Israel’s Channel 2 reports that a young man named Elazar Aharoni and a group of his fellow students at an Ashdod yeshiva were attacked by local workers at the Mount Hermon vacation site, and in the mass brawl that ensued several members of the group were injured.
In the afternoon, prior to the closing of the Mount Hermon site, the group of yeshiva students were walking down to their waiting bus. Looking for a shortcut, one of the students asked an employee for permission to sidestep an iron fences – which prompted a debate.
“If it was anyone else, the worker, who spoke Arabic, would have approved,” Elazar told Channel 2. “But when we were walking down, we felt it was going to be an unpleasant situation, and in the end we felt that our own flesh.”
At this point began what Elazar calls a brutal lynching. “A bunch of guys arrived from the site, jumped on us and started to beat us up,” he recalls. “I tried to escape but could not. At least seven employees attacked just me.”
Shlomi, a friend of Elazar’s who witnessed the attack, said: “Before my eyes they dropped him down and kicked him in the back and smacked him forcefully in the face.”
In addition to his bodily injuries, Elazar is having a hard time recovering from the emotional trauma. “I suffer from nightmares, and can’t fall asleep,” he says. “I’m done with the Hermon. Anyone who was there with mwe will never go near it ever again.”
Israeli Police response was: “An investigation has been launched by the Golan police station, but so far no suspects have been picked up.”
The Hermon site’s response was: “The Hermon site does not engage in law enforcement; any incident of violence, whether by a visitor or an employee is immediately reported to the police and is under its jurisdiction.”