Investigation opened into video of wedding guests celebrating Duma deaths

JERUSALEM (JTA) — An investigation has been opened into a video aired on Israel television that shows Jewish revelers at a wedding celebrating the murder of three Palestinians in a West Bank firebombing.

The video, released Wednesday night on Channel 10 and filmed at the Jerusalem wedding of a right-wing couple last week, features friends of the suspected assailants in the July firebomb attack on a home in the Palestinian village of Duma.

The Judea and Samaria Police said that an investigation was launched several days ago “into the many serious offenses displayed in the wedding video,” Ynet reported on Thursday. The report also cited police as saying that they have collected a great deal of material on the behavior shown in the video. The investigation is being handled by the Judea and Samaria Police’s Nationalistically-Motivated Crimes Unit.

Three members of the Dawabshe family — Ali, 18 months, and his parents, Saad and Riham — were killed in the Duma attack. Ahmed Dawabshe, now 5, the only surviving member of the immediate family, is still undergoing treatment in an Israeli hospital.

In the video, party-goers stab a photo of the Dawabshe family and wave knives, rifles, pistols and Molotov cocktails. The crowd chants the words to a song that includes a verse from Judges 16:28, in which Samson says, “Let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.” The crowd substitutes “Palestinians” for Philistines.

The youths in the video have been condemned from across Israel’s political spectrum.

The owner of the hall where the wedding was held told Ynet that there are “dozens of weddings like this every month,” and that police knew exactly what was going on here.” He said the police had sent undercover cops to document the events.