Hang Arafat Irfaiya!

By Vic Rosenthal

Arafat Irfaiya is the monster that raped, murdered and mutilated a beautiful 19-year old girl last week because she was a Jew living in Eretz Yisrael. He is guilty of crimes against the Jewish people, and he should be executed for them.

There is a law in Israel that prescribes the death penalty for crimes against the Jewish people committed during WWII or “the period of the Nazi regime.” The limitation to the Nazi period is illogical and should be removed. Murdering Jews, qua Jews, in 2019 is not different than doing it in 1943. Murdering them in order to try to destroy the Jewish state is a crime against the Jewish people no less than deporting them to Auschwitz.

Military courts can impose a death penalty for crimes committed in the territories, but unfortunately the site of the murder was just inside the Green Line, so the trial will be in a civilian court.

The leniency shown by the Jewish state to murderers motivated by “nationalism” – Palestinian Arab Jew-hatred – is remarkable, including almost Scandinavian-style prison conditions, regular salaries paid by the Palestinian authority, and often early release as part of political deals or as blackmail for hostages.

This is stupid. The smiles often displayed by Palestinian Arab terrorists like Irfaiya as they are sentenced testify to the fact that they see themselves as victorious despite their conviction.

Keeping these creatures in prison is expensive, provides an incentive for hostage-taking – you may recall that in 2011 one Jewish soldier, Gilad Shalit, was exchanged for 1027 terrorists, many of whom were guilty of murder – and, thanks to the Palestinian Authority’s payment system and the adulation they receive in Palestinian society, probably encourages further terrorism rather than deterring it. When they are released, they often return to terrorism. In 2015 it was reported that six additional Israelis had been murdered by prisoners released in the Shalit deal.

Every time – and there have been many times – that a Palestinian Arab terrorist commits a particularly horrible murder, there are calls for the imposition of the death penalty. And every time, it doesn’t happen.

There are numerous objections to the death penalty in general. But in this case, and in most cases of Palestinian terrorism, they don’t apply. There is no doubt of Arafat Irfaiya’s guilt; there is physical evidence, including DNA, plus a confession and reenactment of the crime.

It is often said that the death penalty is not a deterrent, and this may be true in the West, especially in places like California, where the probability of a death sentence being carried out in a reasonable time is almost zero. In the Middle East, however, there are cultural factors that have the opposite effect. In our region, not executing a murderer is a sign of weakness, a signal that the victim’s family or tribe is too weak to preserve its honor. And a tribe without honor is a tribe whose members can be murdered with impunity. Failing to impose the death penalty actually has the opposite of a deterrent effect – it encouragesmurdering Jews.

Since 1967, Israel and the Jewish people have undergone a continuous loss of honor relative to their enemies, as they have made a series of unrequited concessions (starting with the surrender of sovereignty over the Temple Mount). With Oslo the pace of the concessions – and the concomitant terrorism against Israel – accelerated greatly, and there are beginning to be murmurs that still more is about to be expected of us.

If we wish to survive as a Jewish state, the pendulum must be forced to swing back the other way. I believe that a comprehensive policy to regain the initiative – and our honor – is needed. A small part of it would be to actually punish terrorists in proportion to their crimes. Executing Arafat Irfaiya would be a start.

But only a start. How did it come about that there are so many like Irfaiya? Why did two young Palestinian Arabs viciously slaughter five members of the Fogel family including a 3-month old baby girl?  Why did another Palestinian Arab teenager climb through a window and stab Hallel Yaffe Ariel to death in her bed? Why have there been hundreds of terror attacks against Jews by Palestinians in the past four years, many by perpetrators who are not known to be directly associated with traditional terrorist groups?

The answer is not complicated. When Israel invited Yasser Arafat back from exile and allowed the establishment of the Palestinian Authority as part of the Oslo accords, one of Arafat’s first actions was to decree that every institution in the territories under his control – schools, mosques, summer camps, newspapers, radio and TV – would teach violent hatred of Jews and Israel. Every anti-Jewish trope was included, from traditional Muslim “apes and pigs” slanders to memes borrowed from European antisemitism. Terrorists who murder Jewish women and children are treated as military heroes who have carried out successful “operations.” The project was continued by Mahmoud Abbas after Arafat’s death, and in Gaza after the Hamas takeover. Its effect has been to paint Jews as vermin that it is not only permissible, but laudable, to kill.

At some point, Abbas introduced the policy of paying salaries to terrorists in Israeli prisons (if they should be killed during their attacks, the stipend is given to the family). Despite threats from the US and Israel to cut payments to the PA (the US has already reduced aid to the PA in accordance with the Taylor Force Act and PM Netanyahu has promised to start deducting equivalent funds from import duties collected on behalf of the PA), the PA continues to pay terrorists, which Abbas has called his top priority. Salaries are proportional to the length of prison sentences, which means that they are proportional to the severity of the crime.

