The bizarre saga of the minor from Yitzhar continues, this time with the police harassing the young boy’s elderly grandparents in Petach Tikva as well as others who helped the boy comply with the IDF’s administrative expulsion order, according to the Honenu legal aid society.
For reasons unknown, the IDF gave an administrative distancing order to a 15-year-old minor from Yitzhar, requiring that he leave his parents’ home and all of Judea and Samaria. They claim he is a danger to the state, but there’s been no trial, no evidence, and they only arrested the boy for not leaving his parents’ home as ordered and not for any criminal actions they imagine he’s done.
The family has been trying to fight the secretive order. The other week the police arrested the boy at 3 AM in his parents’ home and tried to send him to some unknown farm in the south of the country, apparently for reeducation.
The family fought it.
In part because the police couldn’t even provide basic details on the facility and they didn’t follow procedures and bring in child welfare services, the court decided to free the boy to return home. The court strongly criticized the police for their actions.
But the police immediately appealed to a different judge who threw the boy back in jail over Shabbat.
After Shabbat the first court released the boy again, but he could not return to Judea and Samaria, so he has been going to different homes each night to sleep, to comply with the anti-democratic distancing order.
The Petach Tikva Magistrate’s court is expected to make an interim decision on Tuesday, and until then, the expelled youth has been living part of the time with his grandparents, despite their protests to the court that it would be too difficult for them to take him in because of the police expectations from them.
And the police are making sure that it is very difficult on the grandparents.
The police decided to visit and harass the grandparents in the middle of the night, despite promising the court it wouldn’t do that.
This week the police began loudly banging on the grandparents’ door at 4 AM, screaming at the couple, demanding the elderly couple immediately open up the door so they could check if the minor was sleeping there.
When the elderly couple asked the police how they can show up at that hour and act that way, one policeman answered they can show up whenever they want.
Nor is this a one-time occurrence by the police.
At a different home the boy had stayed at previously in Givatayim, the police showed up at 11 PM with their walkie-talkies on at full volume. They began ringing the intercom of different neighbors, despite the family’s name being clearly posted on the intercom, and worse, despite knowing the boy wasn’t even there anymore, as he had informed the police he was sleeping at a different address that night.
The host family said the police woke up the entire street with their actions.
The boy’s former host asked, “Why are the police punishing them?” They were helping the family comply with the judge’s order.
Unfortunately, similar stories of police abuse are not unknown in Israel.
The family continues to protest, and other youths have begun protesting in front of the home of Central Command chief Ron Numa who signed the bizarre IDF expulsion order of the young boy from his home.