Jerusalem District Judge Tzvi Segal asked the State Attorney's Office (SAO) Tuesday to explain why it was asking for much stiffer punishment in the case of Jewish nationalist arson than in a case involving the torching of a synagogue.
The question arose during the trial of Yitzchak Gabbai, the third defendant in the arson attack on the Bilingual School in Jerusalem. The two other defendants in the case were sentenced to 30 and 24 months in jail, about two months ago.
The SAO representative at the trial, Attorney Noa Ezra, said that the case was a very serious one that involved a desire to sour relations between Arabs and Jews, and asked the court to set a sentencing range of 4 to 7.5 years.
Gabbai's attorney, Itamar Ben Gvir, submitted to the court a long list of sentences in which the SAO had asked for more lenient punishment in cases that were more serious than the present one. Among these was a case involving an arson attack on a synagogue in which the SAO asked only for 2 to 4 years' jail time.
"This is discriminatory enforcement that will only lead to the defendants' being presented as heroes," he warned.
Judge Segal asked the SAO representative to respond to these charges. Ezra admitted that the range of sentencing requested by the state in the present case is double what it had requested in the synagogue arson case.
The judge asked: "Does that seem reasonable?"
"The numerous sentences that I submitted to the court show clear discrimination between the defendants in the Bilingual School case and the arsonists who set fire to synagogues and a police station, or those who threw firebombs against Jews for nationalistic reasons," said Ben Gvir. "The SAO must not institute a discriminatory policy."