Youth arrested on suspicion of assaulting 2 off-duty soldiers
Suspect is one of a group that allegedly beat the pair, and a girl who was with them, whom they mistook for Arabs
Police arrested a 16-year-old on Sunday suspected of attacking three Jewish Israelis on Friday evening after mistakenly thinking they were Arabs.
The youth is allegedly one of a group of people who attacked the three — two off-duty IDF soldiers and a teenage girl – in a public park in the city of Pardes Hannah, Hebrew media reported.
The assailants reportedly knew the 17-year-old girl, and launched the assault after seeing her talking to the two 19-year-old soldiers. They reportedly shouted “You’re Arabs!” while beating the three victims.
The victims were lightly injured and were taken to the Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera.
The father of one of the soldiers expressed his frustration to police. “Soldiers go on vacation and are attacked by criminals just because they look like Arabs. This is shameful.”
“They tried to lynch them. It could have ended in death,” he added.
The father also told police that there were witnesses in the park who saw the assault unfold but did not call police. “And even if they were Arabs, does that justify their being harmed?”
In February, Shlomo Pinto was sentenced to 11 years in prison for stabbing another Jewish man he mistook for an Arab in October 2015, in a bungled revenge attack.