Tuesday, August 26, 2025, 12:48 Honenu Attorney Eladi Weisel filed an NIS 17,000 civil suit with the Jerusalem Magistrates Court on behalf of a Yehuda and Shomron resident against a border police officer. The resident, a minor, was assaulted three months ago by the officer during the destruction of Eish Yehuda (see video below), a newly-founded community in the Har Hevron region.
In the statement of claim, Attorney Weisel described the assault: “On Shabbat, June 21, 2025, border police officers arrived with a tractor at a newly-founded community, Eish Yehuda, with the intent to destroy it. At the time, a fairly small number of residents were at the site. The vast majority of them were minors. Some of the minors sat on the path leading to the community and blocked it in non-violent protest of the destruction. The officers started to remove them. The claimant, himself a minor, was not among the minors sitting on the ground, and did not take part in obstructing the path. His only participation in the incident was documenting the actions of the officers with his mobile phone, a legal and legitimate activity protected by law. At some point, one of the officers, without either a warning or an explanation, turned toward the minor, roughly grabbed his phone, and, with blatant disdain, threw it a distance of several meters.
“After his phone was thrown, the claimant tried to retrieve it. The officer responded by pinning him to the ground, applying unreasonable and disproportionate force. There was no visible legal basis for this response – the minor had not threatened anyone, acted wildly, or disobeyed any order. He was pinned to the ground only because he dared to document police activity. After the minor got up from being pinned, he picked up his phone and again stood off to the side to record what was happening. In response to his resumption of filming, the officer detained him. The officer applied unnecessary and unreasonable force, shoving the minor, and roughly grabbing him and pulling his payot. This was a humiliating, aggressive, and insulting act, disparaging the minor’s religious beliefs. This all happened, despite the fact that the minor had only documented aggressive police activity, which is an act protected by law.”
Attorney Weisel reacted to the assault: “The officer’s conduct was criminal, and reflects a harmful police culture that requires fundamental correction. An officer forcibly grabbed a mobile phone and threw it indifferently, as if it were not an expensive and breakable object. This was not only a brutal act, but a conscious trampling of the minor’s fundamental rights. And the officer continued with more violence and disregard. One must ask, what was the officer trying to conceal? From what does this blatant disregard of rights stem? It is intolerable for a minor to be assaulted only because he documented police brutality.”
Documentation of the assault at Eish Yehuda; Video courtesy of the videographer