Yosef Haim Ben-David, 42, the main defendant in the murder of East Jerusalem Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir, died Thursday. He was taken from Hasharon Prison to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Abu Khdeir, 16, from Shuafat, was murdered in July 2014, and Ben-David was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 20 years.
Ben-David and two other teenagers who were convicted in the case abducted and murdered Abu Khdeir on the night after the funerals of three Israeli teenagers — Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah — as revenge for their abduction and murder by Hamas in June of that year, before the launch of Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip.
According to the conviction, late on the evening of July 2, after making preparations and equipping themselves in advance, the three set out to carry out a “revenge attack” in memory of the three teenagers.
For about three hours, they searched for a suitable victim in the Wadi Joz and Beit Hanina neighborhoods, and at around 4 a.m. they spotted Abu Khdeir, who had left his home and was walking toward a mosque to pray.
They forced him into a car. During the drive, the two teenagers held Abu Khdeir as he struggled with them.
Ben-David ordered one of them to “finish him,” and the teenager strangled Abu Khdeir until he lost consciousness.
When they reached the Jerusalem Forest, one of the teenagers complained that he and the other minor were “doing all the work.” Ben-David then took a crowbar and struck Abu Khdeir while invoking earlier Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis. “This is for the Fogel family,” he shouted, referring to the parents and three children murdered in their home in the West Bank settlement of Itamar in 2011. “This is for Shalhevet Pass,” he added, referring to a 10-month-old Israeli girl killed by a Palestinian sniper in Hebron in 2001. He continued striking Abu Khdeir until blood ran from his head.
He also kicked the teenager several times while shouting, “This is for Gilad, Naftali, Eyal.”
They then set fire to Abu Khdeir while he was unconscious and fled the scene.
Mohammed Abu Khdeir
(Photo: Reuters)
They destroyed evidence in Jerusalem's Sacher Park, then drove to Ben-David’s home in the settlement of Adam, where they played guitars and went to sleep.
Following the murder, Abu Khdeir’s family sought the demolition of the killers’ homes, but the High Court of Justice rejected the petition, citing, among other reasons, the time that had elapsed since the killing.
His father, Hussein, criticized the judges’ decision at the time.
“If it had been an Arab who murdered a Jew, they would have demolished his house within days,” he said. “If they do not want to demolish the homes of Jewish terrorists, then they should not demolish homes anywhere. This is discrimination and racism. A decision like this encourages people to continue harming us under the protection of the state.”
About four years after the murder, the teenager’s family sued the three killers for about 5.5 million shekels ($1.8 million).
The lawsuit stated: “There is no adequate compensation for such a pointless and infuriating loss of a young person’s life, all while the defendants deliberately intended to harm the deceased, injure him and acted with indifference and cynicism toward the most terrible possible outcome — the death of the deceased in pain and suffering — while showing no mercy toward his parents, who were left with nothing after the death of their son.”