In Reaction

My comments follow this report:-

Israel nabs serial attacker of Arabs, leftist Jews

Israeli authorities have arrested a Jewish-American extremist suspected of carrying out a series of high-profile hate crime, security officials said Sunday.

Police and Shin Bet security forces say Jack Teitel, a 37-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jewish West Bank settler, was behind the killing of two Arabs, the targeting a peace activist and an attack on a breakaway Jewish sect over a period of 12 years...Results of the police investigation will be turned over to the state prosecutor to prepare an indictment.

...Teitel is not suspected of being responsible for the shooting attack against a gay youth center in Tel Aviv in August, in which two people were killed, though Israeli media said he confessed to that attack as well.

Teitel arrived in Israel from the U.S. a decade ago and has lived in the West Bank settlement of Shvut Rachel, north of Jerusalem, for the past six years, his brother-in-law Moshe Avitan said.

...Teitel's lawyer, Adi Keidar, told Israel's Channel 2 TV that his client is "mentally disturbed."

First, murder is murder and a criminal act is a criminal act. There are no "buts".

Second, if at the end of a proper judicial procedure he is found guilty then he is guilty - he alone.

Third, if there are no other defendants or no others found guilty then he alone is guilty, not his family, not his friends, not his neighbors, not his community nor anyone else.

Fourth, any incitement, rumor-mongering or slander must be proven such as talk of an "underground" or "rabbis" or whatnot.