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IDF demolishes house of terrorist killer who murdered rabbi walking home

An IDF bulldozer razed the two-story structure to the ground while over a hundred Palestinians burned tires and threw rocks and paint-filled bottles.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The IDF demolished Sunday night the home of the Palestinian terrorist who killed Rabbi Shai Ohayon on a Petach Tikva street some two months ago.

The family of Khalil Dweikat had appealed to the Supreme Court not to destroy their house in the Samarian village of Rujeib. A day after the murder, Dweikat’s brother said that the father of six suffered from bouts of clinical depression and was taking medication which he may have stopped, according to a Haaretz report. The three-justice panel rejected the appeal in a 2-1 decision.

An IDF bulldozer razed the two-story structure to the ground while over a hundred Palestinians burned tires and threw rocks and paint-filled bottles at the security forces who dispersed them using non-lethal means.

His widow, Sivan, said that justice had been served and that being merciful would be wrong.

“We pray to God and ask for the truth every day as my husband always asked for it, that we will be able to distinguish between good and evil and know how to direct our compassion and concern to correct, worthy and true places,” she said.

Dweikat, 46, who worked in Israel legally on a local construction site, took a knife from the kitchen at work on August 26 and at lunchtime went to hunt Jews to kill “for Palestine, the Palestinian people, the al-Aqsa Mosque, and for Allah,” according to the indictment against him.

He saw Ohayon walking home after getting off a bus and stabbed the 39-year-old father of four several times before running away. He was caught within hours by security forces, confessed to the crime and reenacted it for the police. Dweikat was charged with murder in aggravating circumstances two weeks later and is awaiting trial.

The Supreme Court signed off on the demolition just two months after it denied a government request to demolish the entire home of another terrorist killer.

In the case of Nizmi Abu Bakar, who threw a marble slab from a roof onto the head of Staff Sgt. Amit Ben-Yigal during an army operation in his village, the judges only allowed a few rooms to be destroyed.