Because he ‘saved Jews,’ Palestinian gets light sentence

An Israeli judge has ruled that a Palestinian who was unlawfully residing in Israel will receive only relatively mild punishment, because he recently assisted two Israelis who were accosted in his village and helped them escape a violent mob.

“The defendant is a righteous gentile,” Tel Aviv Magistrate Shamai Becker said last week, according to a report in the news site Ynet Sunday, of his decision to sentence the man to no more than 18 days in prison. “We must not sentence him to any additional punishment, as a sign of gratitude for his having risked his life, his livelihood and his day-to-day status in the village after saving Jews from a bitter fate.”

According to testimony presented before the court, the Palestinian man, whose name was not disclosed, helped a Jewish Israeli man and his son, who at the height of the war in Gaza over the summer drove through his village and were attacked.

The Israeli man, according to the report, told the court that he was “very nervous” during the ordeal.

“It was the fifth Sunday of Ramadan,” he reportedly said in his testimony. “There were lights and people out in the street. I was nervous and tried to cross the village as quickly as possible but I drove into a cul de sac. The villagers told me to drive someplace. They must have deceived me. I drove and they followed me. Someone opened the door and stole my glasses.”

After that, the man said, he and his son were blocked into the alley by another car and attacked with rocks. “I thought I was at death’s door,” he said.

It was then that the Palestinian man invited them into his home and told them to sit tight until the army arrived to bail them out.

“It took forty-five minutes for the army to come,” the Jewish man said. “There were dozens of people who stoned us, but he and his family, twenty people in all, stood around our car and didn’t let anyone near the house. Definitely, they saved our lives. The accused was one of the defenders… He’s one of the people who risked their lives to save me and my son.”

The Palestinian man had pleaded guilty to illegally residing in Israel, impersonating another person and using forged documents, but the judge said that he was a “righteous gentile,” a term used to describe non-Jews who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. “It is my opinion that the Israeli court should show gratitude to the defendant for his actions, thus encouraging such dangerous and altruistic actions in the future,” he said, according to Ynet.

He also recommended that the man be granted a permit to work in Israel.