Five Israeli suspects remanded in beating of Arab man

On Sunday morning, the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court remanded in custody five Israeli Jews who were arrested on suspicion of assaulting and beating an Arab man last week in the coastal city of Netanya.

Police are investigating the incident, which saw Abed al-Kader Jamal, from the neighboring Arab town of Qalansawe, set upon by dozens of Jews while he was on a visit to the city with two friends.

Ten other people were questioned about the attack but later released.

The incident came amid a spate of Palestinian attacks against Jewish Israelis. As tempers flared, Jewish extremists also staged rowdy protests and assaulted Arabs in various Israeli cities on Thursday.

There were conflicting accounts of what sparked the attack, in which Jamal was stabbed in the leg and repeatedly hit with sticks and chairs. He required medical treatment in the city’s Laniado Hospital.

According to a report by the daily Haaretz, the incident in Netanya began as a fight in a local cafe, after which dozens of Jews joined the fray to attack the three Arab men.

The Ynet news site reported that a group of some 30 Jews arranged via social media to meet in the city and look for Arabs to attack, agreeing among themselves on a variety of weapons for the task, including a knife, an ax, and a chain. A knife was later found in a garbage can in the area.

“I don’t where they came from, but suddenly they were chanting, ‘Death to the Arabs,'” said Jamal, whose two friends managed to flee the scene. “I didn’t expect that to happen. It is a shame that we have gotten to such a tense atmosphere. I was lucky to get out alive.”

Maimon Haimi, a resident of Netanya, tried to shield Jamal from the mob. He later said that he was acting in order to protect members of the Jewish mob from a prison sentence.

Haimi told Channel 10 on Thursday that he was in the area with his son, an IDF soldier on leave, when they heard shouts of “Terrorist” and then saw someone running toward them in what he thought may have been a terror attack.

“I was there to catch a terrorist, or perhaps kill him,” he said, recalling how, together with his son, he ran at the man with the intention of stopping him. But when he was a few meters away, he realized that Jamal carried no weapon and was bleeding from a gash in his head.

“I acted to kill a terrorist. Then I got to him and saw that he wasn’t a terrorist, so I changed my mind,” he said. Haimi then tackled Jamal and brought him to the floor, laying his body across that of Jamal to shield him from his attackers.

“I protected the Jews from themselves,” he said. “So that they wouldn’t kill him and go to prison.”

His son, Dan Haimi, posted video footage of the incident on Facebook Friday, writing that he and his father were also beaten by the mob after they attempted to protect Jamal.

Police who arrived to break up the violence initially arrested Jamal and handcuffed him. In a short clip, a clearly distressed Jamal could be seen seen sitting in the corner of a room on the floor — apparently in a police station — surrounded by police who fired questions at him.

One policeman could be heard asking, “Did he steal a bag?” — an accusation Jamal passionately denied. Another police officer then asked him, “What did you do wrong?”

Following the attack, Jamal vowed never to return to Netanya.

“I was lucky to get out alive,” he said.

Earlier Thursday, five people were lightly injured in nearby Tel Aviv when a Palestinian assailant attacked passersby with a screwdriver. The attacker was shot and killed by a soldier.

The ongoing violence has included, alongside Palestinian attacks against Jewish Israelis, several acts of revenge by Jews. On Friday an Israeli teenager went on a stabbing spree in the southern city of Dimona, wounding three Palestinian men and a Bedouin Arab.

The northern city of Afula, the site of another stabbing attack Thursday against an Israeli soldier, saw anti-Arab protests later that day. An enraged mob also converged on a Channel 2 news crew and its reporter Fourat Nassar near the scene of the stabbing.

In the evening in Jerusalem, activists from the anti-Arab Lehava group, along with far-right fans of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer club, marched to the Old City, chanting slogans including “Death to the Arabs” and “Muhammad is dead.”

The Hebrew-language webzine Hamakom reported that throughout the march, activists asked passersby for the time in order to determine, by their accents, whether they were Arabs. In the Mahane Yehuda market and the adjacent Nahlaot neighborhood, the report said, protesters chased after Arabs. Later, they assaulted TV crews in downtown Jerusalem and the Old City.