Israeli authorities have arrested five Israeli settlers suspected in the killing of 48-year-old Palestinian woman Aisha al-Rabi last month, according to the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence agency.
Al-Rabi was killed in October 2018 when a group of settlers attacked her and her husband’s car with rocks on a West Bank highway. The mother of eight sustained a severe head injury that killed her, while her husband and young daughter sustained light wounds.
The Shin Bet said in a statement Sunday night saying that the five Israeli settlers were all minors from the illegal Rehelim settlement in the northern occupied West Bank district of Nablus, located just off the road where the attack on al-Rabi’s car took place.
The settlers are all reportedly students at a yeshiva, or Jewish religious school, in Rehelim.
The Shin Bet alleged that the morning after the attack on al-Rabi, several far-right “activists” from the nearby settlement of Yitzhar drove to Rehelim and instructed students from the yeshiva on how to prepare for an upcoming investigation from Israeli authorities.
Yitzhar is a notoriously violent settlement in the West Bank, and is home to a yeshiva that has been traced to the birth of the religious-nationalist Hilltop Youth organization — a group of young Israeli settlers who regularly commit “price tag” attacks on Palestinians and their property.
Following the arrest of the settlers, whose identities remain unknown, Israeli media reported that the teens were initially interrogated without their lawyers present — a right routinely denied to Palestinian minors detained by Israeli forces in the occupied territory — leading to public condemnation from the youth’s lawyers
The Shin Bet responded to the criticisms saying: “Since the arrests, there have been efforts to slander the security service and de-legitimize it. This effort should be condemned and will not stop the Shin Bet from stopping all forms of terror, Jewish or Palestinian.”
The agency went on to call the suspects dangerous “anti-Zionist” extremists, releasing pictures of a burning Israeli flag, and another flag with “death to Zionists” written on it alongside a swastika, allegedly the work of the suspects.
“Over the past year, the Shin Bet has prevented hundreds of terror attacks in Judea and Samaria, including Jewish terror,” the Shin Bet said.
Despite the Shin Bet’s alleged efforts to prevent “Jewish terror” over the past year, Haaretz reported on Sunday that 2018 saw a steep rise in Israeli hate crimes against Palestinians.
According to the report, anti-Palestinian attacks tripled in 2018, with 482 “politically motivated” crimes by Jews reported in the occupied West Bank, including assault and property damage, compared to 140 reported incidents in 2017.
There are an estimated 500,000 – 600,000 Israeli settlers living in the occupied West Bank in settlements that are considered illegal under international law.
Israeli settlers often move to the occupied territory for political and religious reasons, with many regarding themselves as inhabiting a land that is rightfully theirs — and staking their claim to that land through violence against Palestinians.
Rights groups and activists have long accused the Israeli state and security officials of fostering a “culture of impunity” for Israelis committing violent acts against Palestinians, who are rarely prosecuted for their crimes.
Israel’s High Court ruled last summer to release an Israeli settler who was involved in the 2015 firebombing of the Dawabsheh family home, which killed 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh and his parents, under the pretext that the settler was only a minor at the time of the high-profile attack.
Meanwhile, Palestinian minors have repeatedly been sentenced to decades in prison if they are found guilty of attacking or killing Israelis.
They are terrorist brats, and they deserve the harshest punishment. It seems the Israeli government pretends they cannot control these evil settlers, but give them winks and nods to continue their vicious attacks against innocent Palestinians. Most likely these juvenile criminals will get a rap on their knuckles, and get the most lenient sentence, which would be probation for a few weeks. They will then be treated like heroes by the rest of the setters.
The joke is, the other side is always called the terrorists. It seems Israel has plenty of them too.
The NY Times covered it, not badly:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/06/world/middleeast/israel-teenagers-stoning-palestinian.html
By Isabel Kershner
Jan. 6, 2019
JERUSALEM — Several Jewish teenagers have been arrested in connection with the fatal stoning of a Palestinian woman in the West Bank, Israel’s internal security agency said on Sunday.
The agency, the Shin Bet, said in a statement that the suspects, who were not identified because they are minors, were under investigation for “grave terrorism offenses, including murder.”
The Palestinian woman, Aisha Rabi, who was in her 40s, was struck in the head by a stone as she rode in a car with her husband and two daughters near the settlement of Rehelim, in the occupied West Bank, on the night of Oct. 12. Her husband, Yaqoub Rabi, who was driving, said at the time that he believed the culprits were Jewish settlers and that he had heard them speaking Hebrew.
The Shin Bet said Ms. Rabi was the mother of nine children.
The five suspects are students of Pri Haaretz, a yeshiva high school for Orthodox boys in Rehelim, according to the authorities. The morning after the Friday night attack, the Shin Bet said, activists set out by car from the settlement of Yitzhar for Rehelim, where they briefed the students on how to prepare for, and deal with, Shin Bet interrogations.
That journey would have aroused suspicion, officials said, since driving on the Sabbath is generally forbidden for observant Jews, and Yitzhar is a religious settlement.
Lawyers representing three of the detained minors, who were arrested a week ago, were first granted access to them around midnight on Saturday….
This kind of savagery deserves life in prison at least
They’ll get a slap on the wrist and set free again. Settlers are doing the dirty job for the Netan-yahoo government.
@VeraGottleib
“They’ll get a slap on the wrist and set free again”
And the Colonial Goverment in recognition of their brave ” defence ” of Zionism might well pay for the refurbishment as opposed to demolition of their illegal houses.