Palestinian Aziz Salha waving his blood covered hand while lynching two Israeli soldiers. Photo: Screenshot.

Jerusalem police on Monday arrested six more suspects in the case of an attempted lynching of Arab youths in Jerusalem’s Zion Square Aug. 16 that left one local Arab youth hospitalized with severe injuries. One of the suspects in the lynching said, “There were around 40 to 50 youths there and anyone nearby beat him. If it was up to me, I would have killed him.”

Israeli officials vowed to bring all the assailants to justice. Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon said it ran “contrary to Jewish morality and values, and constitutes first and foremost an educational and moral failure.”

But the incident also reminded the public how differently authorities are handling the incident in comparison to the way the Palestinian Authority (PA) handled the lynching of two Israelis in Ramallah in 2000. In October of that year, two Israeli army reservists ended up in Ramallah by accident and were assaulted by a mob of 1,000 Palestinians at the local police station. They were choked, stabbed, disemboweled, and had their eyes gouged out. Not only did the Palestinian police not intervene, but some even participated in the act.

When the men were finally dead, one of the murderers stood at an open window and held up his bloody hands for the crowds outside to see, while the audience cheered. Then one of the bodies was flung from the window onto the street below. The body of the second victim was set on fire. In the aftermath, the PA did nothing except try to censor foreign media outlets that obtained video of the atrocity. The PA-controlled media portrayed the two victims as Israeli spies.