Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Dad of Palestinian Teen Burned Alive Wants Homes of Jewish Killers Bulldozed

JERUSALEM — Israeli prosecutors called for life sentences for two Jewish men convicted of burning a Palestinian teen alive, while the teen’s father called for their homes to be destroyed.

The father of Mohammed Abu Khdeir reportedly asked during a closed sentencing hearing in Jerusalem District Court on Wednesday that the court destroy their homes as they would for a Palestinian terrorist.

“Demolish their houses, just as happens with Arabs,” Hussein Abu Khdeir said. “There should be equal penalties.”

The hearing was closed because the two men, who were found guilty in November, were minors at the time of the crime. The court is due to hand down a decision in February.

“If their houses had been demolished, the Dawabsheh family wouldn’t have been burned,” Hussein Khdeir told the court, Haaretz reported, referring to the firebombing of a Palestinian family’s home in the West Bank village of Duma that killed 18-month-old baby and his parents. “Light sentences encourage them to carry out further similar deeds.”

Yosef Haim Ben-David, 31, who was said to have led the attack, was found guilty of murder, but a verdict has been delayed pending a decision on his last-minute submission of an insanity plea.

Mohammed Khdeir was beaten unconscious before he was burned to death in the Jerusalem Forest on July 2, 2014, to avenge the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens the previous month.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.