Return of the flock; Photo credit: Free use
Sunday, December 20, 2020, 16:06 On the night of Thursday, December 17, Arabs infiltrated a Jewish farm in Mitzpeh Ya’ir near Susia in the Har Hevron region and stole a flock of thirteen sheep. With the assistance of dozens of local farmers from the area, the owners of the flock combed a wide area. During the search, some of the search party arrived at a road deep in the fields, which bypasses the separation fence and IDF checkpoints and serves as a smuggling route from the city of Arad to the Har Hevron area. An Arab driving a stolen Savana van accelerated towards them in a attempt to run them down and collided with one of their cars head-on, causing damage.
After driving several hundred meters, the thief abandoned the vehicle, which sustained damage, and fled. Equipment worth thousands of shekels was found in the vehicle, which belongs to an air conditioner technician from the south of Israel. He thanked the farmers and said that they saved his business, which would have been completely destroyed by the theft of the vehicle and the expensive equipment.
The owners of the flock continued the search on Saturday (December 19) and found the stolen sheep in an open field in the no. 918 firing range, as an Arab shepherd led the flock into a pen in a nearby Bedouin encampment. The flock owners summoned other farmers, the army and the police to assist them. The sheep were returned to their owners after an official identification process supervised by the police and the IDF.
Return of the flock; Video credit: Free use
The farmers stated that Arabs, left-wing activists from the Ta’ayush organization and foreign activists gathered at the site during the entire incident and attempted to disrupt the return of the flock to its owners – see video above. At the end of the process, twelve out of the thirteen stolen sheep were returned. A missing ewe was apparently killed during the theft. See here, here, here, and here for more incidents involving Ta’ayush and other left-wing activists. See here for an assault on a Jewish shepherd.
On the morning of Sunday, December 20, the flock owners filed a complaint with the Hevron Police over the theft. Honenu Attorney Chayim Bleicher, who is assisting the flock owners with realizing their rights as crime victims, stated: “Agricultural crime is a form of terror aimed at depriving Jews of their land. Unfortunately the farmers are forced to endanger their lives to defend their equipment and their land from terrorists. We demand that the police and the other law enforcement authorities act with all means against terror, immediately put a stop to thefts, and back the farmers who are on the front line, protecting state land.”