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Murders of Koby Mandell and Yosef Ishran

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Palestinian terrorists carried out the stoning murder of Israeli teens Koby Mandell and Yosef Ishran on May 8, 2001. The boys were stoned to death, and "their heads had been smashed in by rocks". State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called the killings of the Israeli boys "horrible, brutal." Pope John Paul II, speaking in Malta, said he was saddened by "news from the Holy Land of terrible violence even against innocent young people." Journalist Caroline Glick said "The details of the butchery are unspeakable."

Disappearance and discovery of the bodies

Koby Mandell and Yosef Ishran were two Israeli teens, 13 and 14 years old. Koby was a citizen of both United States and Israel. The boys lived and attended school in Tekoa, Gush Etzion.

On May 8, 2001, the boys skipped school and went hiking in the Judean Desert surrounding their village. At first, their parents did not worry about the boys. They believed that they had gone to Jerusalem to take part in an anti-government demonstration, but when the boys did not come home by 12 a.m., their parents informed the authorities.

The bodies of two boys were discovered the next day in a cave near the West Bank settlement where they lived. USA Today reported that, according to the police, both boys had "been bound, stabbed and beaten to death with rocks". USA Today continued, "The walls of the cave in the Judean Desert were covered with the boys' blood, reportedly smeared there by the killers" "who dipped their hands in the blood of the victims." There were also "anti-Semitic screeds on the cave's wall". Those "screeds" were written with the boys' blood.

The police tried to figure out if the boys were lured to the cave, or if their bodies were deposited in the cave after the murders. After forensic examination, the bodies, which were mutilated beyond recognition, together with blood-stained rocks were taken out of the cave.

The boys' funeral was attended by thousands of people.

Claiming responsibility and Israeli and Palestinian reaction

A few news agencies were called anonymously. The caller claimed the attack had been carried out by "a group called Hizbullah-Palestine." The caller said the boys were killed as revenge for the death of a four-month-old Palestinian baby, Iman Hiju, who had become the youngest victim of violence when an Israeli tank fired at the home in which the baby lived. Ariel Sharon had issued an apology for the accidental killing, stressing that the "soldiers did not intend to kill her."

In his 2007 book Chronologies of modern terrorism, Barry Rubin named Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine as the terrorist group responsible.

Ariel Sharon blamed the murder on the Palestinian Authority. Sharon said that Palestinian security forces do nothing to stop the terrorists from murdering innocent civilians. He said that Palestinian TV was promoting the violence by "by broadcasting music videos filled with images of children throwing stones." Yasser Arafat responded by blaming Israel for "victimizing Palestinian children". "He cited a 3-month-old Palestinian girl, Reema Ahmed, who was wounded Wednesday during an Israeli shooting attack on a Gaza refugee camp."

Shlomo Riskin, a rabbi from Efrat, said:

The profound distinction between Israel and its enemies is that if a child is killed by Israel, it is in an act of defense directed at a building where shots were fired at soldiers. In the case of Kobi and Yossi and Shalhevet, the enemy picked out innocent children to destroy them.

The spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, Saeb Erekat said, "The Palestinian Authority regrets the loss of life of these two boys and all children, be it Israeli or Palestinian, Jewish, Muslim or Christian." He added, "the short way for peace and stability is finishing the Israeli occupation."

Proposed Koby Mandell Act

As a result of the murder, several legislators introduced the Koby Mandell Act, which reprimanded the State Department for, as it said, not doing enough about Palestinian terrorists who had harmed American citizens, and which would create an Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism in the Department of Justice. The legislation was spearheaded by Morton Klein's Zionist Organization of America but was not a priority of other Jewish groups, who said that it did more to reprimand the State Department rather than support counter-terrorism: by targeting only Palestinian terrorists, they said, it was too narrow in its scope and would not, for example, have been able to deal with the murder of Daniel Pearl. The provisions of the law which created the office were eventually incorporated into a 2004 omnibus spending bill.

The Koby Mandell Foundation and comedy show

The mission of the Koby Mandell Foundation, set up by his parents Seth and Sherri Mandell, is to "work to bridge the isolation that bereaved children and adults are struck with after the loss of a loved one." Leonard A. Cole, in his book Terror: how Israel has coped and what America can learn, writes that Koby's parents are determined "to take the cruelty of Koby's murder and transform it into kindness." Both Seth and Sherri Mandell reject responding to violence with violence. Seth Mandell says that "Throwing stones at Arab houses makes us as bad as the Arabs, and is not an intelligent response." Urging against the violence he says: "There’s plenty of stuff that can be done that is non-violent and makes a point." Sherri Mandell says that "Revenge, to her, means they have won".

Koby's parents also organized comedy shows to commemorate the memory of their son, who they say loved jokes.

References

  1. ^ MARGOT DUDKEVITCH, HERB KEINON, Janine Zacharia,Itim (May 10, 2001). "Terrorists murder teens near Tekoa. Sharon demands PA halt terror". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 11 March 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. ^ Matthew Kalman (6/20/2001). "Two Israeli teenagers stoned to death". USA Today. Retrieved 11 March 2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. ^ "Israeli teenagers stoned to death". Daily Mail. 9 May, 2001. Retrieved 11 March 2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |authors= (help)
  4. Caroline Glick (12/31/2010). "Column One: Hizbullah and the info war". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 11 March 2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. "Two Israeli boys found bludgeoned to death". guardian.co.uk. May 9, 2001. Retrieved 11 March 2011.
  6. ^ Seth and Sherri Mandell (May 10, 2001). "The 'Good' Terrorist. When a man sprays machine-gun fire at a busload of schoolchildren, is that activism, militancy -- or just plain terror?". aish.com. Retrieved 11 March 2011.
  7. ^ Liel Leibovitz (August 7, 2007). "Aliya: Three Generations of American-Jewish Immigration to Israel". St. Martin's Griffin. p. xi. ISBN 0312315163. Retrieved 11 March 2011.
  8. ^ Matthew Kalman (6/20/2001). "Stoning to Death' of Israeli Youths Fuels Tension". ABC News. Retrieved 11 March 2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  9. Barry M. Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin (December 31, 2007). "Chronologies of modern terrorism". M.E. Sharpe. p. 219. ISBN 978-0765620477. Retrieved 11 March 2011.
  10. ^ JOEL GREENBERG (10 May, 2001). "2 Jewish Teenagers Are Beaten to Death in the West Bank". New York Times. Retrieved 11 March 2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |authors= (help)
  11. "Israeli teenagers 'stoned to death'". BBC. 9 May, 2001. Retrieved 11 March 2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. Berger, Matthew E. (December 16, 2004). "Bill Cracks Down on Killers of Americans". Jewish Journal.
  13. ^ DAVID HOROVITZ (12/14/2010). "The funny business of remembering Koby Mandell". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 11 March 2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  14. ^ "The Koby Mandell Foundation". kobymandell.org.
  15. Leonard A. Cole (June 2007). "Terror: how Israel has coped and what America can". Indiana University Press. p. 170. ISBN 978-0253349187. Retrieved 11 March 2011.
  16. MELANIE LIDMAN (3/4/2011). "'They won't understand how the world can continue'". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 11 March 2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  17. Marnie Winston-Macauley (March 1, 2007). "Yiddishe Mamas: The Truth About the Jewish Mother". Andrews McMeel Publishing . p. 307. ISBN 978-0740763762. Retrieved 11 March 2011.
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