25 thoughts on “Move Over Amir, There’s a New Settler Assassin Movin’ In – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
task-attention.png
Comments are published at the sole discretion of the owner.
 

  1. From IRS website……
    The Internal Revenue Service is the nation’s tax collection agency and administers the Internal Revenue Code enacted by Congress.
    One knows, Congress is an “Occupied Territory”. Till one is able to change THAT status, efforts at advocating greater IRS and federal law enforcement agency oversight of the American pro-settler movement may not be successful as the revenue code itself might need a change!

  2. His lawyer says he is “mentally unbalanced”. Just like the Seattle shooter who attacked the Jewish center. You yourself pointed out that since the Seattle shooter is supposedly insane, no lessons can be drawn about his relationship with Islam, even though he said he explicitly said hated Jews. Thus, should that be the case with Teital, you are in no position to draw any conclusions about his relations with “the Right”, the “settlers”, etc. Thus, you will have to wait until the psychiatric evaluations are in and his trial will have concluded.

    BTW-the SHABAK is saying he was NOT involved in the Tel Aviv shooting.

    1. B.K.: The usual patheticness. Teitel has a TWELVE YEAR HISTORY of mayhem including at least two bombings (one of which seriously injured a young child), two murders of Palestinians, the Tel Aviv gay center murders & numerous other acts. Haq engaged in one heinous act of terror. Teitel prob. has no history of seeing a shrink, taking medication or any psychological disorder, while Haq does.

      You are beyond pathetic. You’re racist through & through. You simply can’t admit that the settler movement is riddled with violence & wishes, if it could, to overthrow the secular Israeli state & replace it with a Torah true, Arab-rein halachic state. And Jack Teitel is one of its stormtroopers to that end.

      BTW, Teitel himself is claiming that he WAS involved with the T.A. shooting. Considering how well the Shin Bet has done in apprehending him I’d rather not trust their statements about this until they’re verified by a more trustworthy source.

  3. It’s sad to see people quick to tear apart the Israeli police force. This clearly was the work of a single person with no similar method of operation over an extended period of time. To assume that he wasn’t caught because Israeli police looked the other way is a poor analysis at best. When a police force is gathering intelligence, they are talking to people who have intelligence to offer. You might assume that this man, because he was hanging fliers in support of another terrorist act, might have bragged to friends, but it looks to me like he had no friends to brag to. Resorting to this kind of rhetoric is eerily reminiscent of the thinking I hear from Islam. Israel is better than that. They are the protectors of God’s word. Praise God.

    1. Thanks for the undying support of Pastor Hagee’s Christian Zionist right wingnuts. The police had multiple crime scenes & indeed many similar types of crimes which should have presented patterns for them to study & evidence to examine. The fact that the Shin Bet provided the picture for this post indicates they had him under some kind of surveillance. Why it took 12 yrs. to reel this guy in is a mystery & the Shin Bet & Israeli police should be ashamed of their shoddy work. Period.

      1. Just a brief look at your blog gives one the sense that you support peace, despise bigotry or racism, and have an overall hope to make the world a better place. Namecalling doesn’t quite fit into that picture.

        “The police had multiple crime scenes & indeed many similar types of crimes which should have presented patterns for them to study & evidence to examine.” So which is it?! Was it intended or shoddy?! You’ve asserted both.

        “The fact that the Shin Bet provided the picture for this post indicates they had him under some kind of surveillance.” Really?! You sure see alot in that pic that I don’t. How much you wanna bet I can find an uncropped pic with two cops – one on each arm?! Hold on! Your own pic has a police uniform shoulder board in the lower left! BBC has a better pic if you google image search it.

        Perhaps you should just surrender to God, thank Him for the salvation offered to you through Jesus Christ and start the loving!

        1. Namecalling doesn’t quite fit into that picture.

          Gimme a break. You’re a Christian ZIonist & don’t deny it which means you’re a supporter of the settlers & the Israeli police likely.

