Victim’s family: IDF must destroy memorial glorifying terrorist

The family of Yaakov Faraj wants the IDF to remove a monument honoring the Palestinian terrorist who murdered him.

By World Israel News Staff

The family of an Israeli man murdered by a Palestinian terrorist is calling on the Israeli military to remove a monument commemorating his killer, which stands near the site of the deadly attack.

Yaakov Faraj was guarding the Israeli community of Har Bracha in December 1988 when Hamdan Hussein Mahmoud Najar killed him, then stole his firearm. Najar used Faraj’s weapon to murder another victim, an IDF soldier who attempted to respond to the incident.

Faraj’s wife was pregnant at the time of his death, and he left behind three young children.

Najar, who was from the nearby Palestinian village of Burin, was killed by Israeli soldiers during the ensuing gun battle.

Nearly four decades later, a monument honoring Najar as a martyr stands in Burin’s main square.

Leah Faraj-Ziv, Faraj’s widow, told the Hebrew-language outlet Arutz Sheva that the memorial, which is located so close to the site of the murder, is akin to a slap in the face.

“It is difficult to put into words the feelings of a family whose loved one was murdered in a particular place, only to find a short distance away a monument commemorating the person who took his life,” she told the outlet.

“A monument is a symbol. It conveys a message to future generations. What message do we want to pass on to our children? Do we commemorate someone who took a life, or the man who was murdered while defending his home, his land and his family?”

The Faraj family is demanding that the Israeli military remove the monument, arguing that honoring the man responsible for Faraj’s death compounds the family’s pain and glorifies violence.

MK Tzvi Sukkot of the Religious Zionism party also called for action against the memorial, saying that commemorating terrorists should not be tolerated.

“There is no justification for commemorating the murderer of a Jew, certainly not at the site of the attack where he took the life of a man who simply wanted to protect his country’s land,” Sukkot said in a media statement.

“The fight against the commemoration of terrorism must be consistent and determined to the end.”

Sukkot drew national attention in August when he used a sledgehammer to smash a separate monument commemorating terrorists in another Palestinian Authority-administered enclave in Judea and Samaria.