Jerusalem court drops incitement charges for 5 teenagers over ‘hate wedding’

A Jerusalem court exonerates five Jewish suspects who were charged with incitement to terrorism for celebrating, during a wedding in 2015, the murder of a Palestinian baby.

The reason for the exoneration is not immediately clear. The defendants were minors at the time and the court documents are therefore classified, the Ynet news site reports.

The five minors had been indicted in 2016.

In 2018, prosecutors admitted they lost the original video footage of the incident.

The video from what was dubbed the “hate wedding” featured friends of the accused assailants in a deadly July 2015 firebomb attack on the home of the Dawabshe family in the Palestinian village of Duma.

In the video, published by Channel 10, partygoers can be seen stabbing a photo of 18-month-old Ali Dawabshe, who was burned alive in the attack along with his parents, and waving knives, rifles, pistols and Molotov cocktails. The crowd then chants the words to a song that includes a verse from Judges 16:28, in which Samson says, “Let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.” The crowd substitutes “Palestinians” for “Philistines.”

Another son, Ahmed Dawabsha, who was 5 at the time, underwent months of treatment for severe burns sustained in the attack.