Plainclothes military police officers raided the home of a haredi family in the Ganei Hadar neighborhood of Petach Tikva yesterday in an attempt to arrest a defecting yeshiva student.
The raid ended in failure after dozens of young men and yeshiva students arrived at the scene and surrounded the police.
Relatives of the family said that in the day before the raid they had received calls from unidentified numbers, who supposedly asked to coordinate a "package delivery." "It was clear that this was a ruse," the family members said.
The father described the sequence of events: "It happened all at once, in the middle of the night. Suddenly, at about 3:15 a.m., we heard terrifying knocking on the door - as if someone was trying to knock it down. We jumped out of bed in panic. I looked through the peephole and saw three men in civilian clothes, shouting: 'Open up! We have a warrant!'"
According to the father, the police officers refused to show the warrant or identify themselves: "I asked them to show the warrant, even send a photo, they refused. I asked them to identify themselves, at least to show an ID, but they didn't agree to that either. They just kept repeating: 'Open it and you'll see the warrant.' At that moment, I was sure that these were criminals."
When the father explained that his son had not lived in the house since he got married, the police officers demanded to search it, claiming that one of them was a "blue cop." The father refused, and the confrontation lasted for many minutes with shouting and banging on the door.
The mother described the experience: "Up until then, we were deathly scared. My husband, who had recently undergone bypass surgery, turned pale, breathing heavily. For a moment, I thought I was losing him right there before my eyes. I had the feeling that our house had turned into a battlefield."
During the confrontation, young men and women began to arrive on the street, and the family saw them "flooding the street with cries of protest."
After the police withdrew from the first address, they moved to another address on Begin Street. The haredi community's protection system was activated again, signaling an attempted arrest of haredi defectors. Crowds flocked to the scene and the police were forced to retreat again - this time not before spraying tear gas at the protesters.
The haredi protection center reported that "we are seeing a serious escalation in the conduct of the military police, which is using deceptive tactics - anonymous phone calls, impersonating messengers, banging on doors in the middle of the night. This is clear persecution against Torah students."
The organization called on the haredi public: "Do not answer anonymous calls, do not give out any details, do not open the door to a stranger under any circumstances. Any such attempt must be reported immediately to the protection center.