Video shows Israeli police beating lawmaker
JERUSALEM – A video circulating online showed Israeli police punching a member of parliament and wrestling him to the ground at a protest against planned evictions in east Jerusalem on Friday.
The video showed a scuffle between Israeli police and Ofer Cassif, the only Jewish member of the Joint List, an alliance of Arab parties in Israel’s Knesset. The police can be seen punching him and trying to put him in a headlock before dragging him to the ground. One of the officers can be seen briefly kneeling on his chest.
Cassif was left with a swollen eye, his shirt torn. Ahmad Tibi, a fellow lawmaker from the Joint List, was among those sharing the video of the scuffle on Twitter, calling it a “brutal assault” and a violation of parliamentary immunity.
Israeli police said in a statement that Cassif attacked the policemen, who used “reasonable force” in response and released him as soon as they identified him as a member of parliament. It said Jerusalem’s police chief, Doron Turgeman,
has ordered an investigation into the incident.
Cassif was taking part in a weekly protest in the mostly Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where rights groups said dozens of people are at risk of being evicted after a long court fight with Jewish settler groups. Jewish and Palestinian activists have been holding small weekly protests against the threatened evictions.
Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 war and annexed it in a move recognized by the United States but not most of the international community.