Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino [2] called the wave of nationalistically-motivated assaults across Israel [3] a "despicable and criminal" phenomenon.
During an assessment meeting at the Tel Aviv [4] District Police headquarters on Thursday, Danino instructed officers to prioritize the treatment of such attacks, adding that the suspects would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
"This is our response to any expression of racism. This is the way to root out the phenomenon," he said.
A senior police official said the recent attacks on Arab citizens "heighten the tension between the sectors, even if not all the attacks are nationalistically-motivated."
On Wednesday two female teachers, and Arab and a Jew, were attacked [5] by young ultra-Orthodox [6] as they were making their way to a shiva in Jerusalem. The haredim hurled stones and shattered the window of the car the teachers were travelling in. One of the assailants was arrested after he was identified by one of the teachers.
The Jerusalem Magistrates' Court extended the 16-year-old detainee's remand by one day, and he is expected to be released on Friday.
Over the weekend an Arab couple was attacked [7] on one of the shores of Lake Kinneret [8]. Four youngsters from Tiberias were arrested on suspicion of beating the Arab man, Nimer Sharkawi, at dawn Saturday.
Sharkawi was vacationing with his wife in the Kinneret when the suspects approached him. "Friday night we were at the beach and a group of about eight religious teens came in our direction and began shouting 'Arab, get out of the Kinneret,'" Sharkawi told Ynet.
It was later discovered that two of the suspects were involved in an attack on an Arab municipality worker [9] in Tel Aviv last week.
A day after the attack on the municipality worker, a scuffle broke out between a group of Jewish teenage girls and an Arab woman near the Light Rail [10] station in Jerusalem's Kiryat Moshe neighborhood.
Dorit Yorden-Dotan, a witness to the attack, said a religious teenager who passed by the station "suddenly punched the Arab woman in the face. When the woman tried to defend herself, the attacker's friends began to hit her as well and pushed her against the station's wall."
The woman, Hanna Amtir (38), filed a complaint with Israel Police. Three teenage girls were arrested in connection with the attack. They were released on bail and banned from entering Jerusalem [11] for a period of one month. The Jewish girls claimed Amtir attacked them first. Police recommended that the State file indictments against the Jewish girls.
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