The combination of the coordinated program of indoctrination, plus financial incentives for terrorist acts, has bred several generations of monsters like Arafat Irfaiya.

What this means is that the leaders of the PLO and Hamas, who have programmed the murderers and who pay them, are also guilty of murder. Indeed Irfaiya and the other monsters are no more than hitmen. The root of the problem is planted higher up.

We have a long road to travel to recover from the errors we’ve made since 1967 and since Oslo. But we have to start small.

As a first step, let’s hang Arafat Irfaiya and go on from there.

February 15, 2019 | 7 Comments »

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  2. Thousands march in memory of Ori Ansbacher
    2000 gather in Jerusalem for ‘City of Light’ march in memory of teen slain in brutal stabbing 2 weeks ago.

    ‘City of Light’
    More than 2,000 youth, children and adults are taking part in the ‘City of Light’ march in memory of Ori Ansbacher Tuesday evening.

    One of the initiators of the event, Eliasaf Peretz, the son of Israel Prize laureate Miriam Peretz, who lost his two brothers in Israel’s wars, said during the event: “We gathered here tonight because of a terrible heartbreak. We gathered to cry, and to knock on the doors of the heart, and to grab onto those sparks of hope.”

    We have gathered here because we do not agree to let the wicked win,” said Peretz.

    “We stand here in Jerusalem, different people, different faces and different opinions, in order to take responsibility. Unfortunately, we could not prevent this murder, but we managed to prevent the indifference. We stand here and take responsibility for our extended [family], to show the kind of people we are. “We stand here in pain over the human life which was snuffed out here a week and a half ago Thursday,” he said.

    Addressing Ori Ansbacher, Peretz said: “You decided to the hearts of at-risk youth, to touch those in pain and to heal them with love. 13 days ago, on that Thursday, in the heart of a grove at the edge of Jerusalem, your life was shattered and your light snuffed out in a moment. Your dreams faded away, your words blossomed and fell there, on the land you loved so much.”

    “Ori, look around and see all who have gathered to come here. We stand here seeking to illuminate the dark path, to reveal that bright light so that we will not fail in the long and complex journey of our people, to be free in the Land of Israel,” he concluded.

    The event opens with a “march of light” from Ein Yael to the first station in Jerusalem. The event will be attended by artists Ehud Banai, Shlomi Shabat, Yuval Dayan, Amir Benayoun, Micha Sheetrit and members of the Shalva group. During the event, artist Shlomi Shabat is expected to perform Ori’s poem “A World of Peace,” set to music after her death.

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  4. @ adamdalgliesh:
    it’s a great idea and if murderers are hung they cant be traded for dead bodies as Israel has done in the past but I doubt very much the death penalty will be used

  5. A Torah commentary on last week’s Parshah in honor of Ori Ansbacher. From Arutz Sheva.

    Sending forth the light: In memory of Ori Ansbacher Hy”d
    “Arise, Ori, because your light has come, and Hashem’s Glory has shone upon you” (Isaiah 60:1). Ori has ascended to the highest, murdered by a despicable representative of an already-evil creed. Her light will indeed rise in holiness and purity.

    Parashat Tetzaveh, yesterday’s Torah reading, begins and ends with light.

    It begins with G-d commanding Moshe, “And you shall command the Children of Israel to take for yourself pure pressed olive-oil for the light, to kindle the candle continually” (Exodus 27:20).

    The word which the Torah uses here for “kindle” is ?????????, literally “to raise” rather than “to kindle”. True, Targum Onkelos and Targum Yonatan both translate ????????? into Aramaic as ???????????, “to kindle”, but the fact remains that the Torah uses the verb ?????????, “to raise”.

    Rashi explains ?????????, “to raise” to denote “to kindle until the flame rises by itself”.

    The Ibn Ezra says, in slightly more detail: “Because it is the manner of the light [fire] of the candle to rise as a flame, because this is what fire does”.

    And Parashat Tetzaveh concludes by commanding that “when Aaron will kindle the candles toward evening, he will burn the incense, continual incense before Hashem throughout your generations” (Exodus 30:8). The Torah against uses the verb ???????????, literally “when Aaron will raise the candles…” rather than “kindle the candles”.

    Again Targum Onkelos and Targum Yonatan both translate ???????????, “will raise”, into Aramaic as ??????????????, “will kindle”. And Rashi comments here, “When he will kindle them, to raise their flames”.

    The fire on the Altar of the Mishkan (the Sanctuary), and later in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, was used to burn the meat of the sacrifices. There were four broad categories of sacrifice: the ??????? (sin-offering), the ?????? (guilt-offering), the ????????? (peace-offerings), and the ??????.

    It is the last of these which is relevant here.

