A Connecticut Lesson for Israel’s Courts

Earlier this month, we learned that Israel’s Supreme Court ruled to suspend the demolition order for the home of the Arab terrorist Mu’taz Hijazi. He had attempted to murder Temple Mount Jewish rights’ activist Yehudah Glick.

The next stage has been Glick’s attempt, through the legal rights group Honenu, to appeal to the High Court for Justice to be permitted to testify about his expereince in court during deliberations over the legality of demolishing his assassin’s home.

Some think house demolition, as a form of either punishment or deterrence, is wrong (illegally constructed structures is another matter). In reality, the most recent occasions have actually involved but the rooms where the terrorists were sleeping, not the whole house.

Be that as it is, I read this now

the house is empty, stripped of furniture and light fixtures some feared might become memorabilia. It serves as a “constant reminder of the evil that resided there,”…Some neighbors have moved away, and a school bus stop was relocated because children were too scared to stand there.

And this:

The Newtown Legislative Council voted unanimously…to demolish the 3,100-square foot home and keep the land as open space, at least for a while. Officials said the home will likely be razed in the spring. “We sought considerable input from the [victims’] families, and the overwhelming sentiment was to tear down the house and leave it as open space,” Newton’s First Selectwoman Pat Llodra, the town’s highest elected official, told the 12-member council. “Under my tenure, I can’t see doing anything else with that property.”

What is involved here?

The location is Yogananda Street in Newtown, Conn., where Adam Lanza lived.  He killed his mother there and then terrorized nearby Sandy Hook Elementary and there murdered 20 first-graders and six educators before committing suicide.

After the event, police boarded up the front door and burned the belongings inside it.  The house was appraised at $523,620.

I doubt any terrorist’s house is worth one-half million dollars but the decision of that local council is a lesson for Israel’s Supreme Court.

But will the august justices learn?

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(with thanks to EP)

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