At the beginning of the week, Supreme Court Judge Yitzhak Amit rejected the appeal filed by the Attorney General’s Office against the decision of Jerusalem District Juvenile Court Judge Ohad Gordon to release to house arrest three Arab rioters who participated in a severe lynching of a Jewish family during Sukkot in Jerusalem’s Beit Hanina neighborhood. In Lynch, the mother of the family was hit by glass, and suffered cuts, and the children of the family were filled with glass. Attorney Haim Bleicher from the Honnu organization, which represents the family, attacked the decision.
In his decision, Judge Amit wrote that: “The respondents come from normative families, they have not been involved in crimes in the past, the arrest is difficult for them and they have probably learned their lesson. The respondents are currently staying in Damon prison alongside security prisoners. I am not convinced that this will benefit the respondents and the interest of the state.”
The severe lynching took place during Sukkot, when the family was making its way to their home in the Neve Ya’akov neighborhood in Jerusalem, when the family was driving near the Beit Hanina neighborhood in the city, dozens of Arab rioters began to block the road leading from Derech Begin towards the neighborhood. When the family passed by, the vandals started throwing stones at their car, smashed the car’s windows, and even tried to open the car’s doors. At one point, when a stone hit the window by which the mother of the family was sitting, another terrorist approached and smashed the window completely, and his friend put his hand in and tried to punch her in the head. A large stone thrown at the baby’s seat hit the seat and miraculously landed between his legs. Only after many minutes did the family manage to escape from the place while some of them were injured. The police opened an investigation into the incident and arrested a number of those involved, but as mentioned last week, the District Youth Court in Jerusalem ordered their release to house arrest.
Attorney Haim Bleicher from the Honnu organization representing the family attacked the court’s decision and said: “The murder attacks against Israeli citizens are repeated again and again, but in an unimaginable way the courts release the same terrorists time and time again into the streets of the cities. It’s a shame that the courts prefer the convenience interest of the terrorists over the security interest of the citizens of Israel.”