Justice in Israel

Your editorial raises some provocative questions with regard to Israel’s criminal justice system. Those questions, however, are based more on The Times’ speculation as to what the Israeli courts might be doing in the future rather than a fair and dispassionate examination of the Israeli court system’s achievements.

Within recent weeks the Israeli judicial system has tried and convicted several of its Jewish citizens for violations of Israeli law. The sentences meted out vary according to the severity of the crime and the vagaries of the penal system in Israel.

Ought we not view these convictions as testimony to the rule of law in a country faced with hardened terrorists threatening from several of its borders, hijacking planes across international boundaries, and sending teen-agers with dynamite-laden cars on suicide missions? It is no mean feat for the Israeli judicial system to have withstood the pressures to close its eyes to Jewish terror.

As The Times noted, the case of 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.” It is clear that Israel’s judicial system has met that test as few countries would.

DAVID A. LEHRER

Los Angeles

Lehrer is Western States counsel of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.