Light sentences expected for 4 Jews convicted of endangering Palestinians in Ahuvia Sandak

Had the defendants been only convicted of less dangerous rock throwing, lighter sentences might have been less surprising.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB NOVEMBER 10, 2024 20:28

SETTLERS HURL stones at Palestinians during the annual harvest season, near the settlement of Yitzhar in 2020. (photo credit: NASSER ISHTAYEH/FLASH90)

Two Jewish men and two teens who were part of the Ahuvia Sandak saga were convicted on Sunday by the Jerusalem District Court in a plea deal for endangering Palestinians' lives with rock-throwing on December 21, 2020.

Yet, despite being convicted, including with aggravated circumstances of essentially ideological terror against Palestinians, the four are not expected to be sentenced to more than a range of six to nine months of community service, potential conditional imprisonment and a fine.

In contrast, to the light sentence being sought by the Jerusalem District Attorney’s Office, convictions for Palestinians perpetrating rock throwing against a moving vehicle can potentially lead to a number of years in prison.

Following the Knife Intifada of 2015-2016, Israel passed various anti-terror laws, including stiffening the sentencing for ideological rock throwing if the actions could endanger lives, such as throwing at cars (as opposed to merely throwing in a non-dangerous way at a long distance from a stationary checkpoint), which is exactly what the four defendants on Sunday were convicted of.

In other words, had the defendants been only convicted of less dangerous rock throwing, lighter sentences might have been less surprising.

The Jerusalem Post has learned that a number of circumstances led to the lenient requested sentencing.

What would allow for lighter sentencing?

These circumstances related to: four years having passed since the incident, two years having passed since the trial went forward full throttle, the general problematic circumstances in which the police pursuit of the defendants caused or contributed to the accidental death of Sandak, the need to have similar sentences between the adult-defendants and the minors knowing that the minors' sentences would be less severe, and rulings from the court which messaged to the prosecution that the case might be an uphill battle.

Most importantly, The Post understands that while the court rejected attempts by the defense to dismiss the entire case because of the police conduct leading to Sandak’s death during the police’s hot pursuit of the defendants, the court left open the door to the defense to cross-examine the police involved in the incident.

Further, the Post has learned that in order to identify the defendants, the prosecution would have needed to call the police involved in the pursuit as witnesses in any scenario.

Finally, the Post understands that the prosecution was well aware of the intense scrutiny on this case by right-wing activists within Israel who believed the police, not the defendants, should have been indicted, as well as the scrutiny from the global community and possibly even the International Criminal Court, about whether Israel prosecutes Jewish offenders the same way that it prosecutes Palestinian offenders.

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Anecdotally, Jewish rock throwers have often received lighter sentences than Palestinian ones, and this is an area of law where the prosecution would like to achieve changes. Still, I also believed that due to the controversy regarding this case, this was not the right case to try to pressure the courts to be tougher on Jewish rock throwers.

According to the indictment, the two adult defendants (whose names were published in 2020 but whose names were subsequently added to the case gag order relating to the minors) and the two minors were involved in throwing rocks on December 21, 2020, against Palestinian vehicles based on ideological motivations. 

Further, the indictment said that the rocks thrown by the group were from only a few meters away and that two rocks hit a vehicle and could have caused serious harm. 

In January 2022, then attorney-general Avichai Mandelblit closed the probe into police officers involved in the death of Sandak during a high-speed chase after him and the four others who had allegedly thrown rocks at Palestinian vehicles and then tried to avoid arrest.

The case was a major focus of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and certain right-wing groups that regularly have altercations with the Police, with Ben-Gvir, then a Knesset MK, dismissing the decision as biased and calling for an external inquiry.

However, already in January 2021, the High Court of Justice had rejected a petition by the right-wing activist group Honenu to alter the parameters that Mandelblit and the Police set to probe the Sandak case.

Sandak was killed on December 21, 2020, when the vehicle he was in flipped over while he and a group of activists were fleeing from police for allegedly throwing rocks at Palestinian vehicles. Police either accidentally collided with his car or purposely tried to force his car to stop. 

Mandelblit said that the evidence was not clear-cut regarding which narrative was true, but it was clear that Sandak and his fellow activists were dangerously breaking the law by fleeing arrest in a high-speed chase.

Without a definitive narrative, the most Mandelblit said he could do was order the Police to improve their training of officers about what is allowed and what is not during different kinds of high-speed chases.  

The attorney-general added that the dangerousness of Sandak and his fellow activists throwing rocks at moving vehicles, their purposely circumventing a checkpoint in a dangerous way and their weaving their car back and forth to make the Police chase harder justified attempts by the Police to try to pass them and cut them off.

In addition, the Justice Ministry distributed multiple videos relating to the incident, one of which showed that the Police waited to try to pass Sandak’s car until the road was both straight and wide enough that they even would have had room to safely pass a bus.

A three-justice panel including some of the court's most conservative justices supported the Police and Mandelblit's approach of having the incident analyzed by two separate divisions of law enforcement.

Justices David Mintz, Yosef Elron and Yitzhak Amit ruled that law enforcement had been correct to probe criminal allegations against the Sandak-aligned activists via the police's Jerusalem District unit, while probing allegations regarding Sandak's death via the Police Investigations Department (PID), which is the unit that investigates allegations of police misconduct.  

Honenu had argued that the entire investigation should be handled by PID, focusing on the police actions which allegedly led to Sandak's death.

They had argued that involving the Jerusalem District of the Police was an attempt to cover up police misconduct and deflect blame on Sandak's colleagues. 

Furthermore, then PID’s deputy director Moshe Saada had criticized his boss, the unit’s director then Keren Ben Menachem, for her handling of the case.

The High Court did not accept Honenu's claim, saying that the only way the probe could confront the complex realities involved is by involving the two separate police units and dividing responsibility for those parts of the incident where the suspects were solely civilians from the parts where there was potential police misconduct.