21 September 2023; MEMO: A fundraising effort with the goal of securing the release of the settler who killed the Palestinian Dawabsheh family in an arson attack in 2015 from prison has raised over NIS 1.2 million, reported The Times of Israel.
The effort to overturn his conviction, titled “Amiram also deserves justice,” made headlines this week when Limor Son Har-Melech, a far-right Otzma Yehudit MK, spoke at a fundraising gathering for the cause, referring to him as a “holy righteous man”.
As of this morning, the online crowd-funding initiative had collected NIS 1,203,307 ($315,739) from more than 6,020 contributors.
Those who have made contributions to the initiative include former MK Moshe Feiglin, Bentzi Gopstein, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Lehava group known for its anti-Arab stance, right-wing vocalist Ariel Zilber, as well as far-right rabbis Dov Lior, Elyakim Levanon and Yehuda Shapira.
Channel 12 reported that Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich’s office refuted social media speculations alleging his involvement in the funding.
During her recorded comments, which were shared in a video released on Tuesday, Son Har-Melech, claimed, “I don’t support a murderer. I know he is innocent.”
She proceeded to share her experience of visiting Ben Uliel in prison, where she praised him as “this righteous man, this holy righteous man, really.”
Ben-Uliel was sentenced to three life sentences, plus 20 years for the deadly firebombing of the Dawabsheh house in the West Bank village of Duma, in which Riham and Saad Dawabsheh were killed, along with their 18-month-old son, Ali Saad. Only the couple’s eldest son, Ahmed, survived the terror attack, suffering terrible burns; he was five years old at the time.
In 2020, Ben-Uliel was found guilty of three counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder, arson and conspiring to commit a racially motivated crime, as part of a “terrorist act”.
