by Hagit Rotenberg
B'sheva Newspaper
They regularly receive death threats, are cursed and spat upon, experience vandalism on a regular basis, and have been beaten within an inch of their lives, but the Land of Israel activists in Haifa – calling themselves simply Matte Haifa – the Haifa contingent – continue their activities. They are a reminder that sacrifice for the Land of Israel exists on both sides of the pre-1967 borders.
Last week, three Meretz activists – relatives of Haifa’s former Meretz chairman Attorney Ghassan Abu-Warada – were ordered to pay damages to Matte Haifa activists Dr. Eli Buchbinder and Dr. Ronen Adar after a lengthy civil trial. The criminal trial drags on, though – six years after the violent attack – as Haifa’s judicial establishment seems in no rush to prosecute Atty.Warada’s relatives. Against seemingly insurmountable odds, Haifa’s eclectic group of movers and shakers continue their struggle on behalf of the Land of Israel.
On Friday, October 23, 1998, in Haifa, a number of young Arabs hired by the Meretz movement were affixing banners reading, “There is Meretz [Energy] in the City,” around a busy intersection. Incidentally, they were not the only activists present in the thoroughfare. Eli Lichtenstein, a Land of Israel activist from Haifa, stood across the street from the Meretz supporters with a, information booth and signs, just as he and his friends had done each Friday in the years following the Oslo accords.
The Arab youths approached the Land of Israel activists, grabbed the banners they had set up and tore them to shreds. Lichtenstein, standing his ground and used to gruff treatment at the hand of political opponents, replaced the torn banners with others he had brought. The Meretz supporters, enraged, ran up to him, tore his banners a second time, and yelled, “get out of here now, or we’ll kill you!”
Meanwhile, other Matte Haifa activists, among them Dr. Ronen Adar and Dr. Eli Buchbinder, were manning other parts of the intersection. Dr. Adar placed one of his banners next to one of the Meretz signs which then became dislodged as a result. Dr. Adar went to fix the Meretz banner, telling the already agitated left-wing activists that it was an accident, but it made little difference to the enraged Arabs from Meretz who ran toward the fallen sign.
Dr. Buchbinder ran over and tried to calm everyone down, seeing that the group of Arabs clearly intended to attack Dr. Adar. When one of the Arabs, screaming at Dr. Adar, seemed on the verge of hitting him Dr. Buchbinder got in between and told him, “He didn’t do it on purpose.” Dr. Adar told Dr. Buchbinder, “Forget it Eli, it’s over.” Unfortunately, it was far from over.
Dr. Buchbinder turned to return to the opposite side of the junction but suddenly felt that something was not right. “I felt there was someone breathing nearby, turned my head, and caught a punch squarely in the face followed by another one. I fell down and they kicked me in the face, the stomach and all over the rest of my body,” Buchbinder told B’Sheva newspaper.
“I remember myself on the pavement with three or four hooligans beating me without respite. I completely panicked. Everything around me became foggy. I tried to defend myself in one place and just to be beaten in another one. They deliberately aimed their blows mostly at my face. My entire body was went into shock, numb and completely powerless. I felt like I was being lynched, that there was no chance I would emerge from this alive. It continued for a while longer – them just beating and kicking me with all their might, with intense burning anger. It wasn’t a scuffle, they fully intended to kill me.”
Dr. Buchbinder’s friends who witnessed the scene described how Buchbinder was dragged away by the three Meretz hooligans and beaten to the ground. They threw his glasses into the street while one of them sat on him, beat him in the face, and slammed his head repeatedly against the pavement. The others kicked him all over his body. His face was drenched in blood.
Dr. Adar told B’Sheva newspaper, “I screamed with all my might, ‘stop beating him, don’t use violence!’ I saw them trying to literally murder him. I have never in my entire life seen such a violent and savage scene. There were Jewish Meretz activists standing nearby and I saw the complete shock in their eyes as well.”
Dr. Adar and the other Land of Israel activists in the area ran quickly to try to save Dr. Buchbinder. They tried to drag the attackers away, and in return received beatings as well. Eventually the Arabs decided they had finished their ‘activism’ for the day and left the area.
“I knew I had to take pictures of them,” said Dr. Adar, “after I saw how they nearly murdered Eli I knew in my heart that I had to do everything in my power to make sure these men would stand trial. Unfortunately, I neglected to take the names of the passersby who had witnessed the attack, but at least I got pictures of the attackers and this was an important bases needed to make them stand trial and prove their guilt.”
Taking the pictures proved to be quite a dangerous exercise for Dr. Adar. “I ran to the other side of the street to get my camera from my bag,” said Adar. “When I returned they told me the Arabs had gone to a coffee shop in the Carmelite neighborhood. I ran to the coffee shop and they were sitting there, with a dozen other Meretz activists all wearing Meretz t-shirts, drinking – ostensibly to relax after the attack. I stood on the sidewalk and took two pictures of them sitting in the coffee shop wearing their Meretz t-shirts. They suddenly saw me photographing them and became very alarmed. They ran out of the coffee shop and tried to grab my camera. I wouldn’t give it to them so they knocked me to the ground and began to kick me all over my body.”
