Ezra Nawi's Sentencing Postponed

Ezra Nawi's (see my previous two blog entries) sentencing has been postponed until August 16th.

The following account was posted on MuzzelWatch.

Aug 16! this gives us more time to write more letters.

Ezra’s lawyer, the great human rights lawyer Leah Tzemel, told the judge how many letters had been sent (nearly 14,000!) and the judge reacted by saying, “wow! that many!.” Leah thinks it really helps Ezra for the court to know that so many people are following the case. We need to triple that number by august 16th!

ezra says that he is overwhelmed and humbled by all the letters sent in his support.

as an aside, the case that was heard before ezra’s is a settler who is suing his rabbi for slapping him across the face. a friend of Ezra’s from the group New Profile, said to the rabbi, “usually you slap Palestinians around, so of course now you start to slap each other.” the son of the rabbi, a soldier in uniform, said, “no, we shoot Palestinians.”

My comments:

1) You can write letters by going here. There is also a part of that site that lets you ask your friends to send letters on Ezra's behalf.

2) In the article published in The Nation (see previous blog entry) it says 140,000 letters where sent. Above it says 14,000. What a difference a zero makes! I have no idea which number is correct, though the smaller number sounds more realistic. On the other hand, in the age of the internet who knows what is realistic for this sort of thing

3) Remarkably the judge commented, and seemed openly impressed by the number of letters of support Ezra received. Are judges supposed to take this sort of thing into consideration? (That they secretly do, I have no doubt. But are they supposed to admit it. Isn't Justice supposed to be above the whims of "the mob"?) Frankly I thought the letters, if they where to have any effect, where more likely to influence the prosecution - which is under political control - to ask for a lighter sentence, to avoid embarrassing the government.

4) The comment from "Ezra's friend from the group New Profile" [an Israeli pacific group] was rude! The answer from the soldier is shocking!! The fact that he is a rabbis son is tragic.