A court decided Thursday that the Israel Police will pay Hevron-based nationalist activist Elisheva Federman 85,000 shekels (nearly $22,000) as compensation for damages it caused her and her family during the demolition of their home in Kiryat Arba in October 2008.
The Federman’s home and farm were destroyed in a 1:30 a.m. raid. Noam was not there at the time, because he had been thrown into a police van just minutes before and taken to the Gush Etzion police station; he was not permitted to return home until nearly 24 hours later.
The brutal eviction was documented on video:
The midnight destruction happened as follows, as described by Hevron spokesman David Wilder:
“The troops broke the home’s windows and climbed in through them. They quickly made their way to the children’s bedrooms where they shook awake the kids, dragged them from their beds, beating some of them, and forcefully expelling them from their home, still in pajamas. Some of the kids went via the door; others out the window… Once everyone was out, the bulldozer started plowing down the houses and other structures on the property. It didn’t take too much time, as the families were not allowed to remove any of their belongings. Down came the houses, on top of everything that was inside.”
A month afterwards, Judge Moshe Drori of the Jerusalem District Court castigated the State and police for the destruction. The police had asked that Federman be banned from the area – a request that Judge Drori rejected out of hand, saying it was totally unjustified and in violation of international conventions.
Elisheva Federman sued the IDF, police and Border Guard for damages, both material and psychological, to her and her children. The requested amount of damages: 432,339 shekels ($113,773).
The complaint explained that the security forces injured the family members physically and psychologically, destroyed their property, and stole jewelry and money – totally without proportion to the objective for which they had arrived.
It was similarly noted that the demolition order against the house had been issued ten years earlier, and that they were given five minutes’ warning, in the middle of the night, to get out.