A young Arab couple and their baby were forced to exit their home early Tuesday when two smoke bombs were tossed in their window in the village of Bitilu, near Ramallah.

The couple and their 9-month-old baby escaped the attack unharmed.

Scrawled on the outside wall of their home in black spray painted Hebrew letters were the words, “Revenge: Regards, Prisoners of Zion.”

The writing style appeared significantly different from that seen at the site of the torched home in the Arab village of Duma this past summer. Three families lost their lives as a result of that attack; only a four-year-old boy remains in medical care at an Israeli hospital.

Israeli security personnel and Civil Administration officials converged on the scene to scrutinize evidence at the home, located in Area A of the Palestinian Authority, which is under the complete administrative and security control of the PA government. No Israelis are allowed to enter this territory.

Israel Radio interviewed the father, “Kasel,” and husband who was rescued by neighbors from his home. “They came to our house at 1:30 am… broke the glass and then threw smoke bombs into the house,” he related. “The house filled up with gas smoke – it was impossible to re-enter until now. The neighbors came to help us escape.”

IDF soldiers and members of the Israel Police both arrived to investigate, he said.

He added that he did not see the perpetrators who vandalized the home, but said this had not been the first attack, or the second. “Our neighbor’s car was burned,” he said.

“I don’t inflict any damage on anyone. I want to live in peace,” he appealed.

There were a number of theories being circulated Tuesday morning as Israelis once again pondered who might have perpetrated an attack on an Arab family in the middle of a remote village in the Palestinian Authority.

It could indeed have been carried out by Jews, possibly “hilltop youth.”

It might also have been carried out by Arabs, who also are fluent in Hebrew and have in the past used that language to implicate Jews and divert attention elsewhere.

But this late-night attack may also have been carried out by someone enraged over the recent torture of Jewish youths by Shabak (Shin Bet). The domestic intelligence agency has been accused of using torture in hopes of forcing a confession in the Duma arson-murder case.

Shabak has succeeded in angering so many by torturing Jewish teens being held in administrative detention that they may just have created a new monster.

No one except the suspects and the Shin Bet really knows whether or not they were tortured. It is also likely that no one is going to tell the truth about it either. One can assume that the suspects know all the tricks, such as cutting one’s wrists enough to bleed, and then claim to have attempted suicide.

But it is known that Shabak says its investigators are using “intensive” questioning methods. That much is clear.

UPDATE: Following the report below, the Ma’an News Agency reported on the arrests. The Palestinian Authority website WAFA continued to ignore them.

The Palestinian Authority has found a new form of incitement by simply ignoring any news that might tone it down.

Palestinian Authority propaganda hit a new low Thursday with a self-imposed gag order on the arrests of suspects of last July’s deadly arson attack of the Dawabsheh family in the village of Duma.

Arab media have turned the attack and lack of arrests of suspects into a cause célèbre. Sayeed Arikat, who covers the U.S. State Dept. for the Al Quds newspaper, has raised the issue almost every week.

Before there was news of this morning’s arrests, he reminded spokesman Mark Toner Wednesday of the lack of progress in the case, took the opportunity to criticize a court at the last minute labeled as “insane” a main suspect in the barbaric burning of a Jerusalem Arab teenager earlier this year, and complained of a “double standard” by Israel’s policy of destroying Arab terrorists’ homes but not those of Jewish terrorists.

Neither he nor Toner noted that destroying homes is a deterrent to terror and that the ratio of Jewish terrorists to Palestinian Authority terrorists is something like one Jew and several thousand Arabs.

WAFA, the official Palestinian Authority website, ignored the arrests this morning and instead quoted Nickolay Mladenov, U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, as saying said Wednesday:

Four months have passed since the arson attack against the Dawabsha family in the village of Duma in the occupied West Bank on 31 July.

The English website of the Ma’an News Agency, based in Bethlehem and widely quoted by foreign media, also ignored the arrests Thursday, well after a gag order was released.

It simply paraphrased the WAFA report, emphasizing the U.N. official’s remarks.

The report was updated Thursday afternoon and not only omitted any reference to the arrests but also continued to falsely report, “The perpetrators of the attack have still not been arrested by Israeli authorities.”

A Jewish terrorist was sentenced to three years in prison by the Jerusalem District Court on Tuesday after his conviction in the arson attack on a Jewish-Arab school last year in Jerusalem.

The sentence includes 24 months for the arson, 10 months for incitement to violence and two months for possession of a knife.

