Fogels' Fathers Show Why Jews are Eternal

Two years have passed since one of the most horrific terrorist massacres ever: the barbaric and cold-blooded slaughter of five members of the Fogel family at Itamar, two parents – Ehud and Ruthie Fogel – and three young children – Yoav (11), Elad (4) and Hadas (three months). The murderers, two Arabs from the neighboring village of Awarta, had invaded their home on Sabbath eve.

After being captured, the young murderers said they had viewed the murder as "an adventure." They are not believed to have been directly sent on the bloody mission by any terror organization. Rather, they appear to have been motivated, like so many other Muslim Arab terrorists, by the incessant incitement to terror spewed forth by Palestinian Authority media, which is controlled by the Fatah terror organization.

Arutz Sheva spoke to Haim Fogel and Rabbi Yehuda Ben Yishai, the fathers of Ehud Fogel and Ruthie Fogel, respectively. Listening to their calm and thoughtful words, spoken as their emotions of grief are obviously being held back, one plainly sees the chasm between Jewish culture and Arab Islamic culture. Both fathers embody, in word and deed, the Jewish spirit of intelligent yet unshakable faith, patient perseverance and creativity, offering stark contrast to the wailing, cursing and threats that are often typical of Arab Muslim mourning, especially when Israel can be blamed for the deaths.

Israel's enemies should look at Arutz Sheva's interviews with Haim Fogel and Rabbi Yehuda Ben Yishai and understand why they have no chance in the world of defeating the Jewish nation. The video will drive home to them that whatever suffering the Arabs can dish out to the Jews with their savagery, the eternal Jewish nation will not be driven to despair. The Jews, who have outlived all the ancient nations that persecuted them, will continue building their national home and military prowess, and wait for the right moment to avenge the blood of their innocents.

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A year goes by. Of course, with all of the hardships and pain, the longings that every thing reminds us of, we try to hold back our pain, and to look forward. Because we believe and it is a fact, that we are here, at Mishkan Ehud, the place at which the yeshiva and community are developing, and this is a small consolation but a consolation nonetheless.

We are here in a day that connects sadness with growth. Seeing the yeshiva that is named for our son-in-law developing with time and being built, we feel that the souls continue to act from above. And what someone wanted to cut off, in fact, it turned into a planting of seeds. And from year to year, while it is true that the pain penetrates deeply into the soul, but on the other hand we see that these seeds are planted, and the nation of Israel gathers, and connects and unites, and this gives us the strength to continue, with G-d's help.

As a veteran in the settlement enterprise, I think that settlement is not about these sad events, settlement is about settlement! But we understand that this is also part of it. When something like this happens, at least what people can give, is to enable us to keep moving forward, and to build. So we take that, as well. The children feel good. The children... are covered in love, the Nation of Israel embraces them,

We give the close hug and the Nation provides the next circle, and their parents' prayers for them from above accompany them, so we are certain that they will grow up in joy and turn out to be great people, without a doubt.

What can you tell us bout the Sabbath you just spent here? The first Sabbath you all spent together in Itamar? It was a very uplifting Sabbath, since what happened, we feel Udi and Ruthie
even more than before. And we have turned into one family, here with the community, and we are certain that everyone wants to join this family now. Everyone is invited to come to Itamar,
to visit the yeshiva, and to be here with everything that the Fogel family represents.

A truly wonderful Sabbath. We were slightly worried before it, about how it would go, but... the Sabbath here was uplifting, as simple as that. All of the students, the singing... a true Sabbath,
although [Ehud's] students had visited us several times already, and we heard from them and saw them, being here the entire Sabbath is truly a very uplifting thing.

It is a great experience. An experience... you see view we saw when we woke up: the village from which the murderers came out, Awarta. And you see the homes where the [Fogels] lived.

You say to yourself -- here is the place of evil, and next to it is the place of the future and of developments. This is what strengthens us, you could say.  Despite the evil, there is a future.

Stirring memorial service held on one-year anniversary of Fogel family murders

Family and neighbors join ministers, MKs and IDF generals to remember the five members of the Fogel family who were killed in their sleep by terrorists • Shimon Peres: Words fail to provide comfort or meaning in the face of such “barbaric, merciless and inhumane acts.”

Yori Yalon

Tamar Fogel was on hand to hear her younger brother, Roi, sing a song at a memorial service for their slain parents and siblings.  |  Photo credit: Yoav Ari Dudkevitch

An emotional memorial service was held Wednesday in the Samarian community of Itamar to mark the one-year anniversary of the horrific slaughter of five members of the Fogel family. All five were killed at the hands of two Palestinian terrorists, who broke into their home while the family was asleep. Hundreds of people gathered for a Torah dedication ceremony at the new study and prayer complex “Mishkan Ehud” (Ehud Hall), named after the late Rabbi Ehud Fogel who was brutally murdered along with his wife Ruth and three of their children: Yoav, 11; Elad, 4 and three-month-old Hadas.

The killers, cousins Amjad and Hakim Awad, are both in prison serving multiple life sentences for the brutal crimes.

Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivilin, ministers, members of Knesset, rabbis and senior IDF officers were also in attendance and all had their hearts stirred by the singing of 9-year-old Roi Fogel, who survived the terrorist attack. His sister, Tamar, who also survived, was also there.

“For the residents of this land, everyone understands that cutting it up into pieces will bring only death and spiritual, historical and human injustice upon us,” said Rivilin, hinting at the Migron evacuation issue. “If it is our obligation to build, then it goes without saying that we must do all we can to not destroy even a single house, which is like an entire world. It is our duty to build the entire land of Israel, each and every day.”

Rabbi Yehuda Ben Yishai, Ruth Fogel’s father, opened the memorial service by mentioning the terrorists from the nearby Arab village of Awarta who murdered his family: “There are those in the area who wished to stop life. What we are doing is the opposite. We are doing everything to increase life and strengthen life here.”

Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz, Interior Minister Eli Yishai, Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman, Religious Services Minister Ya’akov Margi and Science and Technology Minister Rabbi Daniel Hershkowitz were in attendance alongside GOC Central Command Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon and other IDF generals. Katz said at the ceremony that “the murderers of this family came to murder Jews, but also to sever Jewish settlement in the land of the bible. I vow to you that many more Itamars will rise here in Samaria, in Judea and throughout the entire land of Israel. That is the answer.”

President Shimon Peres, who is currently on an official visit to the U.S., sent a memorial card to the surviving family members, telling them that words fail to provide comfort or provide meaning and sense in the face of such “barbaric, merciless and inhumane acts … I feel your pain and I cry your tears. We won’t forget the parents and children of the Fogel household.”

Inside Mishkan Ehud, stonemason and artist Assaf Kidron built an ark in the building’s main hall, using local stones and mortar made from earth from the Fogels’ garden. Kidron, a resident of Itamar, was the last person to see Ehud Fogel alive. Kidron initiated and led the project of constructing the holy ark from local stones. The ark rises to a height of five meters (16.4 feet).

“I’ve had a strong a sense of mission planning and building this holy ark, because the entire world, which was shocked by the murder, will turn their eyes to Itamar on the anniversary of the murder to observe how the community is recovering,” said Kidron last week. “I feel we will emerge stronger.”

“The holy ark is built from local stones, which have absorbed our Jewish history in the land of Israel,” he said.

“The stones speak for themselves and convey a connection to the land, to being deeply rooted to the Bible and to continuity.”

Residents of Itamar said on Sunday that they needed NIS 2 million ($530 million) to complete the building, and they were appealing to the wider public to contribute. Itamar Yeshiva Director Aryeh Goldberger said, “It was very important for us to show that we continue to live and build here, despite all those who plot to destroy us.”

First Yahrtzeit of Fogel Family Hy”d Today

Today, on the one-year anniversary of the murder of the Fogel family in the Samarian community of Itamar, a a new beis medrash will be inaugurated in their memories.

Builders are putting the final touches on the building, to be called Mishkan Ehud, or Ehud Hall, in memory of the late Rabbi Ehud (Udi) Fogel, who was murdered in his home along with his wife Ruth and three of their children, Yoav, Elad and baby Hadas. The new building will become the permanent residence of the Itamar Yeshiva.

The decision to construct the complex was made during the shiva, or seven-day mourning period, for the family. Its purpose is to commemorate the family as well as strengthen the settlement enterprise.

Stonemason and artist Assaf Kidron is building an ark in the building’s main hall, using local stones and mortar made from earth from the Fogels’ garden. Kidron, a resident of Itamar, was the last person to see Ehud Fogel alive. Kidron initiated and led the project of constructing the holy ark from local stones. The ark will rise to a height of five meters, and is designed to be the most prominent feature of the beit midrash. During the inauguration event, a Torah scroll will be introduced to the ark. The scroll, contributed by a Brazilian businessman, will have its final letters ceremoniously inscribed on the one-year anniversary of the murder.

“I’ve had a strong a sense of mission planning and building this holy ark, because the entire world, which was shocked by the murder, will turn their eyes to Itamar on the anniversary of the murder to observe how the community is recovering,” said Kidron. “I feel we will emerge stronger.”

“The holy ark is built from local stones, which absorbed our Jewish history in the land of Israel,” he said. “The stones speak for themselves and convey a connection to the land, to deep-rootedness, to the Bible and to continuity.”

Residents of Itamar said on Sunday that NIS 2 million ($530 million) would be required to complete the building, and they were appealing to the wider public to contribute. Itamar Yeshiva director Aryeh Goldberger said, “It was very important for us to show that we continue to live and build here, despite all those who plot to destroy us.”

The women’s prayer section of the new structure will be called Ruth Hall after Ruth Fogel, and the smaller lecture halls will be named after each of the murdered children. “Residents of Itamar experienced a very traumatic event,” said Goldberger, “but it has spawned a large and impressive permanent structure, which gives all of us the strength to continue and hold on to this place. This is the appropriate Zionist response.”

Two Palestinians have been convicted of the Fogel family’s murders and have each been sentenced to five terms of life imprisonment.

Shoah Torah Scroll Welcomed in Itamar, in Memory of Fogels

A Torah scroll saved from the ashes of the Holocaust has been placed in a new synagogue in Itamar, in memory of the five members of the Fogel family who were murdered there earlier this year.

After the massacre, Jack Ross from New York connected with the community through Americans for a Safe Israel and offered to donate a Torah scroll that been rescued from Poland during the Shoah. He had the Torah repaired by a scribe and made kosher after 70 years of not being used and then donated it to a synogogue in Itamar in memory of the Fogel family. 

