Arab teen to be removed from memorial at family’s request

The name of Arab murder victim Muhammed Abu Khdeir, which was recently added to the Victims of Acts of Terror Memorial on Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl, will be removed at the request of his family.

Abu Khdeir’s father, Hussein, said earlier that he wasn’t informed of the move to include his son on the memorial, and that he opposed it. In an interview with Ynet, he said that all he wanted was for his son’s killers to be punished.

“That’s the most important thing to me — not the honor bestowed on my son,” he added. “My son is gone. My son was burned and we burned along with him. I want justice, not honor.”

Hussein Abu Khdeir also noted that his son was not an Israeli citizen.

On Tuesday, Abu Khdeir’s name showed up on the government’s online database of terror victims, next to an Israeli flag overlaid with a picture of the Blood of the Maccabees flower, which has come to symbolize the country’s fallen.

In an apparent revenge attack in early July 2014, three Jewish Israeli men allegedly abducted the 16-year-old Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem and took him to the Jerusalem Forest, where they beat him with tire irons and — while he was unconscious — burned him to death.