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Israeli forces demolish buildings in Jewish Samaria town

“The decision of Bennett’s leftist government to evacuate Jews from a place where a Jew was murdered, rewards terrorism,” MK Avi Maoz said.

By World Israel News Staff

Israeli security forces began demolishing on Friday morning structures that were erected over the past week in the evacuated Jewish settlement of Homesh in Samaria, Hebrew-language media reported.

Rabbi Elishema Cohen, who serves as head of the Homesh Talmudic seminary (yeshiva) accused the Israeli government for lacking the appropriate patience and sensitivity, considering the recent death of 25-year-old Yehuda Dimentman, a student of the Homesh yeshiva, who was shot and killed by Palestinian terrorists after leaving the yeshiva earlier this month.

“It hasn’t even been 24 hours since the shiva ended,” Cohen told Hebrew media. “Only yesterday [Dimentman’s] widow returned home, trying to understand how to carry on with her life … and now we need to tell her that their stabbing her and her dear husband in the back.”

Knesset Member Avi Maoz (Religious Zionist Party) slammed Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and his administration for carrying out the demolishing.

“The decision of Bennett’s leftist government to evacuate Jews from a place where a Jew was murdered, rewards terrorism,” he stated.

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Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan accused Bennett and Defense Minister Benny Gantz for lying to the Israeli public. “You promised the building of the land and we are experiencing destruction!,” he argued. “Thanks to you, terrorists are dancing and Jews are crying.”

On Thursday, thousands joined the mourning family on a rainy day in a protest march to the Homesh yeshiva where Dimentman had studied and where the attack took place.

“We, the Dimentman family, will be comforted by massive participation in a march to the place where our beloved son Yehuda was murdered in the Homesh yeshiva. We ask the leaders of the country and the army to allow everyone who wants to comfort us in our deep distress to go up to Homesh,” a statement issued by the family read.

The modular units destroyed on Friday were part of the yeshiva, which has remained active in Homesh even after the settlement was evacuated and mostly destroyed as part of the 2005 expulsion of some 8,000 Jews from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria.