Footage broadcast on Israel’s Channel 10 News on Wednesday night, December 23, showing right-wing settler extremists at a wedding celebrating the killing of the Palestinian Dawabsha family has caused outrage among Hadash and Communist Party of Israel activists. The video from the celebration in Jerusalem shows dozens of wedding guests waving knives, Israeli military rifles, pistols and a Molotov cocktail on the dance floor. In perhaps the most shocking part of the clip, some revelers can be seen stabbing a photo of the Dawabsha family baby who was killed.
The guests at the wedding are believed to be close associates of the detainees suspected of carrying out the predawn arson attack that caused the deaths of three members of the Palestinian family from the village of Duma in the occupied West Bank on July 31 of this year. The firebombing resulted in the immediate death of 18-month-old Ali Sa’ad Dawabsha, while both of his parents subsequently died from severe burns. The couple’s four-year-old son was the sole survivor of the immediate family.In a statement, Joint List chairman, MK Ayman Odeh (Hadash) said Israel’s government and specifically its Defense Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, “who let the settlers attack Palestinians without facing punishment, are the first to be blamed for this terror network.” Palestinians have often highlighted the lack of progress in the Duma case as being among the causes of a wave of knife, gun and car-ramming attacks targeting Israelis that began on October 1.
The deadly attack drew renewed attention to far-right settler extremism and accusations that Israel’s right-wing government has not done enough to prevent such violence. Young Jewish men from wildcat settlement outposts in the West Bank, known as the “hilltop youth,” have been blamed for murder, violence and vandalism targeting Palestinians, Christian holy sites and even property of the occupying Israeli military.
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