A second Palestinian man was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences for the murder of five members of the Fogel family in a West Bank Jewish settlement. Amjad Awad, 19, was sentenced Monday in a West Bank military court. He was convicted in November for the March 11 murders in Itamar, which is near his home in the West Bank town of Hawarta. Awad also was sentenced to an additional seven years in prison on two counts of weapons trafficking and one count of conspiracy to commit murder, for a total sentence …More

A second Palestinian man has pleaded guilty to the murder of five members of the Fogel family in a West Bank Jewish settlement. Amjad Awad, 19, pleaded guilty to the murders Tuesday during a hearing in a West Bank military court. The judges said they would examine the evidence in the case before convicting Awad on his own admission of guilt in the March 11 murders in Itamar. Awad's cousin, Hakim Awad, 18, was sentenced last month to five consecutive life sentences, equal to 130 years in prison, in the deaths. He …More

Unlike past years, there were no last minute teachers’ strikes stopping the beginning of the Israeli school year. Hundreds of thousands of students headed to class today, joined by Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin. Rivlin visited a school in Itamar, the site of the terror attack that killed five members of the Fogel family last March. He told the students that “the entire Land of Israel belongs to us” and called Itamar “an example for all Jews who return to their homeland." He explained that …More

The gruesome murders of Ruth and Udi Fogel and three of their six children hit the media spotlight again as one of the two men charged with their deaths was found guilty of stabbing the family to death and of carrying illegal weapons by the Shomron Military Court. Hakim Awad, who is 18, has yet to hear what his sentence will be. His alleged accomplice, Amjad Awad, is his older brother; his trial is ongoing. Both men come from a town not far from the settlement where the Fogel family lived. The murders have been …More

Who is Tamar Fogel? The chances are that you will have no idea. She is a 12-year-old girl who arrived home late on Friday, March 11, to discover her family had been slaughtered. Her parents had been stabbed to death; the throat of her 11-year-old brother, Yoav, had been slit. Her four-year-old brother, Elad, whose throat had also been cut, was still alive, with a faint pulse, but medics were unable to save him. Tamars sister, Hadas, three months old, had also been killed. Her head had been sawn off. There were two …More