Others sitting in the coffee shop saw what was going on ran out to help Dr. Adar, causing the attackers to ran away. Dr. Adar succeeded in protecting the camera from their blows with his hands but was knocked unconscious for ten minutes. When he recovered an Arab Meretz activist claiming to be the supervisor of Adar’s attackers held out his hand to Dr. Adar, apologizing and adding, “They were only paid workers, they won’t work for me anymore.” Dr. Adar asked for the man’s name and telephone number and the man complied. The name and phone number, Dr. Adar later found out, were fabricated.
In the meantime, the Land of Israel activists back at the intersection called the police repeatedly for over an hour to no avail. Even a frantic description of the severity of the situation failed to garner police assistance. After an hour and a quarter the police finally arrived and took preliminary testimony from Dr. Buchbinder.
Meanwhile, Dr. Adar fared even worse. He waited for the police for two hours without receiving any assistance. Tens of witnesses to the attack, who stood by for two hours waiting in vain for the police to arrive, eventually gave up and left.
Drs. Adar and Buchbinder eventually went by themselves to the police station in order to file an official complaint. To their astonishment, they came face to face with their attackers standing in the station with a lawyer – filing a complaint accusing the Land of Israel activists of assaulting them.
Following the attack, Dr. Buchbinder was brought to Rambam hospital where doctors informed him that he suffered four fractures of his jaw. He underwent a lengthy surgery over the Sabbath to reconstructed his jaw with a metal pin and several screws, remaining hospitalized for the next five days. The doctors informed him that he had 5% permanent paralysis. Dr. Buchbinder lost a year of doctoral work leading to a substantial economic loss as well.
Dr. Buchbinder still suffers the effects of his injuries today, nearly six years later. He regularly suffers pains in his jaw, severe headaches, and dizziness. Some days, when the pain is particularly acute, he loses the ability to concentrate, and therefore write. This has greatly affected his ability to perform the daily requirements of his job as a university professor. Despite all this, stresses Dr. Buchbinder, he continues to be active on behalf of the Land of Israel with the same determination as before the attack.
Six years have passed since the violent assault on Drs. Buchbinder and Adar at the hands of Arab Meretz activists. Their main problems now lay with the police and justice system, though. Last week a Haifa court awarded the two only 70,000 shekels for their injuries sustained in the attacks – after a very lengthy legal battle. The criminal case is moving along very slowly, having only begun in earnest last summer. The central mystery surrounding the case is the question of what caused the police and prosecutor to so severely delay the criminal case, which seems so straightforward, especially considering it already resulted in a guilty verdict against the attackers in the civil trial.
After the incident, Drs. Buchbinder and Adar turned to Atty. Meir Hoffler and requested he begin the process immediately in order to bring the attackers to justice. He discovered that the attackers were relatives of Atty. Ghassan Abu-Warada, who ran for Haifa city council as a candidate for the Meretz party. The attack had taken place preceding the local municipal elections and Abu-Warada had hired his relatives to stand at that intersection and hang up Meretz banners.
Atty. Hoffler and Drs. Buchbinder and Adar filed a complaint with the Haifa police immediately following the incident. The police did not respond, perhaps hoping to make the complaint simply go away and ignored repeated letters from Atty. Hoffler. The letters, sent to the then-commander of the Haifa region, Brigadier-General Doc Shechter, Major-General Alik Ran, then police chief of the northern region, and Superintendent Yisrael Grey, received no response whatsoever.
Atty. Hoffler claims that insiders were clearly influencing the case, repeatedly delaying what was a clear-cut case backed up by solid proof. “The establishment’s behavior toward us from beginning to end was negligent and corrupt,” said Atty. Hoffler. Additional letters on the matter were sent to the Ministry of Internal Security and to the Department of Public Complaints in Haifa. Each of the letters outlined the case, including facts and evidence, while demanding an explanation for the foot-dragging in bringing the case to trial. In a letter to then-Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein, Drs. Buchbinder and Adar described the alarmingly negative attitude of the police: “From repeated telephone calls with Haifa’s Prosecutor it became clear that a guilty verdict was not expected. The reason given to us again and again was that there was a case overload in the courts. We knew that when a case is granted priority in the prosecutor’s office it is granted a speedy trial. Our case, though, was simply not a priority. We hear all the time about how political violence endangers Israeli society, almost always referring to right-wing groups. But when right-wingers are the victims the situation is completely marginalized.”
Dr. Adar described the answers he received to numerous queries directed toward the police prosecutor regarding the criminal case. “The file is missing,” Dr. Adar was told on one occasion, “it is at a different part of the system right now,” he was told a different time. “I received information that there were people in various positions working to prevent this case from ever reaching the courts. Everything was done in a very shady manner,” Dr. Adar recalled.
Only after Atty. Hoffler threatened to bring the police to the Supreme Court because of their handling of the case did the file enter the court system. Three years passed in the meantime before the guilty verdict was reached – and the criminal trial finally began just last summer.
