Terror victim’s parents advocate death penalty for murderers

“I hope to see the murderer with a black bag over his head, that’s what I hope for,” says mother of murdered IDF soldier.

By: Jack Ben-David, World Israel News

The parents of an IDF soldier who was murdered in Arad by a Palestinian terrorist at the end of November have urged that Israeli authorities impose the death penalty on the man indicted for their son’s death and his suspected accomplice.

The death penalty “is what I feel the murderers deserve, or a very long sentence,” said Boaz Kokia, whose 19-year-old son Sgt. Ron Kokia was stabbed to death by Khaled Abu Jaudah while waiting for a bus outside a shopping mall.

Speaking on Sunday morning after Khaled and his half-brother Zahi Abu Jauda were indicted at the Be’er Sheva District Court, Boaz said that the former should be put to death.

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman has been one of the chief proponents of introducing the death penalty for Palestinian terrorists. In February, he said that by not executing them, Israel was only “inviting more and more terrorism.”

Liberman is currently pushing legislation that would permit capital punishment for Palestinians that could be handed down by the military courts only.

The proposal has received backing from some lawmakers on the right, but has been opposed by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over a year ago that he disagreed with Liberman’s position and that the punishment would not act as a deterrence against terror.

‘Be tough with the murderers and their family members’

Khaled, 22, was charged with attempted murder, premeditated murder, illegal possession of a knife, preparing to commit a terror attack and using of weapon, all of which is considered to be related to acts of terror.

Similarly, Zahi, also 22, was also charged with attempted murder, illegal possession of a knife and obstructing justice.

“I urge the court to be tough with the murderers and their family members who contributed to the murder with their criminal conduct,” said Boaz after the indictments were submitted. It was important, he added, for the family to be given “justice, and also to deter other potential murderers.”

Boaz stated that the punishment had to hit the pockets of the families by “taking away benefits.”

Moreover, he said that the families should be made into pariahs, including in their Bedouin community of Kuseife, from where the terrorists hailed.

This, he said, would convey the message that violence is intolerable in all its forms, for any reason. “This violence hurts everyone, and Bedouin citizens most of all,” Boaz said.

Arab lawmakers ‘raise blood libels and incite violence’

It was Arab lawmakers, he argued, who bear some responsibility for acts of terror by indoctrinating their voters and communities with violence.

“When they raise blood libels about the state and incite as Members of the Knesset…it is a kind of incitement that indirectly causes their citizens to commit acts of violence,” he posited.

Many, he continued, use extreme examples of rights abuses against Arabs as a justification for “a whole ideology of incitement, slander and libels against the state.”

Ron’s mother, Levana Kokia, was equally forthright in calling for the death penalty of the terrorist, whom she said she would like to be hanged, while expressing regret that it was an unlikely outcome.

“I hope to see the murderer with a black bag over his head, that’s what I hope for,” she said. “But it doesn’t look like we’ll get a hanging and we won’t get a death sentence, but we’ll go as far as we can.”

On Friday, the Shin Bet revealed that Khaled originally intended to kidnap Kokia, who served in the Nahal Brigade, by using anesthesia and later using the soldier as a bargaining chip in a future prisoner exchange deal.

Arab terrorDeath penaltyRon Kokia