Honenu Attorney Chai Haber: “In a difficult to understand and unprecedented step, the police are claiming that entering Area B, which is permitted to Israeli citizens, constitutes the criminal offense of ‘public nuisance’, due to the fact that Arab terrorists throw rocks and endanger the lives of Israeli citizens.
“Unfortunately, instead of protecting the worshippers, the IDF and the police decided to detain them. I was not surprised to hear from the police representative during the deliberation that not one of the rock-throwing Arabs had been detained. This is a slippery slope. Tomorrow the IDF could decide that instead of dealing with the individuals throwing rocks on the roads, they will detain the Jewish residents driving on the main roads, some of which are in Area B. We will file an appeal on the scandalous decision to distance the worshippers from all of Yehuda and Shomron. One is left wondering why it is that the left-wingers who entered [Area A] Ramallah, [in June 2016] and were attacked, were not detained whereas the worshippers who entered Area B were detained.”
On Friday 22 Menachem Av the Petah Tikva Magistrate Court agreed to a police request to distance a group of 13 Breslov Chassidim from Yehuda and Shomron for 60 days. They had entered the village of Kifl Hares (Timnat Hares), near Ariel, in the Shomron on Thursday night in order to daven at Kever Yehoshua Bin Nun. The group was attacked by rock-throwing Arabs. Soldiers and policemen who arrived on the scene detained only the Jews.
The village is located in Area B, which Israeli citizens are permitted to enter, and which has a similar status to that of other villages in Yehuda and Shomron and sections of Route 60, including the section traversing the Arab town of Chawarah, which is traveled by Jews in private and public transportation on a constant basis, and the road from Jerusalem to the Jewish community of Nokdim.
Concerning the status of Area B, the police explained that although entry to the village of Kifl Hares is permitted to Israeli citizens, there are scheduled, guarded entries to the village and because the group did not coordinate their arrival they are suspected of being a ‘public nuisance’ and ‘disturbing a public servant in the line of duty’.
The basis for the accusation is that the entrance of the worshippers to the village endangered their lives and the lives of the soldiers who entered the village to protect them. Additionally, the police representatives said in court that the previous week the Breslov chassidim had entered Area A, and therefore demanded distancing them from all of Yehuda and Shomron. In order to enter Kever Yosef, which although it is located in Shechem, it is in Area C, they had to pass through parts of Shechem classified as Area A.
Honenu Attorney Chai Haber, who is representing the worshippers, stated that their entrance to the daven at a holy site which Israeli citizens are permitted to be in is not a crime. Haber added that the IDF is responsible for guarding worshippers at the site and should not surrender to violent acts by the Arabs of Kifl Hares who threw rocks and rioted.
Haber asked whether or not any of the rioting Arabs had been detained and received a negative answer. A police representative stated that none of the rock-throwing Arabs had been detained because the security forces did not want to “create a provocation, but rather acted to save the lives of the suspects.”
Additionally, Haber mentioned that the worshippers, among them 14-year-old youths, were detained for interrogation at 3:00AM and brought to court only after 2:00PM. Most of the detainees were minors and in violation of the Youth Law their parents were not summoned to the court deliberation. Some of the minors complained of police brutality and one of them said that a policeman threatened him with a Taser gun.
Despite the fact that the police representatives themselves admitted that entering the village does not constitute a crime, Judge Smadar Abramovitch-Kollende accepted the position of the police and ordered the distancing of all of the worshippers from all of Yehuda and Shomron for 60 days.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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5 Responses
It may or may not be criminal but it is criminally stupid!
The constant inventing by the police and judges of “laws” that do not exist in any of the laws passed by the Knesset or “constitutional rights” from a non-existent constitution shows clearly that the State of Israel is not a society of law. There is no rule of law in Israel but the arbitrary rule of men. Those in power make up the rules as they go along. They do so to either advance their social or economic position or to protect it.
People should also think of the lives of the young soldiers trying to protect them. Coordinate, you are going into a dangerous zone. How thoughtless can some people be!
‘The constant inventing by the police and judges of “laws” that do not exist’
Do you need a law to prohibit stupidity? Area B is full of rashaim who want us dead. These IDF rules you complain about are saving Jewish lives!
Or are you so anti-Zionist that you would sacrifice Jews on the idolatrous altar of your hateful ideology?
Aryeh you pretty much hit the nail on the head.
Charliehall – theses chassidim endangered the lives of israeli soldiers no more than the israeli politicians who sent them into gaza as cannon fodder in a pointless war with no goals just to try and earn some points before an election and then called it off before they accomplished anything so everything would be quiet for obama’s coronation. Did any of those leaders get called in for questions by the police for that??
Behold the “great zionist dream” – it would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic