Shemitta

Nofar Ben Yiftach, the widow of Oren Ben Yiftach, one of three Israeli Jews who were murdered in a terrorist axe attack in Elad on Thursday night, has been shocked by the attacks on her late husband following reports that he drove the terrorists who carried out the attack into Elad. Ben Yiftach begged the public not to blame her husband for the attack in which he was murdered. "Have mercy on us in our difficult time. It is so easy to spread evil with a finger on the keyboard. Let us mourn without engaging in defense against vicious attacks." The Ben Yiftach family responded: "We are shocked by the discourse on social media and in the media in the heinous attempt to link our beloved son Oren to the criminal attack, who is himself a victim of it. Oren worked as an honest and innocent shuttle driver for a living. Just as a taxi driver does not check who gets in a taxi - so he is not required to check work or residency permits. This is in contrast to a contractor who employs workers." The family also said that "Oren drove a rabbi to a Torah lesson and there is no dispute about that. According to the media, at the end of this trip he may have been asked to drive workers to renovate a synagogue and he did so without knowing of course that he was driving to his death. As far as we know, Oren fought like a hero against the vile murderers who attacked him when they came to the synagogue with an ax and a knife and slaughtered him as in the darkest periods in the Diaspora of massacres of Jews." "The family is now focusing on the severe grief that is another blow to a series of disasters that have befallen the family in recent years. All our thoughts are to help the widow and 6 children deal with the terrible loss. We all hope that the abominable terrorists will be caught and executed exactly the way they ended Oren's life.

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