Ron Kehrmann, whose 17-year-old daughter Tal was murdered in a suicide terror attack on a Haifa bus in 2003, on Tuesday expressed his dismay over the fact that the name of Mohammed Abu Khder, the Arab youth who was murdered by Jews last summer in a nationalist revenge attack, had been added to the Har Herzl memorial for terror victims.
“We discovered this yesterday, and it’s outrageous, we do not understand on what basis they added his name to the monument,” Kehrmann told Arutz Sheva as Israelis prepared to observe Memorial Day.
“This monument was established in honor of those who paid the price of the fight for the sovereignty and independence of the State of Israel, in memory of Israelis who were killed and murdered because of the renewal of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel,” he continued.
“Abu Khder does not meet any of the above criteria. With all the pain, he was killed by criminals, why does his name appear on Mount Herzl alongside all those soldiers who gave their lives for the creation of Israel?” said Kehrmann.
Abu Khder, who lived in Shuafat, in northern Jerusalem, was abducted, murdered and set on fire on July 2, 2014 by three Jews, two of whom were minors. The defendants in the murder case said they were acting in revenge for the abduction and murder of three yeshiva boys, Naftali Frenkel (16), Gilad Sha’ar (16), and Eyal Yifrah (19), who were abducted June 12 and murdered.
Terror victims’ group Almagor is also angry at the news and demands that his name be removed from the memorial plaque at Har Herzl and from the NII website. Almagor said that Abu Khder was not murdered as part of the struggle for Israel’s existence but as a result of “the insanity of criminals.”
“A random killing carried out by people whose sanity is in doubt cannot be compared to organized actions by states and enemy countries,” said Almagor.
In the conversation with Arutz Sheva, Kehrmann also spoke about the pain of grieving for his daughter, saying, “These days between Passover and Memorial Day are difficult. I was not born a bereaved father and I cannot compare my conduct before Tal’s murder to my conduct since then. I remember Tal every year but particularly at this time of the year.”
“Tomorrow we will all get together and remember my daughter and all the other victims from Haifa who are buried in a special section for the victims of terror here in the city. No one can change the fact that Tal is gone, but receiving the empathy of all the people of Israel is touching,” he said.
