Erez Levanon was a 42-year old devout Breslover chassid from Bat Ayin. He was the father of three, played the guitar and even released a CD - you can hear him here:
An intensely spiritual man, he had spent much time in India speaking to Israeli backpackers there about their own religion.Levanon would go out in the fields near his home and pray for an hour every day. Yesterday, his routine was watched by two Palestinian Arabs who, during his prayers, brutally stabbed him many times.
The Palestinian Arab press is treating the murder of a man praying in the field as some sort of great victory, happening in a "well guarded" area, and it characterizes Israel's subsequent search and arrest of the two murderers as a heinous crime. Originally the PalArabs claimed that Palestinian Arabs found him and informed Israeli authorities; that people in their town of Beit Ummar were punished in retaliation, that Israel arrested two 17-year old "children." In fact, he was found by his neighbors who were looking for him and it is remarkable that the IDF found the apparent murderers so quickly.
The Israeli press is reporting that the youths were 18 and that they confessed to the crime, although they claimed that they did not belong to a terror organization.
Yet Islamic Jihad has taken responsibility for the murder.
(Even if you take the PalArab press at face value, it means that Islamic Jihad has trained "children" to be murderers and encourages them to kill any Jew they can find. )