          The line bet. shoddy work & deliberate negligence or malfeasance is very thin & I see no reason I need to pinpoint for you which side of the line this case falls on.

          Today’s Haaretz notes the Shin Bet had him under surveillance. I don’t know whether they had him under surveillance for a few weeks or years. If they didn’t know what this guy was capable of & only surveilled him for the few wks during which he was attaching flyers to light poles, then their negligence in not identifying him is even worse.

          If you try to evangelize in my blog you’ll be banned so fast yr head will spin. Not here buddy. Not now. Not ever.

          1. You seem determined to fit me into a stereotype… in the arena of conversation and ideas, is it fair for you to dismiss my thoughts by putting me under an umbrella and moving me to the back of the room?!

            I tripped across your blog on a google search because my “flashtraffic” from Joel Rosenberg left me wanting. I have no thoughts on settlers and only a slight understanding of Zionism. I am a police detective. I spend my days in funhouses filled with smoke.

            When discussing these topics, it is important to realize which worldview is held. I try, with my basic understanding of the Bible to have a Biblical worldview. The Biblical worldview tells us that all nations will turn against Israel. There are two voices today turning that tide, Islam and the secular progressive movement. It’s a shame that both resort to untruths to fuel their hatred. Are you in one of these two camps?!

            Did we meet before?! Maybe Southwest Michigan? Kalamazoo or Grand Rapids?

          2. I don’t share yr “Biblical” world view though I do have a much closer relationship with those figures in the Bible than you do since I never abandoned their religion as yr ancestors did long ago.

            I am a spiritual progressive & I resent & object to yr nonsense claim that progressives turn against Israel. Not only is the claim ludicrous but it is a violation of my comment rules (once again). Your views are based on gross generalizations that have hardly any basis in fact. Base yr comments on facts & verifiable credible sources. If you persist in implying that I have turned against Israel then you will lose yr comment privileges.

      1. Lovely, Yasmine must be selling West Bank real estate. Thanks for telling us about the happy shiny people who live there.

        Gee, I’m angry about Jewish settlers going on rampages & killing not just Palestinians, but Israelis as well. Imagine my nerve at feeling “really angry” about this. I’ll have to remember to keep my eyes of the prize which is that settlers should be turning Palestinian land into little patches of suburban heaven.

  4. …the rather astonishing revalation that he confessed to murdering two Palestinians 12 years ago and was not prosecuted.

    I don’t find that in the least astonishing. One of the first things that came to mind when I read about this case was that had he stuck to murdering Palestinians he most likely would never have been arrested.

  5. One of the problems with terror investigations is that the nature of the site, often including blast damage, destroys fingerprint evidence, DNA, and other “traditional” CSI-forensic information. Furthermore, the use of standardized military weapons endemic to Israel/Palestine in terror means that ballistics evidence may be less than useful. Jewish stealth terrorists (as opposed to suicide spree killers) within Israel tend to be caught when denounced, or when undetonated bombs can be traced back to a specific maker, or when something goes wrong with the plan and they try to proceed openly in public, or they indulge in publicity. Teitel’s lack of networking, relative lack of left-behind clues and devices obviated the first two, and he was caught when he did the last.

    He was questioned and released for lack of evidence in the murder of Issa Mahamra, and no one else was ever charged, so there may be at least one homicide detective in the Israel Police who was arguing for him to be watched. There are a lot of unsolved homicides in Jaffa, Lod, and Ramle, within the Arab community, too, and resolving single-shooter single-victim cases in Israel is ridiculously difficult as communities circle the wagons for the reputations of both suspect and victim. Never assume complicity when physics, incompetence, and sociology are far weightier factors. As a civilian medic, I got tired of “no one saw anything”, but why would a shot-up Palestinian drug buyer give up the local capos to me or any other Jew? They have a business disagreement, I am The Enemy. Ditto the abused Haredi woman, or anyone else whose us-vs-them is developed enough. :-(((

    1. Nice of you to speak on behalf of the Israeli police & excuse their possible ineptitude. All I can say is that many investigations in many countries of similar types of crimes have resulted apprehension & conviction w/o the suspect actually telling the police & rest of the world of their guilt as Teitel did here.

