Relatives of the Jewish man arrested on suspicion of deadly terror shootings and bombings have justified his actions, calling them “heroic acts of resistance.”
Naa, not really.
In the weeks following the arrest, the family still held hope that the Shin Bet had made a mistake: “We want to believe that everything will turn out to be a mistake, that the Shin Bet is trying to create the impression that they arrested the man responsible for all those crimes just to get others to talk, but we don’t know anything,” Rivka’s sister, Dassi Krief, told Ynet.
Teitel’s wife, said the family, has faith that the situation will resolve itself. “She can’t afford to think that there can be truth to this,” said a relative. “Otherwise she’ll just fall apart. She has to stand by him even in this difficult time.”
Rivka was accompanied by several neighbors when she first attended her husband’s arraignments, but as the case began to unfold, she began attending the hearings on her own.
Now, as the case became public knowledge, the family seems angry and embittered. They feel as if they were all deceived, said Dassi. “It’s very hard. We were all so happy that she married such a good man, and he turned out to be a lunatic. How are we supposed to handle that?
“(…) I think it’s better that we know, but that is what hurt her the most – learning that she has been living a lie. Just last week she told me that she felt cheated and then I realized she knew. She understood.”
Moshe Avitan, Rivka’s brother-in-law, said the family feels exploited: “This man married her while hiding a can of worms. He knew what he was. He started a family without giving his children a second thought.
“This is very hard for us but be can’t ignore this… We’ve already decided to cut all ties with him and his family.”
Rivka, he added, “Is in a complete state of shock. He is a psychopath who was leading a double life… She wants to talk to him and she has plenty to say.
The same goes for his Jewish neighbors.
Meanwhile, the Shvut Rahel community, where Ya’acov resides with his own family, and where police found a cache of weapons near his home, issued a statement Sunday expressing its revulsion to the actions attributed to him.
The community expressed hope that the security establishment would uncover the truth, but also “prays that the suspicions against Ya’acov Teitel will be found to be untrue, and so long as he was not proven guilty we believe in his innocence.”
Not to mention other members of the so-called “settler” communities demonized by all and sundry.
“Acts of the kind allegedly committed by Yaakov Teitel are grave, prohibited and unacceptable. The security forces should be congratulated for discovering him,” Danny Dayan, chairman of the Yesha Council of settlements, said Sunday.
“Any person of conscience in Israel must rise up in indignation against such acts, as well as against any despicable attempt to use them to gain political capital by blaming an entire community that is not connected – and is in fact vehemently opposed – to such actions,” Dayan added.
Ne’emanei Torah Va’Avodah, a liberal religious-Zionist movement, said that it “condemns any kind of violence. There is no justification for these heinous acts in the Torah, which espouses kindness and peace. However, we ask that people avoid pointing fingers and casting blame on an entire community because of the acts of one person.”
Reader homework exercise: compare these reactions to those of the palestinians.
Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)
5:55PM: Some good old fashioned incitement from the palestinian Ma’an News, which use a picture of an Israeli girl praying to illustrate a story on “Jewish terrorists.” [click on image to enlarge]
3:35PM: Quote of the day:
“If you say that this is a Palestinian land, can you mention to me one Palestinian ruler, king, or government that ruled the land? Can you tell me the boundaries of that land? There was never a Palestinian state. Never ever in history was there a Palestinian state. It will be another twist of history that Israel – the Jews – will create the Palestinian state, not Arabs, not anyone else. We will create a Palestinian state.”
– Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon speaking at the London School of Economics last week
3:30PM: From the Department of Crafty Jews:
Israel’s Mossad espionage agency used Trojan Horse programs to gather intelligence about a nuclear facility in Syria the Israel Defense Forces destroyed in 2007, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported Monday.
According to the magazine, Mossad agents in London planted the malware on the computer of a Syrian official who was staying in the British capital; he was at a hotel in the upscale neighborhood of Kensington at the time.
The program copied the details of Syria’s illicit nuclear program and sent them directly to the Mossad agents’ computers, the report said.
3:26PM: Here is former Egyptian Chief of Staff Sa’ad al-Din al-Shazli in an interview with an almost comatose Al Jazeera reporter, in which he says that there will definitely be more Arab-Israeli wars – not because of some supposed Israeli “occupation” of palestinian lands but “based on our belief in G-d, the Koran, and the Prophet Muhammad.”
This coming from a Muslim who looks rather secular.
1:48PM: Swedish blood libel “journalist” Donald Bostrom was booed during his panel at a media conference in Israel. But he seemed defiant and unrepentant about publishing his story.
The hoopla from Sweden spreads to Dimona. Swedish reporter Donald Bostrom, who published a report in the Aftonbladet newspaper accusing the Israel Defense Forces of stealing and trafficking in Palestinians’ organs, was received Monday with boos and shouts during a panel he partook in at a media conference held in Dimona.
The Swedish reporter said that he understands the anger and explained that his infamous article only claimed that the Palestinian families’ allegations need to be investigated. He also said that there was much misunderstanding surrounding the article. “The fact is that the families said what they said. That’s a normal article,” he said.
Interviewer Yair Lapid said, “It is a well-known phenomenon that some of the Palestinian propaganda is lies. It is the weapon of the weak.”
Lapid claimed that he was not at all certain that the Swedish reporter had any basis for the article.
Bostrom responded, “If you are as journalist, you always interview, ask questions, and get answers. Organ trafficking is a global problem.” He said that before he wrote the article, he invested a lot of time researching and spending time in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where he said he interviewed many families off of list given to him. Bostrom said that he chose to publish the story of one of the families, whom he says he interviewed for quite some time and received pictures of their son’s corpse.
Lapid shot back, “To say this without a shred of evidence, that Israel possibly harvested organs from Palestinians who disappeared, in other words, whom we kidnapped, killed, and robbed their organs, is a degrading and monstrous idea.”
In response, Bostrom said that he understands why people are angry, saying that everyone lies while at war. He said that it is difficult for reporters to distinguish between what is correct and what is a lie. “If it were just one family, fine. But there were many families. Mothers have a right to know what happened to their sons,” claimed Bostrom
Bostrom said that everyone would benefit from an investigation into the issue, saying no one had anything to lose. “If it is possible to give an answer to a Palestinian mother that nothing happened to her son, this must be done,” Bostrom asserted.
Bostrom claimed that he never said that the IDF track down Palestinians with the express purpose of harvesting organs. “This is a terrible lie,” he said.
‘Crossing the line’
Lapid concluded, “You are an anti-Semite because you are prepared to believe that there is a possibility that the government and the authorities would take part in such a monstrous thing. The only thing I can say in your favor is that you don’t know you’re an anti-Semite.”
Bostrom said in response, “If we walk in the streets of Stockholm and ask passersby about Israel, the vast majority will respond that they support its right to exist in peace. However, we also have a tradition of criticism, and we will criticize Israel though we support your country.”
Some of the people sitting in the audience did not accept the Swede’s explanations. They called the Swedish reporter a “liar,” and waved banners with “Israel is stronger than anti-Semitism” written on them.
Nor did Bostrom receive a warm welcome when he arrived the night between Saturday and Sunday at Ben Gurion Airport. Dozens of protesters from the Beitar youth movement met him there with shouts.
Incidentally, the Goldstone Report is based on the same principle: publish something based on spurious palestinian claims and then place the onus to investigate them on Israel, who is already comdemned in the court of public opinion by the very publication of the lies to begin with.
Meanwhile, what is Swedish for “Would somebody please show this poor asshole the way out of town.”
