Moshe Zar
Moshe ZarFlah 90

Moshe Zar, 76, a legendary redeemer of land and Samaria pioneer, discovered Tuesday morning that the memorial to his slain son, Gilad, had been burnt and defiled. He shared his feelings with Arutz Sheva in an exclusive interview.

"They murdered my son with 20 bullets and verified his death,” he recalled. “We set up the memorial at the spot, immediately following the murder. This morning, when we discovered that the memorial had been burnt, I felt a huge feeling of humiliation.”

Burnt monument to Gilad Zar
Burnt monument to Gilad ZarKedumim security.

Zar filed a complaint with the police and demanded that the road that is also named after Gilad, which passes next to the memorial, be immediately closed to Arab traffic. “I told the police – 'From you I learned that if one person from the congregation sins, your anger is directed toward the whole group, and if some idiot punctures the tire of an IDF car, then you punish everyone, unil they produce the criminal.'

"So here, when they defile a monument to a murdered martyr who is Jewish, you don't make a big deal out of it,” he pointed out the iniquity. “They should punish the entire congregation here, too, and close the Gilad Road to the movement of local [Arabs]. And if they want to be allowed to pass, let them hand in the criminal. The policy toward the Arabs should be the same as their behavior toward Jews.”

Zar said that he has yet to hear denunciations of the murderer. “Let them not tell me that this is light damage. Puncturing a tire is also light damage. But there is a national price in that case and remaining silent is out of the question, so why do people keep silent on this issue?”

"Where are all of the denouncers who wanted to denounce the residents of Yitzhar?”, he asked rhetorically. “I do not wish upon anyone, even those who hate me, to have a son murdered, and then see the matter pass in silence. Now I want to see what they will do. I expect them to stop allowing Arabs to drive on Gilad Road. He is the one who planned this road," Zar added.

“This is the only way to stop the burning of monuments,” he argued – “by punishing them.”