The bureaucratic process was excruciatingly slow. The Arab attackers and their attorney took every possible step to delay the legal process, including their attempt to disqualify every judge assigned to the case. Atty. Hoffler and his clients are now turning to newly-appointed Attorney-General Mani Mazuz to investigate the handling of the case by the judicial establishment and the police. Atty. Hoffler is confident that a favorable verdict will be reached in the end.
The civil suit, after six years finally resulted in a favorable verdict last week requiring the attackers to pay Drs. Buchbinder and Adar 70,000 shekels. B’Sheva newspaper’s Hagit Rotenberg interviewed the two Land of Israel activists following the verdict.
B’Sheva: Eli and Ronen, what were your feelings, after years of struggling, when you heard the verdict in your favor?
Dr. Eli Buchbinder: Bittersweet. Sweet – because these hooligans are being punished, and I hope that in the criminal case they will receive the harshest of punishment, as well. But bitter because of all the years of pain and suffering I underwent which has affected my life and my work. Also my contact with the establishment and the way things were handled along the way were very difficult. We always had to be on guard, the entire episode was extremely taxing. It is impossible to expect the justice system to carry out justice of its own initiative. The wheels of justice grind slowly, and you also get ground up in them.
Dr. Ronen Adar: My spirits were not lifted by the verdict, because in my opinion there was no victory, simply an acknowledgement of the clear facts of the case. In my opinion the State of Israel must change its policy and set punitive damages that are substantial – that actual deter people from acting violently. The court’s decision basically obligated them to pay for the injury only, which in this situation is simply absurd. I tell you, it is a miracle that Eli is still alive – they lynched him there! For an attacker to pay 50,000 shekels and walk away is outlandish!
Atty. Hoffler: There is no doubt that in the end we will achieve justice despite the prosecution’s failure to ensure that they receive proper damages. If this nasty affair had taken place in the United States, there is no doubt that they would have been awarded serious damages – especially since the attack was politically motivated and as a deterrent. Regrettably, the situation in Israel is unclear, and therefore the judge awarded meager damages as were reported.
It is regrettable that the judge didn’t have the courage to convict Meretz chairman Atty. Ghassan Abu-Warada as well, for sitting silently without raising a finger when his men beat Dr. Ronen Adar mercilessly. The judge unfortunately decided that the defendant would walk out scot-free, unpunished for his shameful behavior, which clearly contravenes an Israeli law called ‘Do not stand idly by thy brother’s blood’.
There must be a serious condemnation and investigation of those within the police and judicial system who acted in a blatantly criminal manner, intentionally causing our case to take years longer than it should have in order to delay the guilty verdict – hoping we would give up. And if the criminal court, which has not even concluded the case yet – had issued its expected guilty verdict in a timely manner there would not have been the need to go through the evidence in its entirety for the civil trial because according to law a guilty verdict in criminal court is enough to assign blame in a civil trial.
Our office is handling other such cases today as well. Another client, Dr. Rosenbaum, was assaulted by actor Giulliano Mor as Dr. Rosenbaum demonstrated in the Carmel. Mor simply approached Dr. Rosenbaum and attacked him. We have a serious situation – the left is the attacker, the fanatical out-of-control violent party, and suddenly the press is completely silent.
What was exceedingly alarming, Atty. Hoffler stressed, was the alarming behavior toward the entire episode on behalf of supposedly public institutions. The Land of Israel movement in Haifa prepared an ad for the local newspapers detailing what had happened. The only newspaper in Haifa that agreed to publish the ad was HaTzofeh. Repeated attempts to get news coverage of the story fell on deaf ears as reporters simply ignored every aspect of the incident along with the subsequent court case. “If the roles were reversed, and it was a right-wing lynch mob who nearly killed a left-wing activist,” said Atty. Hoffler, “you would certainly have seen the story covered in all of the papers and condemned universally.”
The attack on Drs. Buchbinder and Adar was but a chapter on the general violence, including death threats, spitting, cursing and destruction of property that plagues Matte Haifa activists at the hands of left-wing political opponents. The treatment of the entire case was also not a new phenomenon – police complaints have consistently been ignored, with complainants told to “drop it” or not to “make an issue of it.”
Even when police are stationed at the intersections to maintain order, they often fail to deal with infractions committed before their eyes, pressuring activists to, “Go home already – it’s Friday, let’s finish up here already.”
Since the near-lynching of Drs. Buchbinder and Adar several other alarming incidents have taken place. At a left-wing rally in Haifa, Arabs called for the murder of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Dr. Buchbinder asked a police officer standing there to put an end to the incitement to murder that was taking place. He was pushed into the busy street and told, “Don’t teach me how to do my work,” by the officer.
