Murder most foul.

The callous, and agonising, murder of Palestinian teenager Mohammed Khdeir, has shocked many - and rightly so.  However, it is interesting and significant, that the Israeli authorities moved so quickly to investigate the murder - and have already arrested six Israeli suspects, three of whom have reportedly confessed to the heinous crime committed, it appears, for 'nationalistic' reasons.  Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has already said that Khieder’s killers would “face the full weight of the law.”

This is in stark contrast to the response of the Palestinian Authority on the abduction, and murder, of the three Jewish teenagers whose bodies were discovered a week ago.   I have not read, or heard, of any attempt by the PA to investigate those killings.  Rather, there was commendation in Palestine for whoever may have been responsible!

The other, related, news item has been the brutal attack on Tariq Abu Khieder, the American cousin of Mohammed Khdeir - allegedly by members of the Israeli Border Police.  I say 'allegedly' because although the three men involved were in police uniforms, they were also masked!   Uniforms, of course, may be easily obtained, or copied.  What I find interesting, if not suspicious, is that the boy who was attacked was the cousin of a murdered boy; that he is an American who was on holiday; and that there just happened to be two separate mobile 'phone video recordings made, from two different angles, by people who, one is led to believe, just happened to be in those locations!

What is also interesting is that the USA are reported to have put pressure on Israel concerning this shocking event.  Presumably, this is because an American is involved.  However, another American citizen, Saeed Abedini, is languishing in an Iranian jail.  He had often made trips back to his native country in order to visit his parents and extended family. Before leaving for America, he spent many years in Iran as a Christian leader and community organizer developing underground home church communities for converts.

It was in September 2012, while in his homeland to help build a secular orphanage, that he was pulled off a bus by authorities, imprisoned and sent before a judge in what supporters say was a sham trial.  The treatment to which he has since been subjected makes even that suffered by Tariq Abu Khieder (whoever is found to be responsible) mild by comparison!  One has to wonder why the USA is, and has been, so silent with regard to a Christian citizen, when it is read to move so quickly on behalf of the son of Muslim citizens!

Many of us, who love Israel, are concerned that a few Jewish extremists would murder a Palestinian child; we are concerned that it may, in fact, have been Israeli security officers who assaulted his young cousin; and we continue to prayerfully support the parents of those three murdered Israeli teenagers.  Perhaps you will join with us!