Arab youth attacked in Jerusalem released from hospital

‘I intend to go on with my life as usual,’ says Jamal Julani, who says he remembers nothing of the incident; Knesset speaker condemns assault as ‘microcosm’ of national problem

Seventeen-year-old Jamal Julani, the Arab youth brutally beaten by a gang of Jewish teenagers in Jerusalem last week, was released from the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital on Thursday.

“I still don’t recall anything of the event and I can’t understand what everyone is talking about,” Julani said. “All I remember is that I went out to buy clothes for the holiday and woke up in the hospital. I’m glad I’m in good health now.”

Julani added that he was not afraid to go to downtown Jerusalem.

“I intend to go on with my life as usual,” he said. “I have never done any harm to anyone.”

Earlier Thursday, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud) visited Julani in the hospital and said the attack in the heart of Jerusalem was symptomatic of a larger national issue.

“I came here to apologize,” Rivlin told Julani and his parents, who hail from East Jerusalem. “We believed that incidents like this were on the fringes, but that is not the case.”

Rivlin called the occurrence, in which a group of Arabs were assaulted by around 15 Jewish teenagers in the heart of Jerusalem while dozens of bystanders looked on, a “microcosm of a national problem that could endanger Israeli democracy.”

Officials in Israel and abroad condemned the attack, which was described by Jerusalem police as an unprovoked, “extremely severe crime” that had been instigated solely because the victims were Arabs.