A Jewish family that was attacked on the way to a prayer service at the Western Wall 6 years ago sued the attackers and will be paid 60 thousand shekels.
The attackers were arrested and the case against them was closed. After a legal battle, the case was reopened, but the police reached a particularly lenient plea agreement with the attackers without actual imprisonment, without compensation, and for one of them, even without a conviction.
The members of the family were praying at the Western Wall and were attacked by two Arabs who claimed that they had parked their car next to their shop. The attack lasted many minutes and included the spilling of a boiling cup of coffee, punches, kicks, and slaps that caused bruises.
The Arabs were arrested by a police force that arrived at the scene, but the case was closed in January 2018.
The Honenu legal aid organization waged a legal battle and the investigation file was reopened, but a few months ago the prosecution division of the police reached a particularly lenient plea deal with the attackers in which one of the attackers received a two-month suspended sentence and the other attacker will serve 100 hours of community service. After the plea agreement, Honenu filed a civil lawsuit against the attackers. After the amount of time allowed for the attackers to respond to the indictment passed and they did nothing, the court determined that in the absence of a defense, they would compensate the victims with NIS 60,000 - the full amount of the claim.
Attorney Haim Bleicher, Director of the Victims of Hate Department of the Honnu organization, praised the verdict and said: "Civil lawsuits are the necessary supplement in the war on terror even when the criminal law is exhausted and especially where the criminal law is not adequately prosecuted."
"The civil lawsuit gives back to the victims what they deserve for harming them, but more than that, it brings deterrence against those rioters who are forced to pay out of their own pockets to those who they tried to hurt earlier. We will continue to make an effort to see that every rioter or terrorist who harms Jews pays a heavy price."
