Jewish suspect said arrested for alleged racist attack against Arab man in Jerusalem
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Hashim Sheikh
- . June 18, 2023
- . Update: June 19, 2023 5:25 pm
In the volatile Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, a victim was allegedly struck with a metal bar, leading to a cerebral hemorrhage.
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A Jewish suspect from Jerusalem was detained on Friday in connection with a racially charged alleged assault on an Arab man two months prior.
According to reports in Hebrew media, the alleged assault was committed by the suspect, a 21-year-old citizen of the capital, in the volatile East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
The victim, an East Jerusalem resident, was seated next to a Jewish woman when the attack on April 15 occurred. When the suspect and his companion arrived on the scene, they hit the victim with a metal bar.
A Jewish suspect from Jerusalem was detained on Friday in connection with a racially charged alleged assault on an Arab man two months prior.
According to reports in Hebrew media, the alleged assault was committed by the suspect, a 21-year-old citizen of the capital, in the volatile East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
The victim, an East Jerusalem resident, was seated next to a Jewish woman when the attack on April 15 occurred. When the suspect and his companion arrived on the scene, they hit the victim with a metal bar.
A Tale of Two Cities, Into the Land
After the attack, the victim went home, but a few hours later, his condition got worse, so he was taken to the hospital, where he was discovered to have suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.
For about a week, he was put on a respirator while under anesthesia.
After the attack, police arrived on the scene, launched an investigation, and issued an arrest warrant for the suspect, who was able to flee the country right away.
He arrived back in Israel on Friday morning and was detained upon arrival at Ben Gurion International Airport, according to reports in Hebrew media.
He was held in custody for five days by a court. Police are looking into the attack as an attempted murder with racial overtones.
The initial assault or the arrest was not proactively reported by the police, and details of the case were only made public in response to a request from the Ynet news website.
In response, a police spokesperson told Ynet that not all of the numerous cases that they handle every day end up being reported.
In recent years, the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem has grown to be one of the most tense.
In decades-long legal disputes that served as one of the impetuses for an 11-day war between Israel and the Hamas terror organization in the Gaza Strip in 2021, Jewish nationalists sought to evict Palestinian residents.
In a different incident last month, the Shin Bet security agency questioned an IDF soldier about his alleged involvement in a suspected racially motivated attack on two Arab minors in Hadera.
The Shin Bet got involved in the investigation because it was thought that the attack had racial or nationalist undertones.
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Initial investigations indicate that the soldier and other suspects chased after the two Arab children, assaulted them, and took them to the hospital.
