[1][2][3] Koby Mandell was an Israeli-American, his family having emigrated from the United States to Israel in 1996, and the murders resulted in legislation by the U.S. Congress aimed at strengthening the U.S. response to the killing of Americans overseas.

The newspaper continued, "The walls of the cave in the Judean Desert were covered with the boys' blood, reportedly smeared there by the killers".

[5] CNN and the Irish Independent reported that "Israel's Channel Two TV said police believed there were at least three assailants who dipped their hands into the boys' blood after the killing and smeared it on the walls of the cave.

"[8][9] Miro Cohen, a sheep rancher described the scene to Time: "A rock the size of a computer rested on Kobi's smashed skull.

[6][7][9][11] Israeli security forces arrested 20 Palestinians from nearby villages and imposed curfews and roadblocks in response to the attack.

The Jerusalem Post said in its day-after the event story that an anonymous caller to unnamed "foreign news agencies" had said he represented a group called "Hizbullah-Palestine" and that the boys were killed as revenge for the death of a four-month-old Palestinian baby, Iman Hiju, who became the youngest victim of violence when she was killed by an Israeli tank shell a few days previously.

[13] Three books on terrorism that include compilations of terrorist attacks against Israel subsequently listed the murders as being attributable to Islamic Jihad and/or a "splinter group" of Hezbollah, called "Hizbullah-Palestine".

"[11] He added that killing civilians on either side of the ongoing conflict is a crime, and that "the short way for peace and stability is finishing the Israeli occupation.

[5] In a statement referencing the murder of the two boys as well as the terrorist assassination of a ten month old Israeli infant the previous month, Shlomo Riskin, a rabbi from Efrat, saw "a profound distinction" between "Israel and its enemies": [I]f a child is killed by Israel, it is in an act of defense directed at a building where shots were fired at soldiers.

[4]Ariel Sharon characterized the boys' deaths as a "horrific murder" and ordered a missile strike on Yasser Arafat's Fatah offices in Gaza City, in which 20 Palestinians were wounded.

Pope John Paul II, speaking in Malta, said he was saddened by "news from the Holy Land of terrible violence even against innocent young people.

The legislation was spearheaded by Sarah Stern, currently with the Endowment for Middle East Truth and[22][23] formerly the lobbyist for the Zionist Organization of America, but was not a priority of other Jewish groups, who said that it did more to reprimand the State Department rather than support counter-terrorism: by targeting only Palestinian terrorists, they said, it was too narrow in its scope and would not, for example, have been able to deal with the murder of Daniel Pearl.