Dozens of teenage boys from Jerusalem received the same ICQ
message: “We’re putting an end to all the Arabs who hang out in ‘Pisga’
[Pisgat Ze’ev] and the mall, whistle at the girls, curse, threaten
little kids. Anyone who is Jewish and wants to put an end to all that
should be at Burger Ranch at 10 P.M., and we’ll finally show them they
can’t hang in our area anymore. Anyone who is willing to do that and
has Jewish blood should add his name to this message.”
It
would have been difficult to choose a more cynical date on which to
send out such a message: Wednesday, April 30, the eve of Holocaust
Remembrance Day. Dozens of boys arrived at the meeting place in the
Pisgat Ze’ev shopping mall. They streamed in from all parts of the
capital, some on foot, some by bus and some driven in by parents.
Equipped with knives, sticks and clubs, they all had one purpose: to do
harm to Arabs for being Arabs.
At the entrance, the gang
encountered two boys from the Shuafat refugee camp, who had come to
shop for clothes and didn’t know the mall had closed early for
Holocaust Day. The day’s end saw the two battered, bleeding and
stabbed, and at Hadassah University Hospital in Ein Karem.
A
few days ago, an indictment was submitted to the Jerusalem District
Court against 11 of the attackers – teenage boys aged 15-19. Their
testimony indicates the attack was perpetrated in a society in which
violence against Arabs is seen as a legitimate and necessary means by
which to restore Jewish hegemony to the neighborhood.
“I study
in Pisgat Ze’ev at the Teddy Kollek School,” Rafael (his and all the
other teens’ names have been changed), 15, told police. “Last Tuesday
began as an ordinary day. School. I returned from gym and on my way to
class, I overheard some guys saying that tomorrow we would be meeting
in the mall to fight the Arabs. I went home and like every day, logged
on to the computer and connected to ICQ … After I talked with some
people for half an hour, they sent me a message that tomorrow, on the
eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, we would meet at 10 P.M. to fight the
Arabs who whistle at the girls and harass little kids. I sent the
message to one person.”
Another teen, Yaron, said in his
testimony: “I received a message on ICQ on the Thursday before … The
day came and at 8:30 P.M. I went to my barber in Pisgat Ze’ev, Kobi Ben
Haim, for a haircut. After Kobi finished cutting my hair he said,
‘Yalla, in another hour and a half we’ll screw the Arabs.’”
Ill-fated day
At
the same time, in the Abu Kamal home in Shuafat in northern Jerusalem,
18-year-old Ahmed was preparing to go out. “He told me he wanted to buy
clothes,” said his father Jemal. “I heard that in Pisgat Ze’ev there’s
a mall, that it’s like Jaffa Road, inexpensive. I said to him, ‘Great,
go, why not?’”
Ahmed is the second of 12 children. “He saw
that I was having a tough time and that he had to help me, and since
then he’s been working as a janitor in the Shaare Zedek Medical Center.
My child is calm, none of us has a police record. We have Jewish and
Arab friends, we have nothing against anyone and people in the village
respect us.”
Toward evening, Ahmed left his house and when he
arrived at Pisgat Ze’ev he met another teenager from the refugee camp,
16-year-old Walid. “The little Arab,” as the Jewish boys described him
during their interrogation, used to walk around the area looking for
jobs. When he met Ahmed that evening they decided to continue together
to the mall.
In his testimony to the police, Walid said: “We
were on the way to the mall to buy clothes. We arrived at about 7 P.M.
When we wanted to go inside, the guard told us that everything was
closed and only the clinic was open. We left the mall, entered the
nearby gas station, bought food and sat in the park near the mall until
9 P.M. We were planning to return home, and on the way back we saw a
big crowd near the mall.”
When Ahmed and Walid sat down to
eat, the Jewish boys began to gather near the local Burger’s Bar
restaurant. Rafael told police: “In the evening I took a knife from my
room. I put the knife in my pocket and went out into the street.”
What did you know was about to happen?
Rafael: “A fight with Arabs … I wanted to see what was happening there.”
Why did you come with a knife?
“I
go everywhere with a knife. If someone wants to buy it, I’ll have it to
give to him … The knife is always with me and it doesn’t make any
difference if there’s a violent activity or not. It was with me from
the morning.”
You go to school with a knife, too?
“Yes. Always one.”