Arab actor Giulliano Mor attacked Matta Haifa activist Dr. Michael Rosenbaum half a year ago. Rosenbaum was protesting at the ‘Merkaz HaCarmel’ intersection in Haifa on a Friday when Mor pulled his car up to where the activists were standing. The actor grabbed the protestors signs and leaflets and began ripping and destroying them. When the Land of Israel activists told him to desist, Mor got out of his car and hurled a rock at Dr. Rosenbaum’s head. Fortunately, Rosenbaum raised his hand in time to protect his head, but was rushed to hospital with an injured hand that affects him to this day. Atty. Hoffler submitted a complaint to Haifa’s district court a number of weeks ago. The trial is expected to commence in the near future.
On another occasion, when standing at a protest vigil, a car drove onto the traffic island and back onto the road quickly, nearly running over the Matte Haifa activists while hurling curses at them. A young Arab lady attacked one of the activists with scissors as they manned an information booth, which strangely resulted in the person manning the table receiving a police summons, for ‘racism.’ Daily calls by Arab left-wing activists crying, “We will finish what the Germans started”, “Go back home to where you came from”, “We will throw you into the sea,” and “We’ll liquidate all of you” have become the background music for Land of Israel activists braving the streets of Haifa in their dedication to the Jewish people and the Land of Israel.
Meretz spokesman Roi Yellin told B’Sheva newspaper that his party condemns the violence against the Land of Israel activists. “We explain to all our members that it is forbidden to act in a violent manner. Meretz is against such behavior and condemns it fully. Violent behavior is against everything we stand for and believe in and in our eyes is simply out of the question. It is important to stress, though, that the attackers were not bona fide Meretz activists, but workers specifically hired for local election campaigning.”
Dr. Buchbinder and Dr. Adar are typical Haifa Land of Israel activists. Dr. Buchbinder, 48, is a professor of social work at Haifa University and is married with one child. Dr. Adar, also 48, is a Physicist and is married with five children. The two are not members of the religious community but are imbued with a fiery passion which resembles that of the first Yesha (Judea, Samaria and Gaza) settlers of Sebastia when it comes to the territorial integrity of the Land of Israel. Matte Haifa is made up of a surprisingly large number of non-religious activists, most of whom have multiple higher degrees.
B’Sheva: When you imagine activists standing at the intersections you don’t typically picture professors – how do you explain the great diversity of Matte Haifa?
Dr. Adar: One of the great successes of the left-wing is the perception in the media that anyone involved in the struggle for the Land of Israel is religious and even fanatical. This image has been so successfully ingrained in the average Israeli’s mind that many secular lovers of the Land of Israel were embarrassed to be seen protesting at the intersections. We have begun to radically change that.
Dr. Buchhbinder: They try to paint the right-wing as crazies – but the members of Matte Haifa make it very difficult to perpetuate that stereotype. Once you have so many highly-educated people - professors, scientists and researchers – such claims just start sounding ridiculous.
Matte Haifa is an island of perseverance during a time where many have lost hope in protest activities. For the past 11 years, since the signing of the Oslo accords, Matte Haifa activists have stood at Haifa’s main intersection protesting against various government agreements and identifying with the residents of Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan. Besides protest vigils, Matte Haifa, under the leadership of Aviad Vissuly, has organized many programs on behalf of the Land of Israel, including a carnival for the children of the northern Shomron, trips to Yesha, planting and harvesting in the Shomron and various activities in support of Jewish rights in all of the Land of Israel.
B’Sheva: Do you feel that your activities have had an effect in Haifa, the ‘Red City’?
Dr. Adar: When we started our activism, Haifa was already moving away from its socialist-leftists roots. In the last municipal elections the National Union received more votes than Meretz. Haifa boasts a respectable group of lovers of the Land of Israel, many of them secular, who understand that a complete Land of Israel is the basis for our presence here, both spiritually and in terms of security. Many people see us in the street and come over to say ‘good for you’. Some get very emotional, shedding tears at the sight of people just like them who have not lost hope. Our standing at the intersections keeps the lines of communication open between the many like-minded people who are simply impressionable – preventing them from being dragged along by the agenda of the media.
B’Sheva: How do they feel about your political activities at work?
Dr. Adar: Certainly there are nasty comments and unpleasant situations but that is part of the struggle. You learn to toughen up. If you broadcast weakness they sense it and harass you to no end – but if you stand up strong for your opinions others learn to accept them and even consider them. It also depends on you job. If you have a strong base and platform then you don’t suffer much at all for your right-wing views.
Concluding the interview, Drs. Buchbinder and Adar asked to publicly thank Atty. Meir Hoffler for guiding them through the lengthy process, as well as several other legal episodes. “The judicial system refused to answer us, to deal with us, or dignify our requests with responses,” the two said. “They simply brushed us off. On more than one occasion we were forced to raise our voices in the actual offices of the court to receive basic acknowledgement of our rights as citizens. Atty. Hoffler provided us with strong legal backing and a real sense of security. Without him we would still be stumbling around in the dark bureaucratic fog that has become Israel’s judicial system.”
“The front lines of the struggle for the Land of Israel have expanded,” Dr. Buchbinder said, “we in Haifa are proud to be a part of the struggle, letting the world know all throughout Israel Jews are prepared to lay their lives on the line for our homeland, not just on the front lines.”
