For those of you of an age you’ll remember the classic Rolling Stones song, Sympathy for the Devil:
Who killed the Kennedys? After all it was you and me.
I’d like to rephrase the lyric: who made Jack Teitel the vicious killer he is? After all, it was you and me in the sense that he was the product of an ultra-Orthodox upbringing in Florida. He made a home in a West Bank settlement, Shvut Rachel, that was also the home of yet another Jewish terrorist, Asher Weissgan, convicted of massacreing five Palestinian laborers in a 2005 terror incident.
You’ll hear countless choruses of “not me” from the settler movement. I wasn’t responsible for him. He was a lone gunman. He was mentally imbalanced. He kept to himself and never told anyone what he thought. His own brother in law claims he never even had a meal in his home. We’re not responsible. Not me.
That won’t work. There is a cancer in the midst of this movement. I don’t expect the settlers themselves to uproot this cancer. But Israel should be expected to take a stronger role in combatting the illness. And if Israel won’t, then the U.S. government should in ways I’ve already outlined here.
Kudos to the Israeli news site, Walla, for breaking the gag order on this case and publishing news of it. The Shin Bet, for their trouble, hauled in Walla staff for questioning since usually the Israeli press is compliant with such military censorship. I’m glad in this case someone refused to drink the Kool Aid, otherwise the Shin Bet could’ve kept this case under wraps forever.
The Israeli judicial system also deserves black marks for refusing Teitel legal representation for two weeks at the behest of the Israeli attorney general. No matter this guy’s alleged guilt, in a democracy you provide even the worst criminal a lawyer. I would agree with Teitel’s settler supports on this point.
Here you see part of Teitel’s arsenal (unfortunately, they’ve omitted the bomb-making materials at which Teitel had become proficient in two previous bombings). Who provided this to him? Even if he bought this himself, could we not expect the Shin Bet to monitor such an arsenal and the person amassing it?
And finally, you and I made the Jack Teitels of the radical settler movement in that the U.S. government continues to bestow tax deductions on tens of millions of donations from U.S. Jews to settlements like Shvut Rachel and countless others which are used to amass arsenals like the one he had along with other military equipment used to harrass, intimidate and even kill Palestinian civilians in the Territories.
Such inaction on the part of the IRS and federal government at ending this indirect subsidy of terror is shameful and should be ended posthaste.
Shortly after the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip
Nine months ago Teitel’s brother-in-law, Avitan, was seriously injured in a shooting attack near the West Bank settlement of Kochav Hashachar, not far from Ramallah.
“Yaakov was deeply affected by (Avitan’s) injury, as we all were,” Rivka’s sister said. “We are all aware of the risks (of living in a settlement), but this was the first time terror struck so close to home – suddenly we were terror victims.”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1056845.html Israeli seriously wounded in West Bank shooting attack By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent
Funny I hadn’t thought that a time machine had been invented. An incident from 9 months ago affected Teitel so badly that he started his killing spree 12 years ago.
That is one scary looking psycho! Nonetheless, Ive seen photos/videos of settlers who are even scarier looking. Thank God he moved to Israel. Of course, when these types (often American) move to the settlements, Israel is spared the expense of building mental hospitals/institutions to care for them. Eastward Ho, Psychos! That includes you guys: Robertson, Hagee, Lahey etc.
P.S. It’s a shame his wife and four young children will have to vacate his house so that it can be bulldozed.(wink, wink) Under the circumstances, I imagine the Netanyahu government will resettle them in the Jordan Valley alongside some of the Gaza settlers (who were paid very, very handsomely to leave Gaza and resettle in “Judea and Samaria”).
SEE: “Jordan Valley could be a sticking point in peace talks”, By Howard Schneider, Washington Post Foreign Service, 11/02/09
(excerpt) “…That is certainly the view from Maskiot, where settlers such as Yosi Chazut are confident they have a permanent home. Chazut, 30, was among the thousands of Israelis removed from settlements in the Gaza Strip when Israel left the area in 2005. The government let him and his wife and three children settle here a year and a half ago with a long-range plan to develop the surrounding hillsides. During one of Netanyahu’s visits to Maskiot, “he said clearly — the Jordan Valley remains in Israeli hands in every future negotiation,” Chazut said.”…
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/01/AR2009110102434_pf.html
FROM ‘ISRAEL NATIONAL NEWS’ : “…Hagel made clear his attitude towards Israel when he spoke at the pro-Arab and self-proclaimed pro-Israel J Street lobby last week. He echoed President Obama’s previous statements that meeting the demand of the Palestinian Authority for a
new Arab state within Israel’s current borders “is central,
not peripheral, to U.S. vital security interests in combating terrorism.”…
…Hagel, who once criticized President George W. Bush for refusing to meet with Yasser Arafat, has questioned the loyalty of American Jews who support Israel, stating that “the political reality is that … the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here.”…
SOURCE – http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134183
His father was a dentist for God’s sake. Maybe if he had stayed in FL he could’ve been a dental technician & studied at a yeshiva instead of killing Arabs for sport.
Rode a tank
Held a general’s rank
When al Nakba raged
And Deir Yassin stanK…
(As you know, Sir Mick put a lot of emphasis on that last ‘k’.)
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In a lot of nations, violent felons like Teitel are deported to their native countries, their citizenship being conditional upon decent behavior.
The Zionist argument would be, of course, that if one is a Jew, Israel IS his “native country”, despite the fact that his ancestry is extremely unlikely to include anyone who actually ever came near that part of the world.
Did you see his arsenal? You could equip a commando team with all that firepower. Why do these homocidal nut cases in Israel so often turn out to be Americans?