‘We Do Not Live in Fear’: Israeli Women Encourage Running in Memory of Esther Horgen
Israelis woke up on Monday to the horrible news that the lifeless body of 52-year-old Esther Horgen, a mother-of-six from the community of Tel Menashe in Samaria, was found at around 2 am in a forest near her home after she went for a power walk on Sunday afternoon and never returned. Her husband, Benjamin, alerted security officials when she didn’t make it back.Thousands march to honor Israeli woman murdered in suspected terror attack
On Thursday, JNS reported that Israel’s Shin Bet security service arrested a Palestinian suspect from the Jenin area in connection with the murder. Details of the investigation remain under a gag order.
Police are trying to assess whether the incident was a nationalistically motivated terror attack. The Samaria Regional Council said the murder was without a doubt an act of terror, saying Horgen’s skull had been crushed with police believing the weapon to have been a rock.
Friends and family gathered in Tel Menashe on Tuesday to pay their final respects to Horgen before she was laid to rest.
Ora Oziel, a neighbor and close friend, told JNS that her family and the Horgens shared a Shabbat meal together last Friday night, just 48 hours before Esther went on her ill-fated jog. She said that Esther, who was a life coach, marriage counselor and specialist in Jewish psychology, “was full of life.”
“She loved the beauty of nature and of human beings, both on their inside and outside,” added Oziel.
Thousands of people took part in a march on Friday in memory of an Israeli woman murdered in a suspected terror attack while out on a run earlier this week in the Reihan forest near her home in the West Bank settlement of Tal Menashe.
The march took place in the forest where Esther Horgen, 52, a mother of six, was killed on Sunday. Her body was found in the early hours of Monday, having apparently been violently murdered. Horgen had gone out for an afternoon run and did not return, whereupon her husband, Benjamin, notified the police.
Samaria Regional Council Chairman Yossi Dagan called on Friday for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to greenlight new housing construction in the settlement as a response to the murder.
“We call on the prime minister to announce on Sunday that construction in Tal Menashe will be doubled as a Zionist response to the killing. We will not stop marching,” Dagan was quoted by Ynet as saying at the gathering.
IDF troops map house of suspected murderer of Esther Horgen
IDF soldiers entered the Palestinian village of Tura early Friday in order to map the house of the terrorist suspected of murdering Esther Horgen, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit reported.
The process of mapping the house was done in order to examine the possibility of demolishing the house, in case the suspected killer is found guilty.
Horgen, a woman in her 50s, was found dead on Monday in the Reihan Forest, close to her home in the settlement of Tal Menashe, after she had been out jogging.
Horgen’s body was found on the side of a path in the forest and showed signs of violence, including to her head. Her family reported her missing on Sunday. She is survived by her husband, Benyamin, and six children. Her youngest child celebrated his bar mitzvah three months ago.
A suspect in the murder of Horgen, who was killed in the northern West Bank in an alleged terrorist attack, was arrested in a joint operation by the Police, the IDF, and the Border Police on Thursday.
On Thursday, at around noon, intelligence units found that the suspect was staying at his mother’s house in the village of Toura, near Jenin. The Yamam (Israel Police National Counter Terrorism Unit) then arrived at the scene and with assistance from intelligence drones, the suspect was located on a rooftop and was later apprehended. He was taken questioning by the Shin Bet.