Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Teen Killer of Mom of 6 Was ‘Under Influence’ of PA Television — Shin Bet

JERUSALEM — The Palestinian teenager who stabbed a mother of six to death in her West Bank home was under the influence of Palestinian television, the Shin Bet security service said.

PA Television portrays Israel as a state which “kills Palestinian youths,” the Shin Bet said in a statement released Sunday on the progress of the investigation.

The suspect, Morad Bader Abdullah Adais, 16, was arrested in a nearby Palestinian village and reportedly has confessed to the murder of Dafna Meir, 38, of Otniel.

“On the day of the murder, while under the influence of the programs he had been exposed to on Palestinian television, the minor decided to commit a stabbing attack with the goal of murdering a Jew,” the Shin Bet said in the statement. “Given the proximity of Otniel to his place of residence, he decided to commit the attack in Otniel.”

Meir was stabbed to death while fighting off her attacker in what is believed to have been an attempt to save three of her children who were at home. Her 17-year-old daughter witnessed the attack. The assailant ran off after he was unable to remove the knife from Meir’s body.

The murder “underscores yet again the severity of the threat posed by the wild incitement being carried out against the State of Israel and Jews in the Palestinian media, which influences lone attackers to commit murder and other serious acts of terrorism,” the Shin Bet said.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.