Protestors Demand Justice for Teenager Killed While Fleeing Police

Roughly 200 Jewish demonstrators clashed with Israeli police Monday evening while attempting to force their way into the national police headquarters in Jerusalem.

The demonstrators were protesting the death of 16-year-old Ahuvya Sandak, who had been killed due to alleged police misconduct during a car chase earlier on Monday.

Sandak, a resident of the Judean village of Bat Ayin, was killed when the car he was in overturned while he and four other youths were fleeing from an unmarked police vehicle.

The survivors of the accident reported that the car flipped over when the unmarked police vehicle rammed them from behind.

The police department has reportedly opened an investigation into the conduct of the officers involved in the incident.

Member of Knesset Betzalel Smotrich (Yamina) arrived at the scene of the accident near the Rimonim junction and tried to  inspect the wreckage but was prevented from doing so by security forces, despite his parliamentary immunity.

The lawmaker warned of a potential coverup, saying that the incident “must be fully investigated.”

“The police have clear procedures in this matter and there is grave concern that they have been violated, which led to the tragic outcome,” Smotrich wrote on Twitter.

“From the information that came to me at this moment, the police closed the area and even prevented ZAKA members [paramedics] from dealing with the dead and there is a fear that the findings in the field will be covered up.”

The incident was said to have occurred when police tried to apprehend a group of male Jewish teenagers suspected of throwing stones at Palestinian vehicles.

When the suspects fled, undercover police officers pursued them in what became a high speed chase that resulted in their car being overturned.

Sandak was declared dead at the scene and the other passengers were handcuffed and evacuated to a hospital to treat their injuries.

The fact that authorities took such aggressive measures to keep paramedics and even a lawmaker away from the accident scene has only increased public suspicions that the police were at fault for the young man’s death.

Authorities have labeled Sandak and the others in the car with him as members of the “hilltop youth” organization, despite the fact that no such organization even exists (it’s more of a subculture).

Israeli security forces have a highly problematic history of violating the rights of the activist teenagers they broadly define as “hilltop youth.”

Israeli police targeting these teenagers isn’t new. The counterculture of radicalized teens living organic Jewish lives off the grid and challenging the State of Israel’s authority in the West Bank is often presented to the public as an extremist sector of society drifting too far from the values of the state’s Zionist founders.

In Israeli society’s broader internal conflict between the forces of Western liberalism and Jewish nationalism, the nation’s elites rarely miss an opportunity to use the so-called “hilltop youth” to delegitimize all those seeking to pull the state in a more deeply Jewish direction.

These teenagers, who’ve been thoroughly dehumanized in Israeli society, represent a Jewish nationalism that certainly comes with flaws. But it’s also far deeper and more authentic to the region than anything Zionism was able to produce. While this might threaten Israel’s westernized ruling class, those in power should keep in mind that it’s always unwise to cause any ideological group to feel like a persecuted minority.

Attorney Nati Rom of the Ḥonenu organization was said to have arrived at the hospital on Monday afternoon to provide legal aid to those who had been in the car with Sandak.

Some 40 additional people were reportedly arrested at Monday night’s protest.