      How do you know what clues Teitel did or did not leave behind? He placed two bombs. That’s a treasure trove of data for a good police department & forensics team, which apparently Israel doesn’t have.

      He was released for lack of evidence when he confessed to both murders. What does that tell you? I should say “tell us” since it doesn’t tell you anything.

      1. You are reading one line of Issacharoff as if it disposed of all of the facts of the case. I can assure you that the Prosecutor’s office has discretion and would have prosecuted if it had a confession to murder in hand. What is quite likely is that Teitel copped to the homicide and then shut up, leaving one of those miserable single-shooter single-victim homicides in which Israel abounds, in which the State has to prove everything by physical evidence with no eyewitnesses. You can do it in Tel Aviv with good forensics, but in Teitel’s case because of the Territories, that’s unlikely. It is possible that he decided to humiliate the police by giving them a confession and daring the Prosecutor to try him in front of an Israeli jury with no physical evidence. Where was the gun? Were the bullets recovered? Was an autopsy performed? We won’t know until his latest round of trials end, if ever, but he did not WALK at prosecutorial discretion as if they AGREED with his action, as if he’d killed an insect because of the Racist Apartheid State of Israel which declined to prosecute, confession in hand. There have been plenty of squalid prosecutorial foul-ups in cases where a kid was pistol-whipped and died or someone got shot in a confrontation, but “I saw him and I shot him” gets you jail if it can be proven, even in the Territories, once you say it. The problem was it could not, in all likelihood, be proven.

        Two bombs is enough if you have the time and resources to throughly investigate a new bomb-maker. Basically, he was a small fish who slipped by a large security apparatus permanently overtaxed by a large terror threat. I think you have no real feel for life in a country with hundreds of unexploded bombs a year.

        1. You are reading one line of Issacharoff as if it disposed of all of the facts of the case.

          Teitel confessed to the two murders. Israeli police & the Shin Bet, as is their wont with Jew on Palestinian murders closes the case as quickly as possible & after doing as little investigating as possible. We all know the M.O. It’s routine.

          I can assure you that the Prosecutor’s office has discretion and would have prosecuted if it had a confession to murder in hand.

          Hey, I know you’re Eurosabra and possess super powers but would you mind telling us how you can assure us that the prosecutor would’ve done anything? Are you the prosecutor? Work in his office? Work for the Shin Bet?

          leaving one of those miserable single-shooter single-victim homicides in which Israel abounds, in which the State has to prove everything by physical evidence with no eyewitnesses.

          Not quite. There were probably numerous Palestinian witnesses who know there’s absolutely no reason to cooperate w. the authorities since they don’t take Palestinian lives seriously nor do they value them a whit.

          Do stop nattering on about Israeli forensics, murders, etc. This isn’t Israeli forensics we’re talking about. As you note, this is Occupation forensics, which is an oxymoron since I can’t believe the concept exists in the Territories.

          he did not WALK at prosecutorial discretion as if they AGREED with his action

          If Israel frowned upon the murder of Palestinians then they wouldn’t let the settlers get away literally with murder. But they do. So they really don’t have much of a problem w. such criminal activity as long as it doesn’t seep over and involve Jewish victims. Teitel’s mistake was to go after Prof. Sternhell, a nice old Hebrew U. professor. You can’t kill Jews w. impunity. You can kill Palestinians w. impunity.

          “I saw him and I shot him” gets you jail if it can be proven, even in the Territories

          Sure, like the settler videotaped shooting two Palestinians who didn’t get jail & walked.

          he was a small fish who slipped by a large security apparatus permanently overtaxed by a large terror threat.

