TEL AVIV – The Shin Bet security agency has deemed the violent rape and murder of a 19-year-old Israeli by a Palestinian to be a terror attack.
The agency said that the suspect, Arafat Irfayia, had confessed and reenacted the murder of Ori Ansbacher, which occurred on Thursday while she took a walk in a forest in southern Jerusalem.
Irfayia “implicated himself definitively in the incident,” the Shin Bet said.
On Monday, the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court extended Irfayia’s remand for an additional ten days.
Irfayia, who sported bruises, cuts and scabs on his face, smirked and rolled his eyes for the cameras.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a condolence call with his wife Sara to the Ansbacher family’s home in the Tekoa settlement outside of Jerusalem on Sunday evening. While he was there, Netanyahu told the family of the Shin Bet’s conclusions.
Ansbacher’s uncle was quoted by Hadashot News as saying that the murder represented a battle between the forces of good and evil.
“It is important to leave our private story aside and understand that there is bigger business here than Ori and her criminal murderer,” Boaz Bar Yuda said. “It is important to understand that we are dealing with the war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness — we are good people, Ori was full of goodness, light and kindness. There are people here who are looking to do evil and the gap between her joy and her light compared to what this criminal murderer symbolizes that.”
“We believe that the good will win, that its light will win — that good must prevail,” he said and added that, “everything must be done for them to understand that such wickedness has no place anywhere.”
The Israel Police and the Shin Bet are hoping to indict 29-year-old Irfaiya for rape and murder in the context of a terrorist act, Channel 12 reported.
The IDF on Sunday began preparations for the demolition of Irfaiya’s home.
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked on Saturday called for Israel’s military prosecution to demand the death penalty.
Most of the details of the gruesome murder remain shrouded under a gag order but on Monday the additional charge of rape was released.
“We should not hide the truth,” Shaked told Channel 13 news. “He killed Ori because she was a Jewish girl.”
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan echoed Shaked’s call for the death penalty.
“If the murderer abused his victim and if we understand that there is no way to rehabilitate him, and in cases of the murder of a family, the death penalty should be used,” Erdan said.
The only time Israel has used the death penalty was in the case of Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann in 1962.