Adolescents burn Israeli flag, mezuzahs
Six youngsters between ages of 12 and 15 from coastal town Bat-Yam, south of Tel Aviv, arrested for burning Israeli flag and mezuzah parchments torn from doorposts. The boys, not all Jewish, explain 'We loath anything related to Judaism'
"We loath Jews and anything related to the Jewish faith," six adolescent said, stunning police investigators.
The boys, aged 12 to 15, were arrested Monday night on suspicion of burning an Israeli flag and mezuzah parchments torn from doorposts. They were released on Tuesday morning and placed under house arrest.
The principle of a Bat-Yam school reported to the police on Monday morning that students had burnt an Israeli flag.
Police investigators and detectives from the Central District arrived at the school and located the six students who are all new immigrants but not all Jewish. They admitted to burning the flag.
The boys were handed over to the juvenile department for further investigation where they described their recent acts of vandalism and claimed to be Satanists.
They say they had stolen at least eight mezuzahs from apartments in one street then lit the parchments in one of the school structures. The structure burnt down as a result.
'Intolerable hatred to Judaism'
They also shocked the investigators by telling them that they inflict wounds on their friends, steal, and destroy public property.
In one case, after a brawl over a girl they spread feces on the front door of her house. They had taken over an abandoned house and turned it into their headquarters.
Head of the investigation unit, Chief Superintendent Meir Cohen, told ynet: "We are talking about troublers of Israel. They hate anything related to the Jewish faith. We are trying to find all of the places they have vandalized.
Most of them are not Jewish and some are from broken homes; they have developed an intolerable hatred to anything related to the Jewish faith and to Israel."
The boys were arrested while Chief Superintendent Cohen was at a meeting with one of the Knesset committees.
The committee requested that the police "be gentle with the boys in the hope that they might eventually return to society." C
hief Superintendent Cohen told the MKs about the incident and explained that he would act with all severity. The boys now have criminal records against them and the case was handed over to the welfare authorities.
