Thousands protest planned demolition of Samaria yeshiva where terror victim studied

“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,” Dimentman’s family stated.

By World Israel News Staff

At the conclusion of the shiva, the seven-day mourning period, for 25-year-old terror victim Yehuda Dimentman, thousands joined the family on a rainy day in a protest march to the yeshiva, or institution of Talmudic studies, in Samaria, where he 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,” said Shlomi Dimentman. “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.”

The solidarity march began at 1:30 p.m., starting in the nearby village of Shavei Shomron, where Dimentman lived with his wife and infant son.

The yeshiva is housed in modular units in the settlement of Homesh, which the Israeli government destroyed as part of the 2005 expulsion of some 8,000 Jews from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria.

The learning center was re-established there without permission of the authorities, who have consistently refused requests to rebuild the village as a whole as the appropriate answer to Palestinian terrorism.

“We know that a decision was made to destroy Homesh” after the week of mourning ends, yeshiva head Rabbi Elishama Cohen told reporters Monday. On Sunday, the IDF and Israeli police forces destroyed structures in Homesh, leaving the yeshiva intact.

Dimentman’s widow, Ethia, at a press conference during the shiva, urged Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to ensure that the necessary authorizations are given so that the place her husband had loved would be allowed to flourish rather than be razed.

Dimentman was a passenger in a car returning home last Thursday night when two Arabs stepped out of the bushes at the side of the road and shot at the vehicle, hitting it at least 15 times. Dimentman was mortally wounded, while two other passengers were lightly hurt.

The suspected murderers, along with several accomplices, were captured two days later by forces of the Shabak, IDF, and the special anti-terrorism unit of the Israel Police. The terrorists reportedly belonged to the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group.