The Jerusalem District Court on Thursday rejected the police’s appeal and ordered the release from house arrest of Fakhri Khatib, the Arab bus driver who killed Yosef Eisenthal, z’l, after plowing into a group of Chareidi teens during a protest against the Chareidi draft law last week.

Ynet reported that a police representative argued during the hearing, “We’re talking about 258 incidents of attacks on bus drivers. We deal with these cases daily. But even in much more serious incidents, in which drivers were injured, no one ever thought of stepping on the gas and driving into a crowd of people.”

Despite this, District Court Judge Chagit Mac-Kalmanovich rejected the police appeal, which was filed after the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court previously denied the police request on Wednesday.

A Merkaz HaInyanim report earlier this week revealed disturbing past rulings of the two Jerusalem District judges who initially decided to release Khatib—Judges Tamar Bar-Asher and Sharon Lary-Bavli. It should be noted that Bar-Asher stated at the hearing that she believes the bus driver’s version of events—despite factual discrepancies in his account. He claimed he feared for his life, but he plowed into the group of Chareidi teens only after about four minutes of relative calm and after most of the protestors had already left the area.

The report exposes controversial past rulings and statements by the judges. A past ruling by Bar-Asher drew a shocking comparison between inciteful content taught by the Palestinian Authority and the most sacred texts of the Jewish people. According to the report, Bar-Asher previously argued that the Tanach itself supposedly contains passages that could be interpreted as “harsh content”—a statement that at the time sparked strong criticism for attempting to create a false symmetry between the sources and the reality of Palestinians’ ongoing violence and murder of Jews in comparison to the infinitesimal percentage of Jews’ attacks on Arabs.

Judge Sharon Lary-Bavli previously released a terror suspect even after he openly expressed support for rocket fire at Israeli cities. During that hearing, Lary-Bavli surprised those present with a lenient approach, stating that “it is a person’s right to hope that this will happen.” The unusual remark did not pass quietly; she was subsequently sharply reprimanded by the Ombudsman for Complaints Against Judges, who made clear that such a statement could be interpreted as legitimizing dangerous behavior toward the State of Israel and its citizens.

The Merkaz HaInyanim report also noted what appears to be a serious double standard in Lary-Bavli’s rulings. While in the current case she chose to believe the driver who claimed he feared the protesters—despite the fact that no one attacked him in the minutes preceding the ramming—she previously issued lenient rulings in favor of a different type of protesters—leftists, including members of the Brothers in Arms group, even in cases where serious allegations were raised of assaults on police officers during protests.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)