30 students of the Ze’ev Junior High School in Herzliya had to be treated after a student sprayed pepper spray in the classroom. The students were evacuated to the school yard where they were treated by Magen David Adom EMS personnel.
The incident occurred during school hours and students began complaining of eye pain, sore throats and difficulty breathing. The preliminary police probe into the incident revealed the pepper spray was not released in the classroom directly but in the school gym and hallways.
27 of the students were transported to the Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba emergency room for continued care. Chairman of Emergency Medicine Dr. Merav Stern reported most required care for their eye irritation while two of the students required inhalation therapy. They were all treated and released.
Fire department officials, social workers and officials from Herzliya City Hall went through the school before permitting students to reenter, first determining the threat had dissipated.
Elsewhere, school in Mazkeret Batya started an hour later on Monday 17 Marcheshvan as teachers held meetings to discuss a letter left on the windshield of the school’s principal on erev Shabbos stating “We are going to break your arms and legs”. It is pointed out the letter included many grammatical errors. It is also reported there is an ongoing dispute between the PTA and the principal surrounding ongoing construction work in the school being carried out by Arab laborers and police are not ruling out a connection with the dispute and the letter.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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It’s nice to know Israeli police are interested in stopping crime. Pity it’s taken a good 5 years.
Five years ago, a little boy who attended the Israeli elementary school I graduated from was attacked numerous times by his classmates as well as boys from upper grades. He’s a very special boy with excellent middos and lovely parents, one of whom is a ger tzedek from a foreign country. Thus, he looked a bit different from your average Ashkenazi Jew, and his schoolmates (mostly Sephardim) tormented him and his family about this to no end.
A group of rough boys followed the boy and his older sister around the school during recess, making obscene remarks to the sister and taunting the boy about his appearance. Another student in his class repeatedly threatened this boy with death, often accompanying these epithets with a chokehold.
The boy and his family were recent olim chadashim, and the school was not equipped to teach olim Hebrew, and refused to intervene due to the language barrier and a dislike of Americans they were very open about.
The matter escalated when a group of older male students surrounded the boy in the school yard (which was unsupervised), two boys grabbed him from behind, and the rest began punching and kicking him. He sustained bruises on his face and abdomen.
When the parents tried to notify school faculty about the incident, the teachers refused to communicate and went so far as to claim that this poor boy had PROVOKED these various incidents. How??? By simply looking different?
Violence escalated even further the week beforr Sukkos, when the boy was accosted on his way from the classroom by two boys. They attacked him in close quarters, kicking and punching his face and abdomen.
The boy’s parents ran to the school and the school reluctantly notified the police. An eyewitness told the parents that he’d heard attackers discussing openly after the incident how they planned to hurt the boy worse, and even kill him, after Sukkos. Makes a threat to break a principal’s legs seem like saying hello by comparison!
The police were uncooperative despite all of this information, and refused to get involved because (get this) the perpetrators were under twelve years of age!!
Some months later, after the parents pulled all their children from their school, the older sister was accosted on the street by the same group of rough boys who’d harassed her and her brother in school. They blocked her path on the sidewalk and told her in colorful English words that they were going to basically gang-rape her. The older sister escaped them and ran home, panicked, and reported to her father what had happened.
A couple of days later, the older sister was outside again, when she saw the rough boys’ gang leader hanging out near a bus stop with one of the boys who’d made threats on her brother’s life. She hurried home and asked him to help her confront the boys (verbally, as opposed to with a baseball bat), to which he readily agreed.
The girl and her father approached the boy and spoke to him in English, asking that he use his cell phone to call his abba so we could tell him what his son was up to. The gang leader claimed to not understand English, though the horrible words he’d used numerous times were, indeed, in English, and that he didn’t know his own abba’s cell number. The other boy, the one who loves threatening people with death, then twisted the father’s words and told the gang leader that this man had just threatened him with death himself!
Immediately, the boy whipped out his phone and fake-cried to his abba.
A police car passed by, so the girl’s father flagged it over and tried to tell them what had happened. The police mocked his language skills and refused to listen to him. They instead listened to the other boys’ lies, and arrested the father!
The community where all of these incidents happened has tried to cover this up. No one listened when the family reached out for help. They’re safe and sound again in America, but they’re still hurting. Try to do some research, though. You might still find some info on what happened and how you might still be able to help them.
But anyway, it’s nice that Israeli’s police force has finally developed the sentience to deal with school and school-related violence. Pity they’re way too late.