Rafael
arrived at the meeting point with his friend Shlomi, 15. “Like a
retard, I argued with him for about an hour to give me the knife. In
the end I took the knife … Its handle is the size of three fingers,
even less. One of those stupid little ones, just a knife,” he said in
his interrogation.
The group waited for a long time at the
spot, but nothing happened. “We waited for about two hours, everyone
with wooden boards, bats, not a single Arab passed by,” said Shlomi.
At
this point, the boys decided to move to a more strategic location,
opposite the entrance to the mall. Unfortunately for the two friends
from Shuafat, they had to pass the mall on the way back home. “When we
passed by,” Walid said in his testimony, “a guy came over to us and
told us to come over to him. He called his friend, pointed to me and
said to him, ‘Is this the guy that made trouble?’ His friend said no.”
According
to the police, the two young men who spoke to them were Liran Asraf,
18, and another boy, Shaul, 15. Shaul told police: “We waited for about
15-20 minutes and two Arabs arrived. I approached the big Arab and
spoke to him, asked whether he was hitting on the girls. And then I
threw a lit cigarette between the shoulder and neck of the big Arab. He
looked at me, wanted to kill me. His eyes popped out and then he kept
looking, and suddenly all the kids attacked the little one. They simply
pushed him against the railing and stepped on him.”
Why did you throw the lit cigarette at the Arab?
Shaul: “Because he hit on the girls. Because the Arabs hit on the girls.”
Did he start fighting with anyone?
“No. The fact is, the first time I saw those Arabs was at the mall.”
Who was with you and what did each one do?
“I’m
asking you not to show them I’m talking about them, because afterward
they’ll call me an informer. What I saw was feet and jumping. The ones
who were there were Rafael and his brother Naor. Yaron, who had a
stick, hit him between the ribs or the head, I don’t remember exactly.
Uzi jumped on his body. I more or less saw that they all jumped,
kicked, stepped on him, on the Arab. The kid was a trampoline and
punching bag. That’s it. I swear to you that I cried a little on the
side. And then the police came and all of them ran away like ants. If
the police hadn’t come after five minutes, that boy would have been
done for. I came back after three or four minutes to see what was
happening with him and I heard him shouting ‘Mother, Mother.’”
What happened with the big Arab?
“I didn’t look at the big one. Only at the little one because there were about 80 kids there.”
“I
saw that everyone was beating the little one severely,” said Shlomi in
his interrogation. “I swear to you I don’t know how he survived it.
He’s 17, but he comes up to my stomach. The way he was pushed against
the railing and the blows he got, I don’t know how the boy is alive.
Anyone who tells you that he didn’t do anything is a liar.”
Walid
only remembers that “a gang of kids, more than 80, pounced on us and
they had clubs and knives in their hands and they attacked us. All I
remember now is that I passed out and woke up in the hospital.”
While
the boys were beating Walid like a punching bag, Ahmed was stabbed in
the back. According to the indictment, those who stabbed him were Naor
and his brother Rafael, who took the knife from his friend Shlomi.
“I
walked toward the mall,” Ahmed told Haaretz. “But I didn’t go inside, I
passed by the entrance to the plaza and there was a large group of guys
there, they were just standing there and I walked among them at the
side of the road. I heard them talking among themselves and they said
something like, ‘Is it them? Is it them?’ and then someone stabbed me
in the back with a knife, threw me down and continued to beat me. One
guy bit my ear. I don’t know how I managed to get up, but I got up and
ran away. They chased me and threw stones. I continued to run and
started to lose my breath because of the injury and the running, until
I couldn’t go on.”
Shlomi told police he had tried to stab
Ahmed, but he said his “stupid little” knife broke. “When the Arabs
came and they started beating them, like an idiot I got near his leg
and the knife broke and nothing happened to the boy, not even a hole.
You can even check his legs.”
‘Holes in his back’
What part did brothers Naor and Rafael play in the incident?
Shlomi:
“Naor stabbed the big Arab … The Arab was standing, Naor was behind
him, the Arab started to advance and Naor came at him with a kitchen
knife with a black handle and afterward I saw the Arab running with
holes in his back and his whole jacket was full of blood. I saw it
clearly.”
Naor denied these things in his interrogation and claimed, “I gave him two kicks and ran away. That’s all.”
