A group of young Jews were attacked by Arab hooligans on Tuesday before the holiday of Shavuot in Jerusalem, right near the Dung Gate just to the south of the Old City. The youths were on their way to the Kotel (Western Wall).

One of the youths suffered a broken skull in the incident, requiring heavy medical treatment and being evacuated to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital for continued treatment. Video footage of the shocking attack can be seen here:

According to the youths, they were on their way to the Kotel when one of them stopped by the Dung Gate, the closest gate to the Kotel, to urinate by the side of the road. The group continued, when suddenly they realized a roughly 35-year-old Arab resident was attacking their friend who had stopped.

The youths rushed to help their companion, only to find additional Arab hooligans arriving on the scene, several of them armed with baseball bats. At that point one of the Arab attackers struck one of the Jewish youths in the head, as caught on film, severely injuring him.

The youth was evacuated to the hospital with a break in his skull and internal bleeding as a result of the heavy blow. He later recalled that the Arab man started shouting at him, claiming that they were on his property, and began strangling him.

The Arab attacker was arrested by police, and had his detention extended.

“If roles were reversed, it would be in all the headlines”

Attorney Itamar Ben-Gvir, who represents one of the attacked Jewish youth for the Honenu legal aid organization, responded to the events, noting how things would have been different if the Jews had been the attackers instead.

“If this had occurred in the opposite manner, the entire agenda in Israel would have been busy only on this issue,” argued Ben-Gvir. “The media would have spread on thick the red titles, the police would be conducting arrests, and (Justice Minister) Tzipi Livni and (President) Shimon Peres and even the prime minister would have been condemning it.”

“But when a Jew takes a bat to the head, the hypocrisy celebrates and the media is silent. We demand that the police enforce justice, submit an indictment and ask for the attacker to be arrested until the end of legal proceedings,” said Ben-Gvir.

Livni, Peres and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu have all been outspoken in their condemnation of “price tag” vandalism attacks by Jews against Arab-owned property.

Aside from physical attacks of the nature of this latest case, numerous incidents of Arab “price tagging”, including on the graves of Tannaic scholars in the north and swastikas scrawled on Israeli flags in the heart of Jerusalem, have received notably less, if any, media attention than similar incidents committed by suspected Jewish extremists.