Mohammad Barakeh, Arab member of Knesset, secretary-general of the Hadash movement in Israel, stated on the third anniversary of the Shfa-Amr massacre on Monday, that the Arab residents are until this day struggling to convince Israel that they were the victims, but Israel insists to chase them.
Barakeh added that Israel with its racist system is still chasing the residents of Shfa-Amr just because they tried to stop the crime and stopped the criminal from continuing his massacre.
“Maybe the number of casualties is not enough to convince this racist mentality”, he added, “It seems that this mentality allows a Jew to kill Arabs just because they are Arabs, and considers him the victim”.
“Now, the government is still prosecuting and chasing the residents of Shfa-Amr and wants to prosecute them”, Barakeh added, “They must know that if they are prosecuting ten, this means they are prosecuting hundreds of thousands of Arabs, this is a conspiracy and an open battle motivated by a racist grudge”.
Last week, the Knesset session witnesses a heated debate on this issue between Barakeh and the head of the Likud Knesset bloc, Gideon Sa’ar.
Barakeh also said that in the coming days, the residents of Shfa-Arm will commemorate the third anniversary of the massacre in which members of my hometown were killed and massacred.
Israel is debating a law which would forbid the government from paying funeral expenses of residents who were killed during attacks against Israel. Barakeh said that Eden Nata Zada stepped into the Arabic bus in Shfa-Amr, killed four and wounded several others, “but no one suggested such a debate, and we never asked his family, his mother, to apologize for his crime”.
The Shfa-Amr attack was carried out by Eden Natan-Zada, and Israeli settler-soldier, who stepped on board a bus in Shfa-Amr Arab town on August 5, 2005, and opened fire at the passengers.
Four Arabs were killed in the attack, two of them were sisters. They were identified as Hazar 23, and Deena Torkey, 21, Nader Hayek, 55, and Michael Bahhouth, 56 years old. At least twenty were wounded.
In spite of the fact that Natan-Zada was known to police as a member of the outlawed far-right terrorist Kach movement, he was still allowed to be a soldier in the Israel army.
On Monday, hundreds of residents marched in Shfa-Amr carrying pictures of the victims and also Palestinian flags. Several political figures and relatives of the victims delivered speeches during the protest.
Recently, Israeli Attorney General, Menachem Mazuz, decided to charge several Arab residents with “violent assault”. Israel says that Zada “was lynched by a mob that entered the bus after he carried his attack”.
The residents of Shfa-Arm said that if Zada was not killed more people would have been killed and wounded as he continued to fire his rifle until the crowed managed to reach him.
The residents were arrested after an eight-month probe, which was held under a complete media blackout. The Israeli police and the State Prosecutor’s Office in Israel, announced that they had arrested seven Arab residents.
Israel claims that the seven residents participated in the killing of Zada and attacked Israeli policemen.
