Nir Katz
Photo: AFP
Teitel. Confessed, but it wasn't him
Gay victim's mother: There's another Teitel out there
Mother of Nir Katz, who was murdered at Tel Aviv youth center in August, says following arrest of Jewish terrorist, 'There are people here driven by an ideology with the goal of destroying the other'
When the mother of Nir Katz, who was murdered
in August at a homosexual and lesbian youth center in Tel Aviv together with Liz Trubeshi, watched the arrest
of Jewish terrorist Yaakov Teitel on television, she neither felt pain nor anger. All she felt was sadness.
The police and Shin Bet suspected that Teitel, who was responsible for many hate crimes, was also behind the massacre at the gat youth club in Tel Aviv. He was interrogated on the matter and confessed, but the police estimate that he was not the murderer but knows who the shooter was and is covering for him.
"It makes me very sad," Ayala Katz told Ynet on Monday. "How can people like this, whose entire goal is to hurt people who are different, walk around freely? What we are missing in this country so much is compassion and love of the other."
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Katz did not feel disappointed by the fact that Teitel was apparently not the man who murdered her son. "It doesn’t matter whether he physically hurt the youth club, whether he is the one who fired the shots or not. The fact that a person who acted this way was caught is terrible. This essentially means that there is another person like Teitel out there and that other people should be afraid.
"There are people here who are driven by an ideology with the goal of destroying the other. For this they use religion or faith, but as far as I understand, this is not the essence of the Jewish religion. They commit the most serious religious offenses – like 'Thou shall not kill' and unfounded hatred."
The mother stressed that she is not pointing a finger at one sector or another, but at people, individuals or many, who take advantage of religion for their own purposes. "We must not reach a situation in which one sector fights another sector. This is the exact opposite of what Nir would have wanted to see."
She first heard rumors that the gay center shooter was arrested from the media. "The rumors hit me too and I began following them. There is quite a lot of information on the Web. There is a lot of curiosity. We are human beings, you can't deny it. It takes a lot of energy and my son's loss was difficult enough. So I searched for information, but that's all.
"I have no hopes for comfort or relief when the real murderer is caught. I will have a feeling of closure, but my child is gone," she concluded.
