Minister demands police be held to account for making maskless girl cry

Housing Minister Yaakov Litzman says Public Security Minister Amir Ohana has agreed to summon the head of police in Jerusalem for clarifications after an incident earlier in the day in which a girl was briefly detained by police for failing to wear a mask and began to cry.

Litzman, who leads the ultra-Orthodox UTJ party, claims in a statement that members of the Haredi community are being targeted, and that the public is justified in being angry, describing the behavior of the police as “harassment.”

“You need to bring the police to account and to promise that we won’t experience behavior like this again in our neighborhoods,” Litzman says he told Ohana.

There is no immediate statement from Ohana, who is in self-imposed quarantine.

The comments come two days after ultra-Orthodox residents of the capital’s Mea Shearim neighborhood rioted and attacked police who asked a woman without a mask to produce identification.

Diaspora minister Omer Yankelevitch says on Twitter that police need to be more sensitive toward young children.

MK Ahmed Tibi [Joint List] joins those accusing the police of having a light fining finger when it comes to minority populations. “Would they do this with a girl from north Tel Aviv. The same age, would the cops do this? No,” he says in the Knesset.