Ross came to Itamar accompanied by a delegation from the AFSI group and has spent the last week working as a volunteer builder and actually completing the work on the new synagogue and Ark where the Torah was placed. 

Hundreds of residents took part in the Torah welcoming ceremony Tuesday, writing the last letters of the Torah, as is the custom, and taking the Torah – in a dancing procession – to its new home on a hilltop neighborhood in Itamar.

The building of the synagogue was made possible through grants provided by the Israel Independence Fund. 

At the ceremony, Shomron Liaison David Ha'ivri and Itamar Mayor Moshe Goldsmith gave certificates of appreciation to the friends of Itamar who assisted in this and other projects for Itamar and Samaria (Shomron). Aharon Pulver, Chairman of the Israel Independence Fund, and Helen Freedman of AFSI, were honored for their "tireless efforts" for Israel and for the communities of Samaria.

At the ceremony, Shomron Regional Authority head Gershon Mesika compared the Torah, which is the heart of the Jewish people, to Itamar, which he said is the heart of the Land of Israel on the map. 

He said that just as the Jewish people could not exist without its heart, the Torah, so the Land of Israel could not survive without its heartland, the Shomron.

Mesika thanked the donor Jack Ross and the directors of AFSI and the Israel Independence Fund for their ongoing relationship and support for the communities of the Shomron.

Arabs Harvesting in Itamar: We Will Turn You Into Fogels

Itamar residents were shocked to see local arabs, some from the Awwad family that brutally murdered five members of the Fogel family, entering the confines of the communityf's security zone barely half a year after the Friday night massacre.
The PA village of Awarta's residents were allowed in to harvest olives by Israeli Civil Administration but the Shomron (Samaria) Residents Committee reports that they threw rocks at Itamar residents, yelling “We will turn you into Fogel’s”, while drawing fingers across their throats to emphasize the threat.
Last year, Hakim Awwad, one of the murderers, used the harvest as a means of gathering intelligence about the towns homes and residents.
Itamar residents are protesting furiously and young Tamar Fogel, now the oldest surviving member of her family, has joined them.
Benny Katsover, head of the Shomron Residents’ Committee, had harsh words for the civil administration decision: "There is no limit to the insensitivity and irresponsibility of the civil administration. We thought that even the blatant one-sidedness of the Civil Administration has limits, but once again it has given in to radical left views, at the risk of endangering Jewish lives."
Brigadier-General (res.) Rabbi Avichai Ronsky, head of the Itamar Hesder Yeshiva, former IDF Chief Rabbi and once head of the IDF Shomron Brigade, reacted sharply: “Half a year after the murder, the blood still bubbling and the community still tending its bleeding wounds, allowing residents of Awarta, the home of the murderers of the Fogel and Shabo families, into our community – is an irresponsible travesty!"
Gershon Mesika, Head of the Shomron Regional Council contacted the commanding ranks of the IDF and Knesset Members in order to stop the murderess clan's harvest: "It is an outrage that cries out to Heaven. A year ago, exactly, I warned the army Civil Administration that terrorists can use the olive harvest as an opportunity to collect intelligence before attacking. In spite of all my warnings, hundreds of Arabs from the village Awarta were allowed into Itamar to harvest the olives and we all know the tragic results.  I would expect that this year there would be some logic employed."
A PA Arab has been lightly injured after being hit by a rock. He was treated by an IDF soldier at the scene.  The circumstances surrounding the attack are not yet clear, sources said.
Last March, Tamar Fogel, 12 years old at the time, arrived home at midnight after a Sabbath youth activity to discover that both her parents, her 3-month-old baby sister and two brothers, ages 11 and 4, had been stabbed to death and had their throats slashed. Court documents showed that one of the two Arab terrorists held down the children for slaughter, and shot the mother after the other terrorist stabbed her.
The two cousins, Amjad Awad, 19 and Hakim Awad, 18 (17 at the time of the murder), were residents of the neighboring PA Arab village of Awarta. Both expressed pride and no remorse for the crime during the trial. They were sentenced to five consecutive life sentences plus five years in prison, a total of 130 years behind bars.
The Israeli government has pointed out repeatedly that murders like the Fogel massacre in Itamar, while not known to have been directed by a specific terrorist organization, are incited by the Palestinian Authority's constant, incessant stream of media invective.
“Incitement against Israel, which frequently turns into genuine anti-Semitic incitement, is an inseparable part of the fabric of life in the Palestinian Authority,” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu pointed out at the time of the murders.

Second suspect in Fogel family murder pleads guilty Amjad Awad, charged with murder of five members of Fogel family in Itamar massacre last March together with cousin Hakim, admits to crimes

Awarta resident Amjad Awad, 19, who was charged with the murder of five members of the Fogel family in the Itamar massacre last March together with his cousin, Hakim, has admitted to the crimes ascribed to him – five counts of murder.


The judges in the Samaria Military Court sought to examine the primary evidence in the case before deciding whether to convict him by his own admission.


Amjad was the mastermind behind the massacre. Together with Hakim he brutally murdered Ehud Fogel, 36, Ruth Fogel, 35, 11-year-old Yoav, 4-year-old Elad and 2-month-old Hadas. His cousin helped him by holding down the children and shooting Ruth after Amjad stabbed her.

