Israeli sentenced to life in prison for 2015 murder of Palestinian toddler, parents

Sep 14, 2020

A court in Israel has sentenced a Jewish settler to life in prison after he was found guilty of murdering three Palestinians in 2015, one of whom was a toddler.

Amiram Ben-Uliel was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences on Monday for an attack the judge said was committed out of “extreme and racist ideology.” Ben-Uliel, 25, was convicted in May of three counts of murder and two charges of attempted murder and arson for the deaths of Ali, Saad and Riham Dawabsheh in the West Bank town of Duma.

On the night of July 31, 2015, Ben-Uliel hurled Molotov cocktails into the Dawabsheh home as the family slept inside, according to the indictment. Eighteen-month-old Ali died in the home, and his parents, Saad and Riham, succumbed to their injuries at the hospital. Their 5-year-old son, Ahmed, survived with extreme burns.

Ben-Uliel also spray-painted Hebrew graffiti on their walls and firebombed another empty home, the court said, adding that his “actions were meticulously planned and stemmed from the radical ideology he held and racism.”

According to court documents, Ben-Uliel torched the homes “solely because they were Arabs living in Duma,” and the attack was in retaliation for the death of Malachi Rosenfeld, an Israel killed by a Palestinian in a drive-by shooting in 2015.