A funeral was held in Hevron on Friday for Shadi Arafa, the 24-year-old Arab bystander from Hevron in Judea who was accidentally killed by an Arab terrorist on Thursday night in a shooting attack in Gush Etzion that left two Jews dead.
But despite the fact that Arafa was killed in a blaze of gunfire rained down on vehicles by an Arab terrorist driving by, the Palestinian Authority (PA) buried him as a victim of Israel in a twisted perversion of the events.
Israel had delivered Arafa’s body to the PA late Thursday, reports the Palestinian Arab Ma’an News Agency.
His body was taken from Bethlehem in Judea to the al-Ahli Hospital in Hevron according to the paper, and there official PA sources issued the assertion that is tantamount to a blood libel, claiming that IDF forces who responded to the attack killed Arafa.
Putting the lie to the claim is the fact that the terrorist wasn’t shot at; video footage from the scene shows that after he drove at high speed with his gun blazing on vehicles stopped in a traffic jam, he crashed into a car and got out unharmed with his hands raised, at which point a Border Patrol officer arrested him.
But the PA Health Ministry’s claim was apparently good enough for the masses at Arafa’s funeral on Friday, who were organized into a protest by Hamas activists that began the funeral march from a local mosque according to Yedioth Aharonoth.
Funerals of terrorists in Hevron have been frequently used in recent weeks to incite more terror, in a trend surprisingly allowed by the government when it breached a Cabinet decision last month not to return the bodies of terrorists. Arafa’s funeral would seem to show that even Arab victims of Arab terror are being used to incite more attacks.
The two Jewish victims of Thursday’s shooting were named as Ya’akov Don, 49, and Ezra Schwartz, 18.
Don, a resident of Alon Shevut and a long time educator, was buried on Friday.
Schwartz was an American citizen who was taking part in a volunteer program while studying at a yeshiva in Beit Shemesh. Washington has been deafeningly silent regarding his brutal murder.
