Photo Credit: Screen shot
"Bring them down, kill them."

National Union MK Michael Ben Ari sent an urgent letter to Internal Security Minister Yizhak Aharonivich, following the publication of pictures showing a police Special Patrol Force officer ordering his subordinates to kill a group of youths who had climbed a rooftop in Ramat Migron during its evacuation earlier this week, and were refusing to be transferred.

During the segment, the cops repeat threats like: “You are dead!” as the boys are trying to grab their ladder to prevent them from climbing up to the rooftop. The death threats repeat time and again. It’s clear that the phrases are being used more to mean severe bodily harm than actual death, but the abundant use of death and killing as threats is quite jarring, especially when they are expressed at teenagers.

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MK Ben Ari wrote: “I’m writing you in regard to severe images that reached my office which document the removal of youths on Sept. 2, 2012, who refused to be removed. May I point your attention to [the] video in which an officer is heard giving the clear order to his subordinates to bring them down and to kill them.

“Moments later the special force police are seen leaping at the rooftop and the sounds of crying and weeping are heard from the youths, out of camera range.”

According to MK Ben Ari, “An officer who gives a command to kill demonstrators, even if they annoy him very severely, does not belong in Israel’s police force, and I believe you will do well to relieve him of duty and keep him away from contact with civilians even before any legal steps are taken.”

The confrontation segment begins at minute 12:06

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Yori Yanover has been a working journalist since age 17, before he enlisted and worked for Ba'Machane Nachal. Since then he has worked for Israel Shelanu, the US supplement of Yedioth, JCN18.com, USAJewish.com, Lubavitch News Service, Arutz 7 (as DJ on the high seas), and the Grand Street News. He has published Dancing and Crying, a colorful and intimate portrait of the last two years in the life of the late Lubavitch Rebbe, (in Hebrew), and two fun books in English: The Cabalist's Daughter: A Novel of Practical Messianic Redemption, and How Would God REALLY Vote.