A Rabbi Shot Dead

Michael Lumish

Rabbi Shevach in a recent photo with his family.

On Tuesday, January 9, Rabbi Raziel Shevach (35) was shot dead near his home in Havat Gilad, Israel.

Jeremy Sharon, writing for the Jerusalem Post, tells us:

A resident of the Havat Gilad outpost in central Samaria was killed on Tuesday night close to his home, in a drive-by shooting attack on Route 60.

Rabbi Raziel Shevach, 35, a mohel, was married with six children, four daughters and two sons, ages 11 to eight months.

Shortly after 8 p.m., Magen David Adom received a report of the shooting and dispatched paramedics and an MDA team to the site of the attack. The victim had several wounds to his neck and upper body from a reported spray of 22 bullets, and was taken to Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba.

22 bullets.

An Israeli Jewish acquaintance in response to this recent attack has some ideas on "What is going to happen" and "What would happen if I were Prime Minister with a cooperative cabinet."


What is going to happen, he writes:

1.) The killer(s) will be found and tried for murder or will die in a blaze of glory firefight with the authorities.

2.) They will become overnight heroes in Palestinian society. Streets and parks will be named after them. Kids will trade cards with their pictures on them.

3.) The killers and their families will receive a lifelong stipend from the Palestinian Authority.

4.) The killers will be traded in another prisoner swap 10 years down the road.

5.) Rinse, wash, repeat.

The writer is likely correct.

If the killer(s) are found - which is possible by the time that you read this  -  they will become heroes throughout much of Palestinian-Arab territories. The veneration of Jew murderers, after all, is a very old story within Arab culture on Jewish land.

Their families will receive a generous stipend, courtesy of the United States government and the EU and the UN via Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, and Jewish citizens of western countries must wonder how it is that their own governments are financing the murder of our brothers and sisters in the Middle East.

That is, Jewish people must wonder how it is that our own tax dollars go toward the murder of our own people by our own governments within our own ancestral homeland.

And it is also a not unreasonable wager that sometime in the future - much like Reem Assil's friend Rasmea Odeh - the killer(s) will be freed by the Israeli government in exchange for a single Israeli Jew.

What I think is that Jewish people, particularly those of the Israeli persuasion, have about had it.


What would happen if I were Prime Minister with a cooperative cabinet.

1.) Any and all domestic and foreign media will be banned from Judea and Samaria.

2.) When the perpetrators are found they will be summarily executed on the spot in front of their families.

3.) Their remains will be buried in unmarked graves and their names will never be reported. They will not be heroes. Threaten the families that if they ever speak to anyone about their identities that they'll be next.

4.) Go through the village the perpetrators are from and in every house you find a Hamas flag, an ISIS flag, Jihadist literature, or a weapon, shoot the oldest male member of the household.

5.) Deport the survivors to Gaza with whatever they can carry.

6.) Burn the village to the ground and on top of the ashes build a new Jewish settlement called Har Raziel in honor of the murdered.

7.) Make this the official government response to any terror incident going forward.

8.) Watch peace break out quickly.

Damn, that sounds harsh.

I would recommend no such thing, but I am a diaspora Jew living a not-uncomfortable life in the American Pacific Northwest.

The notion of burning villages to the ground or shooting terrorists in front of their families without due process of law is savage to my ears.

The reason that I am pointing to this, however, is not a matter of advocacy. I am not recommending anything written in the blockquote above.

I am, however, beginning to suspect that Israeli Jews - if not Jews, in general - are becoming increasingly tired of simply accepting their lot in life as targets of genocide.

Thus, the Day of the Dhimmi is Done.

The Jewish people have a dual reputation. Sometimes, particularly in diaspora, we are thought of as wimps. Sometimes, particularly in Israel, we are thought of as vicious brutes.

What I would suggest to our neighbors of European and Arab descent - who are sitting with their bowls of popcorn watching the drama play itself out - is that despite two-thousand years of getting our asses kicked even the Jewish people have limited patience.

The blockquote above reflects that.