Often times one hears frequent news about attacks by Palestinians against Jews. However, the other also happens frequently but is seldom talked about.
In a recent case, a Jewish settler is facing murder charges after he and a group of other settlers launched a racially-motivate attack against a Palestinian woman driving in her car. During the attack they were throwing rocks at her vehicle when one of the settlers dropped a four-pound rock on her car, which hit her in the head and killed her according to a report:
An indictment has been filed against a 16-year-old Israeli settler over the murder of Aisha Rabi, a Palestinian woman who was killed three months ago after a rock struck her head.
The indictment of racially motivated manslaughter alleges that the teenager, who has not been identified, dropped a 4-pound rock on a car from a hill overlooking Israel’s Highway 60, Ynet reported.
According to the indictment by Israeli prosecutors, the minor had sought to hit the vehicle of any Palestinian driver, claiming he was motivated by “an ideology of racism and hostility towards Arabs wherever they may be.”
The charges were widely expected after it emerged in court yesterday that the teenager’s DNA had been found on the rock that had struck Rabi in the head and ended her life.
The Times of Israel reported that the court had accepted the prosecution’s request to extend remand of the teenager, with Judge Guy Avnon stating that “the severity of suspicion is very high.”
Remarks from the hearing, the second of five held in the case of the teenage settler, were made public at the request of the police while the rest of the details of the court hearings and the investigation remain under gag order.
Also made public was the teenager’s testimony, which provided some explanation as to why his DNA had been discovered on the stone. The DNA evidence is now the central point of evidence against the settler and his statements yesterday marked the first time he had broken his silence in the case.
Aisha Rabi, 47, was killed in October 2018 as she and her husband, Yacoub, were driving home and a group of settlers threw stones at their car, Haaretz reported. They were traveling with two of their daughters in the car after visiting a third at her home in Hebron. Aisha Rabi was struck in the head with one of the stones. She died shortly afterward from her wounds and was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Her husband was lightly wounded.
Yacoub Rabi told the newspaper at the time he had no doubt that a group of young Israeli settlers were behind the attack. “There were six or seven of them, and it was clear that they were young. In such a place and time, no young Palestinian would dare stand there. The Za’atara area is always surrounded by military force, and so it’s clear that the settlers did it,” he added, referring to an area in the West Bank.
The suspect’s lawyer warned before the indictment was handed down that charges against his client would lead to a drawn out trial that would carry on for years without conclusion.
The lawyer, Adi Keidar, compared his client’s predicament to that of two suspects indicted over a July 2015 firebombing in the West Bank Palestinian village of Duma. In July, a series of confessions given by the defendants under extreme duress were thrown out as evidence, putting the outcome of the trial in further uncertainty. (source, source)
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