Ibrahim Abu Mukh, the head of the terrorist cell that kidnapped and murdered IDF soldier Moshe Tamam in August 1984, was released from an Israeli prison on Monday.
Abu Mukh, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, along with three others in his cell, kidnapped Tamam, 19, who was hitchhiking to his home while on leave. They took him to Abu Mukh’s home in the Israeli Arab town of Baqa al-Gharbiye. They first tortured Tamam and then drove him to an olive grove in Samaria, where they shot him through the chest, killing him. The terrorists were arrested two years later and sentenced to life in prison.
In 2012, then-Israeli President Shimon Peres commuted the life sentences of seven Arab Israelis who killed IDF soldiers. One of them was Abu Mukh. “It was a gesture to [Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud] Abbas,” Itamar Marcus, founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), told JNS. “Peres changed it to 40 years.”
Abu Mukh’s cousin Rushdi Hamdan Abu Mukh, also had his sentence commuted. He, too, participated in Tamam’s killing. Rushdi was released in 2021. Although the Tamam family turned to Interior Minister Aryeh Deri at the time requesting that Rushdi’s Israeli citizenship be revoked, it “shamefully” was not, family lawyer Maurice Hirsch told JNS.
The President’s Residence stressed at the time that a legal statute required the president and justice minister “to limit the duration of life sentences for prisoners in Israel.”
Marcus said the law needs to be amended to remove the president’s authority to reduce sentences for convicted terrorists. If the sentences for terrorists were permanent, there would never have been the 1985 Ahmad Jibril deal, in which Israel released 1,150 terrorist prisoners for three Israeli soldiers. It made kidnapping the “most potent tool and most dangerous terror strategy” of the Palestinians, he said. The Jibril deal led to the Gilad Shalit deal, where another 1,000 terrorists were released, he added.
On Sunday, Marcus argued in a post on X that Ibrahim Abu Mukh should be rearrested and imprisoned for an additional 3,360 years due to his collection of monthly stipends under the P.A.'s “pay-for-slay” programs, which reward terrorists who attack Jews.
“Under the Palestinian Authority Pay-for-Slay law, Abu Mukh should have accrued 2,493,225 shekels [about $800,000] in terror payments. Receiving these payments violates Israel’s anti-terror funding laws and is punishable with a minimum of seven years in jail. PMW calls on the Israeli police to immediately rearrest the murderer and put him on trial for each of the months’ salaries he has received. After 40 years, he should have received 480 salaries, and, when sentenced to 7 years per salary, he should receive 3,360 years in prison. Arrest him today. Throw away the key,” Marcus wrote.
Marcus referred to Israel’s 2016 Law on Combating Terrorism.
On Sunday, the Tamam family and the Choosing Life forum, a group founded by more than 100 Israeli families of terror victims, sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) Director David Zini requesting that Abu Mukh’s Israeli citizenship be revoked and that he be immediately deported to the Gaza Strip under the 2023 Terrorist Deportation Law.
“Throughout the years, the murderer received money from the Palestinian Authority as a sign of heroism and encouragement for the murder of an IDF soldier, and now he is returning to the State of Israel to live alongside us, and to live off the tax money we pay,” the victim’s niece Ortal Tamam told Hebrew daily Makor Rishon.
The Choosing Life forum said that the law was intended exactly for such cases, Israel Hayom reported. “Abu Mukh and his partners gave up their membership in Israeli society as soon as they kidnapped and murdered an IDF soldier. We expect the prime minister to act already before the terrorist has time to celebrate.”
Netanyahu first employed the law in February, signing papers to revoke the Israeli citizenship of two terrorists and deport them.
