Arrests ‘brought back everything from that terrible night’

Itamar council head: We're in a battle for the survival of whole Jewish nation; says family massacre should be a wake-up call for country.

By TOVAH LAZAROFF
Fogel family funeral crowd 311 (photo credit: Channel 10)
Fogel family funeral crowd 311
(photo credit: Channel 10)
As Itamar residents were busy getting ready for Pessah on Sunday, they were catapulted back into the painful emotions that surrounded the murder last month of five members of the Fogel family.“We are happy that they caught the terrorists, but obviously it brought back everything from that terrible night,” Itamar Council head Moshe Goldsmith said.
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He said that he and other Itamar residents were determined to move forward, in spite of the deaths.
“We are going to celebrate the holiday and continue to grow,” Goldsmith said.
He added that the attack, in which Palestinians stabbed to death Udi Fogel, 36 and Ruti Fogel, 35, and three of their children – Yoav 11, Elad, four, and three-month old Hadas – in their home, should be a wake up call for the rest of the country.
“We are in a war situation,” Goldsmith said.
“This is a battle not just for Itamar, but for the survival of the whole Jewish nation.”
Udi’s mother, Celia Fogel, who lives in Neveh Tzuf (Halamish) in Samaria, thanked the security forces for their work in tracking down the alleged killers.
Her husband, Haim, told Ynet “there is no doubt that the arrest of the murderers touches the heart. We knew it would touch the nation. We thought it would do more, but from our perspective we completed a circle. This is a heinous murder of bottomless hate that is simply impossible to understand.”
Ruti’s brother Elichai Ben-Yishai told reporters that nothing could restore what his family had lost.
“It has already been taken,” and this could not be reversed whether the killers were free or under arrest. But the family had been comforted, he said, by the way the nation had embraced them.
Samaria Regional Council head Gershon Mesika blamed the slayings on incitement within the Palestinian Authority’s educational system.
This is the “monstrous, murderous crop” that PA President Mahmoud Abbas has sown, Mesika said. Those who pursue a peace deal with the Palestinians, he continued, “should look at who we plan to do business with and into whose hands we plan to abandon the security of Israeli citizens.”
The proper response to the deaths, he said, was to build and deepen the nation’s roots in the Land of Israel.
The Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip urged the government to deal with the PA as an entity that assists in terrorism.
It also warned against coddling terrorists in jail and noted that Palestinian prisoners enjoyed a host of privileges, including education, television, family visits and health care.
The organization My Israel lashed out at left-wing groups that had gone on a solidarity visit to Awarta, the village near Itamar where the two main suspects live, and asked that the groups be outlawed.
MK Michael Ben-Ari (National Union) asked the attorney general to open an investigation into the groups.