50 Jewish Seminary Girls Threatened by Muslim in a Jerusalem Hostel

Over Shavuot, our hostel hosted two groups of female seminary students, aged 17-22. We had about 50 girls staying with us. They were mostly American Jews.

On Wednesday afternoon, an Arab man in a wheelchair followed one of the girls into the hostel. A group of about 6 girls were hanging out in the lobby where he came in. At first they asked if he needed any help.

The man stood up from his wheelchair, immediately walked over to the electricity box, turned everything off and smashed the switches. He then began yelling that the girls were sluts, that the hostel was a whore house, the land was his, the property was his.. it was all palestine. He even voiced his support for Hamas.

He began reaching into a bag he was carrying. Thankfully one of the girls had the presence of mind to order everyone upstairs immediately. She told me later that she had thought he had a bomb.

The girls ran up the stairs before he pulled anything out of his bag.

My mom and I were the only ones working at the hostel, so I had come out to check the fuze box after the hostel lost power. The girls who reached the top of the stairs first found me, frantically yelling, “There’s a crazy man downstairs! He’s messing with the switches.”

I ran downstairs, my mom only a minute behind me. We both ordered the man to leave.

Of course he didn’t want to go.

He picked up a large clay vase, the one in the picture, and smashed it. Then he threw fake flowers out of another heavy pot and held it tight to his chest. I went around him and opened the front door to get him out.

My mom went out the front door too and yelled toward the large group of people gathered in front of the hostel in Zion Square.

Zion Square is one of the most active and social spots in the city. For Shavuot, a group had gathered around a Torah.

My mom screamed for someone to get the police. There was a man threatening everyone in our hostel. No one responded.

We searched the group for anyone who would help. Everyone just meekly replied that they didn’t have a phone.

Zion Square almost 100% of the time has a police presence. At this moment, there was strangely none. Jews were also unable to use phones over the holiday, so no one had a camera on them or the ability to call for help.

What’s more, as it was a Jewish holiday, the police on duty were all Muslims.

Eventually someone went to get the police.

After finding someone to get help, we turned back to the crazy man. He was still mumbling a bunch of crap (in both Hebrew and in perfect English, by the way) and refusing to leave the hostel. He had gone back to his prop of a wheelchair (a wheelchair that had been provided to him for free by a Jewish organization…🙄) and was at the mouth of the front door, watching my mom get help in the square.

I kept the door open while he sat there. Fed up with his threats, my mom went in behind him and quickly wheeled him out. Thankfully she is strong because he resisted and assaulted her as she did so. The girls on the stairs erupted into cheers and shouts, calling her “such a badass.”

My mom forcefully rushed the man to a concrete bench in the square, next to the crowd, and pinned him against it, waiting for the police. There was no way my mom was going to let that man hurt those girls.

While waiting there with him pinned, a man dressed in Jewish clothing came over to the Arab and offered him a cigarette. There is such a thing as Arabs who pretend to be Jews…

My mom snatched the cigarette from the psycho man who had just threatened 50 young women.

The police station was only a five minute walk away, yet the police didn’t bother to show up for about half an hour.

When they finally arrived, dozens of the girls came out to talk to the police as witnesses. Several of the girls spoke Hebrew.

The police completely ignored all of us. They went only to the Arab man and began chatting with him. The girls translated the Hebrew for us. The police asked how he was doing and said it was good to see him again. It was weirdly friendly between them.

While the police and the Arab chatted, the girls found out that it was my mom’s 60th birthday that day. They bursted out with the happy birthday song, right on Zion Square in the midst of the chaos. It was the best part of the day.

Then several ambulances started zooming in– all to check if the Arab man was okay, as he accused us of hurting him. The police didn’t ask for his name or ID, but they came to my mom and demanded her passport. Which of course was ridiculous.

The policeman went into the hostel, saw the broken vase and the smashed electrical box, saw that we had no power.

They did not ask any of us what happened or any questions at all. They just handed us a phone number and said we would have to file a police report.

The police gave the Arab a cigarette and letting him go. He wheeled himself back to the square in front of the hostel. The police not only didn’t care at all, but actually obstructed justice.

The girls who were witnesses to everything went with my mom and I to the police station. The police refused to let us in, saying it was a holiday.

It wasn’t until one of the girls who was Israeli and spoke perfect Hebrew arrived and insisted with such tenacity that the guard let her and my mom only (none of the witnesses) in.

The Muslim police simply spent hours harassing them both in the police department, sending them around to wrong buildings, and then gaslighting and insulting them when they finally found the head of the police department.

Thankfully an older American who was also staying in the hostel found a way to get the lights back on in the hostel.

Although the Muslim who broke into the hostel was hateful and mentally unstable, he wasn’t stupid and knew exactly what he was doing. The whole break in was planned. He did this crime on Shavuot when no one was using their phones. He also shut down the surveillance cameras before he started the screaming at the woman here, breaking pots and resisting my mom. He was assisted by 2 other people who pretended to be Jewish and knew his buddy Muslim cops would be on duty.

It was an eye-opening experience. It’s not right that such young, vulnerable girls should be in any danger and that no one would even care to help when their lives were threatened. In general, all the girls said they felt much safer in Israel than anywhere else as Jews. But they also said they would find an IDF solider for help, not the police.