Friends and relatives gathered Monday to mourn the death of Yuval Castleman, the Israeli civilian who responded to a deadly terror attack in Jerusalem, shooting and killing the perpetrators before he himself was shot dead by an Israeli reservist soldier. <\/p>\n
Dozens traveled to Castleman\u2019s parents\u2019 home in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Tiv\u2019on to attend his shiva, the traditional seven-day Jewish mourning period, as anger has grown across the country at the circumstances leading to his death. <\/p>\n
Castleman, a former police officer, was driving to work Thursday when he saw two gunmen open fire at a bus stop in Jerusalem. Moments later, he had rushed to the scene. <\/p>\n
A video showed two uniformed soldiers scrambling out of a red car and grabbing their guns. A third person, an army reservist according to Israel\u2019s military, appears to have mistaken\u00a0Castleman for an attacker\u00a0and\u00a0began shooting\u00a0at him.\u00a0Bullets from one of the Israeli soldiers may have also struck Castleman, the IDF said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the soldiers saw him I\u2019m assuming they thought he was a terrorist. But then when Yuval realized that that\u2019s what they\u2019re thinking, he opened his jacket to show he had nothing underneath, and got down on his knees. He opened his hands, so they could see he had nothing in his hands,\u201d said Itkovich. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe was shouting in Hebrew. He was shouting \u2018I\u2019m an Israeli.\u2019 He threw his wallet, his identification, on the way so they could see he\u2019s an Israeli. And they just shot him. They gunned him down,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Castleman died at the Shaare Zedek medical center later Thursday. Three other victims were killed in the attack, for which Hamas claimed responsibility. <\/p>\n
At Castleman\u2019s shiva Monday, his father Moshe praised his \u201cheroic\u201d son. <\/p>\n
Moshe said there should be an investigation into his son\u2019s fatal shooting \u201cto prevent such a thing happening again.\u201d <\/p>\n
Itzkovich, who served in the police alongside Castleman, accused the soldier who shot him of violating protocols. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s certain things that you\u2019re not supposed to do. Even if Yuval was a terrorist \u2013 even if the citizen that they thought was a terrorist was a terrorist \u2013 the man had surrendered,\u201d Itzkovich said. \u201cBy these protocols, they\u2019re supposed to arrest him. He should never have been shot.\u201d <\/p>\n
Itzkovich expressed his disbelief that the soldier had \u201cignored\u201d the protocols he said are drilled into those serving in the Israeli police and military. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey taught us in the army, and in the police force, that the protocols are very, very strict. It\u2019s like a mantra,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you wake me up at 4 in the morning, I will tell you exactly what those protocols are. I trust the army, and I trust the police force, and I know that they gave the orders exactly as they gave it to me, when I was there. And this guy, this soldier \u2013 he ignored them. It\u2019s not that he didn\u2019t know them, he just ignored them. And that was what my friend got killed for. It\u2019s devastating.\u201d <\/p>\n
The IDF originally said it would not investigate the incident. But, amid widespread media coverage of Castleman\u2019s death, Israel Police said they would investigate it, and the IDF then said it would join the investigation because the suspect in the killing is a soldier. <\/p>\n
IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said he felt \u201cdeep sorrow\u201d for Castleman\u2019s \u201ctragic death.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThe IDF has clear instructions on how and when to shoot, and all of this is very clear. And there\u2019s a clear moral rule \u2013 when someone puts their hand up \u2013 he should not be shot,\u201d he also said, cautioning that \u201cuntil the investigation is not over, we cannot indict a person. We have to wait for its outcomes.\u201d <\/p>\n
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called for a \u201cthorough inquiry\u201d into the shooting, describing Castleman as \u201ca hero of Israel.\u201d <\/p>\n
But that call followed an earlier statement by Netanyahu that prompted fury in parts of Israel. In a widely panned comment on the incident, Netanyahu defended the right for Israeli citizens to bear arms and suggested that some civilian deaths were the \u201cprice\u201d that came with such a policy. \u201cThat\u2019s life,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that during upticks of terror over the past decade, and even before that, having armed civilians often saved lives and prevented a bigger catastrophe,\u201d Netanyahu said in a press conference to Tel Aviv on Saturday night. \u201cUnder the current circumstances, we should continue with this policy, I surely support it. We might have to pay prices, but that\u2019s life.\u201d <\/p>\n
Asked for his response to Netanyahu\u2019s comments, Castleman\u2019s father said he would not discuss them \u201cbecause the Prime Minister spoke later and corrected what he had said, and after he understood what had happened, he said that my son was a hero \u2013 and that\u2019s exactly how it was.\u201d <\/p>\n
Applications to carry private\u00a0firearms in Israel surged in the month following the Hamas attack on October 7, according to the Ministry of National Security. As of October 30, the ministry had received 180,500 new applications with its centers receiving an average of 10,000 new requests per day \u2013 compared to 850 new requests per week prior to the terror attacks. <\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir has voiced his desire for more\u00a0Israelis\u00a0to carry\u00a0firearms. <\/p>\n\n
Friends and relatives gathered Monday to mourn the death of Yuval Castleman, the Israeli civilian who responded to a deadly terror attack in Jerusalem, shooting and killing the perpetrators before he himself was shot dead by an Israeli reservist soldier. Dozens traveled to Castleman\u2019s parents\u2019 home in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Tiv\u2019on to <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12513,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}