Israel Mourns Victim, 16, of Cyber-Crime

Sixteen-year-old Ofir Rahum’s Web site became a virtual memorial Friday.

Even as his bullet-riddled body was being buried in a rain-drenched cemetery on Israel’s coast, computer enthusiasts from all over the world were posting messages of grief and anger. “I wish you would have remained anonymous and a stranger to us all,” wrote one.

Israeli security officials impounded Ofir’s computer Friday to investigate reports that he had journeyed from his home in the city of Ashkelon to Jerusalem to meet a woman with whom he had begun an online love affair. The couple are believed to have traveled together to the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Palestinian gunmen ambushed Ofir and shot and knifed him. The officials suspect that the woman was part of a cynical plot to lure Ofir to his death.

The killing, which topped all Israeli newscasts and filled the pages of Friday’s newspapers, shocked a country where Web-surfing is a national pastime and where cyberspace can seem a distant refuge from the mayhem of the streets. Caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Barak abruptly postponed a special meeting of his Cabinet that was to decide whether to enter a new round of peace talks with the Palestinians.

“It is difficult to hold serious talks in the atmosphere of such violence,” Barak said, vowing to punish Ofir’s killers. He said the slaying was a “heinous act, devoid of humanity.”

Palestinian police Col. Mohammed Salah, who heads the Ramallah investigations division, said several car thieves and other men had been arrested for questioning. Salah said his investigation had so far suggested that the motive for the killing was criminal and not political. No women had been arrested, he said in an interview.

The Palestinian Authority took the unusual step of formally condemning the killing.

Barak has come under attack from Israeli opponents, and some in his own government, for his willingness to negotiate with the Palestinians even as a 16-week-old intifada continues. Facing right-wing hawk Ariel Sharon in a Feb. 6 election, Barak had hoped to boost his hapless campaign with television ads that began running this week; polls published Friday, however, gave Sharon a 20-point edge.

Sharon on Friday said Ofir’s slaying only proved that “negotiations conducted under the threat of terrorism weaken Israel.”

Palestinian officials said they remained confident that Barak would agree to join the new talks, which they envisioned as a 10-day “marathon” to be held in Egypt.

The past 3 1/2 months of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has claimed nearly 370 lives, 85% of them Palestinian. But the way Ofir was tricked and ambushed--if these details prove true--hit an especially raw nerve.

“Death Trap on the Internet!” screamed one headline Friday.

At Ofir’s funeral, Rabbi Michael Melchior, a moderate member of Barak’s government, spoke of betrayal.

“We have all come to know you in the last 24 hours,” he told the young Ofir, whose name means “merciful” in Hebrew. “How terrible it is that we raise our children to be merciful and compassionate, not to fear others, to approach them and support them, only to have them approach others and have the worst of all happen. All of Israel is crying.”

Ofir’s friends placed a wreath on the grave, from “Class 5 of the 11th Grade.”

A police spokeswoman declined to give details of the Israeli investigation. But Israeli radio reported that police had confiscated and were examining Ofir’s computer and were trying to trace his movements before his death using the signals of his cellular telephone. The police computer-crime division had joined the probe along with the state secret service.

The teenager was a savvy Internet buff, his friends and family said. Friends said he had bragged of having struck up a cyberspace romance with an older woman in her 20s. He told his friends that she was a dark-haired, English-speaking tourist and that he had already gone to meet her once in Jerusalem about 1 1/2 months ago, when they ended up in an apartment belonging to one of her girlfriends.

“There were no signs at all that she was an Arab or anything, no signs at all,” one of Ofir’s friends, Shlomi Abergil, told Israeli radio Friday afternoon. “I think he was attracted because she was older, 20-plus, and he was only 16 1/2. I think that’s what appealed to him. They kept in touch after the [first] meeting and talked of meeting again.”

Shlomi said that he last saw Ofir on Tuesday night and that the latter told him that he was going off to see the woman again.

On Wednesday, reports surfaced of Palestinian gunmen attacking a male youth on a road between Ramallah and the Jewish settlement of Psagot. They shot him and fled with the body, according to the reports. But it was assumed initially that the victim was a Palestinian.

Only when the Israeli army was informed that an Israeli youth was missing did officials begin to suspect differently. The army contacted the Palestinian police, and after several hours of negotiation, Palestinian investigators said they had found the body in a shallow grave.

“The soil was still fresh, which helped us find the body,” Salah said.

The body was turned over to the Israelis on Thursday evening. A long, thin line of blood had stained the road where Ofir was apparently killed.

Reports that the youth had been instructed to bring a large sum of money could not be confirmed, although his friends wondered where he would have obtained more than a few hundred shekels.

Israeli-Palestinian warfare had already spilled over into cyberspace, with hackers sympathetic to one side or the other doing great damage to Web sites affiliated with their enemies. Israeli government Web sites and those belonging to the militant Islamic Hezbollah movement have been forced to close down periodically because of techno-tampering.

Ofir’s Web site was typical of many Israeli youths’. It had links to songs and “crackers,” a term for those the cyber-savvy regard as benevolent hackers. The youth’s cheerful greeting welcomed surfers and promised daily updates.

“Tell your friends,” his greeting says. “I hope you have fun and come back soon. Bye.”

His distraught parents had a very different take.

“Keep your children away from the Internet,” they said in a statement. “It is what dragged him away, and it is what killed him.”