{Originally posted to the authors’ blog, This Ongoing War}
The murder of a young Israeli, Malachi Moshe Rosenfeld, 26, son of Eliezer and Sarah, a resident of Cochav Hashachar, now turns out to have been yet another direct consequence of the tragically misconceived Shalit Deal.
We posted [“29-Jun-15: Drive-by shooting attack near Shvut Rachel tonight“] about the attack that took the life of Malachi, an outstanding student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was riding home with three friends on the night of June 29, 2015 after playing basketball when their vehicle came under shooting attack near Shilo on the Alon Road (Kvish Alon). All four were wounded in the hail of fire. Malachi died of his injuries the following day.
This evening (Sunday) it’s reported that a gang of Palestinian Arab terrorists has been apprehended and charged with the attack and with the murder of Malachi. Ynet says the members of the gang, identified as the Hamas Silwad Cell (Silwad is a town), confessed to earlier shooting attacks on Israelis.
The members of the cell, according to Ynet:
- Not yet arrested, but believed to be the commander of the cell, is Ahmad Najar, a known Hamas terrorist. He appears in Israel government records as Ahmed Mustafa Saleh Hamed al-Najar. Convicted of involvement in multiple shooting attacks that cost the lives of six Israelis (including Shalom Har Melech, who with his wife and sister-in-law was a dear friend of our murdered daughter Malki who had been herself killed by other Hamas terrorists two years earlier), Najar served less than eight years of the seven life terms term to which he had been sentenced in December 2003 for those multiple acts of terrorism-based murder. All 7 life terms were commuted by the government of Israel and he walked free along with 1,026 other convicted terrorists in the disastrous Shalit Deal. A condition of the commuting of his sentence (all these commutations were conditional) was that he be expelled to Gaza. But he soon shifted his base of operations from there to Jordan where he is said to have “been working to organize and fund terror attacks“. Jordan, for all the positive things said about its role in the battle against Islamist terror, is a hotbed of terrorism.
- Amjad Najar, also an active Hamas terrorists, was arrested on July 7, 2015. Under interrogation, he confessed to passing instructions, weapons and funding from Ahmad Najar, his brother, in Jordan to the West Bank. He served times in Israeli prisons in the 1990s for his involvement in terrorism then.
- Abdallah Ischak, also arrested July 7, confessed under interrogation to direct involvement in the multiple attacks including the slaying of Malachi. He has multiple convictions for terrorism offences.
- Fa’ez Hamed, a Hamas commander, was arrested on July 9. He confessed to planning the attacks and like the others has a history of Hamas terrorism under his belt.
- Jamal Younes, the father of Ahmad Najar’s wife, was arrested on July 10 and charged with facilitating the logistics of the murder.
- Mu’ad Hamed, who executed the actual shootings, was arrested not by the Israeli authorities but, according to Ynet, by Palestinian Authority security officers. He is a known affiliate of Hamas.
- Ahmed Shibrawi, also of Hamas, was also picked up by the PA’s security people.