Another
boy who was present, Ya’akov, 16, said in his interrogation that “these
were two groups that split up. Each one attacked a different Arab, but
most of the chaos was where I was looking. At least 20 kids hitting and
lots of others, 100, standing on the side … I saw one heavy one, a
fat face with a beard and stubble, he was holding a board like a
construction board, 60 centimeters long. I heard someone, I couldn’t
tell who, saying ‘Move for a second, move,’ and then he came and hit
the Arab on the head with the stick. The Arab held his head after a
second and shouted ‘ay’… Aside from the stick, I saw that they
punched him hard, hit him. And then he started running toward the gas
station.”
What did you do?
Ya’akov: “Nothing. I won’t lie to you. I didn’t touch them. I only watched along with others who were hitting.”
Did any of the minority group members attack anyone?
“What do you mean by minority group members?”
Arabs.
“I didn’t see them attacking anyone. The truth is they couldn’t because of the large number of kids who were there.”
Why did it happen?
“Probably
because they’re Arabs. What else could it be? Before it happened they
sent me a message on ICQ that anyone who’s a real Jew should come at 10
P.M. on Holocaust Day to the Burger Ranch at Pisgat Ze’ev. I saw from a
distance there were a lot of people and then I remembered the message
and I went to see what had happened.”
Kobi Ben Haim, the
barber who according to Yaron’s testimony exulted at the opportunity
“to screw Arabs” said in his interrogation that he “went down with a
friend of mind for a stroll after work … I approached the place where
the fight was going on and then he [Ahmed] punched me. I said to him,
‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ And then I punched him in his
left arm and kicked him on the left side of his face and arm.”
Why should the guy punch you if you don’t know him and have no quarrel with him?
Ben
Haim: “I don’t know. Maybe because the people had jumped on him and he
thought that I jumped on him. Ask him that, not me.”
The group
beating of the two teenage boys ended only when a police van approached
the site by chance. The boys left Walid lying on the road bleeding, and
fled. Ahmed, who managed to escape, says, “I began to try to ask for
help and I couldn’t find people I could talk to, because I don’t speak
Hebrew. Until in the end I saw someone who spoke Arabic and asked him
to call an ambulance, and he called and ordered an ambulance that came
and took me.”
The log of Magen David Adom emergency services
and the hospital emergency room describe the events laconically:
“Manner of transportation to the incident: urgent,” “wounded after a
fight,” “temple pulse: 104,” “hematoma under right eye,” “shortness of
breath,” “stabbed by a knife in two places on the back part of the
chest cavity,” “cut in the right ear lobe,” etc.
Meanwhile, at
his home in Shuafat, Jemal Abu Kamal had difficulty falling asleep. “I
waited for Ahmed to come home, I didn’t really sleep,” he says. “At
almost 1 A.M. I heard the phone ring. I got up and went immediately to
look and I saw the boy wasn’t in his bed. I said ‘God forbid, something
happened. Maybe something happened to the boy.’ I answered the phone
and they said, ‘Shalom, we’re speaking from Hadassah Ein Karem. Your
son is such and such.’ I, in such a situation, my heart fell. I said,
‘What happened?’
“They brought an Arab doctor to the phone who
told me, ‘Don’t be frightened, but you have to come.’ I asked how the
boy was doing. He said, ‘Come to us, with God’s help it will be all
right.’ I went crazy. I went to the fifth floor and there I saw they
were helping him, they had opened places in his stomach in order to
take out blood and air.”
At the same time, the boys suspected
of the attack began to return home. In an examination of the phone
records of those involved in the affair the police discovered among
other things the following messaging between two of them, from 4:40
A.M.:
“Bro, did you see what happened yesterday?”
“Yeah, yeah bro, I kicked the Arab. I stepped on his head.”
“Hahaha. Yes, aha.”
“Bro, speak to everyone, we’ll do another one like that!!”
“To
make it short, the police came. Balagan. Wait for a month, so things
will calm down, we’ll do another one. Now keep quiet bro, don’t talk
about it, so nothing will be spilled to the police, you know.”
“Aha, okay bro.”
“Never mind, soon there’ll be another one.”
