MORE ON THE ASSASSINATION OF THAT ISRAELI JUDGE

PLO Thugs Whack an Israeli Judge
By David Bedein

When a Jewish legal ruling threatened to bankrupt the PA, Arafat made the judge an offer he couldn't refuse.
 
The spokesman for a mainstream organization of the PLO, the Fateh, confirmed again yesterday that Fateh indeed takes responsibility for this week’s murder of Tel Aviv District Court Judge Adi Azar, the same judge who has been adjudicating terror compensation cases in Tel Aviv for the past five years.

Last year, Judge Azar ruled in the Tel Aviv District Court that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat must pay a sum in Israeli currency of 52 million shekels (About $11.5 million U.S. dollars) to Israel’s Egged bus cooperative, because of the company’s lost revenues during just one year of the current PLO-led series of terror attacks. According to the decision, Arafat must also pay Egged’s legal expenses, amounting to 100,000 shekels. Judge Azar’s verdict was issued without Arafat’s submitting a written defense. ....

In yet another landmark decision, Judge Azar  placed a lien on 4 million shekels ($890,000 US) of PLO assets in favor of Yosef Azouz, who was wounded in the March 2002 terrorist attack at the Sea Food Market restaurant. The PLO had not contested this case, claiming immunity.... Moreover, Judge Azar also ordered the PLO to reveal its assets in court, something that it has refused to do....

For the past year, the PLO has conducted a campaign to remove Judge Azar from adjudicating cases against their organization with their lawyer, Yossi Arnon, taking the unusual step of making such a demand in Tel Aviv district court. Now, with his murder, Judge Azar has indeed been permanently removed from the case. The next judge adjudicating compensation cases against the PLO, whether in Israel or abroad, will think twice before ruling in favor of the plaintiffs.

Judge Azar was murdered occurred only three days after a judgment rendered against the PLO in Rhode Island, where the PLO was fined in the amount of $116 million U.S. dollars for protecting a Hamas terrorist who had murdered a young couple in their car just outside of Jerusalem, leaving two orphaned little boys who are now being brought up by their maternal grandparents

Cases like these could totally bankrupt the PLO, given the fact that more than 1,300 people have been murdered in cold blood and more than 7,000 people have sustained serious injuries in its terror campaign.

The murder of Judge Azar marks a new watershed in the War On Terror. Israel and the world must ask themselves how a world that lives by the rule of law can create another state that murders the very judges who mete out the law. And Israel itself must come to terms with a judicial system in which blood would be paid in the future if any more judgments are rendered against the PLO.