Police investigators descended on the Gush Etzion town of Bat Ayin Tuesday to arrest three brothers, the youngest of whom is 10 years old. The older brothers, aged 17 and 19 years old, said police beat their younger sibling during the arrest. “One investigator choked my brother while the others beat him mercilessly,” said one of the older brothers.

The three brothers were brought to the Gush Etzion police station where the commanding officer delivered a warning talk to youngest brother, who was then released because at the age of 10, he cannot be charged with a crime.

But according to Honenu, a legal aid organization that provides representation in Judea and Samaria the two older brothers remain in custody at this hour, and added that the detainees have not been told why they were taken into custody. A Honenu spokesman said the brothers were “shocked” to learn that police claimed they had thrown stones at the police car, and added that the brothers denied “out of hand” the police claim.

The incident followed a similar one in Bat Ayin yesterday, when a 12-year-old boy was detained after police said he prevented them from entering the community synagogue. He, too, was interrogated and released.

The 17-year-old, who cannot be named because he is a minor, said plainclothes General Security Service (GSS, or Shabak) officers interrogated him and threatened him.

“Two plainclothes guys came into the investigation room. One introduced himself as ‘Dan.’ He started threatening me and said he is watching me 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“He told me that his goal was to put me in jail for the rest of my life, and that he would hurt me and my family. I laughed, and he told me that the day would come when I would be held in a dark cell and that he would laugh at me. When I continued laughing he left the room,” the 17-year-old said.

Parents turn to Children’s Council

In addition to the Bat Ayin detainees, the family of a 16-year-old boy from Jerusalem have asked the Israel National Council for the Child for help in making contact with their son. They say GSS agents detained him six days ago and have taken the rare step of preventing him from meeting with a lawyer.

“Last Wednesday morning our son was walking down Hanivi’im Street in Jerusalem when he was accosted by two men in civilian clothes. They took him to an undisclosed location. From that moment, we haven’t heard from him or seen him, and we have no idea how he is,” the parents said. We understand that the GSS is interrogating our son under terms of a rarely-used legal clause which prohibits him from seeing a lawyer,” the family said in a statement released by Honenu.

If order to make contact with their son, the parents have asked Dr. Yitzhak Kadman, head of the Israel Council for the Child , to press GSS authorities on their behalf to obtain access to the prisoner.

“This is an opportunity for the Council to investigate the repeated violations committed against minors,” said attorney Adi Keidar, who represents the children. “Violations of the law continue unabated, and no one thinks of the long-term effects of extended periods of incarceration of minors in inhumane conditions in GSS lockups.

President of the Israel National Council for the Child, Dr. Yitzhak Kadman, was not immediately available for comment.

ACRI, Feiglin agree: Detentions recall “dark regimes”

MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud Betenu) said Tuesday that the detention of price tag suspects without evidence places israel alongside the world’s “darkest regimes.”

“The witch hunt against the tough price tag phenomenon has led to minors being held on suspicion of vandalism and prevented from seeing lawyers,” said MK Feiglin. “This is a very serious phenomenon  that should make anyone who holds human rights dear.

“Arresting minors (and adults) for suspected vandalism and property damage and withholding their legal rights under the pretext of ‘the rule of law’ places Israel on the same level as some very dark regimes. I am certain that had the vandalism occurred on the other side of the political map the police would not have dared act this way.

Nirit Moskovitch, a spokeswoman for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said her organization has not acted on this case is that so many detainees in Israeli jails are prevented from meeting with legal counsel that ACRI cannot respond to each case individually.

“The reason this case has made headlines is the comparatively rare case that the individuals involved are Jews,” Moskovitch told The Jewish Press.

Moskovitch added that the organization is completely opposed to the practice of preventing prisoners from legal counsel, especially when the detainees are minors.  She also said that ACRI has spoken out strongly against designating Price Tag attacks,  offensive as they may be, as “terror” attacks.

“We will continue to call for a strong battle against these despicable hate crimes, which require determination and financial resources on the part of police. These measures need not stand in distinction to respect for the rights of suspects and those interrogated.

“Labelling price taggers as a ‘terror group’ could have serious consequences for the human rights of individuals suspected of these crimes,” Moskovitch said.

Settlers in Judea, Samaria and the Binyamin region are getting ready for government forces intent on more demolitions. This time a synagogue and mikvah are among the targets.

Leaders of the Residents’ Council of Judea and Samaria (Yesha Council) have been negotiating for six months with Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and other officials over the looming destruction. The problem stems from a High Court of Justice order forcing the state to demolish 28 buildings said not to be constructed according to code or built “on private Palestinian land.”

Similar orders are rarely issued, let alone carried out against the thousands of illegally-constructed Bedouin and Arab structures dotting the Israeli landscape within the 1949 Armstice lines (known as the “pre-1967 lines,) let alone the hundreds of thousands carpeting the hillsides in those in the disputed territory of Area C.

All but three of the targeted Jewish structures have since been rebuilt to meet the demands of the state.

