police traveled to Israel with official delegation

Hassan Saklana, 34, an imam (Muslim prayer leader) from Urfa in southeastern Turkey, reportedly stabbed a border police officer outside the Old City’s Herod Gate on Tuesday after entering Israel via Jordan a day earlier.

Urfa, a city of nearly 600,000 people near the Syrian border that was once known as Edessa, is considered a hotbed of Islamic radicalism.

HaKol HaYehudi said Saklana left the delegation staying at the New Capitol Hotel in East Jerusalem and carried out his attack.

Ankara’s Ministry of Religion regularly sends official delegations to Israel to establish a Turkish presence throughout the country’s capital, including in the Old City, the Temple Mount and the nearby Samuel Tomb.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the future of such tours after the attack.

Turkish Religious Affairs Minister Ali Erbaş in March called on Muslims to boycott Israeli products in solidarity with “our brothers and sisters” in Gaza, where Israeli forces are fighting Hamas.

The top cleric also claimed that “grandchildren of Holocaust survivors are massacring Muslims” in Gaza and called on the entire Islamic world to unite against the Jewish state, according to Turkish media reports.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has shown extreme hostility toward Israel and documented widespread atrocities since the October 7 Hamas-led massacre in which thousands of Israelis and foreigners were killed, injured and kidnapped.