ISRAELI POLICE, COURTS LENIENT WITH LEFT-WING ACTIVIST

Israeljustice.com

  JERUSALEM -- Israeli police refused to arrest a convicted left-wing activist during a confrontation between Jews and Arabs days after he was sentenced to a month in jail and six months probation for similar crimes in the West Bank.  
    Three days after he was sentenced to one month in jail for assaulting police officers in the southern Hebron Hills, Ezra Nawi, 58, head of the left-wing Tayush organization, returned to the area with a group of activists and Palestinians, including Hamas supporter Mahmoud Abu Karish, to protest against what he said was Jewish settlement on private Palestinian land.  
    On Oct. 24, Nawi and his group arrived at the Jewish community of Mitzpe Asael in the southern Hebron Hills, sparking a confrontation with the Jewish residents who alerted security forces. Police arrested five activitsts and three Palestinians, not including Nawi, after they refused to leave the area, violating a closed military zone order.  
    Jewish residents of communities in the southern Hebron Hills have frequently complained to police about Nawi over the past few years. Complaints ranged from trespassing, uprooting and destroying olive groves to indecent exposure. The complaints were supported by testimony and photographs but police investigations were closed for lack of evidence or lack of public interest.  
    On Sept. 15, 2006, Nawi led five Palestinians from the nearby village of Samoa to Yaakov Talia's Magen David farm. The group threw stones and cursed the Jewish family and Nawi dropped his pants and exposed himself in front of Talia's wife. Talia photographed Nawi's act and submitted a complaint to Hebron police. Nawi, who maintains contact with police officials, was never prosecuted. Instead, on March 28, 2007, police closed the investigation for lack of evidence.  
    In the summer of 2008, Jewish residents of Mizpeh Asael filed a complaint against Nawi and Abu Karish after Nawi led a group of supporters to Mitzpe Asael when 40 dunams of olive groves went up in flames. Police closed the investigation after Karish said that a cigarette butt fell to the ground starting the fire. But three Jews, Lior Ben-David, Mordechai Azouriel and Eyal Rachamim, videotaped beating up Karish, were arrested and indicted on charges that included kidnapping, imprisonment, brutal assault and destroying evidence, punishable by more than 20 years. Karish, the main complainant in the case never testified because the Israel Security Agency said that he was a Hamas supporter and would threaten State security if he appeared in an Israeli court.  
    Nawi, a Jerusalem plumber, was convicted in 1992 for committing an indecent act on a minor, for illegal use of a weapon, growing and possessing drugs, entering a closed military area and transporting illegal Arab workers into Israel from the West Bank.  
    In March, Nawi was convicted of assaulting police officers during the destruction of an illegal Arab structure and on Oct. 21, Jerusalem Magistrate Ilta Siskind sentenced him to one month in jail and six months probation. The court also ordered him to pay a $200 fine and $136 in damages to each police officer.  
    "Ideology is ideology, but this trial is not about ideology," Siskind said. "Wild behavior from the right or the left is inconceivable, even if the goal is to help the weak. Without order, there can be no democracy."  
    The Legal Forum for Israel has petitioned Attorney General Menachem Mazuz and Deputy State Prosecutor for Special Affairs Shai Nitzan to appeal what it termed the "the light sentence" handed down to Nawi.  
    "The message emerging for this light punishment is dismal and destroys any chance of preventing further anarchist violence in Judea and Samaria" the Legal Forum said.