Please click here for a list of posts relating to cases in which Honenu provided legal counsel to victims of antisemitic attacks in Jerusalem.
Wednesday, June 1, 2022, 17:37 In an incident that could have ended with fatalities, Arabs brutally attacked three yeshiva students with crowbars and pepper spray near the Neve Ya’akov neighborhood of Jerusalem. The police detained several suspects, but released them, claiming that the attack was not racially motivated.Honenu Attorney Chayim Bleicher, who is representing the students, wrote a letter to the office of the State Attorney asking them to reopen the investigation and to indict the assailants for nationalistically motivated assault.
Bleicher also sent a letter to the Jerusalem District Police Commander, the content of which is as follows: On 17.5.22, my clients were brutally attacked and humiliated by Arabs as they drove on Musa Peled Street in Jerusalem. My clients, 18-year-old men studying at a yeshiva in the Neve Ya’akov neighborhood, were driving towards center-city. When they turned left off of Neve Ya’akov Boulevard onto Musa Peled Street, three cars driven by Arabs pulled out behind them. One of the cars came close to their right side and almost collided with them several times. After the street widened, additional cars closed them off from the left side and the front.
The assailants’ cars stayed dangerously close to the students’ car until they caused the latter to stop. Then an Arab got out of one of their cars, approached the students’ car, and tried to open the driver’s door. When he did not succeed, he opened the door behind it and sprayed a large amount of pepper spray at point-blank range into my clients’ faces. One of the students who was sitting in the back seat fled to the other side of the car and then discovered to his horror another Arab beating the windshield with a crowbar. The windshield shattered on him. The first assailant returned to his car to take out cold weapons, and the students took advantage of the moment to escape on foot.
As a result of the pepper spray attack on my client who was sitting in the back seat of the car, he suffered an acute inhalation injury, became dizzy, vomited, and was evacuated to the hospital by ambulance. Additionally, the assailants entered the students’ car and stole a wallet, credit cards, and 2,750 NIS in cash from the car and from the students’ bags.
This was an outrageous attack in which Jewish students were attacked with pepper spray and cold weapons for no reason, on a main street of the capital city in front of many people. This attack is especially severe in light of its being part of an increasingly damaging series of terror attacks on Jews in Israel and in the capital city of Jerusalem in particular. Under these circumstances, the suspects must be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted to the full extent of the law so that others will ‘see and fear’. I ask that the suspects be detained again and held in remand until the end of proceedings. They must be indicted as soon as possible for racially motivated aggravated assault and endangering human life in a traffic lane.