Ibrahim Abu Moch, one of the terrorists responsible for the abduction and murder of 19-year-old Corporal Moshe Tamam in 1984, was released back to the Israeli-Arab city Baqa al-Gharbiyye on Sunday, only days after the family of his victim was informed, Tamam’s niece told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
On vacation from his military service, Tamam was travelling from Tiberius to Tel Aviv after taking his girlfriend home when four PFLP Arab-Israelis abducted and killed him.
“My uncle’s murder is more than just our family’s story. It’s really an Israeli symbol, because they kidnapped a soldier, not during a war. Just kidnapped him while he was waiting for the bus, and tortured him, murdered him,” Dr. Ortal Tamam said, noting how her family’s grief has carried through four generations now and how many of those affected by Hamas’s October 7 massacre will understand that same feeling of loss.
Moch is not the first of Tamam’s murderers to be released back to Baqa al-Gharbiyye. The city was reported to have hosted celebrations after the release of Rushdi Abu-Moch in 2021.
Ortal shared that the man responsible for her uncle’s murder now lives only 10 minutes from her family home, and that was one of the hardest things to accept, but knowing he will be rewarded for his brutality has been next to impossible to accept.
Eligible for pay for slay and Israeli social services
Convicted of the murder of an Israeli, Gharbiyye is entitled to the Palestinian Authorities’ stipend for terrorists, which was repackaged last year as welfare payments, according to Palestinian Media Watch, in addition to tax-funded benefits provided by the State of Israel.
“As a terrorist with Israeli citizenship, once he has served his prison time, he will be eligible to receive the benefits of Israel’s generous social services. He will be entitled to Israeli health insurance and certain Bituach Leumi payments as well. It is immoral that Israeli tax money, including the taxes paid by the families of the victims, is subsidizing the murderer of their relative,” Itamar Marcus, the founder and director of PMW, told the Post. “So, as a minimum, the Israeli citizen terrorist who murdered Moshe Tamam should lose all benefits that citizenship grants, and if justice is to be achieved, he should be returned to prison for the rest of his life.”
“We are dealing with a vile murderer who should never have been released and should have remained in prison for the rest of his life. He was originally sentenced to life imprisonment, but like many others convicted of murder before the Oslo Accords, his sentence was later reduced by then-president Shimon Peres as a gesture to Mahmoud Abbas,” Marcus explained. “The Palestinian Authority argued that because these terrorists had murdered Israelis before the Oslo Accords, when no peace agreement yet existed, they should not be held fully accountable. This was a grotesque argument, as though terrorism had somehow been legitimate before Oslo. Nevertheless, Peres agreed to commute many life sentences to terms of roughly 40 years.”
Family requests activation of 2023 Terrorist Deportation Law
Not wanting Moch to benefit from the country he swore to attack, the Tamam family has written to a number of Israeli officials, asking to activate the 2023 Terrorist Deportation Law, hoping to see Moch sent to the Gaza Strip, where the threat he can pose to Israel will be better contained.
“What we’re asking is that this law will be applicable to my uncle’s murderer and that he won’t come back to his home and live in Israel, living both out of my taxpayers money and our enemy’s taxpayers money that he gets from murdering my uncle,” she said. “And so, he wrote a letter to the prime minister, as well as to the Shin Bet, who needs to give their approval.”
Ortal said she has yet to hear back from the authorities about her request.
“It’s not just a story of my family, it’s not the story of Tamam, it’s not the story of any specific family… You know, we already paid the price. My uncle has already been murdered. We can’t go back in time. The idea and the goal of this law is to fight it and to prevent it, to make a difference,” she continued. “You can’t, on the one hand, send my brother, my brother-in-law, my family, to the front line, and then, with the other hand, release our enemies back to Israel.”
“Change requires effort, and I feel like, especially after October 7, we as the people of Israel, we know who our enemies are, and we know that we need to make a very clear diagnosis, whether someone is our enemy, or our friends… And if there are enemies, we need to fight them strongly,” she said, asserting that Israel needed to begin more strictly applying the 2023 legislation. “We have a very strong consensus in society and made it very clear that if you’re a terrorist, you can’t enjoy both worlds. You can’t be part of our society, enjoy being an Israeli while actively acting to hurt us.”
Ortal, who gave birth only two months ago and has spent much of those critical first weeks in shelters with her family, never had the privilege of meeting her uncle. She shared that she grew up hearing stories about his “kind nature, about how sweet and funny and handsome he was,” and has maintained a close friendship with his girlfriend. Despite never personally knowing him, that loss has shaped a large part of her life.
Tamam’s memory is “not a torch that I’m happy to receive, but it’s one that I’m honored to carry,” Ortal told the Post. “I’m honored not only to carry my family’s legacy, but also to make a difference. And hopefully, the way I see it, by fighting terror, we’re actually preventing the next family’s [tragedy]. We’re preventing the next terror attack. We’re preventing the next niece from having to talk about her uncle’s killer.”