The Israeli Supreme Court has accepted a petition by a human rights group arguing that the home of the Jerusalem Arab who nearly assassinated Yehuda Glick should not be demolished.
Regarding the terrorists from the Har Nof massacre, the justices rejected the appeal against Israel’s destroying the homes of the terrorists.
The court also ruled that the home of a tractor terrorist can be destroyed.
Glick was almost killed but made a miraculous recovery and stood on his own today for the first time since he was shot four times in the chest two months ago.
The human rights lawyers argued that the policy has not undergone a legal review for several years, and that demolition of homes as punishment and deterrence violates international law against collective punishment.
The justices stated there are “moral dilemmas” with the policy, but that the gravity of the murders justifies Israel’s policy.
Justice Elyakim Rubinstein, who wrote the ruling for the panel of three justices, warned that security officials in the future will have to provide evidence that the policy is effective.
That puts the defense establishment in the position of having to prove an hypothesis. How can it provide evidence that terrorism would be worse if homes were not destroyed?
How can it prove that the policy works? Because there were “only” two deadly terrorist attacks a month instead of four?
Or perhaps the court wants to know if victims like Glick ”only” were wounded and not killed?
On the other hand, the justices did have the intelligence to note that there is no need to destroy the home of the Jews behind the gruesome murder by fire of an Arab youth. Their reasoning was, according to the court, that the almost universal denouncement of the murder by Jews makes it obvious that demolition is not needed to deter other Jews from killing Arabs.
