“Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.” (Romans 12:19)
Police fought with Jewish protestors Tuesday afternoon just prior to the funeral in Maalot for the three murdered Israeli teenagers Gilad Shaar (16), Eyal Yifrach (19) and dual American-Israeli citizen Naftali Frenkel (16).
Israel’s three kidnapped teens, Eyal Yifrah, Gilad Sha’er and Naftali Frankel, were found murdered on Monday, June 30. It is believe they were killed shortly after being abducted.
Demonstrators covered much of the downtown area of Jerusalem including the Old City’s Jaffa Gate, shouting “Kahane was right!” and “Revenge!”
Meir Kahane was an American-Israeli rabbi who founded the Jewish Defense League in the USA and led a far-right political movement called Kach. He promoted a Jewish state in which Israel would annex Judea and Samaria (the so-called West Bank) and the Gaza Strip, as well as remove the Arab residents either by paying them or by force.
He was killed in a Manhattan hotel in 1990 after giving a speech in which he warned American Jews to move to Israel, before it was “too late.” The gunman was an Al Qaeda trained Arab.
The Jerusalem protest began on Tuesday in front of the Central Bus Station at approximately 4 p.m. and spread out over much of the downtown area. Rapid transit trains were blocked as well as regular traffic causing the police to respond. Soon after their arrival, they began to arrest people at which point violence broke out. One Hawaii native who is studying in the city told the Jerusalem Post:
“It started with people pushing police and police pushing back and I got hit in the face by a cop when he was pushing the crowd back,” she said. “I saw one kid split his head open after being pushed over a wall by an officer. I got an EMT for him.”
Groups of rioters left the demonstration and accosted an Arab store owner, turning over his merchandise, telling him that the government needs to do something, while shouting for revenge.
One protester, a teenage girl, was asked why she was protesting. As hundreds of protesters moved down Jaffa Road in the city’s center she answered, “We are very angry and we came here to protest the terrorists. We don’t want to live in fear and we don’t want war with the Arabs, but we want the terrorists to stop doing this because we are Jewish,” she continued. “This is our country!” (JPost)
On Sunday, the day before the bodies were found northwest of the city of Hebron in Judea, about a 10-minute drive (12 miles) from where they were taken, as many as 100,000 gathered at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv to dance, sing, pray and call for the release of the abducted youth.
Speaking with the media website YNet, one of the fathers, Avi Frenkel had high praise for the event and spoke of the national “unity of fate and a very basic feeling of mutuality. Many people wanted to come here and we barely have time to see them, we barely have time for ourselves, and it’s an opportunity for us to do something with everybody.”
In Brooklyn a couple that owns an art store put up what they call “a wall of conscience” with the names and ages of the lost youths. (Jewish Press)
Announcing the discovery of the bodies, a government official said that the three looked to have been shot to death, probably “very close to the kidnap” time. (Forward)
Authorities have named two prime suspects, Marwan Kawasme and Amer Abu Aysha, who are confirmed members of Hamas. The two have been missing from their homes since the kidnapping. According to the Times of Israel, the land where the bodies were found was recently purchased by the Kawasme family.
The Shin Bet (Israeli Internal Security) had found a bullet casing, blood, tefillin (phylacteries) and other forensic evidence in a burnt, abandoned Hyundai close to the time of the kidnapping that pointed to the boys’ death, but there was still hope that they might be found alive. (JPost)
Following the discovery of the bodies by search volunteers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a security cabinet meeting to discuss an appropriate response and, within hours, Israeli jets bombed 34 locations known to be associated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. (The Guardian)
During the meeting he paraphrased words written by Israel’s famous author Haim Nahman Bialik: “Satan has not yet created vengeance for the blood of a small child,” he added, “nor for the blood of pure teens that were on their way home to see their parents, and who will never see them again.”
