A small but loud demonstration took place today outside the National Headquarters of the Israel Police in Jerusalem’s Ammunition Hill, close to the site of last week’s deadly terrorist attack. Activists from the Im Tirzu organization were joined by ordinary Jerusalemites and Jerusalem university students in calling for police to crack down on ongoing Arab violence in the capital.
Three-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun and 21-year-old Karen Jemima Mosquera were murdered by a Palestinian terrorist who plowed his car into a crowd of Israeli pedestrians at a Jerusalem Light Rail station.
The protesters, equipped with whistles and drums, were seeking to call attention to the so-called “silent intifada” – a term coined by Jewish residents as well as Israeli media outlets for the Arab violence in Jerusalem, which has raged since early this summer.
The demonstrators said they were calling on all officials, including Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich, to let the police do their jobs and “not tie their hands” for political reasons.
“We live in an absurd reality in which the state ignores the serious problem of terrorism in its capital city, Jerusalem, in the hope that it would (simply) take care of itself,” said Im Tirzu CEO Matan Peleg. “In fact, ignoring the growing terror only intensifies it and enables it.”
“A ‘containment policy’ is not law enforcement and doesn’t show sovereignty,” he added, calling on security forces to comprehensively end the violence.
“Restraint against repeated provocations on the Temple Mount and in east Jerusalem neighborhoods indicates that the police are being unnecessarily hindered from doing their jobs and have restrictions placed on them. That is harmful to society as a whole.
“We must strive to stop terrorism completely. Use the army if necessary and impose economic sanctions on parents of youths throwing stones at security forces.”
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