The haredim stoned several Arab cars before striking the passenger-side window of the car the woman was in, resulting in abrasions from the shattered glass.
Above: file photo from 2011
The Jerusalem Post has an update on Arutz Sheva's earlier report on haredim arrested for stoning Arab cars in Jerusalem, injuring an Arab woman. Here's an excerpt that teaches, I think, an important lesson about Israeli law enforcement:
Two ultra-orthodox men were arrested on Saturday afternoon after lightly wounding a Palestinian woman while throwing rocks at Arab vehicles exiting Highway 1, near the Old City’s Damascus Gate, police said on Sunday.
Several Arab cars were pelted by rocks before striking the passenger-side window of the car the woman was in, resulting in abrasions from the shattered glass, Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
After the car the woman was travelling in pulled over, a near riot broke out when the haredi assailants and a group of Arab locals threw rocks at each other.
“Police responded quickly and arrested the two haredim for throwing rocks at the vehicles and wounding the woman,” said Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld. “An Arab man was also arrested for throwing rocks back at the suspects.” …
1. Were there only two haredim throwing stones at Arab cars? Probably not. But only haredim arrested are the ones who directly injured the Arab woman.
2. If these had been Arabs stoning Jewish cars (which happens all to frequently), it is extremely unlikely any of the Jews who responded by throwing stones at the Arab stone throwers would have been arrested. At the same time, it is also likely more than two Arabs would have been arrested.
The lesson to be learned from this is that Israeli Arabs and Palestinians who claim that Israeli law enforcement disproportionately targets them while that same Israeli law enforcement goes exceedingly easy on Jews involved in racist violence have, as rabbis tend to say, have what to rely on. This incident is just one more in a long line of evidence supporting these Israeli-Arab and Palestinian claims.
Palestinian and Israeli-Arab stone throwers should be arrested. So should Jewish stone throwers. Israel needs to have zero tolerance for racist or nationalist violence of any kind, and that zero tolerance needs to be truly colorblind.
Police tend to find crime where they look for it and miss a lot of crime where they don't. It's a form of selection bias that plagued Jews from Middle Eastern countries before it plagued Jews from Ethiopia, and its the selection bias that has plagued Israeli-Arabs and Palestinians almost from day one.
And what this selection bias and its concomitant appearance of white gloves treatment of criminals who are lighter skinned and European Jewish does is create generations of darker skinned Jews and Arabs who either grow to hate authority and the elite because of it, or have that already existing hate reinforced and deepened. And ultimately, that serves no one well.
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