Boredom and violence
To
identify the attackers, the police investigators from the juvenile
division of the Zion district used footage from security cameras at the
mall. The suspects turned out to be “ordinary” boys, without criminal
records, who study at well-known schools in the city. Some said their
participation in the incident was a result of peer pressure. “Because
of that pressure, you either have to join them or fight with them,”
says a boy of 15, who is friendly with the teens but who wasn’t
involved in the incident. “Nobody wants to be a social outcast and
fight with them all the time, so you join them. Apparently they were
bored, because there really isn’t much to do.”
Only few of the
accused expressed sorrow and regret. “It’s strange, because it wasn’t
planned,” said Shlomi. “I didn’t come to hurt anyone, but things
developed. You see a lot of people there and that’s it. I came there
like some kind of idiot. I’m sorry and I want to continue studying.
That’s my future.”
Superintendent Eyal Goren, who is in charge
of the investigation, says they soon discovered this was not another
case of routine juvenile violence but an unusual incident of
racist-nationalist proportions. “In Pisga, there are occasionally
unpleasant encounters between minority members and Jewish youth. There
are incidents of violence, harassment on both sides, but we have never
seen this kind of organized activity,” says Goren. “The incident was
very violent and unusual. The preliminary organization is unusual, the
fact that people who don’t necessarily know each other came there, and
that the younger ones were those who committed the more serious
crimes.”
Who was behind the first ICQ incitement? Attorney
Rafi Merkavi, who represents brothers Rafael and Naor, says the message
was sent out on the Web site of an extremist right-wing group
associated with the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team. Goren insists that no
connection was found with Beitar members and he refuses to say whether
the police succeeded in discovering the source of the message.
During
the course of the investigation it turned out that many had received
another ICQ message, similar to that received before Holocaust Day,
which called on them to gather for the same purpose on the eve of
Memorial Day. During his interrogation, Shaul said, “I heard a rumor
that on the eve of Memorial Day there would be a meeting, the same
thing again, to hurt Arabs. I knew the police would figure it out, but
I didn’t think they would get to me and surprise me.” Shlomi said,
“There are going to be 200 kids there because they’re going to fight
with Arabs again. If you don’t stop it now it will be a regular thing.”
Goren says that the investigation prevented the additional attack from
occurring.
Two days ago, the Supreme Court decided to release
all those who remained in custody to house arrest. Attorney Reuven
Hamburger, who is representing Liran Asraf and Shaul, says the suspects
have to go back to school. He says that “keeping these boys at home
with nothing to do is the thing that is liable, God forbid, to lead to
another incident.”
Attorney Yehuda Shushan, who represented
three of the accused during the proceedings, said that “there is no
doubt that this incident must be dealt with from an educational point
of view, but at the same time each suspect should be judged according
to his individual level of involvement.”
Anat Asraf, Liran
Asraf’s mother, says her son is the victim. “My son has no criminal
record and happened to be there out of curiosity, like 200 other
children. In two and a half months from now he is supposed to be
drafted and to serve the country. We did not educate our children in
‘underground racism’ as the police presented it, but to stick on the
straight and narrow. He was overcome by curiosity. I think that he was
arrested without any wrongdoing on his part.”
Two Arab boys ended up in the hospital.
Asraf:
“Look, I’m not in favor of it and we always told the children that if
they see something, even between one Jew and another, they should stay
out of it. But my son is a victim of the state. Why? Because they came
and pulled him out of the house in a way that I don’t know how to
describe to you. How does an investigator come and inflict a police
record on such a boy? A wonderful boy, a good boy. They’ve stigmatized
him. To what extent can you incriminate a group of children without
proof?”
Doesn’t it bother you that Liran went to look at Arabs being beaten up?
“We
didn’t know, and had we known I promise you that I wouldn’t have let
him leave the house. The judge said: ‘Where were the parents?’ Really,
if a child says that he’s going to a party, do we know where he’s
going? One mother told me yesterday that her son told her he was going
to see a film about the Holocaust.”
Rafael and Naor’s father
is concentrating on keeping his family together. “It’s very difficult
for us. I’m trying to preserve the family unit somehow.”
Can you understand where it came from?
“The
incitement to gather some 150 children near the mall was horrifying,
and that’s what convinced them to come there and try to ‘clean up’ the
neighborhood. I understand that the police have yet to discover who
spread the message. Had there not been a message, you wouldn’t have
seen a single child in the street. There are a lot of problems in Pisga
and in my opinion they’re sweeping them under the rug. There isn’t a
week when something doesn’t happen here. To my great regret, it
happened on the least suitable day. Without any relation to the trial,
we for our part are trying to find therapists who will treat both the
children and us as parents.”