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They regularly receive death threats, are cursed and spat upon, experience vandalism on a regular basis, and have been beaten within an inch of their lives, but the Land of Israel activists in Haifa – calling themselves simply Matte Haifa – the Haifa contingent – continue their activities. They are a reminder that sacrifice for the Land of Israel exists on both sides of the pre-1967 borders.
Last week, three Meretz activists – relatives of Haifa’s former Meretz chairman Attorney Ghassan Abu-Warada – were ordered to pay damages to Matte Haifa activists Dr. Eli Buchbinder and Dr. Ronen Adar after a lengthy civil trial. The criminal trial drags on, though – six years after the violent attack – as Haifa’s judicial establishment seems in no rush to prosecute Atty.Warada’s relatives. Against seemingly insurmountable odds, Haifa’s eclectic group of movers and shakers continue their struggle on behalf of the Land of Israel.
On Friday, October 23, 1998, in Haifa, a number of young Arabs hired by the Meretz movement were affixing banners reading, “There is Meretz [Energy] in the City,” around a busy intersection. Incidentally, they were not the only activists present in the thoroughfare. Eli Lichtenstein, a Land of Israel activist from Haifa, stood across the street from the Meretz supporters with a, information booth and signs, just as he and his friends had done each Friday in the years following the Oslo accords.
The Arab youths approached the Land of Israel activists, grabbed the banners they had set up and tore them to shreds. Lichtenstein, standing his ground and used to gruff treatment at the hand of political opponents, replaced the torn banners with others he had brought. The Meretz supporters, enraged, ran up to him, tore his banners a second time, and yelled, “get out of here now, or we’ll kill you!”
Meanwhile, other Matte Haifa activists, among them Dr. Ronen Adar and Dr. Eli Buchbinder, were manning other parts of the intersection. Dr. Adar placed one of his banners next to one of the Meretz signs which then became dislodged as a result. Dr. Adar went to fix the Meretz banner, telling the already agitated left-wing activists that it was an accident, but it made little difference to the enraged Arabs from Meretz who ran toward the fallen sign.
Dr. Buchbinder ran over and tried to calm everyone down, seeing that the group of Arabs clearly intended to attack Dr. Adar. When one of the Arabs, screaming at Dr. Adar, seemed on the verge of hitting him Dr. Buchbinder got in between and told him, “He didn’t do it on purpose.” Dr. Adar told Dr. Buchbinder, “Forget it Eli, it’s over.” Unfortunately, it was far from over.
Dr. Buchbinder turned to return to the opposite side of the junction but suddenly felt that something was not right. “I felt there was someone breathing nearby, turned my head, and caught a punch squarely in the face followed by another one. I fell down and they kicked me in the face, the stomach and all over the rest of my body,” Buchbinder told B’Sheva newspaper.
“I remember myself on the pavement with three or four hooligans beating me without respite. I completely panicked. Everything around me became foggy. I tried to defend myself in one place and just to be beaten in another one. They deliberately aimed their blows mostly at my face. My entire body was went into shock, numb and completely powerless. I felt like I was being lynched, that there was no chance I would emerge from this alive. It continued for a while longer – them just beating and kicking me with all their might, with intense burning anger. It wasn’t a scuffle, they fully intended to kill me.”
Dr. Buchbinder’s friends who witnessed the scene described how Buchbinder was dragged away by the three Meretz hooligans and beaten to the ground. They threw his glasses into the street while one of them sat on him, beat him in the face, and slammed his head repeatedly against the pavement. The others kicked him all over his body. His face was drenched in blood.
Dr. Adar told B’Sheva newspaper, “I screamed with all my might, ‘stop beating him, don’t use violence!’ I saw them trying to literally murder him. I have never in my entire life seen such a violent and savage scene. There were Jewish Meretz activists standing nearby and I saw the complete shock in their eyes as well.”
Dr. Adar and the other Land of Israel activists in the area ran quickly to try to save Dr. Buchbinder. They tried to drag the attackers away, and in return received beatings as well. Eventually the Arabs decided they had finished their ‘activism’ for the day and left the area.
“I knew I had to take pictures of them,” said Dr. Adar, “after I saw how they nearly murdered Eli I knew in my heart that I had to do everything in my power to make sure these men would stand trial. Unfortunately, I neglected to take the names of the passersby who had witnessed the attack, but at least I got pictures of the attackers and this was an important bases needed to make them stand trial and prove their guilt.”
Taking the pictures proved to be quite a dangerous exercise for Dr. Adar. “I ran to the other side of the street to get my camera from my bag,” said Adar. “When I returned they told me the Arabs had gone to a coffee shop in the Carmelite neighborhood. I ran to the coffee shop and they were sitting there, with a dozen other Meretz activists all wearing Meretz t-shirts, drinking – ostensibly to relax after the attack. I stood on the sidewalk and took two pictures of them sitting in the coffee shop wearing their Meretz t-shirts. They suddenly saw me photographing them and became very alarmed. They ran out of the coffee shop and tried to grab my camera. I wouldn’t give it to them so they knocked me to the ground and began to kick me all over my body.”
