Cleansing Jerusalem Of Arabs

8 Jews Arrested For Assault On Arabs

By ETGAR LEFKOVITS
May 6, 2008 16:17
Updated May 6, 2008 20:42
Courtesy Of The JPost

Eight Jewish teenage residents of Jerusalem were under arrest Tuesday for allegedly stabbing and assaulting three Arab teens and planning further hate-based attacks in the city, police said.

The eight suspects, who range in age from 15-19 and include five minors, allegedly took part in the terror-related attack on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day in the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.

One of the Arab victims was moderately wounded in the stabbing attack and needed to be hospitalized, while the two others, who were beaten by the suspects, were lightly hurt, the police said.

The motive for the attack was nationalistic, police said.

The suspects, who were apprehended in the week since the attack, have either confessed to the allegations against them or connected themselves to the attack, according to police.

The police investigation revealed that the eight suspects planned to carry out another attack against Arabs in the outlying city neighborhood on the eve of Remembrance Day together with other suspects still at large in order "to "cleanse" both the neighborhood in general and the mall in particular of Arab teens who were "pestering" Jewish girls in the area, Ben-Ruby said.

During a search of their homes, police uncovered e-mail correspondences in which the suspects allegedly called on Jewish residents to come to the neighborhood mall on the assigned holiday eves in order to "take revenge" on the Arabs and "expel" them from the neighborhood, police said.

The eight suspects were brought to a Jerusalem court on Tuesday for a remand hearing.

The three adults were remanded in custody for four days.

The eight high school students, most of whom are residents of Pisgat Ze'ev, were part of a large group of Jewish teens which were involved in the case, Jerusalem police investigator Eyal Goren said.

"We were surprised by the extent of planning of the group," Goren said.

More arrests are expected in the case, he added.

The predominantly Jewish neighborhood which straddles the division between the Jewish and Arab areas of Jerusalem,has recently become home to a small number of Arab residents who moved there in order to be on the Israeli side of the separation barrier going up on the outskirts of the city.

The Arabs assaulted by the teens were from a neighboring Arab village, police said.