Police apologize for roughing up Palestinian with Down syndrome at Jerusalem protest
Jerusalem officer tells family of Muhammad Aljoni he regrets incident, cops must take care of those with special needs; father says son did not know what was happening at rally
Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.
Police apologized on Tuesday to the family of a Palestinian man with Down syndrome after officers treated him roughly at a protest the day before.
On Monday, at a demonstration in the flashpoint Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, Border Police officers were filmed grappling with the man, who was visibly distressed and shouting.
A video of the incident circulated online, prompting outrage from Arab Israeli lawmakers. Joint List Knesset member Ahmad Tibi shared the video and identified the young man as Muhammad Aljoni.
The police have said they attempted to remove the man after he called for harming Jews. They said he was handed over to a relative who took him away, and that he was not detained due to his condition.
On Tuesday, a top Jerusalem police officer met with the young man’s family to apologize, but also placed some blame on the protesters.
“I regret the incident. Both we as police, and you as family members, must act to prevent such incidents from occurring again in the future. Calls for incitement to hurt Jews, in general, can lead to violence and disorder and we will not allow it,” said police commander Sami Marciano. “Leave children and people with special needs out of conflicts and protests.”
“On the other hand, we as police have a duty to take care of people with special needs and to show particular understanding when we meet them,” he said.
מה יש למשטרת ירושלים נגד נערים פלסטינים בעלי צרכים מיוחדים? והפעם הנער מוחמד עג׳לוני עם תסמונת דאון.@omerbarlev . תתבישו ! pic.twitter.com/jHy0BjVgCh
— Ahmad Tibi (@Ahmad_tibi) February 21, 2022
Ajloni’s father told Channel 13 on Tuesday that the young man had been merely passing by the protest when he was drawn in unintentionally.
“Whatever he heard the protesters say, he said it too. He doesn’t know the difference between Arabs and Jews. He’s 24 years old, but he’s like a 7 year old. Last night he couldn’t sleep, he was so scared,” Aljoni’s father said.
He said to police, “Think about if it was your son.”
However, a protest participant told Ynet on Monday that Aljoni was a regular at the rallies.
“We know the young man from all the demonstrations and events and respect him because of his condition. There was chaos there, all kind of shouting, he took part and shouted like everyone else. Then we saw police wanted to get to him specifically and make him be quiet. They hit him despite his condition,” she said.
Tibi told Channel 12 on Tuesday that police could not have been oblivious to the man’s condition.
“Despite this, despite the shouts of people nearby to leave him alone… they continued to push, to try to hold him. He was very frightened,” he said.
Tibi said Aljoni was a classmate of Iyad Halak, an autistic man who was chased down and shot dead by police in Jerusalem in 2020 after they mistook a phone in his hands for a gun.
Tibi doubted that Aljoni was inciting violence, and said it was difficult to understand his speech. “Even if he did say such things, they could see who the person was, and they treated him brutally and violently anyway,” Tibi said.
Joint List lawmaker Ayman Odeh said Aljoni’s condition “did not stop police from attacking him.”
“Muhammad and the Aljoni family and all residents of Sheikh Jarrah are in the face of the violent occupation,” Odeh said. He later corrected his post to say Aljoni was a resident of the city, but not of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
Sheikh Jarrah has become a powder keg and a symbol of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as Jewish nationalists have attempted to evict Arab residents there in a decades-long dispute over the ownership of homes.
Tensions in the neighborhood were one factor in last year’s war between Israel and the Hamas terror group, and protests have continued since. Police have also clashed with right-wing Israelis in the neighborhood.
A Jerusalem court on Tuesday indefinitely postponed the eviction of a Palestinian family from a home in the neighborhood, potentially defusing a case that had been a major contributor to tensions in the area.
Police also came under fire on Tuesday for beating soccer fans at a game in Haifa the day before, the latest in a series of similar incidents at sports events.
The Times of Israel Community.