Others sitting in the coffee shop saw what was going on ran out to help Dr. Adar, causing the attackers to ran away. Dr. Adar succeeded in protecting the camera from their blows with his hands but was knocked unconscious for ten minutes. When he recovered an Arab Meretz activist claiming to be the supervisor of Adar’s attackers held out his hand to Dr. Adar, apologizing and adding, “They were only paid workers, they won’t work for me anymore.” Dr. Adar asked for the man’s name and telephone number and the man complied. The name and phone number, Dr. Adar later found out, were fabricated.
In the meantime, the Land of Israel activists back at the intersection called the police repeatedly for over an hour to no avail. Even a frantic description of the severity of the situation failed to garner police assistance. After an hour and a quarter the police finally arrived and took preliminary testimony from Dr. Buchbinder.
Meanwhile, Dr. Adar fared even worse. He waited for the police for two hours without receiving any assistance. Tens of witnesses to the attack, who stood by for two hours waiting in vain for the police to arrive, eventually gave up and left.
Drs. Adar and Buchbinder eventually went by themselves to the police station in order to file an official complaint. To their astonishment, they came face to face with their attackers standing in the station with a lawyer – filing a complaint accusing the Land of Israel activists of assaulting them.
Following the attack, Dr. Buchbinder was brought to Rambam hospital where doctors informed him that he suffered four fractures of his jaw. He underwent a lengthy surgery over the Sabbath to reconstructed his jaw with a metal pin and several screws, remaining hospitalized for the next five days. The doctors informed him that he had 5% permanent paralysis. Dr. Buchbinder lost a year of doctoral work leading to a substantial economic loss as well.
Dr. Buchbinder still suffers the effects of his injuries today, nearly six years later. He regularly suffers pains in his jaw, severe headaches, and dizziness. Some days, when the pain is particularly acute, he loses the ability to concentrate, and therefore write. This has greatly affected his ability to perform the daily requirements of his job as a university professor. Despite all this, stresses Dr. Buchbinder, he continues to be active on behalf of the Land of Israel with the same determination as before the attack.
Six years have passed since the violent assault on Drs. Buchbinder and Adar at the hands of Arab Meretz activists. Their main problems now lay with the police and justice system, though. Last week a Haifa court awarded the two only 70,000 shekels for their injuries sustained in the attacks – after a very lengthy legal battle. The criminal case is moving along very slowly, having only begun in earnest last summer. The central mystery surrounding the case is the question of what caused the police and prosecutor to so severely delay the criminal case, which seems so straightforward, especially considering it already resulted in a guilty verdict against the attackers in the civil trial.
After the incident, Drs. Buchbinder and Adar turned to Atty. Meir Hoffler and requested he begin the process immediately in order to bring the attackers to justice. He discovered that the attackers were relatives of Atty. Ghassan Abu-Warada, who ran for Haifa city council as a candidate for the Meretz party. The attack had taken place preceding the local municipal elections and Abu-Warada had hired his relatives to stand at that intersection and hang up Meretz banners.
Atty. Hoffler and Drs. Buchbinder and Adar filed a complaint with the Haifa police immediately following the incident. The police did not respond, perhaps hoping to make the complaint simply go away and ignored repeated letters from Atty. Hoffler. The letters, sent to the then-commander of the Haifa region, Brigadier-General Doc Shechter, Major-General Alik Ran, then police chief of the northern region, and Superintendent Yisrael Grey, received no response whatsoever.
Atty. Hoffler claims that insiders were clearly influencing the case, repeatedly delaying what was a clear-cut case backed up by solid proof. “The establishment’s behavior toward us from beginning to end was negligent and corrupt,” said Atty. Hoffler. Additional letters on the matter were sent to the Ministry of Internal Security and to the Department of Public Complaints in Haifa. Each of the letters outlined the case, including facts and evidence, while demanding an explanation for the foot-dragging in bringing the case to trial. In a letter to then-Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein, Drs. Buchbinder and Adar described the alarmingly negative attitude of the police: “From repeated telephone calls with Haifa’s Prosecutor it became clear that a guilty verdict was not expected. The reason given to us again and again was that there was a case overload in the courts. We knew that when a case is granted priority in the prosecutor’s office it is granted a speedy trial. Our case, though, was simply not a priority. We hear all the time about how political violence endangers Israeli society, almost always referring to right-wing groups. But when right-wingers are the victims the situation is completely marginalized.”
Dr. Adar described the answers he received to numerous queries directed toward the police prosecutor regarding the criminal case. “The file is missing,” Dr. Adar was told on one occasion, “it is at a different part of the system right now,” he was told a different time. “I received information that there were people in various positions working to prevent this case from ever reaching the courts. Everything was done in a very shady manner,” Dr. Adar recalled.
Only after Atty. Hoffler threatened to bring the police to the Supreme Court because of their handling of the case did the file enter the court system. Three years passed in the meantime before the guilty verdict was reached – and the criminal trial finally began just last summer.
