Arab rioting in Lod; Photo credit: Yossi Aloni/Flash90
Please click here for a list of posts relating to the mid-May Arab rioting throughout Israel.
Thursday, October 21, 2021, 22:28 The Central District Attorney’s office informed Honenu Attorney Adi Keidar that a case against Lod residents who defended their residential neighborhood from a mob of rioting Arabs at the time of Operation Guardian of the Walls will be closed, and the residents are not guilty of the charges against them. Keidar represented three of the residents.
On the first night of the rioting in Lod, a mob surrounded the neighborhood and started to close in. The residents pleaded for a long time with the police for assistance, but they did not arrive. When the mob got close enough to endanger the residential buildings, some of the men went out, risking their lives to defend their families and their neighbors, hundreds of people, by physically separating the homes from the rioting Arab mob.
During the incident, the mob threw rocks, metal bars, and Molotov cocktails at the residents, who shot into the air in order to distance the rioters from their neighborhood. Later, there was a claim that one of the Arab rioters was injured by the shooting and died of his injuries. Attorneys from Honenu, among them Adi Keidar and Nati Rom, represented the residents when they were detained.
Honenu Attorney Adi Keidar, who headed the team that defended most of the detainees: “We welcome the announcement from the District Attorney’s office that the case will be closed and that the defendants are not guilty. With that in mind, we emphasize that the incident began during rioting against Jews who defended themselves, and I hope that the correct conclusions will be drawn after the case is closed, first and foremost, the inconceivable situation in which the Israeli Police abandoned, literally abandoned, the same residents who, from the start of the incident, called out for help and assistance. And when none arrived, they were forced to cope with a genuinely life-threatening danger by opening fire in a restrained manner to save lives.
“Unfortunately, the legal proceedings were needlessly drawn out and the families’ daily routines were drastically changed. Some of them were forced to leave the city. The incident and the interrogations significantly affected the suspects and their families. We hope that there will not be a repeat of this situation and that lessons will be learned.”