Shinawi and his girlfriend
Haifa shooter was a rabid Jew-hater
Details of the investigation against Mohammad Shinawi, who murdered one and wounded another in Haifa last month, reveal his attack was motivated by an obsessive loathing of Jews: 'Everything was against Jews. Targeting them was legitimate my whole life.'
New details from the investigation of Mohammad Yusef Shinawi, 21, the terrorist who murdered Guy Kafri
and shot Rabbi Yehiel Iluz in Haifa at the beginning of last month, have revealed the extent of his hatred toward Jews which inspired him to carry out the attack.
Protocols of Shinawi’s investigation, which were released just days after an indictment was issued against him, show that ten years ago, during the Second Lebanon War, Shinawi assisted youths in burning vehicles owned by Jews and vandalized property belonging to others.
“In 2006, during the Second Lebanon War, I burned cars belonging to Jews in Haifa with people that were older than me, and that was what planted in my head and I grew up with that,” Shinawi stated during his questioning.
Mohammad Shinawi: 'Targeting Jews was legitimate.'
“At age 13, I had a gun. My uncle shot a handgun at a club in Haifa, and he was arrested and sentenced to three years. I would hear about prayers that gives strength and I wanted to kill Jews. Maybe I also wanted to (atone) for my past, all my mistakes and arguments with my uncles and my mother who were always arrested for hitting Jews,” Shinawi openly said.
During another investigation, he pointed out that he did not set the car alight himself, but rather only brought the fuel to the arsonists. “They were five years older than I was and sent me to buy gasoline from the gas station,” he explained. “I knew that there was a war and the boys told me that were are Muslims and Palestinians. On Yom Kippur I went around with friends, were rode around, stole bikes from Jews. Everything was against Jews.”
As he continued to elaborate on his obsessive hatred, Shinawi explained how he once wanted to rent an apartment but was prevented from doing so because he was an Arab.
Guy Kafri murdered (Photo: Zohar Shahar)
“Recently I went to rent an apartment in a Haifa neighborhood, a place with a swimming pool. I wanted to rent there and closed the deal with the owner. When he heard that (my name was) Mohammad, an Arab, he stopped answering my calls,”Shinawi claimed, before adding that “the acts we carried out against Jews continued throughout my whole life.
“I stole from Jews and did not see anything wrong with it. To harm Jews was legitimate,” Shinawi continued.
As the investigation went on, Shinawi shared a story that his girlfriend, ‘A’ teased him about Jews.
“I had a lot of reasons to hate Jews and then she said something to me that made me feel bad.” His girlfriend, he said, would taunt him by accusing him of being a Zionist.
Calmly describing the events of the shooting itself as they unfolded, Shinawi recalled seeing a “religious Jewish man” before shooting him. “I heard him (yelp). I shot four, five or six bullets,” he coldly described. “It was a gun that fired automatically. It has a button for three bullets I think. I don’t remember if the button was pressed. After that I ran northward.”
Shinawi and his girlfriend
He then recounted getting in a taxi before selecting his second victim who he said he shot three times as the gun was still in his bag, which he then threw behind a tree.
Asked by one of the investigators why he chose the day he did, of all days, to murder Jews, Shinawi responded: “I didn’t choose the day. It chose me. On that day all the hatred inside me exploded, all my hatred for Jews. There was no significance about the date. I simply felt that the time had come to carry out the attack.”
Shinawi’s killing spree claimed the life of 48-year-old Guy Kafri, a schoolbus driver. Several days after an intense search Shinawi turned himself in to the police in Acre before authorities determined days after that his motivations were nationalistic.