According to the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), Yitzchak Gabai, 23, of Beitar Illit was a member of the Lehava extremist organization.

Gabai was the third of three members of the terrorist cell to be sentenced in the attack that was carried out on November 28, 2014 at the bilingual, integrated Max Rayne Hand-in-Hand School.

This is a “price tag” attack that international media don’t want to report – because it was perpetrated by Arab Muslims and not by Jews.

There now is proof that the Palestinian Authority was lying through its teeth when it claimed that the last September fire at the St. Charbel Monastery in Bethlehem was caused by an “electrical failure.”

The blaze was reported here by the Jewish Press.com.

Contrary to the claim of the Palestinian Authority, an electrical failure was not the cause of the fire for the simple reason that since the building was without electricity due to renovations.

Bishop Moussa El-Haj said that there was a break-in at the monastery two days before the fire and that items were stolen. There also was a fire in the oldest room of the monastery, where furniture was burned.

He told a Christian Arab website:

There is no electricity in the monastery because or repairs and restoration. This fire was deliberately set.

The biggest question that the Palestinian Authority lie raises is why does Pope Francis so enthusiastic about the Ramallah regime and Mahmoud Abbas, who touts freedom of worship while not only trying to prevent Jews from visiting, let along praying, on the Temple Mount but also covers up radical Islamic arson of a church?

Another question is: Why do foreign and most Israeli media go off the deep end when Jews burn a church but keep silent when Muslims do the same?

The answer is that Jews are not supposed to do these type of things, but it is accepted that Muslims do.

It is correct that Jews, the Chosen People, should not commit such acts, but why is it considered acceptable practice when Muslims do so?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his condolences to the Dawabsha family on Monday following the death of Rihad Dawabsha, who was critically wounded in the Palestinian Authority village six weeks ago.

The Prime Minister called the firebombing attack on the Dawabsha home an “act of terrorism” and added, ” The security forces are doing their utmost to apprehend the assailants and bring them to justice.”

Virtually all international and Israeli media have assumed that Jews were responsible for the attack, but no suspects have been arrested. Several have been detained and released after it turned out there was no basis for suspicions.

The possibility that Arabs were behind the attack sounds like wishful thinking but cannot be ruled out, particularly since the attack took place in the middle of Duma and not at the outskirts, where it would have been easier for Jews to throw a firebomb and flee.

The Hebrew word for “revenge” was scrawled on a wall at the family home, leading to the assumption that Jews were responsible for the crime. However, it has been reported that the Dawabsha family has been involved in a violent feud with another family in the village.

Anonymous individuals painted graffiti near Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv, threatening the life of lawyer and right-wing activist Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The graffiti said, “Homosexuals stab back” and “Itamar Ben-Gvir Watch Out”.

“Homosexuals stab back”

Ben-Gvir filed a complaint with the police.

In response to the graffiti Ben-Gvir said,

“I demand those hypocrites and self-righteous people who have been saying these past few days that ‘words can kill’, come out and condemn this act as well and I hope the police will demonstrate the same motivation to catch those responsible as they are investing in catch right-ring activists.”

“Those who wrote the graffiti won’t tie my hand. I will defend all those who are being persecuted by the Shin Bet and the Prosecution. Certainly, the youth that are jailed without trials, the settlers who are giving everything for the people of Israel, the right-wing activists who are requesting the right to free speech, the Temple Mount activists who are requesting freedom of movement, the Ultra-Orthodox that are hounded because they are against the abomination parade (unconnected to Yishai Shlissel, whose acts I oppose) and to the Beitar Jerusalem fans who find themselves attacked in the media.”

Ben-Gvir added, “In the State of Israel, the right to legal counsel is a basic right.”

(JNi.media) Israeli Right-wing Jews who also consider themselves sane, even liberal-minded, have been hit recently by three painful events that brought on a portrayal of faithful Jews as bloodthirsty, xenophobic and homophobic terrorists.

There was the mid-June burning of a portion of a Catholic Church near the Kineret, which, thank God, did not claim any lives, and then, last Thursday came the mad stabbing of six gay pride parade marchers in Jerusalem, which left a 16-year-old girl dead, and last Friday the burning of a house in the Arab village of Duma, that resulted in the death of an infant.

And while the case could be made that the crazed stabber, Ultra-Orthodox Yishai Schlissel does not represent anyone, the entire world is convinced at this point that “extremist Jews” were responsible for the criminal arson in Duma.

Except that, so far, Israel’s law enforcement agencies, which have focused enormous resources on the case, are unable to show any proof as to the identity of the suspect.

