(IsraelNN.com) Coincidentally, 40 taxi drivers were arrested today for blocking traffic in a work dispute - but police said they would be released if the strike is ended.

Among the most controversial arrests was that of 17-year-old Y.M. of Kibbutz Shaalvim - whom the police held for five hours without informing his family. Ariel, of the Honenu organization, which provides aid to citizens under or facing political arrest, first learned of the story from the boy's friends yesterday afternoon. They told Ariel that Y.M. had received two phone calls around 5 PM: one telling him of a road-blocking, and another one, after he went to the site and found no one there, telling him to head back to the Kibbutz. The friends said that after that, they could find him nowhere. Only five hours later, at 10 PM, were their calls to his cellular phone answered - by someone who identified himself as Shlomie from the police station in nearby Ramle. The friends arrived at the station and found that Y.M. had been held there incommunicado for five hours, without the police even reporting on the minor's arrest to his parents as reported by law. The police claimed that he was not arrested, but merely "detained for questioning," and that they are not required to report the arrest until after six hours if they have an officer's approval.

Following yesterday's blocking of the Ayalon Highway, police arrested many religious-looking youths, including many who had nothing to do with the blocking. Honenu reports that 33 youths, including five minors, were arrested and were taken to a new section of the Maasiyahu Prison in Ramle. One of the arrested reported that as he was being driven away in a police car, one policeman said, "Look, there are two more dati'im [religious people]; let's arrest them, too." In addition, a 10-year-old boy was detained for several hours in the vicinity of the road-blocking as he was on his way to his grandmother's home, and a religious soldier was also picked up as he was walking in the street.

This afternoon, a Tel Aviv Magistrates Court justice, showing open hostility to the accused, ordered some of them them held in jail for four days, and others for three. "If I [could], I would order them held until the end of the proceedings," the justice wrote.

Three minors were released, and two others who refused to identify themselves will be brought before a Juvenile Court. The judge ordered that all the defendants be fingerprinted, against their will. An appeal against their remand will be presented tomorrow morning in the Tel Aviv District Court.

Among the arrestees were Orah Livnat Binyamin - a daughter of refusal-campaign leader Noam Livnat and niece of Education Minister Limor Livnat - and Yonatan and David Goldfischer of Beit El. The boys' mother Miriam Goldfischer, a rabbinical advocate for women, was present at the court hearing and later told Arutz-7, "Our public is taught, as are my children, to give totally of ourselves for the State. But the State is a tool, and if it betrays the things in which we believe - the people, and the Torah, and the Land - then it makes us wonder if we want to belong to this kind of country."

Mrs. Goldfischer, a veteran of the Stop the Withdrawal from Sinai movement of 1982, said that Judge Miriam Kochen was openly hostile to the defendants: "My sons were a kilometer away from the road-blocking when they were arrested, and did not take part in it. Yet she justified the arrests, saying, 'Whoever was in the area and looked like a demonstrator - with a yarmulkeh and tzitzit [ritual fringes], apparently - should be arrested and punished. They all look the same to her, and therefore she said that they all get punished because 'they had no other reason for being there.'" Goldfischer said that the judge said, "This is my opinion, and I'm not ashamed of it."

At one point in the court hearing, the boys' lawyer asked a police representative, "Is it true that the policemen told the youths that if they don't stop, they would be shot?" Mrs. Goldfischer said that instead of listening to the policeman's response, "the judge interrupted by saying firmly, 'Of course not!' How does she know? Was she there?"