Yehuda Guetta, Hy”d; Photo courtesy of the family
Wednesday, January 5, 2022, 10:15 On Wednesday, January 5, the Military Court in Yehuda imposed two life sentences and payment of millions of shekels in compensation on Muntasir Ahmed Ali Shalabi, the terrorist who murdered Yehuda Guetta, Hy”d, and injured Amichai Hala and Binaya Peretz in a shooting attack at Tapuah Junction on May 2, 2021. The terrorist was convicted of intentional homicide, (the equivalent of murder in a military court), three counts of attempted intentional homicide, unlawful production, possessing, carrying and use of a weapon and disruption of legal proceedings. Guetta’s family, accompanied by Honenu Attorney Chayim Bleicher, was present at the reading of the sentencing.
Honenu Atty. Bleicher (L), Rabbi Guetta (R); Free use
Bleicher, who is representing the family, stated: “We hope that the despicable terrorist will finish his life within prison walls as sentenced. However, that is not the end of the story. The war on terror must not be limited to criminal penalization. The war on terror must hit the enemy on all possible fronts. The State of Israel must take stringent measures against the environment in which terror exists, including handing down stiff penalties to abettors to acts of terror: deportation of the terrorist’s extended family, penalization of incitement to terror and of support of terror.”
After the conviction of Shalabi, Rabbi Elisha Guetta, Yehuda’s father, stated his opinion that the death penalty should be imposed on the terrorist: “This terrorist deserves death. The time has come for the judges, especially the military judges, to step outside of the box and decide to do what’s best for Israel, to maintain the sanity of the state. They must return to the accepted rulings of the military courts – sentencing to death contemptible people like this who sanctify death. We sanctify life.
“He murdered a young man, not yet 19, in cold blood. He deserves the death penalty. His family should be deported, and all of the abettors should get life imprisonment. They shouldn’t turn everything upside down. It is a shame that we are humiliating ourselves and not making the correct decisions.”
After the sentencing, Rabbi Guetta stated, “Supposedly, this is a success for the office of the Attorney General. However, I demanded the death penalty. These miscreants deserve the death penalty. Our Torah speaks of life as the paramount value, and whoever violates it deserves the death penalty.”