But authorities have been ordered to demolish those last three that have yet to meet the regulations. They include a synagogue and a mikvah and are to be destroyed by May 18, this Friday, Ynet reported Wednesday. Since the IDF allegedly does not carry out expulsions on Shabbat, it is expected the evictions will begin on Thursday.

It is expected that orders declaring the surrounding area a “closed military zone” will be issued within the next 24-48 hours in order to prevent interference from protesters.

Hundreds of IDF soldiers, Border Guard personnel and police officers are preparing for the operation along with the Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (CoGAT). Generally roadblocks leading into the affected areas are placed to prevent others from coming to the aid of those being evicted.

A former New York City police officer allegedly suffering from “mental illness” was arrested over the weekend for spray painting anti-Semitic graffiti in numerous locations throughout Brooklyn’s Chassidic neighborhood of Boro Park.

Michael Setiawan left the force in 2007 after two years of service, allegedly due to depression, according to a police source quoted by the New York Daily News. His younger brother, also a police officer, later committed suicide (in 2011), police added. Neighbors living near the family home told the newspaper that Setiawan “has got problems” but said “he’s a good guy.”

Currently age 36, the suspect is accused of having spray-painted 15 cars, three buildings, and a girls’ school with hate-filled words and epithets aimed at Jews.

The words “F — you Jew” and “Jew cheap s—-“ were sprayed on to the walls of the Bnos Zion Bobov School on 14th Avenue. Those phrases along with other words and swastikas were also sprayed elsewhere in the neighborhood.

The vandalism created havoc in Boro Park. Residents were terrorized; many are elderly Holocaust survivors with memories of how their nightmares in eastern Europe started — those nightmares began with similar epithets and words scrawled by the Nazis on the buildings around their homes decades ago.

Surveillance cameras caught sight of a bald man wielding a spray paint can on Saturday night in the graffiti attack who appeared to be Setiawan, according to a report published by the newspaper. He was arrested Sunday after detectives reviewed the footage and checked the registration of the car seen in the tape, a source said.

The former police officer was charged with 19 counts each of criminal mischief as a hate crime, and aggravated harassment as a hate crime in connection with the vandalism.

Local Jewish community leaders expressed shock that the perpetrator was a former police officer, but praised detectives for the quick arrest.

Just outside the gates of the Old City of Jerusalem, a new yeshiva sponsored by the Ateret Cohanim organization is set to open by the end of the month.

It will be the first all-mechina pre-army Torah Learning Center to be established in Jerusalem.

‘Otzmat Yerushalayim,’ the first such venture on Sultan Suleiman Street, is housed in the Israel Post Office and Bezeq building. In the same building one can also find offices for the Border Police and the national Israel Police.

The building is located at the main intersection near the Flowers Gate of the Old City, also known as Herod’s Gate, according to the yeshiva’s website.

The yeshiva will be open to some 300 pre-army Jewish students in an area that leftist Jerusalem municipality representative Meir Margalit fears is “a sure recipe for violence. This is a very strategic site and there’s a potential her to cause serious disruptions in civic life in this city,” he told Reuters.

Boys from the pre-army Academy of Otzem in Cholot Chalutza (also known as the Mechina from Atzmona in Gush Katif) are the first group to learn in the yeshiva.

The Otzem Academy will send groups of 30 students each to the yeshiva to learn for 7 to 14-day periods over the coming months, according to the statement posted on the yeshiva website.

Students enrolled in pre-army academies throughout the country will send their students to do the same, sponsored by donors locally and abroad.

Facilities include a Beit Midrash, dining room, kitchen and dormitory which can hold up to 30 students at a time. Attendees will participate in educational tours around the Old City in addition to their studies.

A formal “Chanukat HaBayit” – open house” ceremony – is expected to take place around the date of Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day), the holiday celebrating the reunification of Jerusalem, Israel’s eternal capital.

This year will mark the 47th year since Israeli soldiers took back Jerusalem from its Jordanian occupiers (in the 1967 Six Day War) and the barbed wire cutting the city apart was finally erased from the landscape.  Israel’s restoration and formal annexation of the remainder of the capital has not been recognized by the United States and by the international community.

At present, some 215,000 Jews live in the eastern part of the capital, which is also home to approximately 280,000 Arabs, most of whom hold Israeli identity cards and enjoy state social benefits, including comprehensive health care.

Approximately 30 Border Police officers continue to live in the quarters of the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva in Yitzhar, in northern Samaria, even though all of the students are away for the annual vacation during the month of Nissan in which Passover falls.

Border Police spokesman Shai Hachimi confirmed for The Jewish Press that the men are staying in the yeshiva dorms, but it is not clear what they are doing there.

They made big headlines three weeks ago by setting up camp at the yeshiva after some of the student allegedly were among a mob of idiots who stormed the tent of IDF soldiers who were guarding Yitzhar from Arab terrorists. The attackers- make that criminals – ransacked the tent and destroyed army and personal property as a reward for the soldier’s serving the country while others are free to learn Torah – or, as in this case, not only no learn Torah but also violate it.

Some teenager from Yitzhar also took out his anger against the government, armed forces and police by puncturing the vehicle of the commander of the IDF Brigade in the area.

