58 months in prison for two terrorists who lynched Jews • Watch

January 26, 2023   

The Jerusalem District Court sentenced two terrorists, Ibrahim Salaima and Muhammad Kabaja, to 58 months in prison for participating in a lynching of Jews near the Lions Gate on Jerusalem Day two years ago. In addition, they were ordered to pay 70,000 NIS in compensation to Jews who were injured in the lynching. The terrorists were convicted of terrorist acts of aggravated sabotage and intentional damage to a vehicle. The victims of the lynching are represented by attorney Haim Bleicher of the Honenu organization. In the sentence, the judge described the severe lynching that the Jews experienced: "On the morning of Jerusalem Day 2021, three Jews drove in a car toward the Western Wall in Jerusalem to pray. The three wore a kippah on their heads and had a Jewish-religious appearance. When the car arrived near Rockefeller Junction in the Old City, the car got stuck in traffic. A riot broke out around the car, in which the rioters threw stones at the car, smashed its windows, kicked the car, opened the car's doors, and kicked its passengers. The driver of the car tried to escape by driving back and forth under the incessant stone-throwing and the opening of the driver's door by one of the rioters. He lost control, hit two people who were there, climbed onto a concrete wall on the edge of the sidewalk, and got stuck there. All this, under a relentless attack that continued with force even when the vehicle was stuck against the concrete wall and its passengers were sitting inside," it was written. The judge also wrote about the role of the terrorists in the lynching: "At a point when the vehicle was standing against the concrete wall, Kabaja got out of his vehicle, which was in front of the attacked vehicle, and from a distance of two meters threw a stone that he picked up from the floor at the driver who was sitting in the vehicle with the driver's door open. Immediately afterwards, Kabaja picked up another stone and threw it also from a distance of about one meter at the driver. At the same time, Salaima came running with a black helmet on his head, approached the vehicle and sprayed pepper spray into the vehicle through the right-front seat window from a few centimeters away. The defendants committed their acts while the rioters around them continued the attack in the manner described above. The two defendants fled after the police officer arrived at the scene and fired into the air." The reasons for the sentence stated, among other things, that: "The defendants' actions seriously and gravely harm the protected values ​​of preserving the value of life, bodily integrity, public peace and security, the rule of law, public order and the individual's sense of personal security. The phenomenon of stone-throwing has recently intensified and has become a real "state coup," significantly endangering public peace and human life, requiring the imposition of sentences that are effective in deterring both the perpetrator himself and the perpetrators." "In this case, the intensity of the harm to protected values ​​is at its peak. This is a continuous, severe and combined attack by many rioters against three victims who were trapped in a vehicle at the scene of the incident and could not have escaped. The potential for damage in this attack, carried out under these circumstances by many rioters together, is great and even fatal. Including this, the fact that the incident was not stopped on the initiative of the defendants and the other rioters, but rather due to the arrival of a police officer who fired into the air, and as a result the attack was stopped, must be brought into consideration." "The seriousness of the acts in our case is greatly intensified in view of the fact that they were carried out together with the rioting crowd. These offenses therefore require an appropriate, severe and onerous punitive response. Moreover, the seriousness of the acts and the harm to protected values ​​is intensified in view of the ideological motive that underpinned them, in an attack that was aimed at people but because of their religious and national identity." Attorney Haim Bleicher of the Honenu organization responded to the verdict and said: "As described in the verdict, we are dealing with serious and severe acts of terrorism with serious harm to the victims of the offense and to the security of all Israeli citizens. "We believe that the punishment is not severe enough and does not sufficiently express the severity and cruelty of the terrorists' actions. We will ask the prosecutor's office to appeal, demanding that the punishment be made more severe and thus also increase deterrence against terrorist perpetrators.".