Hakim Awad was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences for the murder of five members of the Fogel family,(HY'd) including a 3-month-old infant. He expressed no remorse during the trial.
Awad and his cousin, Amjad Awad murdered Udi Fogel, 36, and Ruth Fogel, 35, and their children, Yoav, 11; Elad, 4; and Hadas, 3 months, in a Shabbat eve attack on their home in Itamar, Israel. Amjad Awad has already been convicted of the murders and has yet to be sentenced.
Three of the Fogel children survived the attack: Two were sleeping in a side bedroom and were not discovered, and the Fogels' 12-year-old daughter, Tamar was out of the house visiting a neighbor at the time of the killings. It was Tamar who discovered the bodies of her parents and siblings when she returned.
The judges called the attack "an atrocious, bone chilling and terrifying act."
Israel does not havecapital punishment, but so horrified were the judges by the crime and the murderer's lack of any remorse that the judges said in their decision that they had actually considered sentencing Awad to death.
"A case such as this tempts the use of such a punishment," the judges wrote in their decision. "The imprisoned criminal, whose life would be taken after being sentenced to death, might turn into a martyr, a shaheed in their terms, with all the meanings that are attached to it."
I understand the judge's reasoning, but this is not justice. The murderers of the Fogels are already considered heroes by their fellow 'Palestinians',and they and their families will immediately begin receiving a nice fat salary from the Palestinian Authority just like the other murderers now sitting in Israeli jails, if they're not already on the payroll.
You see, the Awads are some of the 'heroes and martyrs' Mahmoud Abbas is insisting he wants freed as part of any peace settlement with Israel. So there's no upside to keeping them around.
Want to bet that would be a deterrent for future jihadis thinking about emulating them?
No comments:
Post a Comment