No reason given for our son’s detention, protest parents of ‘Jewish extremist’

The parents of a suspected Jewish terrorist held in Israeli administrative detention said Wednesday that no reason has been provided for their son’s arrest, while his lawyer claimed there was no proof of his involvement in an arson attack at a prominent church in the Galilee.

The 18-year-old Mordechai Mayer was detained for six months without trial on Tuesday for his suspected involvement in the June attack on the Church of the Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes, located on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. He was placed under house arrest earlier this week and has been issued with a restraining order keeping him away from the West Bank and Jerusalem.

“We are residents of the United States, we were born in the United States, we made a good living there and we left everything in order to come here because we love Israel,” his mother, Sarah, told the media at a press conference at their home.

“We raised our children to love nature, health; our children love Israel and we are in shock,” she said. “I want my son to come home.”

His father, Gedaliya, accused the state of using their son as a “scapegoat” after the deadly attacks at a Palestinian home in the West Bank and the Jerusalem gay pride parade, which killed an 18-month-old baby and a 16-year-old girl, respectively.

“Yesterday night there was a knock on the door, they showed us the [detention] order and took him for half a year,” Gedaliya Mayer said. “They didn’t say a word about why, any suspicions, nothing, just that they were taking him to jail. We discovered that Israel they can take an 18-year-old boy to prison for half a year without accusing him of anything. They had to arrest someone and he was the scapegoat.

Yuval Kedar, the lawyer for Mayer, said that, “unlike in other instances,” there was no evidence linking his client to the crime.

“The Shin Bet [security service] feels defeated. It investigated the suspect twice and did not find anything,” said Kedar, who works for Honenu, a legal aid organization that assists Israelis accused of security crimes.

Five people are suspected of carrying out the church arson attack, but thus far only three have been indicted.

Mayer was the first detainee as part of an administrative detention policy, approved by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Tuesday, that allows incarceration without trial for Jewish terror suspects.

Administrative detention is considered a harsh and highly controversial method, but is increasingly used by world governments to combat the threat of terror, when there is not enough evidence against a suspect to justify a criminal trial. Administrative detention is temporary in nature, but may be renewed repeatedly by the defense minister.

Israel has begun to crack down on so-called Jewish extremists after the death of an 18-month-old Palestinian baby in a firebomb attack on his home in the West Bank village of Duma. The baby’s parents and four-year-old brother are all being treated for severe burns in Israeli hospitals.

Two other suspects, Meir Ettinger, the grandson of assassinated Israeli-American far-right activist Meir Kahane, and Eviatar Slonim were also arrested for extremist activity early this week.

Judah Ari Gross and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.