Bentzi Gopstein
Bentzi GopsteinEliran Aharon

Dozens of activists of the anti-assimilationist and anti-intermarriage Lehava group who had been arrested this morning, Sunday, were released from the police station without being brought to court.

Chairman of the group Bentzi Gopstein, however, will be brought to the Jerusalem Magistrate Court at 3:30 pm for a hearing.

Gopstein’s attorney Itamar Ben-Gvir said, “It is clear that bringing Gopstein to a hearing is being done for show so that police have what to answer to the Supreme Court. There is no logic in freeing the activists at the station but specifically bringing him to a hearing, when everyone was arrested on suspicions of the same offense, and this detail says more than anything else about the considerations of Israel Police.”

Earlier, police raided the homes of Lehava activists in Jerusalem, central Israel, southern Israel, and Judea and Samaria. Investigators searched the homes of suspects and collected findings connecting them to suspicions of threatening Arabs. Police said that several incidents of attacks and plots against Arabs in Jerusalem by Lehava activists took place recently over the issue of intermarriage. Police also said that attempts to expand the activity of the group were identified.

“The decision to hold a police investigation and detain/arrest activists is intended to cut off the phenomenon and prevent its continuation, while preventing extremism on the part of members of the group and the harming of others on a nationalistic, racist basis,” police said. “We will work in every place where offenders take the law into their own hands, threaten, extort, and work violently for any reason, so as to maintain public order.”