Glick Shooter Posthumously Fired From Begin Center

Jerusalem, November 2 – The institution where the shooter of a prominent Jewish activist worked has terminated the man’s employment now that the police have killed him, the Menachem Begin Heritage Center announced today. The Begin Center fired Muataz Hijazi this morning, said the center’s head, Herzl Makov, since being killed was an unacceptable characteristic for an employee.

Mr. Hijazi shot Rabbi Yehudah Glick in the chest four times, after the latter had delivered a lecture at the Center on Wednesday. Rabbi Glick remains in serious but stable condition, and the following morning the police and General Security Services located Hijazi and killed him in a brief rooftop firefight. Hijazi had a known criminal history and had spent time in prison for various security-related crimes, but for some reason the Begin Center hired him to work in the cafeteria, and apparently allowed him to enter the premises with a gun.

“We were willing to overlook his previous terror activity when we hired him, and even his shooting of one of our keynote speakers, but now that he’s dead we can no longer justify keeping him on staff,” said Makov. “Being dead is unacceptable, and we have no choice but to terminate Mr. Hijazi effective immediately.”

Commentators voiced disagreement Sunday over whether the Center went far enough in penalizing the attempted murderer. “They should have fired him the moment he was killed,” argued political analyst Hanan Crystal on Voice of Israel radio this morning. “Waiting until today just makes things worse, and broadcasts weakness and wishy-washiness.”

Yediot Acharonot defense columnist Ron Ben-Yishai praised the Begin Center, specifically citing the interval between the shooting death and the announcement of termination as evidence that the Center let cooler heads prevail before taking such drastic action, and did not let the heat and emotions of the moment dictate their response. “They deserve to be commended for their calm, deliberate response,” he wrote.

In a column for the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, Editor-in-Chief Aluf Benn disagreed, asserting that no punitive action at all should have been taken, since, he contended, Mr. Hijazi’s death was not his own doing. “It was the police and GSS who killed him – all he did was shoot a man touting the abominable notion that Jews should be allowed to pray at their holiest site.”