No, They Didn't

"They didn't even let me see him, to see a photo of him.The police didn't want me to [identify him]. '[The body] is burned', they told me."
"We saw. There are cameras. We saw how they took him. I have the footage. You can see a car arrive at around 4 a.m., 4:10, 4:05. The car arrived, two people got out and one stayed [in the car]. They came, took him and forced him into the car."
"The same people. And the police came, and they saw their car in photos, and didn't do anything. One day before [the kidnapping]. [They] killed him in cold blood and burned him. It's all your government's [fault]. The government allows the settlers to do what they want, it includes them in its government, it can't say anything to them. What can I tell you? The government gives them what they want. What can I do?"
Hussein Abu Khdeir, Jerusalem's Shuafat neighbourhood

Mohammed Abu Khiedir.  AFP, Getty Images

The father of Mohammed Abu Khiedir is convinced his 16-year-old son was abducted and killed by Jews: "Probably settlers or the Shin Bet", he insists. Footage from a surveillance camera near the kidnapping site showed three Hebrew-speakers he said, forcefully seizing his son. There are Arabs who speak Hebrew; there are Jews who speak Arabic.

For the group of three men, he said, it was not the first time they had attempted to kidnap someone in the vicinity. The same men had arrived in Shuafat earlier, with the intention of kidnapping someone off the street. Finally they circled the street several times a few hours later as his son sat waiting for the Mosque to begin Ramadan prayers and forced his son into their car. 

 

Of one thing he is certain; it was Israelis, Jews, who took his son and murdered him. Not a tribal evening of scores, another Arab clan involved, as rumours had it. His son looked too young, he emphasized to be the target of a clan feud.

Israeli police at the scene where the body of an Arab youth was found in the Jerusalem Forest Wednesday morning, July 02, 2014. photo credit: Yonatan SIndel/FLASH90)

"If you saw Muhammad, you would think he was ten years old, not 16. He's small, even the village leaders can't talk to him." A boy "everyone loved", an "honest person who never did anything [bad] in his life". "He was supposed to go to school. He studies at [the] Amal [vocational school], in Atarot", the northern edge of Jerusalem. "He was studying to be an electrician, like me. He wanted to become an electronics technician."

"He fasted. He woke up in the morning, as usual, at night, and what happened, happened." Jews, neighbours and acquaintances that are Jewish had come to express their condolences to the grieving family, said Hussein. No doubt they did. No doubt Mr. Hussein had good relations with his Jewish neighbours. So it was not they, it was others, Jews who came from elsewhere, either in the government security establishment or settlers.

For an educated man, albeit one in excruciating pain of loss, Mr. Hussein does not seem to understand that police thought it best for the grieving father not to view the gruesome remains of his son. The boy was instead identified using DNA samples taken from his parents. The abduction and murder created a reaction of violent chaos as clashes broke out in East Jerusalem after the boy's burnt body was discovered to the shock of everyone, Arab and Jew.

 

President Shimon Peres delivering a eulogy next to the flag-draped bodies of Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-ad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach at their funeral July 1, 2014 (photo credit: Chaim Tzach)

Israeli officials have declared their disgust at the murder and sorrow on behalf of the bereaved family. a dreadful occurrence that took place just as three abducted Israeli Jewish seminarian students whose bodies were discovered buried under stones weeks after they had been kidnapped and murdered were being buried in the central town of Modi'in. Some Jewish thugs ran in mobs through Jerusalem, attacking Arabs, shouting racist slurs while some shouted "Death to Arabs".

Although it has not yet been definitely established that the young Palestinian was murdered by Jews, it is possible. Palestinian Arabs have no monopoly on ferocious violence leading to death, although they indulge in those fanatical crimes against humanity far more frequently than Jews ever do. And racist slurs and insulting and frightening slogans and belligerent declarations of violent intent come far more readily to the lips and more more frequently of Palestinian Arabs, as well as in the "Arab Street" throughout the Middle East.

Palestinians clash with Israeli border police in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat after the body of a Palestinian teen from East Jerusalem is found in the Jerusalem Forest, Wednesday, July 2, 2014. (photo credit: Hadas Parush/Flash90)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasted no time in expressing his opinion of the "reprehensible murder" of Mohammed Abu Khiedir, calling on Jews and Arabs alike "not to take the law into their own hands", that "everyone must act according to the law". A swift investigation was ordered, and it is precisely what is required. The atrocious death of anyone at the hands of terror-assailants is a requirement of any civil society.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas angrily called upon Mr. Netanyahu to condemn the pitiless murder to balance what he had himself expressed in condemnation of the taking of the freedom, then the lives of three young Israelis: "I demand the Israeli government punish the killers if it wants peace between the Palestinian and Israel people", said the Palestinian leader furiously. 

 

 Aside from the fact that Mr. Abbas demonstrated compassion in his statement of regret at the abduction and murder of the three Jewish youth, his comment about peace rings a tad too precious, given his government's constant incitement to violence against the Israeli state, and the deliberate institutionalized slander on Palestinian public media and the intentional and sinister curricula teaching Palestinian children to hate Israeli Jews and aspire to martyrdom in their adult years.

The violent clashes that took place in Shuafat, where young Mohammed Abu Khiedir lived with his family is a classic for Palestinians, who do take the law into their own hands through incessant and vicious lawlessness in an almost-constant anarchic eruption of "resistance", prevailed upon them by the Palestinian Authority officials who declare it their obligation against the occupation. An occupation that could be retracted with the signing of a peace agreement.

 

Palestinians throw stones at Israeli police Wednesday in protest of a suspected revenge murder. Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

 

But then, should two states emerge and 'peace' take the place of constant conflict with its soul-destroying aura of detestation, victimization, refugeehood, revenge and violence, what would young Palestinian men do to occupy themselves if they could not defy the Israeli police and military by throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, and revel in dodging rubber bullets and tear gas?

"They looked like Mossad or KGB agents, not religious people. Regular Israelis are scared to come around here. The way they kept asking questions and the way the car kept turning round in the streets, they looked like they knew what they were doing and had been trained", said Bushra Abu Khiedir, the dead teen's aunt.

Palestinians clash with Israeli border police in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat after the body of a Palestinian teen from East Jerusalem is found in the Jerusalem Forest, Wednesday, July 2, 2014. (photo credit: Hadas Parush/Flash90)