Muhammad Abu Khdeir, the 16-year-old Palestinian from the east Jerusalem village of Shuafat who was burned to death last summer by nationalist Jewish Israelis in a revenge attack following the kidnapping of three teenage yeshiva students near Hebron last year, has been added to the list of names that appears on the memorial plaque on Mt. Herzl commemorating the civilians who died in terrorist attacks this past year.
Following the indictment of the three men suspected of carrying out the murder, the Defense Ministry recognized Abu Khdeir as a victim of hostile action, granting his family identical compensation rights to those of victims of Arab terror, such as victims of suicide bombings.
Abu Khdeir’s name has also been added to the official state website listing terror victims run jointly by the National Insurance Institute and the Welfare Ministry.
Chilling testimony from the main suspect in the July 2 murder confirmed the brutal homicide was indeed rooted in revenge for the three yeshiva students abducted and killed by Hamas operatives in June.
“We said ‘they took three of ours, let’s take one of theirs,’ and we decided to pick someone up, kidnap him, beat him within an inch of his life and discard of him,” Yosef Haim Ben-David, 29, told police.
A resident of the West Bank settlement Adam, northeast of Jerusalem, Ben-David, who has a history of mental illness, has sought a temporary insanity defense for his role in the murder.
He was arrested last year along with two unidentified 16-year-old accomplices from the capital and Beit Shemesh.
During his testimony, the alleged ringleader behind the kidnapping and subsequent torture of Abu Khdeir, said he first discussed seeking revenge following the funerals of Gil-Ad Shaer, 16, Eyal Yifrah, 19, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16.
“We began talking about what happened, about the kidnapped youths, and decided that they needed to be avenged,” he said in his testimony.
“I was furious at [the killers] while the entire country was silently praying.”
According to Ben-David, the three then agreed to go on a “human hunt” for an Arab victim.
“We planned to hurt a soul, meaning to kill... to torture him and kill him,” he told police, adding that he wanted his victim “to know that he was about to die as a sacrifice for the Jews that were murdered.”
To that end, Ben-David testified that he filled three empty bottles with the gasoline used to burn their victim alive.