Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin warned that racist violence is a strategic threat,
while visiting Jamal Julani, the victim of last week’s beating in downtown
Jerusalem, on Thursday at the Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s
Ein Kerem.
“It is hard to see you lying in the hospital because of an
unimaginable, outrageous act,” Rivlin told Julani, who was released from the
hospital Thursday evening. “I came here in the name of the State of Israel, in
order to apologize and express anger over what happened.”
Eight teenagers
were arrested this week for beating Julani almost to death just after midnight
in Zion Square last Thursday. Eyewitnesses claimed that dozens of Jewish youth
were involved in the attack, surrounding Julani, beating him and continuing to
kick him, even after he fell unconscious to the ground.
Rivlin called for
schools to discuss the attack in the beginning of the school year.
“We
have reached the point where we are not educating our children that all of us,
Jews and Arabs, live together,” he said. “Events like this could happen again.
We are in an environment in which conflict creates the impression that violence
is allowed, as opposed to argument and use of democratic tools.”
The
Knesset speaker said that Likud ideological forbearer Ze’ev Jabotinsky would be
appalled that some of the attackers wore shirts with the symbol of Betar, the
youth movement he founded and the name of one of Jerusalem’s soccer
teams.
“I came here today to say: The writing has been on the wall for a
long time, and the letters are on fire and can burn us all,” Rivlin
added.
“We, the government, the Knesset, schools and everyone who sees
himself as a leader, are responsible for this.”