Teen Victim Of
bus Attack Dies
r rot_
Two Palestinians Teens
Jailed In Fogel Murders
Amjad Mohammad Awad, left, and Hakim Mazen Awad
JERUSALEM (JTA)
T
wo teenage Palestinians from a West Bank
village have been arrested in the murders of
five members of the Fogel family in a West
Bank Jewish settlement.
The Israeli military announced Sunday that Israeli
security services — including the Israel Defense
Forces, the Shin Bet security service and police —
were involved in the arrest of the teens from the
nearby village of Awarta in connection with the bru-
tal March 11 murders in Itamar on Sabbath eve.
Amjad Awad, 19, who worked as a laborer in
Israel, and Hakim Awad, 18, a high school student,
reportedly admitted to committing the murders.
They also staged a reconstruction of the crime, the
French news agency AFP reported, citing a Shin Bet
briefing document.
Amjad Awad, who is not related to Hakim, report-
edly said that he went to the Itamar settlement to
"die a martyr's death."
The suspects have been identified as members of
the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, as
are several members of their families, some of whom
were arrested as accomplices, though Israeli security
services suspect the alleged murderers did not act
on behalf of the terrorist organization.
Dozens of residents of Awarta had been detained
FBI: JDL Extorted
Money From Rappers
WASHINGTON (JTA) — FBI records say
the agency believed the Jewish Defense
League extorted money from rappers by
threatening violence.
The JDL has been
"extorting money from
various rap music
stars via death threats,"
according to a report in
Haaretz on the release
of FBI files surrounding
the unsolved 1996 mur-
Tupac Shakur
der of Tupac Shakur.
The JDL is not other-
wise linked to Shakur's murder in the files.
Another JDL target was rapper Eazy-E,
according to the documents, which
alleged that the JDL would follow-up
death threats with demands for protec-
tion money.
by Israeli security services in recent weeks in an
effort to identify the Fogels' murderers.
"The murders of five family members, includ-
ing a 3-month-old baby, constitute a crossing of
all red lines:' said IDF spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital
Leibovich."The IDF has invested in numerous
operational and intelligence efforts, and has worked
closely with other security forces in order to find
those responsible for this vicious murder."
Udi Fogel, 36, and Ruth Fogel, 35, and their chil-
dren Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and Hadas, 3 months, were
stabbed to death in their beds. Two sons — Roi, 8,
and Yishai, 2 — were sleeping in a side bedroom
and were spared. A daughter, Tamar, 12, returned
home at midnight from a youth group program to
discover the massacre.
The family had been evacuated from the Gaza
Strip and lived in Ariel before building a home in the
northern West Bank community of Itamar, near the
Palestinian city of Nablus.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said
Sunday in public remarks that he had been updated
in recent weeks and days on the progress of the
investigation.
"For the family, this is not a complete answer, but
without it they could not be given even a partial
answer': he said, adding, "We will reach murderers
anywhere!' I 1
The JDL was founded in the late
1960s by Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was
assassinated in 1990 by an Egyptian
terrorist in New York. It has been desig-
nated a terrorist grouip by the U.S. State
Department.
Agriprocessors Supervisor
Is Arrested In Israel
JERUSALEM (JTA) — A former super-
visor at the Agriprocessors kosher meat-
packing plant in Iowa was arrested in
Israel on March 31.
Hosam Amara, 46,
was indicted in 2009
on federal charges of
fraud and immigration
abuses. He is accused
of some of the worst
worker abuses at the
now defunct plant in
Hosam Amara
Postville, according
Daniel Viflic (inset) and the bus struck by a terrorist rocket.
JERUSALEM (JTA)
T
he Israeli teen injured in a Gaza rocket attack on a
school bus has died a day after a weeklong cease-fire
between Israel and Gaza terror groups was disrupted.
Israel Channel 2 reported Sunday evening that Daniel Viflic,
16, was declared dead at Beersheba's Soroka Hospital, 10 days
after suffering severe head trauma after a rocket fired from Gaza
slammed into his school bus traveling outside of Kibbutz Sa'ad
in southern Israel near the Gaza border.
The bus driver, the only other occupant of the bus at the time
of the attack, also was injured.
Viflic had been in a deep coma with no brain activity for at
least a week.
Early Saturday, Israeli airstrikes hit two terrorist bases near
Gaza City in retaliation for rocket fire on two southern Israeli cit-
ies, disrupting the unofficial cease-fire. The Israeli attack came
hours after two long-range rockets were fired from Gaza on
Ashdod and Ashkelon.
The cease-fire had started a few days after the school bus
bombing following Israeli retaliatory strikes for weeks of
increased rocket attacks by Gaza terrorist groups that had hit
Israel, and after a weekend in which 150 rockets from Gaza
struck southern Israel, including the rocket that hit Viflic.
Nineteen Palestinians were killed in Israeli retaliatory strikes.
to the Des Moines Register. In 2008, the
plant was the site of what at the time
was the largest immigration enforce-
ment action in American history.
Extradition proceedings against
Amara will begin in Israel on May 2,
according to the newspaper.
Amara is charged with one count of
conspiracy to harbor undocumented
aliens for profit; 24 counts of harboring
and aiding and abetting the harboring
of undocumented aliens for profit; one
count of conspiracy to commit docu-
ment fraud; and one count of aiding and
abetting document fraud.
He faces up to 260 years in prison
and $6.75 million in fines if convicted,
according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Agriprocessors executive Sholom
Rubashkin was convicted in 2009 on 86
counts of fraud related to his manage-
ment of the plant and later sentenced to
27 years in federal prison.
He remains in prison while his case is
under appeal.
Netanyahus Sue
Television Station
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara,
have filed a libel suit against an Israeli
television station for what they say is
false reporting on a travel scandal.
The suit against Israel Channel 10
asks for about $1 million in damages.
The Netanyahus deny the allegations
on the news program HaMakor, (The
Source), that they double-billed two
organizations for one trip abroad.
The lawsuit also claims that the sta-
tion went forward with its report on the
"Bibi Tours" scandal despite the fact that
the Netanyahus provided answers to
their questions.
21 2011
27