3 Jews Confess to Revenge Killing of Palestinian
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Three Israeli Jews arrested for the murder of a Palestinian teenager have confessed to abducting him and burning him alive, officials said on Monday, an incident that helped trigger a week of Israeli-Hamas fighting around the Gaza strip.
Easing a court gag order on the case, Israel said the suspects, two of them minors, had told interrogators that in killing Mohammed Abu Khudair they sought revenge for the murder of three Jewish seminary students in the occupied West Bank last month.
The names of the suspects, remanded by an Israeli court pending a formal indictment, were not immediately given.
Tensions escalated around the two incidents. More than 166 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed by Israeli action against Gaza, run by the militant Hamas group. Hundreds of rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel.
The adult suspect facing the gravest allegations might plead mitigation in citing past mental illness.
“I expect soon to get the investigative material, in which I will look for support for the assessment there is a complex problem in the matter of of my client’s criminal culpability,” an attorney for the organization, Honenu, said.
According to Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, in the early hours of July 2, as Muslims marked the end of the daylight Ramadan fast, the three suspects “patrolled Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem for a number of hours, in an attempt to find a victim to abduct, until they spotted Mohammed Abu Khudair”.
Bundling him into their car, they drove to a forest outside the city where the 29-year-old suspect beat him on the head with a tire iron (wheel brace) and, helped by the two 17-year-olds, doused him with fuel and lit it, the Shin Bet said.
Israeli prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had blamed Hamas for the killing of the Jewish youths and launched a crackdown against the Palestinian Islamist group, deplored Abu Khudair’s murder as “loathsome”. He ordered police to find the culprits swiftly and pledged to see them prosecuted to the full.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
