Civil Rights Group: Why No Response to Distancing Orders?

Hillel Fendel
A7 News

Three residents of Samaria have been distanced from their homes for six months, with no official justification. Reaction: silence. The three are Akiva HaCohen, 25, Ariel Groner, 24 and Eliav Eliyahu, 19, all residents of the Samaria (Shomron) town of Yitzhar. The last-named was married last year, while the other two each have four children -- Groner has a 10-day old baby son, and HaCohen’s wife is in her ninth month of pregnancy.

Shmuel Medad, head of the Honenu Civil Rights Organization, has condemned the lack of a response even from the pro-Land of Israel sector, and says that the silence in the face of these “unconscionable” orders cannot be justified.

Medad is astonished at the orders: “To throw someone out of his home with no explanation whatsoever? Not to advance any reason or evidence? In the past, such a thing was never done against Jews in the Land of Israel, but only against terrorists. Now, however, this phenomenon is becoming commonplace – and yet everyone stands by silently.”

The orders banning the three residents from all of Judea and Samaria are special “administrative detention” orders that the army can issue to any resident of the region at any time. No evidence or justification for the orders need be provided.

The orders allow three days for an appeal. If the recipient of such an order does not leave his home within one week, he faces imprisonment.

"It's not connected to any olive harvest or the like," said Daniella Weiss, a veteran Land of Israel Faithful Movement leader, denying allegations that the three are suspected of fomenting violence against Arab olive growers. "It has to do with the eviction of outposts and to [Defense Minister E Barak who wants to destroy them."

Medad agrees: “How can you distance Jews for six months because of an olive harvest, when the entire harvest doesn’t take more than three months? It’s clear that it signals they [the authoritie are planning another expulsion or eviction, as they have done in the past.”

“It is very grave that our public barely reacts when three of our members are punished in this way, without evidence and without explanation. We must rise up against this phenomenon. Our silence is a very big weakness on our part, and it is very grave.”

Medad said that Likud MK Ze’ev Elkin, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee’s subcommittee on Judea and Samaria, has been consulted on the matter, “and he very much wants to help. We will meet with him this afternoon.”

The Honenu organization provides aid for the "indirect victims" of the continued Arab terrorist war and struggle against Israel - those who have become entangled in an expensive and torturous web of legal difficulties after having been forced to respond in real-time to genuine threats on their own or on others' lives, or for standing up for Jewish rights to the Land of Israel.