Tal Yushvaev
Tal YushvaevShiya Deitch

An embarrassing incident took place last week at a hearing held at the Jerusalem District Court, during which the defense attorney of the terrorist who tried to set fire to the Yushvaev family home in the Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood in Jerusalem claimed that Yushvaev’s presence in the neighborhood caused the incident.

The lawyer turned to Tal Yushvaev and said, "If you didn't live there, there would not be any problems." Attorney Haim Bleicher from the Honenu organization, which represents Tal Yushavev, replied, "If there were no Jews in the Middle East there would be no problems" and then repeated his words aloud in court: "If there were no Jews in the Middle East there would be no problems."

Yushvaev described during the hearing the feelings and difficulties experienced by his family since the incident.

"It took us a long time to recover from this incident, we could not live in our home for two whole months, we were like homeless people. I am a student and I lost a year of school because I had to recover from the incident. We and our child have been dealing with anxiety since the incident," said Yushvaev.

The incident took place in February 2022, when two terrorists threw firebombs at the Yushvaev family home in the Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood in Jerusalem. The firebombs started a fire in the family's home, causing the bedroom of the children to burn, and fortunately they were not in their home at the time. The police arrested a young Arab resident of the neighborhood on suspicion of committing the act together with three other terrorists.

Attorney Bleicher said, "Tal and his family are subjected to repeated terrorist attacks by their terrorist neighbors who hope to clear their neighborhood of Jewish residents. We expect the court to impose deterrent sentences at least, as requested by the prosecution."