Palestinian youth fought attackers, indictment says

Israel hasn't released the identity of the suspects in what it calls a revenge attack

The New York Times

Palestinian youth fought attackers, indictment says — Omaha World-Herald, 18 July 2014 — Omaha World-Herald · Omaha, NE · 18 July 2014

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JERUSALEM — In the moments before he was kidnapped at dawn on July 2, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, 16, suddenly sensed that there was something suspicious about the two casually dressed Jewish teenagers who were asking him directions.

He tried to move away and call a friend, then shouted and struggled as the two youths forced him into a waiting car driven by an adult relative, according to court documents released Thursday.

The three Israelis who authorities say abducted and killed Mohammed, a Palestinian teenager whose burned body was found about an hour later in a Jerusalem forest, have so far remained nameless and faceless, their identities withheld by authorities.

But the three, a 29-year-old adult and two 16-year-old minors, were charged in a closed Jerusalem court on Thursday with the grisly murder, which Israeli authorities say was a racist revenge attack. The murder indictment presented by state prosecutors on Thursday sheds some light on the backgrounds of the perpetrators.

The adult suspect has an eyeglass store in Jerusalem, lives in a West Bank settlement between Jerusalem and Ramallah and has been treated with psychiatric drugs for years, suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, among other illnesses.

The teenagers, one a yeshiva student and the other a yeshiva dropout, according to the documents, would often socialize with their older relative and help him in the store. Mohammed’s death, which came after the abduction and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank, led to riots in east Jerusalem and in Arab towns across Israel.

It raised questions about the spread of extremist Jewish groups or a new, right-wing terrorist underground. The picture that emerges from the charge sheet presented by state prosecutors is one of amateurish and clumsy killers acting on their own initiative. They argued among themselves during the attack.

The adult, who was driving the car, almost left one of the teenagers behind in the forest in his hurry to flee. After a largely inept effort to destroy evidence, some of it in a park in central Jerusalem, the three went back to the adult’s home in the settlement of Adam, played the guitar and went to sleep.

The car, picked up on security cameras along the route of the kidnapping, was parked outside. Besides the slaying of Mohammed, the adult defendant and the yeshiva dropout have also been charged with trying to kidnap a Palestinian boy in the same area of east Jerusalem the night before Mohammed’s abduction, and with assaulting the boy and his mother.

They have also been charged in connection with car fires; an attempted arson of cars in another East Jerusalem neighborhood and with burning a Palestinian-owned store. The charge sheet details the defendants’ hourslong search in the dark for a “weak” victim in the streets of East Jerusalem, until they came across Mohammed.

After being dragged forcefully into the back of the car, Mohammed struggled with the teenagers as the car sped toward the forest. After Mohammed kicked one of them in the head, he was told he would pay for that. The driver shouted, “Finish him off.” The minors tried to strangle Mohammed, who eventually lost consciousness.

How this transcription was made

Date and publication rest on the collector's slide label; no masthead, folio or printed dateline appears on this clipping.

Context added by this archive

Put this beside the Bennett op-ed on slide 29. Here the New York Times gives a murdered Palestinian 16-year-old his name, his age, the direction he turned, the friend he tried to call, the kick he landed, and the words shouted over him.

Five weeks later the Chicago Tribune let Bennett write that Hamas 'kidnaps and slaughters teenage yeshiva students' with no mention of Abu Khdeir, and illustrated it with a photograph of a Palestinian about to be executed. The dek is notable for its distance: 'what it calls a revenge attack' - the paper attributes even Israel's own characterisation.

The killers are described as 'amateurish and clumsy', 'largely inept', and the adult's psychiatric history is given in the fifth paragraph; no equivalent individuating detail is given about any Palestinian suspect anywhere in batch B.

Cite this clipping

"Palestinian youth fought attackers, indictment says," Omaha World-Herald, 18 July 2014. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2014-056. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2014-056