Avraham Tzvi Rabin, a 16-year old minor, recently received his tenth administrative order within 18 months. The order stipulates that he is under house arrest at night at his parents’ home in Jerusalem, must report every day to the police station and is forbidden to speak to several individuals.

With the assistance of Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado, who is representing him, Rabin filed a request with the IDF Homefront Commander to cancel the order or convert it to a detention warrant, because he cannot fulfill it and also because his family’s life is being severely disturbed by the enforcement of the order.

A recent incident illustrates the extent of the disruption. Rabin was detained, however the Jerusalem Juvenile Magistrates Court decided to release him. As he was leaving the courthouse, Rabin received his tenth administrative order as mentioned above.

Two days after the order was served policemen arrived at the minor’s home in order to verify that he was fulfilling it. During the check the minor told them that he did not intend to follow the order and left his home after them. The policemen detained him. However, the Jerusalem Magistrates Court released him, again, because he had not actually violated the order.

In the letter which Yado sent to the Homefront Commander, Major-General Tamir Yedai, he wrote: “In the year 2017 the minor’s schooling was stopped as a result of an administrative order. After the order expired the minor transferred to a different yeshiva, from which he was also removed due to an additional order.”

And: “As a result [of the administrative orders] the minor has not attended school since ninth grade. There has been no intervention by either the Youth Probation Service or by social workers.”

Yado also stated that, “Every day policemen raid the minor’s home in the middle of the night and wake up the entire family in order to verify that the minor is at home. As a result of this the lives of the entire family have become a continuous nightmare.”

Furthermore: “The extreme demand that the minor sign in every afternoon at the police station, which takes him approximately two hours on public transportation, there and back, is breaking him and destroying any hope of his having a normal daily schedule.”

Yado stated his opinion that the minor is not dangerous to the public: “The extent of it [the risk that he is dangerous] is minuscule in relation to the destruction the orders – which are issued without the recipient standing trial – have imposed on his life.”

The letter concludes with a request, “The minor has had enough of the order and requests that it be canceled, and if not, then he and his parents are requesting that he be sent to administrative detention, so as not to disrupt the lives of the entire family, and not to put the youth in a position of risking violating the order and having a criminal case opened against him.”

Last Shabbos, a letter written by Rabin about what has been happening to him over the past few years was published in the Hebrew weekly “Olam Katan”. He described how the saga of the administrative orders began. He stated that he was not at all a “hilltop youth”, but rather visited friends from time to time at an outpost. At one of the times he asked one of the policemen who arrived at the site not to behave violently. The policeman assaulted him and broke his arm. Then Rabin was detained for the first time for “assaulting a policeman”.

In his letter Rabin described how he received his first administrative order after a video clip in which the above-mentioned policeman broke his arm was publicized. After that Rabin received eight administrative orders, including house arrest orders effective at night, which prevented him from attending his high school yeshiva on a regular basis. The last administrative order, the tenth within18 months, which includes house arrest at night and a requirement to report to the police station in Jerusalem every day, was for him the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Rabin wrote: “I understood that I would not be able to withstand this order. I told the policemen that I could not fulfill the order and that they should take me to jail. That was preferable to me over the conditions of the order.” Following that statement Rabin was detained. However, the judge who tried his case ruled that, “This is an order that immeasurably violates freedom.”

Honenu Attorney Menasheh Yado, who is representing Rabin, stated that, “Over the past few years, young right-wing activists who have been susceptible to administrative orders are invisible people to Israeli society. They have no rights, they do not have legal backing or a legal support system on which to lean. The authorities do almost whatever they want with these youth. The situation has reached the point that a youth is interested is being detained out of his own free will in order to end the saga of torments which he and his family have been facing.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem/Photo Credit: Shlomo Melet)