Tel Aviv murder suspect Nashat Melhem. Came from an allegedly normative family
Photo: Raanan Ben-Zur
Two sides of the same coin
Analysis: Tel Aviv and Duma murder suspects are not errant weeds, mentally Ill, lone wolf terrorists or confused young people. They are filthy fingers which should be cut off by Shin Bet, while ground they developed on should be handled like a spreading epidemic by both Jewish and Arab societies.
The murderer from Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Street
and Amiram Ben-Uliel
and his friends, who are suspected of committing the murder in the Palestinian village of Duma, are two sides of the same coin - not errant weeds, not mentally Ill, not lone wolf terrorists and definitely not confused and adventurous young people.
The two murderers came from allegedly normative families, which claim to be supporters of the State and the rule of law. Nashat Melhem's father is a security guard and volunteer in the Israel Police, and Ben-Uliel's father is a rabbi in a military preparatory program.
They are filthy fingers, which are connected to hands and a body that maintain them, move them and protect them. These murderous fingers should be cut off by the Shin Bet, but the hands and the body - the ground they developed on - should be handled like a spreading epidemic by both societies, the Jewish and the Arab.
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But the two sons, like some of their siblings, have radicalized the values they learned in their surroundings and taken a step forward to cross the rickety fence which still separates between the societies they were raised in and anarchy and hatred towards anything the Israeli establishment represents.
Duma murder suspect Amiram Ben-Uliel. Hatred towards anything the Israeli establishment represents
Several hours after the murder in Duma, the Shin Bet's Jewish Division already had the names of two suspects: Amiram Ben-Uliel and A., a minor. Yet it took five months and unusual interrogation methods to turn the intelligence evidence into a confession, a reenactment and indictments.
It wasn't unintentionally that from day one, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon and senior defense establishment officials rejected claims made by Yesha Council leaders and Knesset members and ministers that the murder was committed by Arabs. Even when the Shin Bet presented the texts found in the possession of the "revolt group," as well as additional evidence, the heads of the radical right chose to ignore them and demand that the Jewish Division be shut down.
The reason it took five months till the prosecution is that the Shin Bet is a thwarting body whose goal is to prevent terror attacks. It's not its job to lead people to court. So even after it obtained names of suspects, it focused on the effort to thwart concrete attacks planned by the group which the Duma murderers came from.
The second effort was to neutralize the group, which eventually led to the four indictments filed Sunday. That is the reason why the minor was placed under house arrest, while Ben-Uliel - who had disconnected himself from the group - was under tight surveillance.
The attempt to create a picture of confused minors who have been thrown out of educational systems is their relatives' way of building an alibi for them. The acts they are suspected of carrying out, which likely include unsolved affairs, allow no leniency over their age. Moreover, the definition of the term "minor" is flexible" - in the territories, an Arab is considered a minor up to the age of 16, not 18 like among the Jews.
The Duma affair calls for a reexamination of the discrimination in the definition of minors, particularly as senior defense establishment officials declare that a Jewish terror attack is much more dangerous for the Israeli society and national security than a Palestinian terror attack. Jewish terror - as revealed in the indictments - is aimed at creating a shockwave which will lead to a series of clashes between Jews and Arabs that will require the army to enter the territories, eventually leading to regional chaos which will make it possible to fulfill the vision of a halachic state.
Fortunately, the revolt group was caught at its inception. They were planning to create provocations on the Temple Mount, but estimated that their chances of succeeding at the moment were not high, so they focused on two targets: Creating a wave of riots by burning Palestinians homes along with their inhabitants, and embarrassing the State of Israel vis-à-vis the Christian world by targeting churches. The revolt group was neutralized, but the Shin Bet is concerned by the fact that imitators, followers and avengers exist and continue to develop around them.
In the past year, the Shin Bet reached most parents of the revolt group members and of members of the wider circles. Some of them are people from the heart of the Judea and Samaria settlements, who were shocked by their children's misdeeds and expressed their helplessness. On the other hand, some of these parents were familiar with their children's comments, were aware of some of their activities, and in cases of arrests even made up alibis for them. In any event, no one in the body which developed these filthy fingers took any real steps to stop them.
The suspects were defined in the media as a "ticking bomb," which justified the special measures used against them, but officially the Shin Bet has no such term. The unusual interrogation measures are used according to Clause 113 in criminal law, which states that if there is an almost certain likelihood that the interrogatee holds information which could help thwart an attack, a special investigation can be permitted and then presented to the attorney general's examination.
If the attorney general decides that the clause was applied without justification, the investigator may be punished, but so far all cases of torture complaints have been closed. That will likely happen again in this case.
