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(Jerusalem Post) – The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and Israel Police have arrested an American-born Jewish settler who is allegedly behind an unprecedented series of deadly terror shootings and bombings spanning over a decade, in which two Palestinians were killed and Israel Prize Laureate Prof. Ze’ev Sternhell was injured. According to the Shin Bet, he also planted a bomb at the entrance to house of a messianic family in Ariel, seriously wounding their son, then-15-year-old Ami Ortiz.
Yaakov “Jack” Teitel, 37, was arrested by the Israel Police’s elite counter-terror unit YAMAM on October 7th as he was hanging flyers in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof in support of the attack on a Tel Aviv gay and lesbian youth club in August in which two people were killed.
Yaakov Treitel (Photo: Shin Bet Israel Security Agency)
Ex-marine as US tourist murders two Palestinians
Teitel, the father of four from the settlement of Shevut Rahel, came to Israel in 1997 and allegedly succeeded in smuggling a pistol into Israel aboard a British Airways flight. The Shin Bet says the gun was used to kill an east Jerusalem cab driver on June 8, 1997 and two months later to shoot and kill a Palestinian shepherd near the settlement of Carmel in the Southern Hebron Hills.
Teitel then left Israel for Florida and returned three years later in 2000. According to the Shin Bet he was wanted at the time by American authorities for his alleged involvement in violent criminal activity in the US.
Obviously the following article has been written from extreme rightist view of the case. Palestinian=Arab and Palestinian occupied territory=Samaria. Shame on the Sin Beth for turning over the house during the weeklong Sukkot holiday.
[Most links added are mine – Oui]
(IsraelNN.com) Yaakov Teitel, 37, of the Jewish town Shvut Rachel near Shilo in Shomron [Palestinian occupied territory – Oui], is under arrest on suspicion of having carried out two murders of Arabs, as well as several bombing attacks and attempted bombings. He was imprisoned over three weeks ago, but has not yet been permitted to meet a lawyer or his family; his wife was briefly arrested as well some ten days go, but was released a few hours later.
Teitel is charged with murdering two Arabs in two separate incidents in 1997: a cab driver from eastern Jerusalem, and an Arab man near the southern Judea community of Carmel. He is also accused of having set off a bomb at the home of a Christian family in the city of Ariel, injuring one person seriously, of placing bombs at several police headquarters, and of placing a bomb in the yard of the home of radical left-wing Professor Ze’ev Sternhell. Sternhell has called on Arabs to murder “only” settlers, and not other Israelis, in their struggle against Israel.
Teitel, who has a wife and four children aged 4 months to 5 years, has not been permitted to see them since his arrest. Neither will he be permitted to see them until he is indicted, say sources close to the case.
A former U.S. Marine, Teitel immigrated to Israel several years ago. He was arrested early in the morning during the weeklong Sukkot holiday. “They turned over the house,” neighbors said, “including drilling holes in the wall and destroying things, looking for weapons – but found nothing.”
A Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) agent said, however, that ultimately, a cache of weapons that he had smuggled into Israel from abroad was found buried under his house.
Yaakov Teitel's weapons' cache. (Photo: Shin Bet Israel Security Agency)
Why did it take Shin Bet 12 years to apprehend a Jewish terrorist?
(JPost) – The Shvut Rahel community , where Yaakov Teitel resides, issued a statement Sunday expressing its revulsion by the actions attributed to Teitel.
He is accused of a long series of hate crimes directed against left-wingers, Palestinians, gays and messianic Jews. Among the accusations against him are two acts of murder and an attack which seriously wounded a teen from a messianic family.
The community expressed hope that the security establishment will reveal the truth, but also “prays that the suspicions against Yaakov Teitel will be found to be untrue, and so long as he was not proven guilty we believe in his innocence.”
The community also “wishes to emphasize that attempts by left-wing interested parties to exploit the situation for incitement against all settlers are ugly and despicable.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."