ANT KATZ

This video, posted to YouTube by Ha’aretz.com from a news report by Israeli TV network Channel 10, shows a group of Orthodox teenagers purportedly dancing with guns, knives and Molotov cocktails as some stab the picture of Palestinian toddler Ali Dawabsheh, who died with his parents in the Duma arson attack earlier this year. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu strongly condemned the shocking images in the clip, saying that it shows the real face of a group that poses danger to Israeli society and security, according to Ha’aretz.

The main modern Orthodox rabbinical group in the United States expressed its “outrage” over a video that shows Jewish revellers at a wedding celebrating the murder of three Palestinians in a West Bank firebombing. Reportedly filmed three weeks ago at the Jerusalem wedding of a couple linked with Israel’s radical right, the video was later picked up by the news channel and published on December 24, under the title: “Jewish wedding celebration guests ‘mock dead Palestinian baby’.” 

“The vigilante and lawless calls for revenge and dancing with machine guns and knives are anathema to Jewish morality and religious standards,” Rabbi Shalom Baum, president of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), said in a statement issued on Thursday.

RIGHT: OUT OF THE ASHES – A baby picture of 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh who, with his parents, Saad and Reham, died in the July 31 firebombing. The only surviving family member is four-year-old Ahmed who is still being treated in an Israeli hospital

The video, released on December 23 on Israel’s Channel 10 and filmed at the Jerusalem wedding of a right-wing couple earlier in the month, features friends of the suspected assailants in the July firebombing of a home in the Palestinian village of Duma that killed three members of the Dawabshe family – a toddler and his parents.

READ: JEWISH TERROR, the story on the original incident on Jewish Report Online.

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US Orthodox rabbis slam wedding video

The RCA, which represents over 1 000 rabbis, “applauds the quick and decisive statements of Israeli religious and political leaders” against the guests at the wedding, the statement said.

Jewish Report Online has included this in our Top-Reads of 2015 series as it has been the subject of so much media attention since July – and will clearly be one of the top ongoing news stories in 2016 with so much public interest. This could become a negative game-changer in Middle East politics

The statement by the US rabbis called on the Israeli government to “take whatever measures necessary to protect the safety of all of its innocent citizens, and calls upon Israeli religious and educational leaders to nurture values in Israeli society that hold these despicable acts to be unacceptable and intolerable”.

The International Rabbinic Fellowship, a group of rabbis from around the world, issued a statement on December 24 expressing its “shock and sorrow” over the contents of the wedding video.

“That even a few Jews identified with the observant community can act in this way is frightening and an admonition to us all. Such behaviour is halachically and morally repulsive and an ethical stain on the good name of Judaism and the State of Israel,” the Fellowship said in its statement. “We trust the authorities in Israel not only to condemn this behaviour but diligently work to prevent the awful acts it encourages.”

The statement continued: “As a small educational step, we call on all members of the observant community both in Israel and in the Diaspora to desist from playing songs of vengeance such as the one taken from the Book of Judges, at any wedding or other celebration that is held. We call on all people invited as guests to exit the circles of dancing when such songs are playing and express their disapproval.”

Celebrating and mocking deaths

The incident comes as accusations have been made by far-right Israelis that the suspects in the Duma fire-bomb murders, who are being held in administrative detention, have been tortured by the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service. Netanyahu has spoken out in defence of the organisation, saying that the leaked video, attests to the importance of the Shin Bet to Israel’s security.

The shocking footage from the wedding shows guests celebrating the death of a Palestinian baby burned alive in an arson attack, says JTA.

They start celebrating and mocking the death of 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh. One guest danced while holding a knife through a picture of the young boy who, with his parents, died after an arson attack on their home in July 

The video was aired on Israeli TV and published the next day by the daily Ha’aretz newspaper. Israeli police said they were investigating whether the actions at the wedding constitute an incitement to violence.

There have also been hints that charges may be imminent in the arson case but some of the suspects’ lawyers have accused Shin Bet state security investigators of trying to exact confessions with torture.

READ: ARSON SUSPECTS CAN’T SEE LAWYERS, the story on the Supreme Court upholding a lower court on Jewish Report Online.

According to the Times of Israel, the video, released last Wednesday night on Channel 10 and filmed at a Jerusalem wedding last week, features friends of the suspected assailants in the July attack on a home in the Palestinian village of Duma.

RIGHT: 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh and his parents, Saad and Reham, died in the July 31 firebombing. The only surviving family member is four-year-old Ahmed who is still being treated in an Israeli hospital

Three members of the Dawabshe family – Ali, 18 months, and his parents, Saad and Riham – were killed. Ahmed Dawabshe, now 5, the only surviving member of the immediate family, is still undergoing treatment in an Israeli hospital. 

Netanyahu slammed the right-wing Israeli group in a statement released after the video aired: “The shocking pictures that were broadcast this evening show the true face of a group that constitutes a danger to Israeli society and to the security of Israel,” said the PM. “We are not prepared to accept people who deny the laws of the state and do not view themselves as subject to them. The pictures underscore how important a strong ISA (Israel Security Agency, or Shin Bet security service) is to the security of us all,

READ: NEW ‘DEVELOPMENT’ IN INVESTIGATION, the story that there may be imminent charges and more arrests by Shin Bet on Jewish Report Online.

Tzipi Livni, a Zionist Union lawmaker, spoke about the video before the Knesset: “This is the group that wants to destroy the Jewish Israel, to destroy this state from within, to destroy the government from within and sow hate,” the Times of Israel quoted Livni as saying.

Livni pointed at Bezalel Smutrich, a member of the right-wing Jewish Home party, and said: “These are the people you protest being interrogated by the Shin Bet.”

The suspects in the Duma attack, who are Jewish and are being held in administrative detention, have claimed the Shin Bet tortured them during interrogation, a charge the security service denies.

Prime Minister Netanyahu and Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett have defended the Shin Bet. Bennett, who is the education minister, told a group of religious Zionist school administrators at a gathering last Wednesday that he is “closely supervising” the Shin Bet, according to Haaretz. 

“What is being done to [the Jewish terror suspects] is certainly no more than is done against Palestinian terrorists,” he said.

Catch up this story on JR Online

• BIBI, LIVNI, US RABBIS ALL SLAM JEWISH TERRORISTS
  
• NEW ‘DEVELOPMENT’ IN ISRAELI INVESTIGATION: SHIN BET
• SUPREME COURT: ARSON SUSPECTS CAN’T SEE LAWYERS
• JEWISH TERROR DRAWS NETANYAHU HOMEWARD

More of 2015 Top-Reads series

• 28 Dec: RISE OF JEWISH RIGHT-WING TERRORISTS
• 27 Dec: #1 PHILIP KRAWITZ STORY HAS 11 736 READS
• 22 Dec:TOP-READS AND ISSUES ON JR ONLINE IN 2015

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Get the best out of JR Online

During the December/January holidays last year we were overrun by enquiries from non-regular users of the website about how to find things on SAJR Online. Well, the good news is that each and every one of the almost 15 000 content items posted on the website over the past 26 months are still there! And they will remain available and searchable on the internet forever.

And so, we are going to also run a twice-weekly segment entitled “Getting the best out of JR Online” which we will start posting from next week. They will eventually be put together for posterity as a manual for users to follow.

As a sweetener, allow us to introduce you to three useful pages (which we will explain how to access in the “Getting the best…” series):

• Click here to see our VIDEO ARCHIVES which you can search through at your leisure;
• Click here to see our LATEST STORIES which go back 26 months in order of recency; and
• Click here to see all the WHACKY JEWISH WORLD stories we have ever published.