Ringleader of 2014 kidnapping and murder of Palestinian teen dies while serving life sentence

Yosef Haim Ben-David, who led the kidnapping and murder of Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu Khdeir in 2014, died on Thursday after being hospitalized while serving a life sentence.

The Israel Prison Service (IPS) merely announced that “a 42-year-old prisoner in Hasharon Prison, [previously] a resident of Jerusalem, died today at the hospital.”

Media quickly identified the deceased as Ben-David.

In its statement, the IPS noted the prisoner’s medical condition could not be disclosed due to privacy laws. It added: “As in any instance of a prisoner’s death, an inquiry team has been appointed.”

Ben-David was convicted in 2016 for the kidnapping and murder of Abu Khdeir, who an autopsy indicated was beaten and burned alive in a forest outside Jerusalem. The ringleader’s two accomplices — his nephews, both minors at the time — were sentenced to life in prison and to 21 years, respectively.

The perpetrators saw the murder as a revenge attack for the prior kidnapping and murder of three Israeli students by Hamas terrorists, which was one of the triggers for the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in the summer of 2014.

At trial, Ben-David apologized and claimed he was suffering severe mental illness at the time of the attack. However, the court rejected this defense.

In 2018, the Supreme Court rejected appeals by Ben-David and his accomplices, upholding their convictions and prison sentences and saying they had “emerged from a dark tunnel of racism, ignorance and hate.”

The judges described the murder as “a ‘strategic terror attack’ that ignited a wildfire in the territories in general and specifically in East Jerusalem,” referring to riots carried out in reaction to the killing.

“The murder calls for profound self-examination from top to bottom in Israeli society as to dealing with the phenomenon of racism and its metastases,” they wrote.

The incident was also the subject of the 2019 series “Our Boys” on HBO, created by three Israelis and produced in conjunction with the Keshet media group.

In 2015, at the request of the Abu Khdeir family, the teenager’s name was removed from the Victims of Acts of Terror Memorial on Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl.