There was very little time between the stabbing incident at Jerusalem’s gay pride parade July 30, in which Shira Banki, 16, was killed, and the arson-related murder the next day of 1½-year-old Ali Dawabsha in the village of Douma near Nablus. Just a few hours separated the events, creating a sense of continuity between them in Israel’s public discourse.

Both incidents were hate crimes that left innocent people dead and wounded. When the perpetrator of the gay pride stabbing was caught, people were shocked to learn he was an ultra-Orthodox Jew named Yishai Schlissel. He had been released from prison just three weeks earlier after serving a 10-year sentence for stabbing three people at the Jerusalem gay pride parade in 2005.

Schlissel considers himself to be a messenger of God. He is actually a Jewish jihadi. “I came to kill as a messenger of God. An abomination like this in Israel is inconceivable!” he screamed as he flashed his knife in 2005. His views became even more extreme in prison. Had the police been even a little more vigilant, he would probably not have been able to repeat his crime, and a 16-year-old girl would still be alive.

In the case of the arson in Douma, the identities of the murderers are still unclear. It seems as if they planned to burn an entire Palestinian family to death in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to demolish two houses in the settlement of Beit El earlier that week. The two houses, named the Dreinoff buildings, were constructed illegally on private Palestinian land. Young extreme settlers barricaded themselves in the buildings last week, trying to prevent their demolition.