Two Arabs Indicted in Murder of Reuven Schmerling, Hy”d

An indictment was filed Sunday against two illegal Arabs who murdered Reuven Schmerling, Hy”d, on Erev Sukkos. According to the indictment, Yussuf Khaled Mustafa Kamil and Mahmad Ziad Abu Alroob decided to find Jews to kill to avenge the death of a friend of theirs, who was killed carrying out a separate terror attack in the summer, as part of the riots over the implementation of security measures at Har HaBayis in the wake of the murder of two Israeli security officers.

Schmerling was murdered on Erev Sukkos, October 4, savagely stabbed by several terrorists who worked with him in a warehouse he owned in Kfar Kassem. Police had initially said that they believed that Schmerling had been killed in a financial dispute with workers, but police definitively determined after several days that the murder had been committed for nationalistic reasons, based on evidence that had emerged.

The two murderers are residents of the village of Kabatiya in central Shomron. They entered Israel illegally with the express purpose of carrying out a terror act, the indictment says, and utilized one of the many transports of illegal Arab workers to get past checkpoints into Israel proper. They reached Kfar Kassem, and after some discussion decided to stab Jewish workers who came to the town. Schmerling had a warehouse in the town, and worked with a large number of local Arabs.

They approached Schmerling and asked for help in repairing a refrigerator they said had broken down in their apartment, but when they got him alone, the indictment says, they began stabbing him, and hit him with a number of heavy objects that were nearby. The two ran away and went into hiding as soon as they killed their victim, but they were discovered by security forces and arrested the next day. Officials said that before they were caught, the terrorists had been planning another attack in the ensuing days.