13-Mar-11: The victims of Friday night's murders-by-knifing have names and faces

Rabbi Udi Fogel, 36, his wife Ruth, 35, and their children Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and three-month-old Hadas are the human beings murdered in their sleep Friday night by terrorists acting in the name of Palestinian anger and political aspirations. The orphaned Fogel children are Tamar, 12 (who came home at midnight to find an unimaginable scene of carnage), Roi, 8, and two-year-old Yishai. Their grandparents are now caring for them. The funerals are set for later today (Sunday) in Jerusalem starting at 1:30 pm.

Hadas (3 months)

Elad (3)

Yoav (11)

Ruth

Rabbi Udi

May their memories serve as a blessing.

Following is a report of Friday night's events passed along by a contact.

On Friday night at 10:30 pm the terrorists entered the house through the living room picture window, did not notice the 6-year-old boy sleeping on the couch and continued on to the bedroom where they slashed the throats of the father and newborn baby who were sleeping there. The mother came out of the bathroom and was stabbed on its threshold. The evidence shows that she tried to fight the terrorists. They then slashed the throat of the 11-year old-son who was reading in bed. They did not notice the 2-year old asleep in his bed, but murdered the 3-year old with two stabs to his heart. After that, they locked the door, exited through the window and escaped. Exactly two hours after the infiltration, there was another warning signal from the same spot on the fence, as the terrorists left the way they had come.  Once again, the patrol did not identify the source of the signal as infiltration. The 12-year-old daughter returned home at 00:30 and found the door locked. She asked a neighbor, Rabbi Yaakov Cohen, of the Itamar Yeshiva, to help her. He brought a weapon with him once he noticed tracks and mud near the house. The two woke up the 6-year old sleeping in the living room by calling through the window and when he opened the door, the Rabbi returned to his home. When she entered the bedrooms, the young daughter saw the horrific bloodsoaked scene and ran out of the house screaming. The neighbor ran back and fired several shots in the air to alert security personnel.  Within a short time, large police and IDF forces arrived and began intensive searches to see if the terrorists were still in the community. At 03:30 a.m., military trackers discovered footprints leading to the Arab village of Awarta.

Awarta is historically associated with the burial site of the sons of Aaron, the high priest (Cohen Hagadol) and brother of Moses. One of those sons was Itamar, after whom the community in which the Fogel family lived is named.

A previous jihadist massacre in Itamar in June 2002 took the lives of Rachel Shabo and three of her children: Neria (16), Zvi (13), and Avishai (5). Two other Shabo children were seriously injured and Yossi Tuito, commander of the neighborhood preparedness team, was shot to death as he approached the family's house in order to help. The Palestinian Arab terrorist who caused these deaths was killed.