Supreme Court rejects insanity plea for Israeli killer of Palestinian teenager

Ben David and one of his nephews were sentenced to life imprisonment, while the other was sentenced to 21 years. All three were also ordered to pay fines of tens of thousands of Shekels to the Khdeir family.

The Supreme Court rejected Ben David’s plea of insanity as well as claims by his two accomplices that they had not meant to kill Mohammed Abu Khdeir.

The justices who heard the case described how the three perpetrators had “emerged from a dark tunnel of racism, ignorance and hate”, and called for “profound self-examination from top to bottom in Israeli society as to dealing with the phenomenon of racism and its metastases.”

The three attackers said they had killed the Palestinian teenager as revenge for the kidnapping and killing of three Jewish teenagers, Eyal Yifrah, Gil-Ad Shaer and Naftali Fraenkel, by Hamas in the West Bank the previous month.

The bodies of the three Jewish teenagers were discovered a couple of days before the Jewish extremists carried out their “revenge” attack.

The parents of Mohammed Abu Khdeir were in court for today’s hearing.

His father Hussein Abu Khdeir welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision, but called for the homes of the three Jewish extremists to be demolished, just as Israel regularly does in instances where Palestinians attack Jews.

He told journalists outside the courtroom that the attackers who had killed his son “were like Nazis”.