Israeli Rabbi, Wounded in Palestinian Attack, Dies
by Reuters and Algemeiner Staff
An Israeli rabbi died on Monday of wounds from a Palestinian attack a day earlier in the West Bank in which a soldier was killed.
The rabbi, Achiad Ettinger, 47, was a father of 12 and a resident of Eli. He was shot on Sunday shortly after the soldier — later identified as Staff Sgt. Gal Keidan — was stabbed to death at an intersection on a busy highway near the main entrance to Ariel.
The Palestinian assailant used the 19-year-old conscript’s rifle to fire at the rabbi and wound a second soldier before fleeing in a hijacked car, Israeli officials said.
A spokeswoman at the Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva announced Ettinger’s death. He was the head of a religious seminary in Tel Aviv.
“The people of Israel are mourning the murder of Rabbi Achiad Ettinger,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on Twitter.
The IDF was still searching for the suspected attacker, identified in the Israeli media as a 19-year-old Palestinian with no known affiliation with a terrorist organization.
Palestinians, many of them individuals without links to armed groups, carried out a wave of attacks in the West Bank in late 2015 and 2016, but the frequency of such incidents has since decreased.