Amjad Awad (Photo: Hagai Aharon)

Last month, the court sentenced Hakim, 18, to five consecutive life sentences and another five years in prison - a total of 130 years behind bars. In court, Hakim claimed that security forces had tied up and killed two residents from his village last year.

"I'm 18 and am going through puberty. Not every young man at this age thinks of murder, just a Palestinian man whose land has been occupied. This is what the State does to me every day. When I want to leave my village, I need to undergo a search that always includes being beaten."

Moments before the sentence was read out, Hakim Awad managed to say that he was not sorry and explained that he murdered the Fogels "because of the occupation". The judges said then that they avoided sentencing him to death "because it wasn't effective with those kinds of people".

Killing babies with a smile

Giulio Meotti describes a court appearance last week by Hakim Awad, one of the two young 'Palestinians' who confessed to, and was convicted of, the murder of five members of the Fogel family in Itamar last March.

In court, Awad always smiled at the camera, just like [9/11 hijacker Mohamed] Atta did. Awad said he has “no regrets” and flashed the "V" sign for victory while he was leaving the courthouse. “I am a person like you, I have no mental condition, I never had a serious illness,” Awad said to the judges. His smile was sincere.

The Fogels’ massacre in Itamar, where two Palestinians murdered babies as deliberately and unabashedly as very few other than the Nazis and Khmer Rouge ever had, has not been deciphered by our writers and intellectuals. It's because we have been told that “they hate us” is the language of xenophobes, the illiberal, the intolerant; that genocidal anti-Semitism was buried in the ashes of Auschwitz; that we have to be polite, sanitized and self-critical.

...

A seductive combination of post-colonial white guilt mixed with liberal condescension has dulled our moral senses and made us blind to Awad’s smile; a smirk that conveys unleashed hatred, contempt, physical aggression, the desire to expel, to destroy, and to eliminate the Jews.

Meotti goes on to compare Awad to the Nazis.

It's also the smile of Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo chief in southeastern France from 1942 to 1944, who laughed all the time when the Jewish victims described the torture at court in 1997. In 2007, a photo album containing 116 rare photographs of senior Nazi officials at the Auschwitz concentration camp was made public by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Josef Mengele, the camp doctor notorious for his medical experiments, is smiling while the gas chambers are operating in Birkenau.

Germany perpetrated the Holocaust not because it had the means to do so, but because its leaders engendered the will to do so. This totalitarian, robotic willingness also lies in Hakim Awad’s smile.

Did anyone suggest making peace with the Nazis? Here's what Winston Churchill had to say on that subject.

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

You ask, What is our policy? I will say; “It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.” You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour!”

If Churchill were Prime Minister of Israel today, you can bet that he would not be negotiating with the leaders of a society that produces the likes of Hakim Awad.

Morality - Tribute to Fogel Family - Aaron Holder

Tamar Fogel, Orphaned Terror Victim, Visits Pollard in Jail

Tamar Fogel, 12-year-old survivor of the Fogel family massacre, last week visited Jonathan Pollard during the traditional seven day mourning period (shiva) mandated by halakha (Jewish law) for the loss of a parent, sibling or offspring.  During shiva, mourners sit on low stools or the floor, wear rent garments and are consoled by visitors who also say special words of comfort as they leave.

Pollard is mourning the loss of his father while in jail after American authorities refused humanitarian pleas that he be allowed to attend the funeral.

Pollard, serving a life term for an offense that usually carries a punishment of 2-4 years in prison, is the son of the late Prof. Morris Pollard, who died at the age of 95. The Obama administration also turned down pleas that Pollard be allowed to visit his father before he died. The kaddish prayer, said at each prayer service for 11 months after the death of a parent, requires a quorum of ten Jewish men (a minyan) and therefore Rabbi Yona Metzger, Chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Israel, has taken it upon himself to recite the prayer for Pollard.

However, prison authorities allowed Tamar Fogel to visit him in his cell. She and two younger brothers escaped the gory fate that met her parents, two other brothers and a baby sister after two Palestinian Authority teenage terrorists savagely knifed them to death in their home in Samaria earlier this year.

After the shocking attack, Pollard sent condolences to Tamar and her brothers by sending them teddy bears.

Tamar’s grandfather, Rabbi Yehuda Ben Yishai, accompanied her to the North Carolina prison where Pollard is languishing while his health is deteriorating.

Rabbi Ben Yishai said that Pollard, despite the loss of his father, asked about the surviving Fogel children.

Tamar’s visit was rare because prison authorizes generally have not allowed visitors under the age of 18.

Fogel Baby-Stabber ‘Proud of What I Did’

Amjad Awad (18), one of two Arabs who savagely slaughtered five members the Fogel family March 11, said Sunday that he has no regrets for what he did.

“I am proud of what I did and will accept any punishment I receive, because I did it all for Palestine,” he said after his arraignment at a Samaria military court.

 

Hakim Awad (17) and Amjad Awad of Awarta were formally charged with five counts of intentionally causing death – the military court’s equivalent of murder charges. They were also charged with stealing weapons, breaking and entering and conspiracy to commit a crime.

 

The charge sheet describes how they entered the Fogel family’s home in Itamar, surprising two children, Yoav (11) and Elad (4). Amjad led Yoav to another room and stabbed him to death there, while Hakim tried to strangle Elad. Amjad then returned and stabbed Elad with the two knives he held in his hands.

