On Thursday, a military court sentenced ‘Abd al-Jalil, the Arab terrorist who murdered three members of the Salomon family in Neveh Tzuf last July, to four life sentences and compensation payment to the family in the amount of roughly $600,000. But the decision was not unanimous: Judge Dov Gilboa (Greenboim) called for the death penalty for al-Jalil.
“Is keeping the defendant from seeing daylight until the end of his life punishment enough?” Judge Gilboa asked in his minority opinion, wondering, “Perhaps the defendant must return his soul to God now, which the defendant himself was seeking, and perhaps continues to seek today.”
“On the question of what punishment we should give defendant, I cannot agree with the learned words [of Justice Lieberman, who wrote the majority opinion],” Justice Gilboa wrote. “The offenses were committed under exceptional circumstances, whereby [the defendant] acted as someone who wanted to slaughter human beings in cold blood and decided it should be carried out in Halamish (the settlement’s other name).”
“I watched the face of the defendant, which was stretched in a smile the whole time, even as he was facing the family members who described the murder – I decree that the defendant’s sentence can only be death,” the judge concluded.
During his shiva call at the Salomon family’s home, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also cited al-Jalil’s disturbingly wide smile during his arraignment and said the state must wipe it off his face.
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, an advocate of the death penalty to terrorists, responded to the sentence, saying, “No number of life sentences will suffice to punish this human being whose smile is still stretched across his face. My heart aches for the Salomon family.”