Just a day after it was announced that terrorism had dropped considerably and that not one Jew had been killed or wounded in the entire month of June, the Shabak (General Security Service) announced that the murder of a taxi driver two months ago in central Israel was a terrorist crime.
Shortly after the victim’s body was found in an orchard near Gan Yavneh, just outside Ashdod, on May 11, an IDF force arrested his murderers: two 22-year-old Arabs from the north Samaria-area village of Arana. A third accomplice has not yet been caught.
The two confessed that they crossed illegally into pre-1967 Israel for the purpose of a robbery, but that in the course of robbing the driver, they decided to murder him as well. One of the terrorists explained that this was in revenge for the killing of his cousin – an Islamic Jihad terrorist who had been involved in arranging suicide attacks and was killed when the IDF tried to arrest him.
One of the arrested murderers was also found to have been involved in several terrorist shootings at Israeli targets in the past. He further confessed that he and his fellow terrorists planned to kidnap a Jew to use as a hostage in the event that one of them would be arrested. In addition, he said he planned other attacks, including the murder or abduction of a soldier, placing bombs along IDF routes, manufacturing bombs, and more.
The victim, Gregory Rabinovitch, 56, was survived by his wife, daughter, and son-in-law Hanokh Pe’er. “Gregory never fought with anyone,” Pe’er said at the time, “and never insulted anyone... He refused to take Arabs, even if they offered to pay him three times the price.” The exception that he made to this apparent rule cost him his life.
Fifteen Israelis have been killed in terrorist attacks or in battle with terrorists since the beginning of 2009. These include two civilians, including a 16-year-old murdered by an axe-wielding Arab, two policemen murdered in a Jordan Valley roadside attack, and 11 soldiers, nine of whom were killed during the IDF’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza at the beginning of the year.