36-year-old Jewish terrorist and would-be assassin charged with plotting to murder government official according to laws of Torah Judah-ism
Times of Israel
Police prosecutors filed charges on Friday morning against a Jewish terrorist who is accused of making threats against the life of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, law enforcement announced.
The defendant, a 36-year-old resident of Jerusalem whose name is barred from publication, sent a letter on Wednesday to former chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef requesting permission to assassinate the attorney general, a largely unpopular figure among Israel’s right-wing and ultra-Orthodox populations.
He was indicted on the charge of making threats against the official, law enforcement officials announced Friday.
He is suspected of asking Yosef to issue a ‘din rodef’ against Baharav-Miara — a religious decree applied to grave offenders thought to be an imminent and lethal danger to others. In Jewish law, one is permitted to stop a rodef by any means, even if this requires killing them.
The label became infamous in Israeli political history after Yigal Amir, the assassin of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, cited it as a religious justification for the murder in November 1995. The term has no standing in Israeli law.
‘The erev rav desecrate the name of the heavens with their actions against the Torah world, and I am ready to kill the attorney general if I receive approval for such from the three elders of the generation. Without approval, I will not do it,’ the suspect’s letter read, according to the Ynet news site, using a term referring to non-Israelites who joined the biblical Exodus from Egypt.
At a hearing in the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court on Thursday, the detainee’s lawyer forcefully argued his client’s case, claiming he had no intent to murder the legal official since he never received Yosef’s permission to do so.
‘Even if this is an act that is loathsome on a moral and ethical level, we are still within the realm of criminal law,’ said attorney Idan Butbul. ‘He contacted the rabbi via a sealed envelope and not with direct intent, and asked him a question. Under these circumstances, the act does not amount to a criminal threat.’
However, police argued that the suspect’s letter constitutes a credible threat to Baharav-Miara’s life.
‘The suspect came to the home of Rabbi Yosef and asked to speak with him. When he was turned away, he handed over a letter in which he expressed the desire to kill the attorney general,’ the police representative said during Thursday’s hearing, per Ynet. ‘The writing is on the wall.’
Baharav-Miara has been regularly denounced by members of the current government, which voted earlier this month to fire her from her post, though the High Court of Justice immediately froze the move as it reviews whether the dismissal process passed legal muster.
She has also infuriated ultra-Orthodox leaders by increasing pressure on Haredi draft dodgers, requiring the military to send thousands of enlistment orders to yeshiva students, and pushing for the arrests of those who don’t comply.