Friday, May 30, 2008

Prosecuting Terror Bombers

The following is the response of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to a letter from a Christians-for-Israel organization urging Israel to find and prosecute the religious Jews who planted the pipe bomb that blew Messianic teen Ami Ortiz to bits in April.

Clearly they are blaming the victims and do not have a serious intent to bring the perpetrators of this attempted murder to trial. Obviously, there has not been sufficient outcry in the Christian community to move Israel to execute justice.

Communicated via the Israeli Embassy of a foreign nation which I am choosing not to name here. I have added the bold emphasis:

Following your letter with regarding to the Ami Ortiz incident in Ariel, we submitted your comments to the relevant Israeli Authorities. Please find below information that the Embassy received from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem.

A. The police are investigating this case and due to the fact that there main force is intelligence the details are classified and they can't reveal any details on this issue.

The officer that is in charge of this area could only give information related to the background that led to the incident.

B. There are approximately 20 people in the Jewish Messianic community of Ariel. The head of this group act in a provocative way among the Jewish and Muslim in this area and try to convince them to convert their religion. Both communities are unsatisfied from his behaviour even though Ortiz's family lives in a good relationship with the Jewish neighbours.

C. The investigation of this matter is very complex and this is why it takes a long time to reach to a conclusion.

D. However, the police maintain a preventive activity that this case wouldn't repeat itself. The officer emphasised in general that the Messianic Jews need to change their approach towards other communities to prevent extreme actions.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will inform the Embassy once the investigation is completed.



Let me just add that the Ortiz' ministry is hardly "provocative." They live a godly life and operate in loving ministry to people in need on both the Jewish and the Palestinian sides of their region. For this good, they infuriate the anti-missionaries who hate Jewish believers in Jesus.

This letter tries to justify the attempted murder of the Ortiz family by religious fanatics in Israel by blaming the Messianic Jews for "provocative" conduct. DO NOT ACCEPT THIS LIE. Please pray for the Messianic Jews of Israel who are reporting a dramatic increase of persecution incidents by religious and anti-missionary groups over the past months.

This is a very serious situation for all the believers of Israel. Let's not fail our brothers and sisters again by remaining silent.



I just received an additional piece of information from David and Leah Ortiz:


A video report has been done on Ami and the bombing which will air on Channel one in Israel
at 8PM our time this Friday May 30th..

The police tried to stop this report from being aired and brought Channel one into court twice!! However they were defeated twice.

They say that they don't want details of the case revealed for their investigation but 9 weeks have passed with no arrests and no suspects.

This is something that needs much prayer, but please pray for the perpetrators of this attempted murder and hate crime to be apprehended and for justice to be done.



Ami still faces many surgeries, continual pain and up to the next two years in a full body stocking to repair all the damages done by the bomb blast. What if he were your 16-year old? This is a cloud hanging over the head of every believers in Israel.

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