The 37-year-old terrorist who murdered two Jewish men as they prayed the afternoon service a year ago last November was sentenced to life in prison on Monday in the Tel Aviv District Court.
Raed Khalil, also known as Raed Masalmeh, was convicted this past July for the murders of 32-year-old Aharon Yesiav and 51-year-old Reuven Aviram. The two men were praying the afternoon service at a synagogue in the Panorama building in Tel Aviv when they were stabbed to death by Khalil, who confessed to the killing.
Khalil, the father of recently-born twins and three other children, said he took a nine-inch knife from the Tel Aviv restaurant where he worked under a legal permit that allowed him to enter Israel from the Palestinian Authority. He went upstairs to the second-floor synagogue to hunt for victims at the synagogue.
He stabbed Aviram a number of times, but the dying man managed to stagger away and yell a warning, “Terrorist!” before he collapsed. Khalil found Yesiav next, and stabbed him nine times in the torso, before moving on to find another victim.
Worshipers slammed the door to the synagogue, blocking the killer from entering as he fought to get in before finally giving up and running out of the building with the knife still in his hand. Khalil attacked three others as he attempted to make his escape, until he was caught and held by passersby, who handed him over to police.
It’s important to reiterate that the Palestine Liberation Organization, on behalf of the Palestinian Authority government, generously rewards terrorists such as Khalil and their families with high monthly salaries to compensate for their incarceration in Israel. The more Israelis they wound and kill and the longer the jail sentence, the higher the salary and the more vocal the praise by government officials for their “heroism.”
Before he was sentenced, Khalil spoke of the Dawabshe family, attacked and murdered through arson in July 2015 by Jewish extremists in one of the handful of Jewish terror attacks ever carried out against Palestinian Authority Arabs. The Dawabshe family was officially declared to be victims of terror under the protocols of the Israeli government and are receiving the same consideration that Jewish terror victims do.