The bureaucratic process was excruciatingly slow. The Arab attackers and their attorney took every possible step to delay the legal process, including their attempt to disqualify every judge assigned to the case. Atty. Hoffler and his clients are now turning to newly-appointed Attorney-General Mani Mazuz to investigate the handling of the case by the judicial establishment and the police. Atty. Hoffler is confident that a favorable verdict will be reached in the end.
The civil suit, after six years finally resulted in a favorable verdict last week requiring the attackers to pay Drs. Buchbinder and Adar 70,000 shekels. B’Sheva newspaper’s Hagit Rotenberg interviewed the two Land of Israel activists following the verdict.
B’Sheva: Eli and Ronen, what were your feelings, after years of struggling, when you heard the verdict in your favor?
Dr. Eli Buchbinder: Bittersweet. Sweet – because these hooligans are being punished, and I hope that in the criminal case they will receive the harshest of punishment, as well. But bitter because of all the years of pain and suffering I underwent which has affected my life and my work. Also my contact with the establishment and the way things were handled along the way were very difficult. We always had to be on guard, the entire episode was extremely taxing. It is impossible to expect the justice system to carry out justice of its own initiative. The wheels of justice grind slowly, and you also get ground up in them.
Dr. Ronen Adar: My spirits were not lifted by the verdict, because in my opinion there was no victory, simply an acknowledgement of the clear facts of the case. In my opinion the State of Israel must change its policy and set punitive damages that are substantial – that actual deter people from acting violently. The court’s decision basically obligated them to pay for the injury only, which in this situation is simply absurd. I tell you, it is a miracle that Eli is still alive – they lynched him there! For an attacker to pay 50,000 shekels and walk away is outlandish!
Atty. Hoffler: There is no doubt that in the end we will achieve justice despite the prosecution’s failure to ensure that they receive proper damages. If this nasty affair had taken place in the United States, there is no doubt that they would have been awarded serious damages – especially since the attack was politically motivated and as a deterrent. Regrettably, the situation in Israel is unclear, and therefore the judge awarded meager damages as were reported.
It is regrettable that the judge didn’t have the courage to convict Meretz chairman Atty. Ghassan Abu-Warada as well, for sitting silently without raising a finger when his men beat Dr. Ronen Adar mercilessly. The judge unfortunately decided that the defendant would walk out scot-free, unpunished for his shameful behavior, which clearly contravenes an Israeli law called ‘Do not stand idly by thy brother’s blood’.
There must be a serious condemnation and investigation of those within the police and judicial system who acted in a blatantly criminal manner, intentionally causing our case to take years longer than it should have in order to delay the guilty verdict – hoping we would give up. And if the criminal court, which has not even concluded the case yet – had issued its expected guilty verdict in a timely manner there would not have been the need to go through the evidence in its entirety for the civil trial because according to law a guilty verdict in criminal court is enough to assign blame in a civil trial.
Our office is handling other such cases today as well. Another client, Dr. Rosenbaum, was assaulted by actor Giulliano Mor as Dr. Rosenbaum demonstrated in the Carmel. Mor simply approached Dr. Rosenbaum and attacked him. We have a serious situation – the left is the attacker, the fanatical out-of-control violent party, and suddenly the press is completely silent.
What was exceedingly alarming, Atty. Hoffler stressed, was the alarming behavior toward the entire episode on behalf of supposedly public institutions. The Land of Israel movement in Haifa prepared an ad for the local newspapers detailing what had happened. The only newspaper in Haifa that agreed to publish the ad was HaTzofeh. Repeated attempts to get news coverage of the story fell on deaf ears as reporters simply ignored every aspect of the incident along with the subsequent court case. “If the roles were reversed, and it was a right-wing lynch mob who nearly killed a left-wing activist,” said Atty. Hoffler, “you would certainly have seen the story covered in all of the papers and condemned universally.”
The attack on Drs. Buchbinder and Adar was but a chapter on the general violence, including death threats, spitting, cursing and destruction of property that plagues Matte Haifa activists at the hands of left-wing political opponents. The treatment of the entire case was also not a new phenomenon – police complaints have consistently been ignored, with complainants told to “drop it” or not to “make an issue of it.”
Even when police are stationed at the intersections to maintain order, they often fail to deal with infractions committed before their eyes, pressuring activists to, “Go home already – it’s Friday, let’s finish up here already.”
Since the near-lynching of Drs. Buchbinder and Adar several other alarming incidents have taken place. At a left-wing rally in Haifa, Arabs called for the murder of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Dr. Buchbinder asked a police officer standing there to put an end to the incitement to murder that was taking place. He was pushed into the busy street and told, “Don’t teach me how to do my work,” by the officer.
Arab actor Giulliano Mor attacked Matta Haifa activist Dr. Michael Rosenbaum half a year ago. Rosenbaum was protesting at the ‘Merkaz HaCarmel’ intersection in Haifa on a Friday when Mor pulled his car up to where the activists were standing. The actor grabbed the protestors signs and leaflets and began ripping and destroying them. When the Land of Israel activists told him to desist, Mor got out of his car and hurled a rock at Dr. Rosenbaum’s head. Fortunately, Rosenbaum raised his hand in time to protect his head, but was rushed to hospital with an injured hand that affects him to this day. Atty. Hoffler submitted a complaint to Haifa’s district court a number of weeks ago. The trial is expected to commence in the near future.
