Jewish Man Convicted of Murdering Palestinian Teen Dies in Prison

Yosef Haim Ben-David, the primary perpetrator convicted of the 2014 murder of Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdair, died Thursday at age 42. Ben-David was rushed from Israel's Hadarim prison to a hospital following a cardiac event, where medical teams were unable to revive him.

Ben-David's death comes 12 years after the brutal murder, which sparked widespread public outrage in Israel and internationally. He was serving a life sentence plus 20 years for the kidnapping and murder of Abu Khdair, a sentence handed down by the Jerusalem District Court. The murder occurred in July 2014 amidst heightened security tensions, shortly after the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, Gil-ad Shaer, Naftali Fraenkel, and Eyal Yifrah, by a Hamas cell.

Ben-David, along with two minors, including his nephew, embarked on a revenge mission on the night of the Israeli teens' funerals. They abducted 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdair from the Shuafat neighborhood of Jerusalem, drove him to the Jerusalem Forest, beat him with clubs, doused him with gasoline, and set him on fire while he was still alive. During his interrogation and a reenactment of the crime, Ben-David described the act as revenge for the murder of the Israeli youths, stating, "I took him out of the car and threw him here. I grabbed him and said, ‘This is for the Fogel family, this is for [child victim] שלהבת פס.’ Then I asked them to bring the gasoline bottle. I poured it all here. One bottle, one liter. I lit a lighter, I didn't think about anything. In a second he was all aflame."

The case garnered significant public and legal attention. The Jerusalem District Court found Ben-David guilty of murder, kidnapping, and assault, determining he was sane and fully aware of his actions at the time. In February 2018, the Supreme Court upheld his conviction, rejecting his insanity defense. Presiding Justice Yitzhak Amit described the murder as a "strategic terror attack that ignited Jerusalem, particularly East Jerusalem," and called for "sober self-reflection in Israeli society regarding the phenomenon of racism and its consequences."

Ben-David's two accomplices, who also played significant roles in the crime, were sentenced to life imprisonment and 21 years respectively. The Abu Khdair family pursued legal action, filing a NIS 5.5 million civil lawsuit against the three murderers in 2018, stating that no compensation could adequately address the "senseless and abhorrent loss of a young life."