Israel’s Selective Justice

The sentences imposed by a Jerusalem court on 15 terrorists who belonged to a so-called Jewish underground call into question the concept of the equal application of justice in Israel. Three of the terrorists, convicted of murder, received mandatory life terms. But a dozen others, found guilty of lesser but still major felonies, were treated with relative leniency. Relative, in this case, means in comparison with the far more severe sentences given Arabs who have been convicted by Israeli courts of less grievous crimes.

None of the dozen Israeli terrorists will have to serve a prison term longer than seven years, even though they were found guilty of such crimes as conspiracy to blow up a Muslim holy place, the attempted assassination of several prominent West Bank Arabs, and planting bombs on Arab buses that, had they not been found and defused, could have taken scores of lives. One of the defendants has in fact already been given credit for jail time served, and released. Four others are likely to be set free by next spring.

By contrast, an Israeli court last December sentenced five Arabs from Gaza who were convicted of membership in a terrorist organization--but not with committing any specific terrorist acts--to prison terms ranging up to 13 years, with no commutation for time already served.

Israeli justice will now be further challenged as supporters of and apologists for the Jewish terrorists step up a campaign to win them clemency. Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who heads the right-wing Likud faction, has taken a lead role in that effort, contending that the terrorists are simply “good boys” who went astray. This is not a far echo from the terrorists’ own claim that the acts that they committed were prompted mainly by frustration over the inability of the security services to suppress all acts of anti-Israeli violence on the occupied West Bank.

It is clear, though, that the anti-Arab terrorism carried out by the Israelis was prompted first and foremost by a combination of ultranationalism and religious zealotry, reflecting their notion of a God-given right to full and permanent Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank. This concept is embraced in its most radical form by the racist Rabbi Meir Kahane--though it does not lack for more politically respectable advocates as well, including many within Likud.

The case of the Jewish terrorists has become something of a test of how Israel’s commitment to democracy and the rule of law will respond to the mounting internal dangers posed by extremists. If political pressure now wins clemency for the convicted terrorists, it will be taken as a victory for extremism and an encouragement of still more anti-Arab violence and vigilantism.