Ramallah, 29-05-07: Jewish-French immigrant, Julien Soufir, was indicted at the Tel Aviv District Court on Monday for the brutal murder of Palestinian taxi driver, Taysir Karaki of East Jerusalem, 35 and the father of five on May 14.
Soufir told police that he "decided to murder an Arab" and travelled to Jerusalem with his brother because he believed they could find an "Arab" victim more easily there. Soufir stopped a cab in Jerusalem, and after ascertaining that the driver, Karaki, was Palestinian, he asked to be taken to Tel Aviv.
Once there, the brothers invited the driver to come up to their apartment to use the bathroom. After they entered the apartment, Soufir waited for Karaki to get out of the bathroom and then attacked him with a knife, stabbing him 24 times in the neck.
He later told police "I felt nothing. It was like slaughtering an animal because all Arabs are animals, they have no souls."
Palestinian Minister of Information, Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, condemned the murder as a hate crime, and said that the killing was evidence of the extent to which racism aimed at dehumanising Palestinians is deeply entrenched within Israeli society.