Two Israelis arrested for attack on Arab bus driver in Jerusalem
Man and teen allegedly boarded Jerusalem bus, asked driver whether he was Arab, then spat at him and hit him with rocks
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Two Jewish residents of Jerusalem, one of them a minor, were arrested Sunday on suspicion of assaulting a bus driver for being Arab.
The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court extended their detention in police custody until Wednesday, Haaretz reported Monday.
Only the adult suspect, Reuven Yosef Horowitz, 20, was named in the report.
The suspects boarded on the Egged city bus on May 1 around midnight, and one approached the driver and asked him if he was an Arab. When the driver responded that he was an Arab from Jerusalem, one of the suspects allegedly spat in his face, the report said. Afterwards, the two allegedly attacked him with stones and threw stones at the bus.
The judge said in his decision to extend the suspects’ arrest that the incident was “ugly and despicable” racism and that no tolerance for such behavior should be shown.
Nearly 30 of Egged’s East Jerusalem Arab bus drivers quit their jobs in November 2014, after a summer of heightened tensions in the capital and a war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, out of fear of Jewish attacks, Haaretz reported at the time.
Last week a Jerusalem court sentenced a Jerusalem man to life in prison plus 20 years for the brutal murder of an East Jerusalemite Palestinian teen in July 2014.
The Times of Israel Community.