Arsonist Jailed for School Fire in Yerushalayim

A member of the anti-Arab group Lehava was sentenced on Tuesday to three years in prison for setting fire to a Jewish-Arab school in Yerushalayim a year ago.

The court found that the 24-year -old defendant set fire, along with two accomplices, to a classroom in the “Hand in Hand” school, which promotes Arab-Israel coexistence.

No one was hurt in the night-time arson attack, during which “Death to Arabs” was daubed on a schoolyard wall. An accomplice received a two-and-a-half-year jail term in July and the other a two-year sentence.

More than 600 children attend Hand in Hand, which has an equal number of Jewish and Arab pupils. There are four other such schools in the Hand in Hand network in Israel.

Meanwhile, the Shin Beit said it has made a breakthrough in “a recent major case of Jewish terrorism,” but the details are under a gag order.

A police spokesman would not say whether it was related to a July 31 torching of a Palestinian home in Duma by suspected Jewish attackers in which three members of a family — an 18-month-old boy and his parents — were killed.

In September, Minister of Defense Moshe Yaalon disclosed that the Israeli security forces knew which group the arsonists came from, but could not act for fear of exposing intelligence sources.

This article appeared in print on page 42 of the December 2nd, 2015 edition of Hamodia.