Horrific new details of the brutal rape and slaughter of murdered Israeli teenager Ori Ansbacher were revealed by alleged murderer Arafat Irfaiya, who admitted to purchasing a kipah ahead of his attack so he would be allowed entry to Israel by being mistaken for a Jew.
“I bought the kipah two weeks before, so I could enter Israel without being suspected or identified as an illegal resident,” Irfaiya told investigators, adding that he did not include anyone in his plans, which were to “kill a Jew due to the occupation and treatment of Arabs at checkpoints.”
Irfaiya, a 29-year-old from Hebron, told investigators that he happened upon 19-year-old Tekoa resident Ansbacher in the woods outside Jerusalem, where she was sitting on a boulder and writing in a journal. He said he was determined he would have intercourse with her “whether she consented or not.”
The attacker then stabbed Ansbacher three times and dragged her as she struggled to get away, stabbing her further and gagging her with her scarf before binding her hands and raping her.
Ansbacher died during the attack, and Irfaiya destroyed Ansbacher’s cellphone and memory card to make it more difficult to locate her.
Irfaiya was positively identified due to DNA evidence left at the scene, and is charged with committing a terrorist murder and rape.
He told investigators that he sprinted across the border between Jerusalem and Judea in order to avoid identification by security cameras.
Irfaiya had previously spent time in prison for terror-related offenses, and is believed to be affiliated with Hamas. He was arrested at the entrance of the Temple Mount armed with a large knife in 2017, telling police that he would “come back here with a knife” if he were released from prison.
Israel’s Justice Minister Ayalet Shaked and former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman are among the high-level Israeli officials calling on Israel to institute the death penalty and execute Arafat Irfayia.
The only time Israel has utilized the death penalty was on Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust. He was hanged in Jerusalem in 1962 and then cremated.