And so, is it possible the perpetrators were not Jewish? Moreover, is it possible for one to make such a suggestion and not be immediately cast aside as an apologist for Jewish extremism, or even of being a Jewish extremist himself?

The fact by itself that Jews have not been caught over the Duma case does not mean that it wasn’t committed by a “Jewish extremist,” because the loosely organized, mostly young Jews who are filed under this category are difficult, if not impossible to penetrate. This is the reason Israel’s government this week decided to apply to them its most anti-democratic legal means, administrative detention, which, essentially, punishes a person not for the crimes he committed, but for the crimes police know he wants to commit.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. The Netanyahu government—much like right-wing Jews everywhere—is under a fierce and relentless attack over the Duma case, which was a dream-come-true for those engaged in anti-Israeli propaganda.

The Arab League foreign ministers meeting in Cairo agreed on Wednesday to call on the UN to protect the Palestinians from “terrorist crimes” by Israeli settlers.

Now, Israeli settlers face daily terrorist attacks on the highways, in bus stops, in their fields. Only two days ago a young Jewish woman was firebombed in her car in Jerusalem by an Arab and was rushed to hospital with severe burns on 20% of her body. The story didn’t make any of the world’s news outlets. It was barely covered in Israel.

As many have pointed out, the Duma baby death is a classic “Man bites dog” story.

And yet, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas insists that “the Arab Group (at the UN) must act to submit a draft resolution to the Security Council concerning terrorist crimes by Israeli settler groups against the Palestinian people.”

The question remains, though: is it possible to suggest that the arson in Duma village may not have been committed by Jews?

Zionist Organization of America president Morton Klein on Tuesday cautioned against jumping to conclusions on the Duma arson.

“It is inappropriate to rush to cast blame on Jews for the fire at an Arab home in Duma in last week in view of the minimal, contradictory, and questionable evidence reported thus far – and in view of the numerous instances in which Arabs have fabricated attacks or blamed Jews for Arab violence against other Arabs,” Klein said, demanding that “a full investigation should be done to determine responsibility. And of course, whoever is responsible for this attack – whether Jew or Arab – should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

However, he added, the available evidence “raises strong suspicions that the fire last week was the continuation of an 18-year-old feud between two Arab clans in Duma.”

The Dawabsha family house stands in the middle of Duma, making it “extremely difficult for Israeli Jews to reach and then to depart from the center of a hostile Arab village without being detected,” Klein wrote.

And then there’s the matter of the Hebrew graffiti. Over the past few years, a similar “extremist” Jewish element has gained notoriety for their “Price Tag” operation, where they would graffiti intimidating messages on the walls of homes belonging to Israelis on the left, and cause damage to Arab property, also accompanied by nasty graffiti.

In several cases involving arson against mosques, monasteries and churches, the Hebrew graffiti looked suspicious, both in terms of vocabulary and handwriting analysis. One of the two graffiti slogans on the walls of the Duma house, stating “Long live the King Messiah,” with a little, slanted crown over the last word, is also questionable, as has been pointed out by some experts.

The choice of the slogan itself, which is decidedly related to the Chabad Chassidic movement, is curious, although it doesn’t rue out the possibility that an “extremist Jew” wrote it.

The handwriting has four suspicious features:

1. The letter Khaf at the end of Melech was clearly first written as a mid-word khaf, and then a line was added, to make it a final-khaf. It’s an afterthought, possibly by someone who is not well versed in writing Hebrew.

2. The two letters Heh in the beginning of the second and third words are completely different from one another.

3. Likewise the two letters Chet in the first and third words.

4. Likewise the two letters Mem in the second and third words. Again, not being well versed in handwritten Hebrew does not rule out a Jewish perpetrator, but it certainly raises the possibility that they weren’t Jewish.

Klein noted a case this week, in Lod, Israel, where a local Arab blamed three “settlers” for attacking him, describing them down to their knitted yarmulkes and fringes, only to admit eventually that he was actually beaten up by local Arabs.

“Palestinian Arab terrorists have repeatedly borrowed from [the] Nazi playbook, staging and fabricating incidents to blame on (non-existent) Jewish ‘extremists’ and Israel,” Klein wrote.

“If it turns out that Jewish individuals were responsible, those individuals should be arrested, prosecuted, and punished to the full extent of the law. However, if this incident turns out to be another ‘blame the Jews’ Arab hoax, the facts should be broadcast with the same fanfare that blame was precipitously cast on Israeli Jews,” Klein insisted.