Please click here for a list of posts relating to cases in which Honenu provided legal counsel to victims of antisemitic attacks in Jerusalem.
Thursday, April 14, 2022, 8:00 In mid-April, a young Jewish woman was attacked by an Arab as she rode the light rail in Jerusalem. She filed a complaint at the police station and is receiving assistance from Honenu Attorney Chayim Bleicher, who wrote a letter (summarized below) to the Jerusalem Police demanding that they immediately locate the attacker and indict him for nationalistically motivated assault.
Bleicher: “The assailant and his friends intentionally humiliated a Jewish woman. Their goal is to injure Jews, and therefore the police must apprehend them. Because an assailant who does such a thing will not stop there, he must be quickly located, detained, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
Summary of the letter from Bleicher to the Jerusalem Police:
On 10.4.22, my client, a young Jewish woman approximately 16-years-old, was attacked by an Arab as she stood talking to her sister on the light rail in Jerusalem. A group of Arab youths was in the same train car. Suddenly, for no reason, one of them punched my client hard in the arm. He continued on his way as he and his friends laughed.
My client, who felt sharp pain, turned to the assailant in protest of the act, but he disregarded her. My client and her sister disembarked at the “City Hall” station and reported the incident to the policemen. Later, my client filed a complaint at the Sha’ar Binyamin Police Station. This was a humiliating and outrageous antisemitic attack. This incident must be handled decisively and not belittled.
A terrorist who starts with an attack such as this and is not properly handled is likely to ‘acquire a taste for it’ and continue on to more serious and damaging acts. Note that a very similar incident – an Arab slapped a Jewish youth on the light rail – that was filmed and shared on social media was in large part the ‘opening shot’ of the 2021 Arab riots.
Video evidence must be taken immediately from the security cameras on the light rail before it is deleted, both from the train car documenting the assault and from the station where the attacker disembarked, to facilitate locating his place of residence. Also, intelligence agents must be involved with locating the assailant, detaining him and bringing him to trial.