In September, following the terror attack in Har Adar which left three people dead and one wounded, the IDF issued a home demolition order against the terrorist who committed the attack.
Home demolitions are an important tool in creating deterrence against future attacks. But only if you actually use it.
Last week, after the IDF announced the terrorist’s home was demolished, photographs of the home show that in fact the IDF only knocked down a couple of walls and not even close to the entire home of the terrorist.
As a result, the Makor Rishon newspaper began investigating demolition orders going back to 2014.
What they discovered is that the Israeli High Court blocked most of the IDF’s home demolition orders.
The leftwing organization that brought the cases to the High Court is called HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, and according to NGO Monitor HaMoked is primarily funded by various European governments and foreign sources.
Since 2014, the High Court has only allowed 36% of the home demolition orders against terrorists. 64% were either canceled, limited to closing off a room, or restricted to an individual wall or two.
In 34% of the cases, the High Court only allowed individual walls to be demolished, 18% were limited to sealing off a room, and 12% were cancelled outright.
In 2016, thirty demolition orders were ordered against terrorist homes, and the court only permitted eight of those homes to be fully demolished.
In 2017, only one terrorist’s home was demolished.
Makor Rishon discovered the court isn’t the only one to blame.
In recent years, the IDF has also reduced the number of demolition orders they issued, limiting the orders only to terrorists who actually succeeded in murdering people.
In the case of the massacred Salomon family of Neve Tzuf, the IDF only demolished part of the terrorist’s home, and that was without a court decision limiting them.
It appears the equation is: 3 Terror Victims = 1 Room.