Jewish terrorists get life in prison

Three sentenced for Arab killings

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JERUSALEM (AP) — A court on Monday sentenced three members of an underground Jewish gang to life in prison for killing three Palestinians, and 12 others to lesser terms for attacks on Arabs in the occupied West Banks. The defendants, most of whom are Jewish settlers, claimed they acted in self defense and said they would appeal for presidential pardons.

Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, leader of the conservative Likud bloc, has recommended clemency, and an opinion poll indicated most Israelis favor it. Defendants, their families and supporters responded with defiant shouts and songs when the sentences were pronounced in the heavily guarded courtroom.

Announcement of the sentences by the three-judge court ended a 13-month trial that brought into question the government’s security policies in the West Bank of the Jordan River, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

The three defendants sentenced to life were convicted July 10 of killing three Palestinian students and wounding 33 in a 1983 shooting spree at Islamic University in Hebron, south of Jerusalem. The 12 others, also convicted July 10, received sentences of from four months to seven years in prison, plus suspended terms.

Bassam Shakaa, the ousted Palestinian mayor of Nablus whose legs were blown off by a car bomb planted by the Jewish underground in 1980, called the trial a sham. He said the punishments were lenient “for political reasons.” “These punishments will not stop such crimes,” Shakaa said in a telephone interview.

Members of the underground ring, the largest Jewish terror group in Israel’s history, won widespread symapthy for their argument that the government was lax in responding to Palestinian violence against Jews who lived in the occupied territories.

“I learned during the trial that there is a difference between law and justice,” said Menachem Livni, 35, a reserve army explosives expert who was the ringleader. “What we did, taking the law into our own hands, was wrong. But you cannot ask someone to sacrifice his life on the altar of law and order,” he said.

Judge Shmuel Finkelman said the court took Arab terror attacks into account in sentencing. He noted that the car bomb attacks an Shakaa and two other Palestinian mayors followed a terrorist attack that killed six settlers in Hebron.

The charge of causing grievous bodily harm carries a maximum 20-year sentence, but the defendants charged with the car bombing were given only three years. Five settlers received up to 45 months for planting bombs in five Arab-owned buses in Jerusalem. Thwarting the attack helped police crack the ring in April 1984.

Ten other members of the terrorist band are serving sentences of up to 10 years imposed in separate plea bargaining arrangements, and two more have completed jail terms. The lengthy trial created widespread controversy about the settlement program that has moved 50,000 Israelis into the West Bank in 18 years.

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"Jewish terrorists get life in prison," The Daily Illini, 23 July 1985, p. 5. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1985-015. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1985-015