 

They then proceeded to the parents’ bedroom, where a struggle developed. Amjad managed to slash Rabbi Ehud Fogel to death and then stabbed his wife Ruthie in the neck and back. Hakim shot and killed her.

 

They then heard the three-month old baby girl, Hadas, crying, and stabbed her to death too.

 

The Military Prosecution has yet to announce whether it will ask for the death sentence for the murderers. Even if it does, the chances that such a sentence will be given and carried out are slim.

 

The Itamar Yeshiva, where Rabbi Fogel taught, is expanding as a Zionist response to the murders.

 

Israel has said that murders like the Fogel massacre, while not known to have been directed by a specific terrorist group,are incited by the PA. 

ISRAEL MATZAV: LA Times loves terrorists

The Los Angeles Times does an unbelievably sympathetic portrayal of two brutal murderers, the murderers of five members of the Fogel family of Itamar. The blog post (that's what it is) was written by one Maher Abukhater of "Ramallah, West Bank." This guy makes every excuse you can possibly make for two people who, among other things, slit the throat of a three-month old baby.

“They said they have done it and they are not going to plead innocent or claim they made their confession under duress,” their attorney, Faris Abu Hasan, said. “I do not know what kind of state of mind they were in when they confessed.”

Hasan said he thought they had given up on life and didn’t believe they would make it alive into the heavily fortified settlement of Itamar, let alone survive getting back out.

The two Palestinians, residents of Awarta, cooperated fully with their interrogators and gave them full and explicit details of how they had accomplished the killings.

...

Hasan, who only has met them once since the army announced their arrest, believes the Awads are resigned to their fate. He says once the case comes to court, which may be soon, the pair will plead guilty.

Once the prosecutor presents the list of charges to the military court, which will convene May 27 in a northern West Bank military base, the judge will set a date for the trial. Hasan said it will likely take just one court session for the judge to pass sentence because the Awads will admit committing the killings and testify that they were not coerced into making their confessions.

An Israeli military judge Tuesday gave the army prosecutor 10 days to present the charge list against the boys.

“I do not think I will have a case in court,” Hasan said. “It seems that it is already decided.”

Yeah, confessions with forensic evidence tend to shorten trials, don't they? But you can bet this trial will still take a lot longer than any trial in the 'Palestinian Authority.' And unfortunately, since we haven't administered the death penalty since Adolph Eichmann 50 years ago, these two monsters will likely sit in jail getting an education until they are sprung in a 'prisoner exchange' - maybe even for Gilad Shalit.

Itamar Yeshiva: Remembering the Massacre, Continuing to Build

Two 18-year old 'Palestinians' arrested for Fogel family massacre

The two cousins - aged 'around 18' and 'nearly 19' - are charged with the murder. They are from the neighboring village of Awarta. Six other 'Palestinians' were arrested, including an uncle Salah who helped them to hide the murder weapons and guns stolen from Itamar, and to burn their clothes. The uncle gave the weapons to a 'Palestinian' from Ramallah, who was arrested on April 14. The weapons were found in his home. Seven of the eight 'Palestinians' arrested are related.

The two reconstructed the murder. They jumped the fence into Itamar, broke into an empty house, and stole an M-16 rifle, bullets and a bulletproof vest. Then they broke into the Fogel house, where they murdered the 11-year old Yoav and 4-year old Elad. Then they went into the parents' room where they fought with and murdered the parents. They apparently shot Ruti Fogel with the rifle.

Then they left the house, debated whether to return to look for weapons,returned, heard the baby crying and murdered her. They did not see the other children - they said they would have murdered them too had they seen them. They then stole an M-16 from the Fogel house as well.

They are affiliated with the 'Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.'

Their motivation was terror for the sake of terror. None of the terror organizations were apparently involved. All Israelis and Jews were their targets, and they came to murder - and for no other reason.

It took a long time for the two murderers to confess.

Machon Meir Interviews Bereaved Father of Ruth Fogel z"l

Mayor of Itamar Discusses Fogel Family Massacre at YU

Speaking to a crowd of hundreds in Yeshiva University’s Lamport Auditorium, the mayor of Itamar, Rabbi Moshe Goldsmith, described the impact of five brutal murders on his small, close-knit community.

“For a community to lose a special family like the Fogels, there are no words to describe the pain,” Goldsmith said of the parents and three children murdered in Itamar on March 11. “This family has caused the entire Jewish world to wake up and realize that we can’t live our lives the same way anymore.”

During a presentation on Wednesday night, March 30, that featured photographs of the Fogel home and Itamar’s breached security fence, Goldsmith delivered a firsthand account of the night of the attack. “Families like ours were all in our houses, singing zemirot and celebrating Shabbat,” he said. “We had no idea what the terrorists were planning.”

Goldsmith explained how the attackers tested blind spots along the town’s fence and security camera for months in advance, then waited in an empty house next door for Tamar Fogel, 12, to escort school friends home before entering the Fogel home. A hand-written note of congratulations on the recent birth of Hadas, 3 months, was still hanging on the door.

“We’re on the front lines and so we’re targeted,” said Goldsmith, noting the town’s location in the heart of Judeo-Samaria. “This has been the hardest period in our lives. However, our response to these tragedies is not to give up—it is to build.” The Fogel home stands in a section of town that was constructed several years ago after members of another family were murdered by terrorists and their home set on fire.

