An Arab driver who killed a little Jewish girl riding her bicycle near the synagogue in Kfar Tavor on Yom Kippur Eve in 2007 was sentenced to nine years in prison on Tuesday, although the maximum sentence for manslaughter is 20 years. His accomplice was sentenced to just two years in jail, longer than the time that has already passed since the event.
On Yom Kippur eve, when the Kol Nidrei service began and the streets were empty, the two Arabs entered Kfar Tavor at high speed on the all-terrain vehicle (ATV) and headed directly for a group of children milling about near the synagogue on their bicycles. They executed a “wheelie” and smashed into nine-year-old Tal Zino, killing her.
Judge Yitzchak Cohen
Assad Shibli, 22, who struck and killed Zino, was sentenced by the Nazareth District Court to nine years in prison and given a 50,000-shekel ($13,500) fine after being found guilty of vehicular manslaughter. Mohammed Shibli, 21, who sat behind the driver during the incident, was sentenced to two years in prison and was fined 15,000 shekels ($4,000), having been found guilty of being an accessory to the crime and abandoning the scene of a crime.
In handing down the sentence, Justice Yitzchak Cohen said "The defendant was intolerably foolhardy in his driving due to his knowledge of the rites of Yom Kippur. The [second] defendant ran without offering assistance and without reporting the accident... Nothing will return light to a child's eyes, but proper proportionality must be observed.”
According to a Jewish witness from Kfar Tavor, Assad Shibli – who lives in the Bedouin village of Assad a-Shibli, near Kfar Tavor – drove recklessly near the local gas station two weeks before the incident, and threatened a Border Police volunteer: “wait and see what will happen on Yom Kippur.”