In an interview reported by Israel National News, the father of the family killed in Itamar, Rabbi Yehuda Ben Yishai, said that his daughter and her family "received the privilege of being the sacrificial lambs and to sanctify the name of heaven." Yishai called for a greater strengthening of "Jewish identity and pride."
The New York Jewish Week reports that some Itamar residents have been calling for the expulsion of all Palestinians from the West Bank, quoting David Schneerson, who lives next to the house of the murdered family:
"As long as there is one Arab here, it’s not enough... Kahane is the closest to correct in all of the politics in areas,” he said, referring to Rabbi Meir Kahane, who advocated the transfer of West Bank Palestinians. “No one wants Arabs here in the state.”Jewish Week reports that Schneerson, 30, is a Chabad Lubavitch emissary and says that Israeli military officers told David Schneerson that the murderer cased his home.
According to the report, "Schneerson believes that a picture of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, saved the lives of his family and five children." The story quotes Schneerson: “Our door was open. We are sure that he saw the rebbe and fled.”
The Rebbe, as Rabbi Schneerson is known, is highly revered by thousands of followers in Israel and the U.S.; some believed him to be the messiah.
Schneerson taught an extreme form of Jewish supremacism, stating that Jews constitute a separate, superior species, writing that "the body of a Jewish person is of a totally different quality from the body of [members] of all nations of the world...A non-Jew’s entire reality is only vanity" and that "The entire creation [of a non-Jew] exists only for the sake of the Jews."
Schneerson was recently honored by a proclamation by President Obama, following a tradition begun by Congress in 1978.
Related stories:
Media omissions on Itamar
Obama honors Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson
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