By Haaretz Editorial

There is no way to describe the West Bank settlers' attack on the Palestinian village of Bitilu but as a well-planned terror attack. The settlers' "military" organization and violent resistance to the cabinet decision to destroy the illegal outpost of Givat Menachem, as described by Chaim Levinson in Haaretz yesterday, are no different from the activities of other terrorist organizations. This includes the incitement, ranting and raving preceding the act of vengeance on Bitilu, the attempt to set a house on fire, the injuring of villagers with stones, and the threat to continue these violent tactics.

A frightened kidnapped Israeli soldier is sending a taped video message to the Israeli public. He tells who he is, assures his loved ones that his captors are treating him well. They are feeding me, he says, and adds "kosher food," as the barrel of a gun nudges his shoulder. As the camera zooms out, the viewers realize that the captors are not Hamas terrorists but rather two armed settlers. 

By Anshel Pfeffer, January 7, 2010

Senior Israeli security officials are warning of a drastic increase in the number of right-wing extremists prepared to use violent means to stop any attempt to dismantle settlements.

Israeli extremists opposed to the settlement freeze have made threats deemed credible by the authorities on the life of Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.  Also, the arrested Jewish terrorist Yaacov Teitel reportedly told Israeli investigators that he wanted to kill Peace Now Director General Yariv Oppenheimer.

(From today's Ma'ariv (Hebrew only, translation by INT)

In Your Backyard
by Neta Patrick and Michael Sfard

The fact that the murder case in which Yaakov (Jack) Teitel was a suspect at the end of the 1990s, was shelved on the grounds of an unknown perpetrator (a situation in which the police has no lead for locating a suspect), is a scandal and a police fiasco.  It would be a smaller scandal if this was an exception that did not attest to the rule, but whoever follows the outcome of investigations of violent incidents against Palestinians in the West Bank knows that hundreds of cases are shelved on a daily basis without basic investigation actions being carried out in them.  Alibis are not checked, investigation teams do not visit the scene of the incident, and police lineups are not in the lexicon of the Samaria and Judea District Police.

"Shelving a case" is a euphemism for closing a case.  In theory, shelving a case does not rule out the possibility that it could be reopened if new evidence is discovered, but in practice, cases do not return from the shelf.  The statistics gathered by Yesh Din show that for several years, consistently, over 90 percent of the cases involving suspicions that Israelis committed offenses against Palestinians have been closed without an indictment.