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A left-wing activist convicted
of participation in an illegal protest against the separation fence on Sunday
asked the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court to sentence him to jail time, rather than
community service or a suspended sentence. Despite his request, the court
decided to issue him a three-month suspended sentence.
Jonathan Pollack, a central activist in the Anarchists Against
the Fence movement, was convicted of participating in an illegal protest
against the separation fence held in 2004 outside of the government compound in
Tel Aviv. During the protest, the demonstrators blocked traffic on Kaplan Street.
Pollack said in his plea, “This trial—if it wasn’t administered
by a court of the occupation, in the only democracy in the world in which 3.5
million citizens are homeless—was supposed to be a trial of the [separation]
wall, the same wall defined as an illegal prison by the highest legal authority in
the world, the same wall that serves as a political tool in the campaign of
ethnic cleansing Israel is running in the occupied territories.”
“It was not us who were supposed to stand here in the
dock, but those who plan and carry into action the Israeli apartheid,” he
added.
Pollack said later that he was not surprised when the court
found him guilty, but could not accept his punishment as legitimate and
therefore will not cooperate with the probation board and does not plan to
perform the community service duties imposed on him by the court.
“I want to say that though this is my first conviction it
certainly won’t be my last. I still believe that what I did was necessary and
right considering the situation, and that the resistance against oppression is
every man’s duty, even if it comes at a price,” Pollack said. “I ask that the
court punish me with a prison sentence and not a suspended one. In a country
where any gathering in the territories is considered illegal because of its
widespread anti-democratic policies of closed military zones, any suspended
sentence given to me will quickly become a prison term,” he added.
In conclusion, Pollack addressed the judge and said “If your
honor thinks that a prison sentence is befitting the crime that I have
committed, your honor will take the liberty and personally send me to prison
right here and now.”
The prosecution in the case asked for a suspended sentence and
a fine to be paid by the defendant. Judge Landman who presided over the case
decided to sentence Pollack to a three-month suspended sentence. In the case
that Pollack should participate in an illegal gathering within the next two
years, he will be put in prison for three months. The other defendants in the
case were sentenced to 80 hours of community service without convictions.
Landman said “it saddens me that a mature and articulate
individual has come to the conclusion that the only way he can express his
opinions is through the violation of the law, even if the law does not seem
appropriate.”
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