[VIDEO IN EXTENDED ARTICLE]
Police on Monday morning 6 Elul stopped the vehicle of Rabbi Nachman Friedman on Yerushalayim Street in Bnei Brak. Rabbi Friedman was the gabbai of the Sadigura Rebbe ZT”L. Police decided to pull over the car after seeing some of the passengers were not wearing seatbelts as the law demands.
A dispute resulted and there are different versions of what occurred according to the numerous eyewitness and police accounts.
Police report the car stop was the result of a violation. They explain the driver became belligerent and when they tried to issue a summons he refused to sign. At some point, they tried to place the driver in custody and they were compelled to retrain him.
The eyewitness accounts and a video tell a different story. The driver was quite polite in his refusal to sign on the summons since police did not adequately explain what was going on. At that point detectives pulled the driver from the vehicle by force and they began to strike him. They restrained him while striking him the witnesses reported.
Some of the witnesses intervened in an attempt to stop police from striking the driver. They explain Rav Friedman is well known and he is a gentle person who simply is not capable of acting as police insist he did. Some eyewitnesses explain the rav was unaware the people who stopped him were police since they were not in uniform. Eyewitnesses add that throughout the ordeal, the plainclothes policemen refused to identify themselves. The ordeal lasted for about 45 minutes.
Ultimately, EMS responded. Rabbi Friedman was transported to Mayanei HaYeshua Hospital for treatment after the police beating. As police were pinning him to the sidewalk he pleased, explaining he just underwent back surgery and they were injuring him.
The police statement to the press speaks of “resisting arrest and assaulting police”.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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15 Responses
The entire country from upper echelons to the bottom strata needs sensitivity training…
Cop stops car, introduce yourself, explain misdemeanor … Give ticket.. If driver is not cooperating, call for back-up help & continue to explain procedure..
Sorry, but the video is not going to prove anything. There is a lot of shouting and as many security personnel taking videos of whats going on. As a general rule, we give the benefit of the doubt to the police since they are not in the business of harassing innocent yidden for seat belt violations without cause. This “rav” must have done something to trigger all this attention.
Some Israeli police are thugs when it comes to Chareidim
#2, “We” do not give the police the benefit of the doubt- only you do. And you need to fix your stupid rule. They are a primitive group of savages shown every day to be lawless criminals. There is NO excuse for violence of this sort.
Halacha Eisof Soneh Leyakov
Gadol hadr: you are so ignorant! You know nothing about what the police in israel are; there are very limited ethic laws and extreme bias. You should be a bit more sensitive when posting.
To gadolhaddora:
If you would have read the news during the past 5 years, you would have noticed that on several occasions the police did indeed harass innocent people. The big question is, how come the officer did not show his badge to the driver. If he was not wearing a uniform, why should the driver assume that he is a police officer?
This could go viral like Ferguson!
I do not know Rabbi Friedman nor was I there. All I do know is that I can see a man with a cane struggling on the ground screaming that he is just after surgery. He does not look a dangerous criminal that needs to be forcibly physically restrained. Is it the law in Israel that a person issued a summons is required to sign it?
It is a known fact and a sad part of our life here in Israel that the police are anti-Chereidi and often use violence.
Also, whereas in the States I was brought up with the idea of the “friendly cop on the corner”, here children are afraid of the police because even though they obviously would not beat them up, they act to them with anger and hatred. (I’m referring to Chereidi children),as with that story of the policeman who spit at the five year old Chereidi girl on her way to kindergarten and countless other incidents of police yelling at Chereidi children instead of helping them
In the above story the police were %100 wrong for not identifying themselves and didn’t give this man a chance to realize who they were before they became violent. And there was no need for such violence that landed this poor driver in the hospital.
We are in a bitter galus.
It is a priority of the so-called police to harrass chareidim – chareidim in Israel are more in Golus than us in the diaspora!
To gadolhaddora, your gadlus seems to shine in stupidity! I live there and volunteer for the police and the police have potential to be animals . Some are ignorant imbeciles and there are to many that are bothered by frum yidden. So please keep you nonsense to yourself, because you sound silly to those who know!!!!
Just imagine the difference in “sensitivity” if more there were more chareidi police officers.
You can complain, or you can make effective changes.
“they were compelled to retrain him”
” As police were pinning him to the sidewalk he pleased”
YWN needs an editor.
The Israel police are a bunch of savages. They are ruthless & very mean especially to the charaidim. You can not give them the benefit of the dought at all.