To highlight the community’s heartfelt devotion to the land, Goldsmith showed a video of daily life in Itamar: children eating ice cream on benches, cucumbers growing in hothouses and chickens roaming backyards. “We are a people who just want to live a life of peace in Israel, yet every day we have to know things most people don’t know in a lifetime,” he said.

In a question-and-answer session, Goldsmith spoke about further security measures Itamar hopes to take, such as the purchase of another security camera and fence expansions that he expects will cost $80,000. But he added that vocal support for Israel from abroad, especially in the face of media bias and political opposition, was also critical. “I am amazed by the response of the American community, who has opened its arms to us to hear our story,” he said. “All we want is peace, yet we are the ones going around in bulletproof cars and buses and suffering terrible, terrible tragedies. The media has not written much about us, but everyone in this room can speak out, be brave and spread the truth.”

IDF veteran Adam Kugelman, president of YU’s Soldiers in Exile Club and a board member of the Israel Club, which sponsored Goldsmith’s talk together with the Yeshiva Student Union and Torah Activities Council, felt that the event provided an important personal connection for American Jews to the Itamar tragedy. “People read about it in the news and move on,” he said. “There’s so much in the news today. But to see pictures and hear a firsthand account, that’s critical. That creates a feeling.”

“We have to connect to Israel in any way we can,” said Rabbi Herschel Schachter, rosh yeshiva at YU’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), after the event, which also drew students from Rutgers University, Columbia University, New York University and Queens College. “We have to have more of an awareness that we are one nation.”

Never Forget: The Itamar Tragedy

CAMERA: The New York Times and Itamar

The murders of the Fogel family, including three children stabbed to death in their beds, obviously posed a dilemma for the New York Times.  Fixated as it is on a story line in which Israel, and especially Israeli settlers, bear central responsibility for ongoing tensions with the Arabs, the Times covered the killings with the strained circumlocutions, omissions and colored language typical for the paper’s editors and reporters when addressing peril to Jews and the Jewish state.

 

The first major account of the carnage by reporter Isabel Kershner appeared on March 13 – on page 16 with no photo. A day later, updates on the story appeared closer to the front of the paper, on page 4, as the focus turned to Israel’s announcement of renewed construction in several settlements. Two photos ran that day of the Fogel funerals. A telling caption read: “About 20,000 attended the funerals for the Fogels, whose deaths outraged settlers.”

 

Did the Times think only “settlers” were outraged over slitting the throats of children in their beds? Israel’s leading columnist, Nahum Barnea, who’s not a settler, had written: “The murder in Itamar is so shocking, so horrible, that it makes the debate over settlements irrelevant. Against the murderer, who pulls out a knife and butchers in cold blood three children in their sleep, the difference between Tel Aviv and Itamar is erased.”

 

The Fogel horror had to be reported, of course. But what to call the killings and how much to communicate about their instigation rooted in relentless dehumanizing of Jews throughout Palestinian culture – in media, mosques, schools and political discourse – were the question.

 

Alterations in wording of the Times account on its Web site over the first hours after the event suggest editorial interventions to mute even minimal references to the Israeli Prime Minister’s strong language denouncing Palestinian demonizing of Israel and to the appalling terrorist attack.

 

A version posted at 23:02 GMT included Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement: “A society that permits such wild incitement is one that eventually brings about the murder of children.”

 

That charge, expressing the core of Israel’s belief about the consequences of the pervasive, bigoted assault on Jews by Palestinian leaders and their social, religious and political institutions, was excised. What remained was language that reverted to the paper’s characteristic distancing from the realities of anti-Jewish incitement. The final text read: “Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, pointed a finger at the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, blaming it for what he described as incitement in the schools, the mosques and the news media it controls.”

 

Omitted is the strong connective tie between anti-Jewish propaganda and killing children and inserted is the reference to the Palestinian Authority as “Western-backed.” The message shifts; a finger-wagging leader of Israel, seemingly out of step with the West, is “blaming” the PA leadership – not for demonstrably instilling Jew-hatred, which is a moral outrage – but only for what the Israeli leader “described as incitement.”

 

On March 15, the Times was seemingly compelled to touch fleetingly on the issue, as Israeli leaders pressed their denunciations of the Palestinian Authority’s incitement to violence and muted condemnations of the murders. Once again, though, the information was minimal and colorless, subsumed in a story strenuously emphasizing and repeating that PA leaders condemned the Fogel atrocity.

 

Moreover, the reporter hastened to interject what is likely a partial underpinning of the Times agenda in whitewashing Palestinian incitement: “The new focus on incitement against Israel, together with Israeli dissatisfaction over the Palestinian response to the brutal attack, seemed to pose a question about the Israeli government’s readiness to deal with Mr. Abbas as a serious peace partner – even though Mr. Abbas and Mr. Fayyad are widely considered moderates who have repeatedly said they would never resort to violence.”

 

That is, if Israel insists on drawing attention to the demonization of its people by its peace partner, what might this portend for their “readiness to deal with Mr. Abbas,” who is, after all, “moderate” and “would never resort to violence”?

 

For Times writers, “resort to violence” seemingly does not include raising generations imbued in the belief they’re honor-bound to destroy Israel and in which even babies like the Fogel’s three month old Hadas are deemed targets.

 

In the category of what’s newsworthy and what’s not, the naming of summer camps, sports events, streets and public squares in honor of terrorists such as Dalal Mughrabi, Wafa Idris and Yeyhe Ayyash prompts no serious, focused attention on the part of the Times. As it happens, Mughrabi’s murderous rampage along the Tel Aviv coastal road in 1978 included the killing of at least ten toddlers and children, ages 2-14. Is it surprising that her elevation to icon status for killing demonized Jews would encourage others to seek similar fame by a similar route?

 

But any formulation that casts deep onus on the Palestinians is essentially foreign to the paper’s story line, centered, as it is, on faulting Israel.

 

Kershner’s original account of the Fogel murders included another editorial modification of note. A quote by Israeli military officials about their determination to apprehend the killers originally included the following: “The military called the killings a terrorist attack, indicating that it held Palestinians responsible.”

 

A few hours later all mention of the “t” word was deleted – even as an indirect quote from the Israeli military. Nowhere in the coverage were the killings of the parents and three children characterized as a terrorist attack or even an apparent terrorist attack.

 

To put this in the context of other use of the term “terrorist” by the Times, just four days earlier on March 9, a story about Arid Uka, who shot two American military men in Germany, referred to the event as a “terrorist attack.”

 

On March 4, a story about the arrest of New Jersey men seeking to join a radical Somali group referred to “terrorists born or raised in the United States.”

 

 A February 21 story about an attack on an Islamabad bank referred to a perpetrator as part of a “terrorist group.”

 

 A February 18 story referred to “Somali terrorists” who had bombed crowds in Kampala.

 

On February 11, a story referred to “terrorist groups that threaten India.”

 

On January 29 and 25, multiple references were made to “terrorist” acts in describing a bombing at a Moscow airport.

 

A January 24 story about an attack on an Alexandria, Egypt, church referred to “the terrorist strike.”

 

And so it goes.

 

“Terrorists” kill people across the globe, civilians and military, and are rightly called what they are by the Times. But those who entered the Fogel house and stabbed to death sleeping children were termed “intruders” in the bizarre logic and language of the Times.

 

A follow-up story on March 16 returned to Itamar, focusing on the fervent religious attachment of the residents to the area and noting the communities are deemed a violation of international law by “most of the world” – but not mentioning the traditional counter-view of the United States that they are legal. And, of course, rather than finally probe the malevolent forces in Palestinian culture that nurture and drive actions such as the stabbing of babies, and inspire Gazans to distribute candy and rejoice on hearing of the killing, that whole subject was left untouched.

 

Again.

 

This article was first published in The American Thinker.

My Neighbors Were Murdered . . . The Fogels of Itamar

We were nearing the end of our Shabbat meal this past Friday night. Filled with the warmth of the pleasant family atmosphere, our younger children are preparing for bed. Binah, who recently became bat mitzvah, asks for permission to go to her friend’s house for a Shabbat gathering.

“Yes, sweetheart, you can go,” I say. “Just make sure you’re back by 10:15.”

My murdered neighbors.

Unusually for me, I am too tired to wait for Binah and her older brother, who went to a friend’s house for the entire Shabbat meal, to return home. After clearing the table, I retire to my room and sink into a deep sleep.

At 2 AM, my husband jumps out of bed. My oldest daughter is calling him. Soldiers are at the door. “Is everything O.K.?” I call out sleepily.At 2 AM, my husband jumps out of bed. My oldest daughter is calling him. Soldiers are at the door.

“Is everything O.K.?” I call out sleepily.

My husband checks on all the children; they’re all safely at home. He reports back to the soldiers.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Some kind of security incident,” he replies. “They’re checking up on all the families to make sure that everything is okay. I think we’d better say Psalms.”

I get up and join my husband in prayer, concentrating on the positive verses and mentally blocking out all the verses that seem to insinuate evil tidings. “Think good and it will be good,” I tell myself.

From time to time I look out of my bedroom window. To the side, I can see military vehicles driving up in the direction of the newly built houses at the other side of the village—an unusual sight on Shabbat for the religious community of Itamar. This is obviously a case when profaning the sanctity of Shabbat is permitted: lives are clearly in danger . . .

From time to time I look out of my bedroom window. I can see military vehicles driving up in the direction of the newly built houses at the other side of the village—an unusual sight on ShabbatMilitary flares are exploding in the dark night sky above, illuminating the hills around us, a sure sign that the army is searching for somebody or something ominous out there. I continue saying Psalms, trying to fathom from the familiar, calming words whether all is good, or not; but I am no prophetess.

I see a group of soldiers walk across the synagogue courtyard just beneath my window, wearing helmets and bullet-proof vests, guns at their sides.

The flow of vehicles continues. Military jeeps and ambulances are now rolling out of the village. I notice civilians walking quickly to the village offices, which are also in view from my window. During times of danger the offices serve as headquarters for the emergency task force which collects and relays information to us citizens.

Seeing the civilians walking freely outside, I realize that the incident has come to its end. Maybe now we can learn what happened. I am still optimistic.

My husband spots a friend and walks down to greet him. Through the window I watch them embrace in a bear hug. I try to discern from their motions whether all is well. An hour has passed since we awoke.

