The murder by knife of three children, including an infant of 3 months, and both parents in a West Bank settlement late Friday night rocked Israel terribly. The news broke on Saturday morning, and the shock was somehow both muted and amplified by the enforced public silence of the Jewish Sabbath. But Shabbat ended at sundown, and freed from the strictures of enforced rest, events lurched forward with something very like vengeance.
First came the condemnations. “This is a despicable murder of an entire innocent family, parents, children and an infant, while they were sleeping in their home on the Sabbath evening,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “We all know,” Netanyahu added, “as those who want to strike at us will know, that the future of the settlements will not be decided by terror.”