          Teitel was a small fish? 12 yrs of terror activity in which he killed AT LEAST two Palestinians, wounded a teenage Jewish boy, nearly killed Zeev Sternhell, possibly killed or helped plan Israel’s only anti-gay massacre? Is that yr idea of a small fry? Actually, what you mean is that any Jewish terrorist is a small fry compared to the truly evil, dangerous Palestinian militants.

          Israel has “hundreds of unexploded bombs a year?” What are you talking about? That type of hyperbole doesn’t work around here. It may work in Eurodudeville though.

          1. Richard,

            He confessed to the 1997 murders in 2009. Issacharoff’s phrase is ambiguous. You can believe whatever you like about the Israeli justice system from Seattle. I have known several very good and very frustrated prosecutors who have worked the Territories, and most of the problems come from judges, who prefer to convict for a lesser offense, and from higher ups in Ministry of Justice who send down an order to refuse to prosecute unless the case is ironclad (as Teitel’s case will be at this point.)

            It’s a pity Palestinian witnesses don’t come forward, they don’t come forward often in Lod, Jaffa, or Ramle either, at least not in criminal cases.

            Unfortunately that videotape depicted a confrontation sufficient to allow that particular settler to make a claim of self-defense. And, yes, they get away with a lot, as do many of the accused in Israel.

            That’s a small fish. The Jewish Underground/Machteret Yehudit were big fish. There are probably plenty of unknown stings going on right now against big fish. One would hope.

            For the rest, when are you going to serve on an Israeli jury? Never. The USA will keep making Jewish terrorists and anti-Zionists and we’ll continue to put up with it.

          2. He confessed to the 1997 murders in 2009.

            I don’t read it that way. The way I read it he confessed to the murders at the time he was a suspect and was questioned.

            most of the problems come from judges

            You’re whitewashing an entirely bankrupt system. It’s not judges or any particular party or any particular single phenomenon. The entire Occupation stinks to high heaven. There is no judge, there is no justice for Palestinians.

            It’s a pity Palestinian witnesses don’t come forward, they don’t come forward often in Lod, Jaffa, or Ramle

            You’re likening Palestinians who see every day the impunity of the settlers and that the IDF & police not only stand by, but actually abet the terrorists. This is wholly unlike the situation inside Israel for Palestinian citizens of Israel. They ARE NOT THE SAME. You can talk till you’re blue in the face using yr facile comparisons & generalizations. But they are not persuasive. You’re one cool Eurodude. But smooth operators like you fall flat around here.

            Unfortunately that videotape depicted a confrontation sufficient to allow that particular settler to make a claim of self-defense.

            Horse manure. The settler clearly shoots a Palestinian from a distance, a Palestinian who is not threatening him in any way. The Palestinian is clearly not armed. The settler clearly has a gun. Of course the settler made a claim of self defense & of course the State accepted it. And of course the State discredited the grievous bodily injury done to the Palestinians who were shot.

            The USA will keep making Jewish terrorists and anti-Zionists and we’ll continue to put up with it.

            A perfect example of yr bankrupt cynicism comparing Jewish terrorist & anti Zionists as if they were equally noxious, when everyone but you knows that those terrorists kill and the anti-Zionists (who hold far less sway politically than the terrorists) don’t.

            I’ve got news for you, it’s the U.S. which is merely an unwitting accomplice to terror. But it’s Israel that is wholly guilty for allowing the terrorists to flourish.

          3. Richard,

            You are not going to get much argument from me on the features of the Occupation, given that it makes Israel-Palestine a much worse place for everyone. However, small terror, both Arab and Jewish, is much harder to root out, which is why spree killers are almost never caught before they strike. So there is a structural problem in that both Jewish and Arab “lone gunmen” are much harder to deal with preemptively. They either have to be denounced by their own community or (again) socialized to renounce terror. And, as before, the only person with experience in de-motivating terrorists in a constructive fashion is the head of the GCMHP, and he has other fish to fry.

            Again, I see the issue more as US-ian interference, although Israeli-grown anti-Arab terror is a problem in and of itself. Perhaps a Hebrew-speaking Israeli terrorist would have been denounced to the authorities because he would have been seen as making “us” look bad. Teitel was invisible partly because he was not well-liked, not a Hebrew-speaker, not socially connected. What is possible is that no one knew or no one gave a damn if he was going to get himself killed hunting Arabs. Crazy American.

            What we do know from the GCMHP of the 80s and 90s is that terrorists are most susceptible to dissuasion if they are doing it for the social rewards of imputed heroism, so short of getting rabbis on board, the ideological lone wolf is unreachable.

          4. Jewish and Arab “lone gunmen”

            Teitel was not a lone gunman. Many, many knew him & the Israeli police say he had at least one accomplice so far.

            the only person with experience in de-motivating terrorists in a constructive fashion

            More smoke. The Israeli gov’t has every means at its disposal if it truly wished to root out Jewish terror. But first it would have to deal w. the underlying problem of rooting out ideological extremism and pockets of resistance to state authority like Hilltop Youth and their allies in the settler movement. A comprehensive will to act is needed & totally lacking. The settler extremist movement could be broken in a matter of weeks if there was will. There isn’t.

      2. It is much more likely that this is the case of a very stealthy lone wolf evading capture as long as his discipline held against his megalomania. People have to be seriously socialized against violent solutions on a personal level to avoid Lone Gunmen, and I think only a few of the more quiescent pietistic religious groups in Israel manage that effectively. The only person with extensive secular experience with micro-dissuasion of terror of that type is Eyad el-Sarraj of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, and he is (obviously) overwhelmed by more immediate concerns.

  6. Is there a typo in the sixth letter of the phrase “gays of Israeli Jewish peace activists” in the original blog”?

    In other words, should “of” be “or”?

  7. Again, bear in mind that the State of Israel is also the heir to weak states in the region, like Ottoman Palestine and the British Mandate. Indeed, largely untouchable Jewish paramilitaries featured under both, and the Ottomans were going to use mass deportation as a solution, really you are arguing for the vigorous use of the Emergency Regulations, which is not going to survive a challenge in the courts. It’s only not lack of will, but also the fact that people have rights even if they do something like the hilltop youth, where the lack of will in enforcing closed military zones becomes an issue. It’s also going to precipitate even more violence, cui bono? The State seems to be kicking the can down the road in hopes of pulling a French Algeria, where it can isolate the settlers as direct opponents of a done-deal peace, which is the kind of leverage it needs. Again, I get that you don’t like that the State of Israel is actually a very confused place with diffuse centers of power, and that the rule of law aids and abets settler disorder at times and doesn’t exist when they need to undermine it to get what they want.

    1. really you are arguing for the vigorous use of the Emergency Regulations

      No, I’m not. I’m arguing for strictly enforcing existing law & protection of their rights as suspects. If existing law was enforced the State would have tremendous leverage.

      The State seems to be kicking the can down the road in hopes of pulling a French Algeria, where it can isolate the settlers as direct opponents of a done-deal peace, which is the kind of leverage it needs

      Well, that all would be very nice if there was an Israeli DeGaulle. But there isn’t. In his absence, the settlers only grown stronger. I’m afraid we can’t wait for Israel’s DeGaulle since that will allow the devils among the settlers to play.

      rule of law aids and abets settler disorder at times

      No, rather it’s the lack of enforcement of Israeli law that aids & abets the settlers. Rather, Israel enforces laws against Palestinians only and even then it abuses those laws in coming up with ever more inventive ways to persecute them. Settlers get off scot free except when there is a particularly outrageous mass murder,outright pogrom, or similar incident.

      1. Settlers get off scot free except when there is a particularly outrageous mass murder,outright pogrom, or similar incident.

        And even then only if it is sufficiently high profile that the GOI or the IOF feels the need for a damage control PR effort.

        And it bears pointing out that this is one of many pages the Americans have taken from the Israeli playbook for their occupation of Iraq, as well as Afghanistan.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *