Former Israeli chief justice Meir Shamgar dies at 94

JERUSALEM – Meir Shamgar, a long-serving former chief justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, has died. He was 94.

Israel’s highest court announced his passing Friday. Shamgar served as chief justice between 1983 and 1995.

As the military’s chief legal officer, Shamgar laid the groundwork for the legal infrastructure of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza after the 1967 Mideast war. As attorney general, he made the landmark decision to allow Palestinians in these areas to appeal directly to Israel’s Supreme Court.

After his retirement, he presided over the inquiry into Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination by a Jewish extremist.

President Reuven Rivlin says he was one of “the founding fathers of the Israeli judicial system … a man of truth, learned and wise, groundbreaking, brave, honest and modest.”