The name of a Palestinian boy who was killed by Jewish extremists was on Tuesday added to an official memorial wall in Israel for terror victims, in a first such recognition in the country for an Arab fatality. 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir's name showed up on the Israel government's online database of terror victims, next to an Israeli flag overlaid with a picture of the Blood of the Maccabees flower, which has come to symbolise the country's fallen. The Israeli Defence Ministry recognised Abu Khdeir as a victim of "hostile action" in July 2014, the term used for Israeli civilians killed in conflicts with the Palestinians and Arab states, some two weeks after he was murdered. Hussein Abu Khdeir, Mohammed's father, told news portal Ynet that "this is a great initiative meant to honour my son, but I'm more interested with something else entirely: For the court to do justice with those who burned my son alive, and sentence them to the appropriate punishment." Hussein is perturbed at the efforts by defence lawyers of some of the accused planning to claim that their clients are mentally unfit to stand trial. "My son is gone, my son was burned and we were burned with him. I want justice and not honour. What good is it going to do me if they carve his name in stone?" he told the news portal. "I don't forget for a moment that at court, my son's murderers look at me and laugh and enjoy themselves. Hagai Admon, director of Mount Herzl, told The Times of Israel that Abu Khdeir, to the best of his knowledge, was the first Arab victim of a Jewish hate crime to be recognised on the monument. Israel's Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terror attacks begins on Tuesday and will last until Wednesday evening, when it will fade into Independence Day celebrations. In an apparent revenge attack in early July last year, three Jewish Israeli youngsters allegedly abducted Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian resident of east Jerusalem, beat him with iron rods and burned his corpse in a forest outside the city, leading to an international outcry.