On another occasion, when standing at a protest vigil, a car drove onto the traffic island and back onto the road quickly, nearly running over the Matte Haifa activists while hurling curses at them. A young Arab lady attacked one of the activists with scissors as they manned an information booth, which strangely resulted in the person manning the table receiving a police summons, for ‘racism.’ Daily calls by Arab left-wing activists crying, “We will finish what the Germans started”, “Go back home to where you came from”, “We will throw you into the sea,” and “We’ll liquidate all of you” have become the background music for Land of Israel activists braving the streets of Haifa in their dedication to the Jewish people and the Land of Israel.
Meretz spokesman Roi Yellin told B’Sheva newspaper that his party condemns the violence against the Land of Israel activists. “We explain to all our members that it is forbidden to act in a violent manner. Meretz is against such behavior and condemns it fully. Violent behavior is against everything we stand for and believe in and in our eyes is simply out of the question. It is important to stress, though, that the attackers were not bona fide Meretz activists, but workers specifically hired for local election campaigning.”
Dr. Buchbinder and Dr. Adar are typical Haifa Land of Israel activists. Dr. Buchbinder, 48, is a professor of social work at Haifa University and is married with one child. Dr. Adar, also 48, is a Physicist and is married with five children. The two are not members of the religious community but are imbued with a fiery passion which resembles that of the first Yesha (Judea, Samaria and Gaza) settlers of Sebastia when it comes to the territorial integrity of the Land of Israel. Matte Haifa is made up of a surprisingly large number of non-religious activists, most of whom have multiple higher degrees.
B’Sheva: When you imagine activists standing at the intersections you don’t typically picture professors – how do you explain the great diversity of Matte Haifa?
Dr. Adar: One of the great successes of the left-wing is the perception in the media that anyone involved in the struggle for the Land of Israel is religious and even fanatical. This image has been so successfully ingrained in the average Israeli’s mind that many secular lovers of the Land of Israel were embarrassed to be seen protesting at the intersections. We have begun to radically change that.
Dr. Buchhbinder: They try to paint the right-wing as crazies – but the members of Matte Haifa make it very difficult to perpetuate that stereotype. Once you have so many highly-educated people - professors, scientists and researchers – such claims just start sounding ridiculous.
Matte Haifa is an island of perseverance during a time where many have lost hope in protest activities. For the past 11 years, since the signing of the Oslo accords, Matte Haifa activists have stood at Haifa’s main intersection protesting against various government agreements and identifying with the residents of Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan. Besides protest vigils, Matte Haifa, under the leadership of Aviad Vissuly, has organized many programs on behalf of the Land of Israel, including a carnival for the children of the northern Shomron, trips to Yesha, planting and harvesting in the Shomron and various activities in support of Jewish rights in all of the Land of Israel.
B’Sheva: Do you feel that your activities have had an effect in Haifa, the ‘Red City’?
Dr. Adar: When we started our activism, Haifa was already moving away from its socialist-leftists roots. In the last municipal elections the National Union received more votes than Meretz. Haifa boasts a respectable group of lovers of the Land of Israel, many of them secular, who understand that a complete Land of Israel is the basis for our presence here, both spiritually and in terms of security. Many people see us in the street and come over to say ‘good for you’. Some get very emotional, shedding tears at the sight of people just like them who have not lost hope. Our standing at the intersections keeps the lines of communication open between the many like-minded people who are simply impressionable – preventing them from being dragged along by the agenda of the media.
B’Sheva: How do they feel about your political activities at work?
Dr. Adar: Certainly there are nasty comments and unpleasant situations but that is part of the struggle. You learn to toughen up. If you broadcast weakness they sense it and harass you to no end – but if you stand up strong for your opinions others learn to accept them and even consider them. It also depends on you job. If you have a strong base and platform then you don’t suffer much at all for your right-wing views.
Concluding the interview, Drs. Buchbinder and Adar asked to publicly thank Atty. Meir Hoffler for guiding them through the lengthy process, as well as several other legal episodes. “The judicial system refused to answer us, to deal with us, or dignify our requests with responses,” the two said. “They simply brushed us off. On more than one occasion we were forced to raise our voices in the actual offices of the court to receive basic acknowledgement of our rights as citizens. Atty. Hoffler provided us with strong legal backing and a real sense of security. Without him we would still be stumbling around in the dark bureaucratic fog that has become Israel’s judicial system.”
“The front lines of the struggle for the Land of Israel have expanded,” Dr. Buchbinder said, “we in Haifa are proud to be a part of the struggle, letting the world know all throughout Israel Jews are prepared to lay their lives on the line for our homeland, not just on the front lines.”
The weekly B'Sheva newspaper is Israel's third largest circulation publication (home delivered to 130,000 families), and rated the largest circulation newspaper to Israel's religious public.