Edna Arbel
Israeli Supreme Court Judge Edna Arbel, date unknown.
Photo from the Judiciary of Israel. Wikimedia Commons
A justice on Israel’s Supreme Court from 2004 to 2014, Edna Arbel was born in Jerusalem in 1944. After her military service, she studied law at Hebrew University and later completed a Master’s degree at Bar Ilan University. She was admitted to the bar in 1969 and in 1972 began working in the State Attorney’s office. She dealt with a variety of cases involving serious crimes such as murder, security offenses, violence, drugs, and white-collar offenses. In 1984 she was appointed District Attorney and in 1988 she became a judge. In 1996 Arbel became state prosecutor, where her courageous determination to combat both governmental corruption and rising violence not only placed her in the public limelight but at times also aroused considerable hostility.
A justice on Israel’s Supreme Court from 2004 to 2014, Edna Arbel was born in Jerusalem on June 22, 1944. Her Czech-born father, Yizhak Englander (1915–2002), immigrated to Palestine from Poland in 1933, studied law and Arabic studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and practiced law in Jerusalem. In 1943 he married Tova Estreicher (1917–1989), who was born in Budapest, arrived in Palestine at the age of two, studied administration, and became a civil servant in the Ministry of Justice. Their second daughter, Judith, was born in 1951.
Education and Early Career
In the course of her military service, which began in 1962, Arbel studied law at the Tel Aviv extension of the Hebrew University and later (1975) went on to complete a master’s degree at Bar Ilan University in 1979. After clerking for a private law firm, she was admitted to the Israel Bar in 1969. In 1972 she began working as an attorney at the Central District office of the State Attorney, where she dealt with a variety of cases involving serious crimes such as murder, security offenses, violence, drugs, and white-collar offenses. During this period she also served as a representative of the Ministry of Justice on the District Planning and Building Committee and was a member of the Psychiatric Committee, which deals with the release from hospitalization of mentally ill individuals who have committed criminal offenses. At the request of the Attorney General and the Ministry of Justice, Arbel served on a number of ad-hoc committees. These included the Committee on Undercover Agents and the committee that investigated the events following the 1984 terrorist hijacking of an inter-urban bus (Bus 300), which involved the capture of the terrorists, their killing by Israeli security forces, and the attempt to obstruct the investigation. She was also on the staff of the committee of inquiry that investigated the events that occurred in 1982 in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon, where members of the South Lebanese Army, aided by the Israeli military, massacred hundreds of Palestinians.
Work as District Attorney and State Prosecutor
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