• Abu Khdeir suspects to plead insanity | Jonathan Cook’s Blog
    http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2014-07-14/abu-khdeir-suspects-to-plead-insanity

    Three Israeli suspects who have confessed to the gruesome killing of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was abducted in East Jerusalem and later burnt to death, are going to plead “temporary insanity”, according to Haaretz. Mohammed’s father guessed as much last week, when asked whether he trusted Israel’s judicial system: “I think they will say that [the murderers] were insane and give them a year or two and that’s all. (...)”

    That’s not because Hussein Abu Khdeir has incredible prescience; it’s because this is how it works in Israel. Palestinians who kill Israelis are terrorists, and Israelis who kill Palestinians are either heroes, if they are doing it in an official capacity, or deeply damaged individuals on the “fringes of society”, if they act on their own. Either way, they are not meaningfully held to account.

    As Hussein also implies, the three, if convicted, will probably get a lenient sentence and then pardoned when the fuss dies down in a year or two.