The vandalism supposed was “price tag” revenge for the demolition of homes by police. The “crime” of the homeowners was that they built without permits even though some of the houses have been standing for years. But the destruction undoubtedly was justified on the basis of it being carried out in the name of human rights, just as price tag violence is committed in the name of God.

People on the yeshiva have accused the government of “price tag” revenge by sending in the Border Police, many of them non-Jews, to take expel people out of their homes and then tear them down. The invasion of the yeshiva was icing on the cake but not the last word.

Police on Wednesday searched the home of Yeshiva Ode Yosef Chai’s head Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, while he was not home, and confiscated a computer. The rabbi told The Jewish Press he does not know what the police were looking for but speculated the raid may have been connected to the controversial book “Torat HaMelech,” which states rabbinic rulings on when a Jew is allowed to kill a non-Jew.

Liberal non-free thinkers in the office of the attorney general have tried to make a case the past several years against several rabbis for incitement because they endorsed the book.

Regardless of the intentions of the police, the yeshiva remains under the control of the Border Police.

The student’s vacation ends next week, but the police have said no one may enter,

Yeshiva officials have charged the government with trying to shut down the yeshiva. If true, such a measure would only encourage more violence.

Just as the government showed up to take over an empty yeshiva and capture headlines to convince ignorant Israelis that the police have put an end to violence from Yitzhar, it can be expected that the yeshiva  will not open for a day. Maybe even two days, or three, just enough to make a big impression before the Border Police leave.

In the meantime, the Border Police must be bored sitting around all day sipping coffee, preventing non-existent students from committing violence.

If they stay there long enough, at least the Jewish bones, maybe they will learn a bit of Torah.

The family, friends and coworkers of Baruch Mizrahi HY”D, a senior police officer in Israel’s Police Intelligence unit, during the funeral at the military cemetery of Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on April 16, 2014. Hundreds of people attended the funeral.

Baruch Mizrahi was killed by Palestinian Authority terrorists on April 14 near Hebron, while driving with his family to a Passover Seder in Kiryat Arba.

The country is shocked by this attack, by the brazenness of the terrorists, one of whom openly stood on the side of the road, spraying bullets at passing cars.

His wife, Hadas, and one of his sons, Itai, were also injured in the attack. He leaves behind 5 children.

May God avenge his blood.

The Missouri-born suspect charged in a pre-Passover shooting spree that left three dead outside two Kansas Jewish centers is a known white supremacist, media report.

Frazier Glenn Cross (aka Frazier Glenn Miller), 73, was charged with one count of first degree premeditated murder and one count of capital murder in connection with the shootings that took place on Sunday near Kansas City, Kansas.  He had three weapons in his possession when he was taken into custody on Sunday, according to police, after shooting at five people, none of whom he knew.

Of those, 14-year-old Reat Griffin Underwood and his grandfather, family practitioner Dr. William Lewis Corporon, 69, were both Methodists. Reat was heading for an audition for a play to be held at the Jewish community center. Occupational therapist Terri LaManno, 53, a Roman Catholic, was on the way to visit her mother at the assisted living center.

Police investigators say the shooter’s actions were “unquestionably determined” to be a hate crime,” Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass told reporters. While sitting in the back of a police vehicle after his arrest, Cross was seen in a video filmed by CNN affiliate KMBC shouting, “Heil Hitler!”

Those who know Cross told CNN that he has ‘made no secret of his racist views, writing letters to newspapers and inviting people to white supremacist meetings at his home.’

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) watchdog organization reported that Cross was the founder and former ‘Grand Dragon’ of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and the paramilitary White Patriot Party.

Also according to the Center, Cross is a “raging anti-Semite” who has called Jews “swarthy, hairy, bow-legged, beady-eyed parasitic midgets” in posts on online forums advocating the extermination of Jews.

But although he was convicted on weapons charges and for plotting to murder SPLC founder Morris Dees, Cross spent only three years in prison. And he’s been publishing ‘The Aryan Alternative’ tabloid regularly, without interference, since 2005.

(Note the difference in how American ‘justice for all’ is meted out to a convicted would-be assassin such as Cross, and a Jewish spy for the allied nation of Israel, the man named Pollard.)

The abbreviated prison term for Cross came as the result of a plea bargain arranged with federal prosecutors in exchange for testimony against 14 white supremacists in Arkansas at a sedition trial in 1988.

(The plea bargain arranged with federal prosecutors for Pollard was suddenly abrogated at the bench during sentencing without warning, with no explanation and after Pollard had already fulfilled his part of the deal. He was instead sentenced to life in prison on a one charge of passing classified information to a friendly allied nation. The crime carries a maximum penalty of ten years in prison – Pollard is now entering his 29th year.)

Cross appeared in court on Tuesday in a wheelchair wearing an anti-suicide garment to face the charges of murder: the first, for killing a boy and his grandfather outside the Jewish community center. Neither victim was Jewish. As he heard the other accusation for killing a woman visiting her mother at the nearby Jewish assisted living facility, he learned that in this case he had also failed: nor was his third victim a Jew.