Attorney Yoram Sheftel thinks Judge Yuval Shadmi of the Nazareth Youth Court should be removed from his post after a decision Wednesday not to convict an Arab youth who threw rocks at a police car because – in the judge's opinion – the state discriminates between Arabs and Jews in the matter of rock-throwing.
Sheftel told Arutz Sheva's Hebrew radio that it was “a grave matter” that the judge decided to grant an exemption from punishment to a youth who took part in an insurrection in support of the enemy during the counter-terrorist operation in Gaza. The judge, he said, must be removed from his position.
'Outrageous comparison'
"He should be dismissed from his judgeship and this can be done with a majority of seven out of ten members in the Committee for Appointment of Judges."
“Judge Shadmi has apparently forgotten what country he is sitting in and under what flag he is judging,” he said. “This is an outrageous comparison, between Arab hooligans who identify with the enemies in wartime, when we are fighting the ones who fired missiles at us from Gaza in Cast Lead, and they, the Arabs, throw rocks at police cars – to compare that to Jews who resist expulsion from their homes, people who settle the Land of Israel, is simply a crime.”
A judge like Shadmi has no place in an Israeli court, Sheftel said. “He should be dismissed from his judgeship and this can be done with a majority of seven out of ten members in the Committee for Appointment of Judges. I estimate that this judge brought his political views to bear in this verdict.”
Sheftel added that the media's identification with Shadmi's verdict “proves where we are living” and that “there is no doubt that the radical Left in Israel identifies with the Arab enemy and that verdicts like these will only encourage Arab youths to continue to aid the enemy [because] they know that in Israel they will not be convicted. I am convinced that this outrageous verdict will be appealed.”
Shadmi is a product of the kibbutz educational system. He graduated from Mevo'ot Eeron high school, which belongs to several kibbutzes, and was a member of Kibbutz Maanit for many years, according to his official biography on the court system's website.