A panel of three Supreme Court justices rejected Margalit Har-Shefi\'s appeal this morning. The Tel Aviv District Court convicted her three years ago of knowing in advance of the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and not preventing it. She later appealed both the verdict and the severity of the nine-month sentence. The three Supreme Court judges unanimously upheld the conviction, and two out of the three felt that the sentence was not too severe. Margalit Har-Shefi, 25, is scheduled to enter prison next month.
After the decision, Har-Shefi told reporters that the ruling was a blood libel: \"Could any one have ever thought that a citizen, a Jew, an Israeli, would get up and murder the Prime Minister? Even those whose responsibility it was to protect his life did not do what today, after the event, seems to have been so obviously required. And I, only 20 years old, who in one terrible moment was thrown into the midst of a public, judicial, and media whirlpool, was turned into a symbol… I am being sent to prison for one reason only: they needed someone to blame, to cover up for an entire system that fell asleep on its watch. They found me, and acted as if it all happened because of me. This is a blood libel, in its most simple sense. If I would have thought for one moment that the Prime Minister would be murdered, I would have done everything I could to save him.\"
Har-Shefi told Arutz-7\'s Ariel Kahane today, \"My problem with the ruling is not with the law itself - whether or not someone can be convicted of not stopping a crime. My objection is that though unfortunately I knew the murderer, I did not know that he would actually commit such a crime.\"
Her father Dov reacted, \"To my sorrow, the Court convicted my daughter Margalit of something that no one in the world could possibly know. Only G-d knows if she actually thought that he would commit the murder. There is no witness, nothing concrete that proves that she knew. The entire case is based on speculation, assumptions, evaluations - which could have led, at most, to a doubt - nothing more. The judges have put themselves in place of G-d.\"
After the decision, Har-Shefi told reporters that the ruling was a blood libel: \"Could any one have ever thought that a citizen, a Jew, an Israeli, would get up and murder the Prime Minister? Even those whose responsibility it was to protect his life did not do what today, after the event, seems to have been so obviously required. And I, only 20 years old, who in one terrible moment was thrown into the midst of a public, judicial, and media whirlpool, was turned into a symbol… I am being sent to prison for one reason only: they needed someone to blame, to cover up for an entire system that fell asleep on its watch. They found me, and acted as if it all happened because of me. This is a blood libel, in its most simple sense. If I would have thought for one moment that the Prime Minister would be murdered, I would have done everything I could to save him.\"
Har-Shefi told Arutz-7\'s Ariel Kahane today, \"My problem with the ruling is not with the law itself - whether or not someone can be convicted of not stopping a crime. My objection is that though unfortunately I knew the murderer, I did not know that he would actually commit such a crime.\"
Her father Dov reacted, \"To my sorrow, the Court convicted my daughter Margalit of something that no one in the world could possibly know. Only G-d knows if she actually thought that he would commit the murder. There is no witness, nothing concrete that proves that she knew. The entire case is based on speculation, assumptions, evaluations - which could have led, at most, to a doubt - nothing more. The judges have put themselves in place of G-d.\"