Exhausted, I crawl back into bed, waiting for my husband’s return with news.

Itamar, Israel

At long last he comes in but stands there in silence. Something is clearly not right.

“Is anyone injured?”

“Yes,” he replies quietly, and adds no more. I recognize that if he could, he would ensure me that nobody had been killed. I am dumbfounded.

“Terrorists infiltrated the village and broke into one of the houses,” he tells me slowly, and is silent once more. Unfortunately, in the twelve years that we have lived here, Itamar has known too many similar incidents.

“Was anyone saved?” I ask him haltingly, well-versed in the ramifications of such an occurrence, but wishing only to hear good to the same extent that he wishes to refrain from telling me of the evil.

“Three of the six children were saved.” I instantly derive that the parents, too, were not spared.

Not wishing to leave me groping for questions any longer, he adds, “There were five killed altogether, the Fogels . . .”

A chill grips my heart.

It’s Shabbat, I tell myself. Try not to cry on Shabbat.

I try to defeat the tears that threaten to overwhelm me with the power of my mind, by regulating my breathing to the rhythm of a chassidic meditation. I toss and turn in bed. Sleep evades me for the next few hours. Towards dawn I finally fall into a short, fitful sleep, dreaming strange dreams.

I wake up at 7 o’clock to the sound of my children’s voices, hoping ever so briefly that last night was nothing more than a horrific nightmare. Alas.

My husband is already in synagogue, praying in the early service, as he does every day. I must get up to tell the children before they run down, too, and hear the shocking news from other sources.

“The Shabbat gathering I went to last night was at the Fogels!” Binah tells me through her tears, as I sit with her on her bed. “We all left there together and Tamar [Fogel] was with us!”

“That’s why she was saved,” I reply, gently caressing her.

Throughout Shabbat everything centers on the terrorist attack that left Tamar and two of her younger brothers so dreadfully orphaned at such an early age.

“Mrs. Fogel was helping to organize the celebrations for the Talmud Torah [boys’ school]’s twentieth anniversary,” my fourteen-year-old son tells us with tears in his eyes. This year, until baby Hadas was born, Ruth Fogel had been working as the secretary for the school while the regular secretary was on maternity leave.

The funeral. (Meir Alfasi)

“Last year she was form tutor for the other ninth-grade class,” my now tenth-grade daughter tells us. “She taught us, too . . .”—and, I remember now, Mrs. Fogel would often give my daughter a lift to school.

After the morning prayers each of the children goes off to a specially arranged meeting with their familiar educational figures from the village and professionals in trauma treatment. There they hear the whole story in a way that is supposedly suited to their age (is there really a way to tell young children that their schoolmates and their parents have been brutally murdered in cold blood?!)

Although I hardly knew the family myself, that doesn’t help ease the shock, horror and pain that I share with my children, with my community, with my people. And, I remind myself, G-d says He shares our pain with us, too: “In all their troubles, He is troubled” (Isaiah 63:9; Talmud, Taanit 16a).

The names of the victims have not yet been released to the general public. After Shabbat is over, I call my seventeen-year-old son in yeshiva high school in Jerusalem—Mercaz Harav. Was it only three years ago that we were at our wits’ end with worry over what was going on there? He was only in ninth grade at the time and, by Divine Providence, was out of the yeshiva when the gunman shot at the boys learning there in the library, injuring one of my son’s roommates and killing one of his classmates along with seven other pupils . . .

I can’t make a call out of my cell phone—the cell network is busy, probably overloaded with callers who have just heard the horrific tidings after Shabbat. I call again from our land line and my son answers immediately.

“Have you heard the news?” I ask him gently.

“Sure. My friends told me something was going on in Itamar and I was just checking it up on the Internet. I was worried about you.” I didn’t ask him why he didn’t call us to find out.

My heart is torn to pieces. Why do my children have to know such suffering at such a tender age?

Unlike my heart, my faith is whole, as is the faith of our community and all those who build their homes in every part of the Land of Israel. We are aware that by living where we live we are protecting Jerusalem from more such vicious attacks; and Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Netanya, Ashdod . . . No matter how much we suffer, our faith grows ever stronger. We channel our pain into positive actions, standing solidly by our resolve never to succumb to the use of violence against the brutality that smacks us in the face again and again. For every Jew murdered, more orchards, more fields, more greenhouses will be planted; another house, another neighborhood, another village will be built, with the compassion and benevolence that we learn from the Torah and will continue to teach to our children.

We share the legacy of faith that the Fogels, Ehud and Ruth and their three innocent children, have left us. They set up their lives together in Netzarim, in Gush Katif, only to be cast out of their home, their lives uprooted, for our enemies to trample upon its ruins in a fantasy of peace that has never been realized. Undaunted, they relocated to the town of Ariel, and then finally to Itamar—just two short years ago. Rabbi Ehud found his place as one of the rabbis in the school here and Ruth continued to build their beautiful family in their new home. Together, they planted an olive orchard and taught their children to love the people of Israel, to love the Torah and to love the Land of Israel. Together they were snatched away from us by the brutal hands of bloodthirsty terrorists.

WRITE TO THE FAMILY:
Share your condolences and mitzvah resolutions with the Fogel orphans

May the Fogels’ souls be bound in the bundle of life.

It is no longer Shabbat, we are allowed to cry.