MK calls on PM to destroy homes of Jews who murdered Arab teen

MK Taleb Abu Arar calls on PM “to immediately demolish the homes of the criminal murderers that killed Abu Khdeir.”

AUGUST 21, 2014 12:08

Muhammad Abu Khdeir (photo credit: REUTERS) — Muhammad Abu Khdeir

(photo credit: REUTERS)

United Arab List-Ta’al MK Taleb Abu Arar called on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and other senior ministers to destroy the homes of the murderers of Palestinian teen Muhammad Abu Khdeir.

In a statement posted on his Facebook page on Tuesday evening, and picked up by the Israeli-Arab media, Arar called on the prime minister, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, and Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch “to immediately demolish the homes of the criminal murderers that killed Abu Khdeir.”

However, destroying Israeli citizens homes raises constitutional questions as the government tends to destroy homes of Palestinian non-citizens as punishment for terrorism, in Gaza, the West Bank, or Jerusalem.

Chilling testimony from the main suspect in the July 2 murder of 16-year-old east Jerusalem resident Muhammad Abu Khdeir confirmed the brutal homicide was indeed rooted in revenge for the three yeshiva students abducted and killed by Hamas operatives in June.

Arar criticized the decision to demolish the homes of the suspects in the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank in June, even though they still have not been convicted in court.

Still, the High Court rejected appeals to prevent the government from carrying out the demolitions of the murder suspects' homes.

"It’s impossible to deny that acts of incitement and violence against Arabs have multiplied in Jewish society; this is regrettable, and it’s necessary to act forcefully against such occurrences,” Justice Yoram Danziger wrote in the decision, according to the Hamodia website.

“But the comparison is out of place, because house demolitions in the territories aren’t used in cases of incitement and violence, but in especially severe cases of murder. I’m not overlooking the shocking case of the murder of the teenage boy Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a case that shocked the country and sparked wall-to-wall condemnations, but this was the rarest of rare occurrences," he said.

"Therefore, it seems to me there’s no place for the artificial symmetry claimed by the petitioners to support their claim of discriminatory enforcement.”

The IDF Spokesman’s Office said that combat engineers supported by Border Patrol officers set explosive charges to two houses belonging to Hussam Kawasme and Amar Abu Aysha in the southern West Bank on

Monday and sealed off a home belonging to suspect Marwan Kawasme.

Hussam Kawasme, 40, from Hebron, was arrested on July 11, but both Marwan Kawasme and Aysha have still not been found.

Arar claimed that there is a double standard against Arabs, even in the courts.

This is a “clear sign of racism and hatred of Arabs,” he said.

Ben Hartman and Daniel K. Eisenbud contributed to this report.