Pair of Jewish murderers on hunger strike in prison

Two Jewish inmates serving life sentences for murdering Palestinians have launched hunger strikes, the Israel Prisons Service confirmed Sunday.

Yosef Haim Ben-David — one of three people convicted of the 2014 brutal murder of 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khdeir — began his 16th day of fasting on Sunday.

Jack Tytell, who was convicted in 2013 for a string of nationalistically motivated murders and terror attacks spanning a decade, commenced the fifth day of his own hunger strike.

While both inmates are being held in the Rimonim Prison, authorities say they have had no contact with one another.

While Tytell, a Florida native, is demanding that he be released from prison, Ben-David put forward a list of demands in a letter he wrote that was publicized by his attorney.

The convict called for a reduction of his sentence, an improvement in the conditions of security prisoners and an improvement in the conditions of religious prisoners.

According to Ben-David, “many Jewish (inmates) suffer from this leftist state,” which he referred to as “Palestine” in the letter.

The Abu Khdeir murderer pointed out that there is precedent for his early release given that “the State of Israel liberated hundreds of Arabs with the blood of dozens of Jews on their hands.” Ben-David was apparently referencing the Palestinian security prisoners released by Israel in exchange for captive IDF soldiers or the bodies of fallen troops.

Abu Khdeir was abducted and killed in East Jerusalem on July 1, 2014, by three attackers — ringleader Ben-David and his two nephews, who have not been named because they were minors at the time. An autopsy found that Abu Khdeir had been beaten and then burned alive in a forest outside Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem District Court sentenced the three in 2016. One of the minors, who had been aged 17 at the time of the attack, was convicted of actively helping Ben David in the kidnapping and murder. He was sentenced to life for helping to pour gasoline on the teen before he was set alight.

Tytell, an Orthodox Jew, moved to Israel from the US in 1999 and made his home in the West Bank settlement of Shvut Rahel.

He was arrested in October 2009 by the Shin Bet security service after an investigation by the organization’s Jewish Department linked him to a slew of murders, attempted murders and acts of terror lasting over a decade.

Tytell’s rap sheet includes the murder of an East Jerusalem Arab taxi driver in 1997 and the murder of a Palestinian shepherd also in 1997 — both of which took place during a visit to Israel and both of which he was convicted for.