Yet again, Jews have been attacked by Arabs in the Shimon Hatzaddik (Sheikh Jarrah) neighborhood of Jerusalem. This time, the victims were yeshiva students who were pelted with stones and threatened with what appeared to be an air rifle. The attackers were apprehended by police and arrested, only to be released by the Jerusalem District Court.
The students concerned had been walking through the neighborhood when they suddenly came under attack with a volley of stones thrown at them and then tear gas fired their way via what appeared to be a gun.
Representing one of the students was attorney Haim Bleicher of Honenu who demanded of the police that they arrest the perpetrators and bring them to justice.
“On January 31, my client was attacked in a cruel and threatening manner in the Shimon Hatzaddik neighborhood,” Bleicher wrote in his letter to police. “My client is an eighteen-year-old youth who was walking through the neighborhood with two friends; as they approached the gas station, they noticed two members of a minority group who started whispering to one another.
“My client and his friends were somewhat afraid but carried on walking. As they passed by the two suspects, one of them shouted out to one of the friends, ‘Come here, boy!’ The friend turned around and saw that one of the suspects was pointing a gun at him! It is superfluous to note the intense fear and paralysis that gripped them, thinking that that moment was possibly their last,” Bleicher described.
“The youths then realized that some kind of gas was being fired at them and they began to sense a burning, painful sensation in their faces. Only then did they realize that the ‘gun’ was one that fires gas and not bullets. They started to run away but to their horror, they realized that they were being pursued.”
Bleicher then described what happened next: “The attackers cornered my client and started to close in on him, while his friends attempted to come to his aid. The attackers then threw stones at my client and his friends until my client managed to escape. Police then apprehended the attackers, and their details are known to law enforcement authorities.”
Bleicher also noted that, “An incident of this kind should be regarded with extreme gravity. Aside from the actual details of the attack using stones and gas, a mock gun was used in a threatening manner to the point that my client and his friends felt that their lives were endangered. It is inconceivable that extremist Islamic terrorism should be allowed to flourish on the streets of Jerusalem with no justice being meted out to the perpetrators. I am demanding that the attackers be detained immediately, interrogated, indicted, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”