A terrorist who attempted to steal a soldier's personal weapon has been sentenced to 40 months in prison and a financial compensation of NIS 35,000.
At the entrance to an IDF base, the terrorist stopped his car, approached the soldier, and sprayed pepper spray in his eyes, causing his vision to blur. The terrorist tried to grab the soldier's weapon while pushing him onto a nearby concrete post and hitting him hard in the face. However, despite the shock and the blurred vision, the soldier managed to knock down the terrorist, and a struggle developed between the two. The weapon fell to the ground; the soldier stopped to retrieve it, and the terrorist took advantage of that to try to escape. Seeing this, the soldier resumed his pursuit, and after the terrorist tried to grab his weapon again, another fight developed between the two.
At this point, a Border Police officer arrived at the scene and helped the soldier overpower the terrorist and bring him into custody. At the end of the incident, the soldier was taken to the hospital suffering from various bruises on his body as well as a chemical burn to his eyes. "For ten minutes, I thought I was going to die. I could not see anything and didn't know what was happening around me. Even now, I find myself continually reliving the incident," the soldier commented.
Throughout the sentence, the judge explains his considerations for the punishment, both regarding imprisonment and financial compensation. According to the military judge, in the amended sentence, there is a slight improvement for the soldier for the damages caused to him by the terrorist. However, as mentioned, the soldier is not satisfied with the terrorist's punishment. The Honenu legal aid organization that represents the soldier strongly criticized the sentence and says that it is a lenient sentence for a terrorist who wounded a soldier and tried to steal his weapon, a case that only by a miracle did not end in an even worse way.
Attorney Bleicher, who represents the soldier on behalf of Honenu, says: "The sentence ignores the reality we are in. A war on brutal terrorism, terror attacks, and murders of Jews every day. The sentence offends justice twice, once due to the fact that the terrorist does not receive the sentence he deserves for what he did to the soldier, in that he fought him and attacked him for a long time. A second time in the meaning of stealing a weapon from a soldier in Judea and Samaria and all that is implied by that, that many times we know where these weapons are intended, and that is what could have happened in this case as well."
"40 months in prison for an incident of this type is not a deterrent punishment. It is a punishment that is appropriate for a criminal incident, not an incident of terrorism. When it comes to a terrorist incident, in a place where attacks are carried out, 40 months is a reward for terrorism. We fear that such a lightening of the punishment will ultimately lead to an increase in terrorism. We were with the soldier at the hearing, and he demanded not to accept the plea agreement, and the matters were put before the judge. It is true that the prosecution is the one who submitted the agreement, but nevertheless, the responsibility for the verdict rests on the shoulders of the judge," he concluded.