Former Likud MK assaulted during visit to family of slain East Jerusalem man
Temple Mount activist Yehudah Glick hospitalized with light injuries after incident at home of Iyad Halak, an autistic man shot dead by police
A former Likud lawmaker was assaulted Thursday in East Jerusalem while visiting the family of an autistic Palestinian man who was shot dead by police.
Yehudah Glick, a longtime activist for Jewish prayer rights on the Temple Mount, said he wanted to pay his condolences to the family of Iyad Halak, 32, who was killed in Jerusalem’s Old City over the weekend.
Police said Halak appeared to be holding a gun, but he was unarmed and apparently didn’t understood officers’ orders to halt as he passed near the Lion’s Gate. He reportedly fled on foot and hid in a garbage room, where he was gunned down.
“I went in the name of people who want peace, a gesture of goodwill,” Glick told Channel 13 news. “When I entered the home and presented myself to the mourners, around ten people suddenly grabbed me, lifted me up and threw me down a flight and a half of stairs.”
Glick said other people then began hitting and kicking him, before a relative of Halak’s tried to distance the assailants.
רגע תקיפתו של גליק. pic.twitter.com/xC5woWnRFk
— Suleiman Maswadeh סולימאן מסוודה (@SuleimanMas1) June 4, 2020
Glick then went to a fire station and was taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center with light injuries.
Police arrested several suspects following the attack in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi al-Joz, the Ynet news site reported.
“I was rescued for a second time from an assassination attempt. It’s too bad people don’t understand that violence only causes damage to all of us,” Glick said after the incident.
Glick was referring to a 2014 assassination attempt in which he was seriously wounded. He has said the attacker called him the “enemy of Al-Aqsa” before shooting him as he left an event at the Begin Center in Jerusalem promoting Jewish visiting and prayer rights to the Temple Mount.
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The man who helped Glick get away accused him of seeking to create a “provocation” by going to the Halak family home in the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood, which is in the shadow of the Temple Mount.
“I rescued him from there. They don’t like him here,” the man, identified only as Sami, told Channel 13.
Glick served as a Knesset member for the Likud party in 2016-2019.
