Car damage; Photo courtesy of the photographer
Monday, March 28, 2022, 10:54 In early March, a Jewish resident of central Israel was severely attacked by three Arabs while driving home from work on Route 471 through Gush Dan. The assailants cursed him, damaged his car, and beat him. Although the driver filed a complaint on the same day and attached video documentation (see below) of the incident, the police closed the case within a week, claiming that the matter was not criminal. Following an appeal filed by Honenu Attorney Chayim Bleicher with the Attorney General’s office on behalf of the injured driver and an inquiry from a Ynet journalist, the police reopened the case.
In addition to the appeal, Bleicher sent a letter to the Tel Aviv District Commander, Major-General Amichai Ashad, requesting that the renewed investigation be handled by the regional unit of investigations “before many pieces of evidence, such as video clips from traffic cameras, disappear.” Bleicher also requested that the appeal be transferred to the district public complaints officer “for an examination of conduct of the police station at the time that the case of such a serious complaint was closed.”
Bleicher described the details of the attack in the appeal (summarized below):
On 8/3/2022, at approximately 19:00, my client was driving home. After he slowed down due to a traffic jam, a commercial vehicle with a trailer pushed its way to the front of the traffic jam, causing my client to brake suddenly. Several minutes later, the commercial vehicle tried to enter my client’s lane again, forcing him out of his lane and almost causing an accident with a car in another lane.
At that moment, the commercial vehicle stopped, and three Arabs got out and kicked my client’s car, causing damage. My client managed to escape and continued driving. But then the Arabs’ car came up quickly from behind, and before my client could react, one of the suspects approached him, hit him, and tried to pull him out of his car so that they could severely beat him.
Even after my client, now injured, escaped, the assailants chased him as they threw glass bottles and various other objects at him and spit at him, endangering him and causing great damage to his car. My client suffered severe pains in his arm as a result of his injuries.
During the attack, he called the police and requested their urgent assistance. He also recorded the assailants throwing glass bottles at him and spitting at him. That evening, he filed a complaint with the police and transferred his video recording to them. To his great surprise, he discovered that the case had been closed after approximately one week because “criminal proceedings are not a suitable framework for investigating this incident.”
This is an extremely serious incident of aggravated assault with undertones of nationalistic motives that necessitates an urgent investigation by the Israel Police, including the involvement of the Central Unit of the Tel Aviv Police, so that the suspects who pose an immediate danger to loyal Israeli citizens will be apprehended. The violations involved are extremely serious: intentionally endangering human life in a lane of traffic and throwing rocks or other objects at vehicles. It is unacceptable that such a serious case would be closed without an investigation and the immediate detention of the suspects. Therefore I demand that the case be reopened and that the suspects be detained and brought to trial.
Documentation of the attack; Video courtesy of the videographer