Terror in Bnei Akiva, Lod

Yesterday before 23:00, Lod burst into the news again when Arabs burst into a Bnei Akiva clubhouse and attacked Jewish youth.. Honenu, the organization that is representing the injured Jewish youth, released the first notification of the incident. Ben Gvir did not disappoint and was one of the first politicians, it appears, to have reacted to it publicly.

This is a developing story. See updates at the end of the article.

Honenu reports that a group of Arab hooligans attacked the kids with rocks, injuring two, one in the head.

Honenu expresses amazement that in the center of the country, kids in a clubhouse can be attacked and injured and the attackers remain at large. They request that the police put them behind bars immediately.

I would like to say that I have no doubt they will be caught and arrested. As of this first writing, I was not aware of any perpetrators having been apprehended. Given our experience in Israel, had one of the Jewish kids injured an Arab in self-defence, we might have seen an arrest of the Jew.

The problem is not so much with the police. The problem is the legal system that seems to release terrorists, or not arrest them in the first place, and hold Jews who are defending Jews, such as.those who came to Lod and Ramla in May 2021 to support Jews undergoing constant attack.

A more recent example (of a Jew defending himself being arrested while the Arab attackers are not) involves the arrest in July of the Jewish man who defended himself and the group of young people who were out in a field near Ariel for an educational activity. According to Honenu, dozens of Arabs attacked the group with rocks and also had clubs and axes in their hands. They closed in on the group of children. The 44-year-old man accompanying the group was the only adult present and, in self-defense and defense of the youths, he ended up stabbing and killing one of the Palestinian Arabs. He was arrested for this. Finally, the court accepted his version and the case was closed.

What makes it difficult to understand about the arrest in the first place was the fact that the security force that answered the call for help had to fire their guns in order to get the Arabs away from the Jews. We are not told if these Arabs were taken in for questioning along with the Jewish hero who kept them from harming the youth. (Of course another question is why there was only one adult with the group and why he apparently did not have a gun, but that is beyond the scope of this article.)

Back to Lod: At 23:00 last night, in response to the Lod Bnei Akiva attack, the spokesman for MK Itamar Ben Gvir (Otzma Yehudit) released a statement on behalf of the MK:

With the help of God, we will establish a fully right-wing government and correct the failures of the terrible government that gave support to terror in their acquiesence and lack of response.

Now, if Ben Gvir had control over the issue, I have no doubt that we would see a more determined approach to responding to acts of terror on both sides of the Green Line and in preventing the next one. However, it would have been more instructive were Ben Gvir to give examples of how governments before this last one acted in a way he considers apt.

Now I am just waiting to see how the rest of the candidates for the upcoming elections will make hay with this incident instead of saying that all who love Israel must get together and figure out TOGETHER how to tackle the problem of terrorism.

UPDATE: It appears that there were Jews in the group that attacked the group in the Bnei Akiva clubhouse. Here is a description of the events as provided by residents of Lod, paraphrased by me: While madrichim (group leaders) of the Bnei Akiva youth group were having a meeting before opening the new year’s activities, there was a gang of about 15 Arabs, with Jews among them, banging the entrance door and making a lot of noise outside. Two of the madrichim went out to tell them to stop and they were pushed and beaten. When the madrichim tried to push them away, some started throwing rocks, injuring one madrich on the head. The attackers also used sticks and a broom. One of the attackers held a lit lighter near the thoat of one of the madrichim but nothing happened to him. The police came and stopped the attack.

There were, in all, two injuries, the light injury to the head that was treated at hospital and another injury treated at the site of the attack. The two wounded filed a police complaint and, according to Israel National News (Hebrew), one member of the gang was apprehended so far.

Feature Image Credit: Honenu