The family of a Palestinian boy abducted and burned alive by a Jewish extremist have demanded that the perpetrator's home be demolished and his citizenship revoked, similar to the measures taken by Israel against Palestinian militants.
A Jerusalem court on Tuesday handed a life sentence to Yosef Haim Ben-David (31), the main assailant and mastermind in the killing of Muhammad Abu Khdeir (16) in 2014, whose death helped spark a chain of events that led to that year's war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
On July 2nd, 2014, the defendant, together with two underage accomplices, abducted Abu Khdeir from a Palestinian neighbourhood in east Jerusalem, drove him to a forest on the outskirts of the city, beat him unconscious and burned him alive.
Rejecting a plea of insanity, the court sentenced Ben-David to life in prison for murder, with an additional 20 years for other counts.
The two underage defendants who helped him abduct the teen were sentenced in February, one to life imprisonment and the other to 21 years in jail. All three confessed to the crimes.
The state prosecutor said the damage Ben-David had caused Israel and the family of the Palestinian teen was “irreparable”.
The defendants said they carried out the murder to avenge the killing of three Israeli teens who were abducted and killed in the West Bank earlier that summer.
The murder of Abu Khdeir was condemned across the political spectrum in Israel and fuelled extensive clashes across the West Bank between Palestinians and Israeli security forces. After the murder of the three Jewish teens, Israel cracked down on Hamas in the West Bank, prompting Hamas in Gaza to increase rocket fire into Israel. The violence escalated into the 50 -day Gaza war.
Ben-David expressed remorse in the courtroom and apologised to the victim’s family. “I ask the family’s forgiveness for everything that happened. It was out of my control. I have a psychiatric history. This is not my character and I am not that kind of person.”.
However, the grieving relatives rejected the apology shouting “murderer” and “racist” at the accused. Hussein Abu Khdeir, the father of the murdered teen, said he wanted to see Ben-David die in prison. “I don’t accept the words of this dog. Only Nazis commit such actions. Since the murder of our son, our blood has been burned. There is no love in our heart.”