JERUSALEM (JTA) — Three more wedding guests have been arrested in connection with a video showing Jewish revelers celebrating the deaths of members of a Palestinian family in a firebombing.
The three people, including one minor, reportedly were arrested Monday by Israel Police, three weeks after the wedding video was broadcast on Israel’s Channel 10. The minor reportedly was seen in the video dancing with a pistol.
The three reportedly are being investigated for incitement and illegally handling firearms.
Five other suspects, including the groom, Yakir Ashbal, were arrested last week and released.
Ashbal told Israel’s Channel 10 last week after the release of the video that he did not see the activity captured on camera at his Jerusalem wedding, which had 600 guests.
The video shows friends of the suspected assailants in the July attack on a home in the Palestinian village of Duma that killed three members of the Dawabshe family — a toddler and his parents — stabbing a photo of the family and waving knives, rifles, pistols and Molotov cocktails. The revelers also chant 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.
Those shown in the video celebrating the deaths have been condemned from across Israel’s political and religious spectrum.
An investigation was launched into the incident, even before the broadcast of the video on Dec. 23, by the Nationalistically Motivated Crimes Unit of the West Bank police.
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