Such people are buried only at night

Jews threw stones at the house of a Palestinian who shot schoolchildren

Yesterday, Israeli police reported that six people, two of whom were law enforcement officers, were injured the day before during clashes with radical Jewish activists. 22 people were arrested.

On Sunday evening, about two hundred Jewish far-right activists reached the Arab village of Jabal Mukabar, which is part of East Jerusalem. The radicals had been planning for several days to avenge the Jewish youths, students of a Jerusalem religious school, who were killed a week and a half ago by a native of this village. In Jerusalem, despite calls from a number of rabbis “not to take revenge,” leaflets appeared calling for revenge and to take part in the destruction of the terrorist’s house and the expulsion of his family from Israel.

Shouting “Death to the Arabs!” The vigilantes began to raid the house where 25-year-old Alaa Abu Dheim lived before the terrorist attack he committed on March 6. The house managed to survive; the police pushed the militant Jews away from the crowd of local residents guarding their homes.

Alaa Abu Dheim on the evening of March 6 broke into the building of the Mercaz HaRav religious school in the religious district of Jerusalem and shot students with a machine gun, which he hid in a cardboard box. Eight students aged between 15 and 26 were killed on the spot and 11 people were injured. There could have been more victims if a soldier had not arrived from a neighboring building and shot the criminal. As it turned out, the Arab worked as a driver at this school and quit shortly before his protest.

Now Israeli authorities are deciding what to do with the former driver's family and his village home. According to local press reports, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Homeland Security Minister Avi Dichter are proposing to demolish the house. The Jewish Organization of Victims of Arab Terror states that Israeli law does not prohibit destroying the homes of terrorists. The family members of the Arab who committed the crime that rocked Israel are not citizens of the Jewish state, but have an Israeli identity card and a residence permit in the Jewish state.

A proposal is being discussed not only to destroy the house, but also to generally expel the militant’s closest relatives from Israel. If this decision is made, the expelled family will most likely head to neighboring Jordan. It is paradoxical, but for now the members of this family continue to receive benefits from the National Insurance Institute of Israel, although Prime Minister Ehud Olmert himself tried to deprive them of cash payments from the state, including unemployment and old-age benefits.

After heated disputes, the terrorist’s body was eventually released to relatives. As the press service of the Israel Defense Forces told Vremya Novostey, “the body transfer procedure took place on the night of March 12.” That same night he was secretly buried in the cemetery of the village of Jabal Mukabar. The police agreed with the militant's relatives that only members of his family would take part in the funeral ceremony. This prevented many Arabs living in Israel from coming to the burial procedure. Many of them see the slain driver as also an "avenger" responsible for the deaths of nearly hundreds of residents of the Gaza Strip in the Palestinian Authority in Israeli strikes this month.

Maria GRISHINA, Dmitry DUBOV, Jerusalem