A movement has begun to encourage President Ruvi Rivlin to grant a pardon, or a commuted sentence, to Yoelish Krausz.

Krausz is sitting a 5 month jail term for fraud and tax evasion, for the crime of running an unlicensed slaughterhouse in Mea Shearim and not reporting earnings.

Krausz is the father of 16 children. The movement picked up steam, it seems to me, when Krausz's wife  (I am not sure how) said she is collapsing under the weight of taking care of everything alone. According to Behadrei, MK Betzalel Smotritch (Habayit Hayehudi) has joined the movement and put in a request with the Justice Ministry to put together a professional legal opinion on the matter. Smotritch says Krausz is the classic case of someone who did something wrong, is paying the price and deserves mercy. Smotritch says this man of chessed is the classic example of what the concept of giving a pardon was created for.

I have no opinion on the matter - if he deserves and gets it, fine, and if not not.

I am curious to see what he will do if pardon is granted, or if he has to submit a formal request. Considering he has always refused to accept anything from the State, and he was one of the leaders of the community that does so, I wonder if he would accept the granting of a pardon or if he would refuse it. If he gets it, I would hope he would take it, if just to relieve some of the burden from his wife. He would probably be able to justify it by saying he shouldn't have been in prison anyway and the State had no right to lock him up so he is not really taking anything.

I don't know if anything has changed or if this is how it always was, but the two high profile cases recently, Krausz and Olmert, both seemed to have a public mercy campaign going to generate sympathy and public calls for release. I don't know what will happen with Krausz, but the campaign to generate public sympathy seems to have worked and that public pressure is what I find interesting here.