Police: Arab teen in Jerusalem attacked by haredim

Two haredim attacked a 16- year-old Arab resident of Jerusalem’s Beit Hanina neighborhood on Monday evening, leaving the youth with moderate head injuries requiring hospitalization, police said.

“T.” was riding his bicycle with a friend on Haim Bar Lev Street near the National Police Headquarters when the two were accosted by haredim around 9 p.m. His friend fled the scene while the two haredim pummeled T., hitting him multiple times in the head and giving him a black eye, police said.

From his hospital bed on Tuesday in Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem, T. said the two friends were speaking Arabic when the haredim attacked them out of nowhere.

A woman driving by saw T. sprawled on the ground and called an ambulance. Police immediately began searching the area for the ultra-Orthodox suspects but were unable to locate them.

Magen David Adom paramedics evacuated T. in moderate condition. He was set to be released on Tuesday, but after experiencing dizziness will be kept under observation for at least one more day.

This is the third such incident in the past year.

In the most publicized case this past August in downtown Jerusalem’s Zion Square, a mob of at least 30 Jewish teenagers savagely beat 17-year-old Jamal Julani until he was unconscious. Julani recovered after paramedics fought for 10 minutes to restore his pulse, and 10 Jewish teenagers were indicted in connection with the incident.

A few weeks later, a group of Jewish teenagers attacked a 28-year-old Arab who was bringing a coworker home from the bar in the Katamon Tet neighborhood.

“I am angry,” T.’s mother said at his bedside. “He didn’t talk to anyone or go up to anyone, how could something like this happen?”

“This is not good for the Jews or for the Arabs,” she added.

Police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said police are still interviewing witnesses and the victim in order to find the perpetrators.