The Pisgat Ze’ev mall is in the
heart of the Jewish neighborhood that was built in the mid-1980s in
northern Jerusalem, beyond the Green Line, and about 50,000 people live
there now. Jews and Arabs, secular and religious sit in cafes and shop
at the supermarket and other stores. One of the store owners said that
“60 percent of the mall’s revenue comes from the Arab population.”
Still,
you won’t hear many people condemning the attack on the Arab teens
here. “This is a Palestinian mall,” says a 15-year-old sitting with his
friends on a stone bench in front of the mall. “About 90 percent of
those who enter it are Arabs.”
Under threat
The
female security guard at the entrance to the mall says that “Arab
children or teenagers come here, go up to the top floor and spit down.
Sometimes they whistle at the girls, harass them.”
Next to her
sits a man in his twenties. Until recently, he worked as a security
guard in the mall and he is very familiar with the neighborhood. He
heard what happened here on the eve of Holocaust Day and doesn’t hide
his satisfaction. “The police don’t do anything and the time has come
for someone to take the law into his own hands. It’s a very good
thing.”
He describes incidents when Arabs beat up Jews and
nothing was done. “Look, here,” he says, pointing at a bus stop. “About
seven kids asked a Jew for a cigarette. He didn’t give it to them and
they beat him up. Whey aren’t they tried? Why aren’t their pictures
identified by security cameras?”
Attorney Merkavi, formerly
the chair of the Pisgat Ze’ev Community Administration and presently a
member of its board of directors, explains: “It’s impossible to divorce
what happened from the fact that something happened around this plaza.
It bothered them that the Arabs would come and hit on the girls here.
There’s the fear that these girls will be enticed. They give them
cigarettes and who knows if it doesn’t go further than that?”
So it’s a hormonal thing?
Merkavi: “Yes. They don’t want the Arabs to come and hit on the Jewish girls. Who knows what else develops there.”
Do you want to stop them from hitting on the girls?
“Yes.
That’s the point, because that’s what incites this plaza. At the same
time, we’re working to explain that it’s forbidden to take the law into
one’s own hands and to conduct such a pogrom.”
Can’t the girls decide for themselves if they’re willing to have someone hit on them?
“Listen, that’s dangerous. These are girls aged 15-18. I don’t have to explain to you what temptations there are.”
Does it bother you?
“My personal viewpoint is less important. It’s important to me to conceal my viewpoint, especially as a lawyer.”
Last
Monday, 11 P.M. Three young men sit on a dark staircase in Pisgat Ze’ev
and talk. The photographer and I ask to speak to them. It’s hard to
mistake the smell of marijuana wafting from their direction. I
introduce myself as a journalist and they ask to see my ID. Afterward,
one says his sister can’t walk in the street without Arabs whistling at
her. Another says he advises his younger brother not to walk by himself
in Pisga, for fear that he’ll be attacked by Arabs.
The three
are well versed in the affair, leaving almost no doubt they are
connected to the gang. They know the names of all the suspects and
their lawyers and when exactly each legal proceeding took place.
Suddenly they notice my recording device and become belligerent. Under
threat, I am forced to let them hear the last recording to make sure
they weren’t taped. I erase the recordings, but they aren’t satisfied.
The photographer wants to call the police, and within seconds one
starts chasing him.
“Catch him,” he shouts to the other two.
They obey, grab me, kick me and throw me onto the stone plaza. “Yalla,
get out of here,” they shout at us, adding a hard kick for good
measure.
Now all that’s left is to imagine how Ahmed and Walid felt when they were attacked not far from there by dozens of boys.
Abu
Kamal says his son is in very bad shape. “He got a blow to the head and
now he gets up three or four times a night. He’s afraid, sometimes he
cries. He was emotionally damaged and that’s the worst kind of damage.
Now his condition is not so good and I can’t leave him. I’m afraid
he’ll get up and throw himself out of the window at night.
“I
have a lot of Jewish friends,” he explains. “And until now I’ve been
telling my children that a human being is a human being. This is a
small place and we have to live together. Now I tell him not to be
afraid, that it happens, that even among Jews there are such things,
that God has written this down. It’s little people who did this, maybe
they have an illness. But he’s afraid and I don’t know what to do.”