Erdan
ErdanYonatan Zindel, Flash 90

Minister of Public Security and Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan (Likud) rejected the European Union's call to investigate the arrest of Jafar Farah, the Arab man injured during demonstrations in Haifa last weekend.

"The State of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, does not need moral warnings from a biased and obsessive body like the European Union," Erdan said.

"A campaign of persecution brimming with hypocrisy against Israel and the attempt to blacken its name is doomed to failure. I propose to the EU not to interfere in the internal affairs of the State of Israel," the minister added.

The European Union called on Israel to investigate the circumstances of the injury of Jafar Farah, director of the Mossawa Center, “The Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel,” who was arrested in Haifa last weekend along with 18 other demonstrators who expressed solidarity with Gazans.

Farah claimed that his leg was broken after a policeman attacked him during his arrest. A police officer who was involved in the incident that ended in Farah's injury testified this morning before the State Attorney’s Police Investigations Department (Mahash).

The Haifa-based Mossawa Center says that it "aims to promote the economic, social, cultural and political rights of the Palestinian Arab citizens in Israel, and the recognition of this community [as] a national indigenous minority, with their own national, cultural and historical distinctiveness."

According to NGO Monitor, the center has received hundreds of thousands of shekels in funding from the EU.