    The word ?????? means “elevation” or “that which rises” (from the root ???, “on”). There were 13 categories of ??????:

    The ??????? (twice-daily sacrifice, morning and afternoon, which we commemorate today with the Morning and Afternoon Services);

    The Festival Sacrifice on the three Pilgrimage Festivals;

    The ?????? (additional sacrifices for Shabbat, Rosh Chodesh, Festivals, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur);

    The sacrifice which accompanied the Omer;

    The sacrifice which accompanied the two loaves on Shavuot;

    The Kohan Gadol’s personal sacrifice on Yom Kippur;

    The personal sacrifice a woman brought after giving birth;

    The personal sacrifice a Nazirite brought when his Naziritehood finished;

    The personal sacrifice a metzora’ (often mistranslated as “leper”) brought when he was cleansed;

    The communal sacrifice as atonement for communal idolatry;

    The personal sacrifice a convert brought;

    The personal sacrifice anyone could bring as a voluntary offering;

    And the ????-???????????, voluntary offerings which anyone could bring, which were sacrificed on the Altar at times when there were no other sacrifices to offer upon it, so that the Altar would not be left unattended and abandoned [1].

    These sacrifices would all be burnt on the Altar, hence the name ??????: that which burns goes up in smoke; and hence the alternative English renderings, “burnt-offerings” or “elevation-offerings”.

    These sacrifices also suggest the identity between burning and rising, between kindling and raising – the idea with which Parashat Tetzaveh begins and ends.

    Light is a frequent metaphor for Torah, “because the candle is a Mitzvah and the Torah is light” (Proverbs 6:23), and “Hashem is my Light and my Salvation” (Psalms 27:1).

    But fire is as much a force for destruction as for holiness: the fire on the Altar and the fire of the candles were a spiritual elevation to holiness; but both Holy Temples were subsequently destroyed by fire.

    There can be no example more poignant than Rabbi Chaninah ben Teradyon who was murdered in Kiddush Hashem (Sanctifying the Name of G-d). It was shortly after the Romans had crushed the Bar Kochba Revolt, and the great Rabbi Akiva, the spiritual leader of the Revolt, had recently been arrested and murdered by the Romans (135 C.E.).

    Rabbi Chaninah ben Teradyon, Rabbi Akiva’s contemporary and friend, continued to defy the Romans and their decrees by teaching Torah to the masses in Israel. He ran a Yeshivah in Sikhnin (Sanhedrin 32b) in the Galilee (the modern-day Sakhnin, entirely Arab-populated), exactly half-way between the Kinneret and the Mediterranean Sea.

    And eventually he, too, was caught and arrested.

    The Romans – with their typical ingenuity with which they so often invented ever-crueller methods of execution – wrapped him in a Sefer Torah (a Torah-scroll) and burned him and the Sefer Torah together, with water-logged wads of cotton-wool so he would die slower in greater agony.

    His daughter and his students were gathered at this public execution, and screamed in their distraught devastation.

    And Rabbi Chaninah ben Teradyon, while he was being burnt, called out words of comfort to his daughter:

    “Had I been burnt alone, it may have been difficult for me; but now I am being burnt with the Sefer Torah – I know that He Who will avenge the Sefer Torah will also avenge me!”.

    And as his daughter screamed in horror “Is this the Torah, and is this its reward?”, he called out to her:

    “My daughter, why are you crying? If you are crying for me, then don’t cry – because better to be burnt by a fire that man has lit than by a fire which G-d has lit. And if you are crying for the Sefer Torah, then don’t cry – because behold! the Torah itself is fire, and fire cannot destroy fire” (Avodah Zarah 18a, Semachot 8:12).

    Such is the dual nature of fire: it can desecrate and sanctify, it can destroy and it can build, it can bring death and it can give life, it can defile and it can purify.

    We have spoken of the ??????, the burnt-offering/elevation offering. But the identical letters, vowellised differently, give the word ???????, wickedness or evil. Like fire – like light – the ???? can be good or evil.

    A week ago, Israel – indeed all decent humans – were shocked and devastated by the particularly sadistic and gruesome murder of Ori Ansbacher Hy”d in Jerusalem.

    Her name, ??????, denotes light. As the prophet said: ?????? ?????? ???? ??? ???????, ???????? ?’ ???????? ????? – “Arise, Ori, because your light has come, and Hashem’s Glory has shone upon you” (Isaiah 60:1).

    Ori has ascended to the highest, murdered by a particularly despicable representative of an already-evil creed. Her light will indeed rise in holiness and purity.

    The evil fires which seek to extinguish our fires will themselves be extinguished. Our ?????? will inevitably defeat their ???????.

    And our fires, like the light with which Parashat Tetzaveh begins and ends, will continue to rise and to burn, and to illuminate our path to sanctity and to ultimate redemption.

    Endnote

    [1] These sacrifices were called ????-??????????? because the word ????, which literally means “end” (a cognate of ?????, “summer”, the end of the harvest), is also a synonym for “fruit” (see 2 Samuel 16:2, Jeremiah 40:10, Micah 7:1 et al.). Just as fruit is typically placed on the table as a sweet at the end of a meal, so too these voluntary sacrifices were placed on the Altar as “sweets” at the end of the “meal” of the regular sacrificial service.