Plainclothes policemen broke into homes in Gilad Farm and Yeshivat Shiru LaMelekh in Samaria during the night and arrested five men and one minor – because an Arab complained that he was beaten up a month ago. Yehuda Shimon, spokesman for the Gilad Farm near Yitzhar, who also serves as a lawyer on behalf of the Honenu Civil Rights organization, told Israel National News : “Around 4:00 this morning, nearly 100 Yassam, shabak and magav men [special unit police, Israel Security Agency agents, and Border Guard policemen] broke into homes and the yeshiva caravans, and arrested three married men and three yeshiva boys, including one minor. They pulled them out of their beds in the middle of the night, while waking up everyone else around them as well and asking for identification. One person tried to film what was going on – and a plainclothes agent broke his camera. This is clearly illegal, but we cannot identify who did it… “The police did not, as the law requires, send them advance summons for questioning; only when they got to the police station were they informed that an Arab had complained that he was beaten up near Havat Gilad five weeks ago… The law states that they must send advance summons, unless there are special grounds to suspect that the investigation will be marred; it is clear that the police take advantage of the law in order to persecute us. “They all denied any connection with the incident, and protested the fact that their arrests were carried out in such a brutal manner, with no advance warning, for an incident of this nature from five weeks ago… I understand that most of them are now being released, while one of them may be taken to court and then released.” Most notably, Shimon said, “when the police originally asked for a warrant for their arrest, Judge Nava Bechor of the Magistrates Court turned them down. This is a very rare occurrence, and shows the weakness of the case against them. Only when the police then went to a higher court did they receive the warrants… This is just another very grave incident that is part of the known strategy of the Jewish Department of the ISA and Assistant State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan’s special Judea/Samaria law enforcement team to come down hard on the Jewish residents.” In a Knesset committee session last month, MK Ze’ev Elkin (Likud) called for the disbanding of Nitzan’s team. Members of the committee said afterwards that Nitzan admitted that his team is politically biased against the Jews in Judea and Samaria. Yehuda Shimon continued: “We feel as if we’re living in some kind of movie, with no basis in normal reality. We have had houses burnt down – two on Rosh HaShanah – and horses stolen, two women were stoned as they were walking here, a car was burnt – and all our complaints to the police are dismissed without any investigation. In the case of the houses, three Arabs were arrested and released, and that was the end of it. Yet here, on a five-week old charge by one man, they go to to this extreme to investigate us. There is clearly a policy from somewhere in the higher echelons to persecute the Jews of this area.”
