There has been a dramatic development in the investigation of the violent assault on two soldiers on Shabbat in Haifa. Channel 2 News reports that Police believe the attack was not carried out for nationalist reasons – as they had originally assumed – but resulted instead from mistaken identity.
Two youths were arrested overnight, and another four have been behind bars since yesterday. In interrogating the six suspects, police found that minutes before the violent attack, rocks had been thrown at the homes of the assailants, near Rambam Hospital in Haifa, and they went out into the street to take revenge. The two soldiers just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Still, the account of the attack that was given by the two victims, both IDF soldiers in civilian clothing, was rife with descriptions of anti-Semitic slurs. Thus, whether those Arab assailants were out for Jewish blood or were merely looking to murder whomever dared throw rocks at their homes, the outcome is still extremely worrisome.
National Union Chairman MK Jacob “Ketzale” Katz this morning referred to the Haifa incident with strong language . “The Likud government headed by Netanyahu and Barak failed,” he told Arutz 7. “If after 62 years of independence, anti-Semitic lynching takes place in downtown Haifa, it is clear to all that the Jewish people’s ability to deter such attacks has collapsed.”