Friday, February 14, 10:40 On Thursday, February 13 following the appeal filed by attorney Itamar Ben Gvir on behalf of Honenu, the Jerusalem District Court under the auspices of Judge Moshe Drori ordered the Israeli police to immediately release four youths, all Beit El residents, who had been detained the previous day on suspicion of throwing rocks at Arabs near Beit El. In his ruling Judge Drori drew strong criticism against the process of carrying out the detention at the homes of the suspects and on the conduct of the police in general.
It should be noted that for a long period of time the residents of Beit El and the surrounding area have been complaining about Arabs throwing rocks at Jewish cars from alongside the roads in the area, and also frequently closely approaching the fence of Beit El and throwing rocks into the community. The complaints have not received treatment by the police. However on Thursday the police chose to detain specifically four Jewish youths on suspicion of throwing rocks at Arab residents of the area.
The manner in which the detention was carried out violated the basic rights of the youths and the incursion into their homes greatly angered the residents of Beit El, who complained that instead of dealing with the Arab stone throwers encountered by Jews on a daily basis the police chose to handle baseless complaints by Arabs and hassle Jewish youths.
This detention follows one day after the detention of another youth from Beit El who was detained on the same suspicion and also ordered immediately released by the Jerusalem District Court. Honenu attorney David HaLevi represented the youth.
Attorney Itamar Ben Gvir, who represented the four youths from Beit El on behalf of Honenu, said in response, “It is regretful that the Yehuda and Shomron Police conduct themselves in a frenetic manner when handling detentions of nationalist activists. However it is even more regretful that the same police admit in court that they founded an entire department for handling nationalist crime, bolstered it with dozens of policemen, funded it with an inflated budget at the Israeli taxpayers’ expense and also fully admit that the department detains only Jews. If that is not racism, I do not know what racism is.”
This case was reported in brief here.