Israel Moves To Sentence Terrorists Under 14

The Knesset Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Sunday approved a bill authorizing prison sentences for minors under 14 who commit terrorist crimes, The Jerusalem Post reported.

The bill, proposed by MK Anat Berko (Likud), states that anyone under 14 convicted of an act of terrorism will be kept in a locked children’s home until the age of 14, when the offender can then be sent to prison.

Earlier this month, Palestinian cousins aged 12 and 13 stabbed a security guard on a light-rail car in Yerushalayim’s Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood.

Berko said she is working toward swift passage of the bill because it could save lives.

“As long as the Palestinians recruit minors while knowing that the Israeli law does not have a real response to minor terrorists under age 14, we can only expect the phenomenon to spread, with the thought that anyway Israeli law enforcement will send the minors back home after they commit the acts,” Berko stated.

The committee also conditionally approved a bill by MK Robert Ilatov (Yisrael Beitenu) that is the latest of several proposals to curtail donations organizations can receive from foreign governments or entities funded by foreign governments.

According to Ilatov’s proposal, funding from a foreign country would not be exempt from income tax and any corporation, organization or person that is funded by a foreign country will be considered a foreign agent.

The bill will have to wait its turn for a preliminary Knesset vote until a similar one by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is dealt with.

Shaked’s “transparency bill” would require NGOs who receive most of their funding from foreign governments to declare that they do so in its publications and reports that are publicly available.

“The blatant intervention of foreign countries in the state of Israel’s internal matters through funding is an unprecedented, broadly-occurring phenomenon that violates all the rules and norms of relations between democratic countries,” Shaked said earlier this month.

This article appeared in print on page 7 of the November 23rd, 2015 edition of Hamodia.