Sunday, December 16, 2012

16-Dec-12: Those murders and attempted murders about which you almost never hear

Asher Palmer and his infant son were murdered in this vehicle which
came under lethal rock attack a year ago [Image Source: Ynet]
The note below comes from Yehudit Tayar whose "Scenes from the Front Lines" we publish here regularly. (Here's the most recent of them.) Yehudit's note deals with what happened this afternoon to our mutual friends Melody and Yosef Hartuv whose well-named blog "Love of the Land" always makes for interesting reading.

Rocks Are Lethal Weapons       
Yehudit Tayar (December 16, 2012)

Today was another continuation of the trials in the Machane Opher military court of the terrorist gang who murdered Asher and Yonatan Palmer HY"D on Highway 60 - the Hevron Jerusalem Highway, a little over a year ago.

Today was supposed to be the summary of the defense of Ali, one of the terrorists who was in the vehicle during the time of the terror attack that resulted in the murder, by means of a huge boulder heaved from a moving car towards the car in which Asher, a young father and his infant son, Yonatan - not yet a year old - were traveling.

Throughout the trial, the defense attorney has repeatedly tried to persuade the court and the prosecution that there had been previous cases of Arabs throwing rocks and that their reasons for the attacks were "in order to punish, injure or kill Jews". Ali's lawyer continued to try and persuade the court that there was no reason to accuse Ali of attempted murder because of all the previous cases that he mentioned.

There we were: Adrian Agassi, the lawyer who represents the Palmer family, and a group of friends and family who have been sitting for over a year with the Palmers through the entire endless nightmare of the trials of the terror gang who practiced heaving huge rocks from moving vehicles towards the cars of "settlers" (as the terrorists testified).

As usual, we sat hugging the photographs of Asher and Yonatan Z"L during these hearings and finding it impossible to believe the defense lawyers' requests to the court.

We left there and parted until Sunday, and what will be the continuation of the trials. Melody and Yosef drove towards their home in Kiryat Arba. When they reached Beit Ummar on Highway 60, the Jerusalem-Hevron highway, Arabs attacked their car with rocks and bashed in the front window.

When I received the phone call from Melody, and as I reported the attack to the security and medical rescue forces, I was in shock. Just now we had heard the defense of a terrorist who murdered two innocent people just because they were Jews as he tried to convince the court that attacks with rocks are not attempted murder - and here again is an attempted murder of Jews by Arabs.

Melody was B"H injured in her hand and not worse. But the vehicle provided to them by Molly, the mother of Asher and grandmother of Yonatan Z"L had its entire front windshield smashed in. 

It is impossible to even begin to attempt to describe such a situation where one is returning from a trial of terrorists who attacked a car with rocks in order to murder innocent people merely because they were Jewish, and then your car is attacked and the windshield bashed in.

Israel's courts must finally recognize that rocks are lethal weapons and are being used to murder Jews.

Yehudit Tayar is a volunteer emergency medic, serves as one of the veteran spokespeople for the Jewish pioneers in Yesha, works with the security forces and for the past 32 years has made a home for herself and her family in Bet Horon, a community in Iseael's Benjamin region.

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