The Knesset’s winter session opened with a rowdy meeting of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which called an emergency meeting about the issue of Arab minors throwing rocks at cars in east Jerusalem. The meeting was organized after an incident on Friday in Silwan, when Elad head David Be’eri hit and lightly injured two Arab children who had thrown rocks at his car.

“We don’t want to see any children injured, period,” said Committee head Danny Danon (Likud). “But we also don’t want to see children involved in negative activities.”

The meeting degenerated into a yelling match between MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List – Ta’al) and MK Michael Ben Ari (National Union). “Even a child, if he is endangering someone’s life, should be shot at,” said Ben Ari. “This meeting was organized because a kid was thrown into the air, and you guys are like a party of drunk people who have lost your heads!” said Tibi, calling the east Jerusalem residents a “company of fanatics.” Ben Ari repeatedly called Tibi a terrorist and told him to “go wear a dress with [Libyan leader Moammar] Kaddafi.”

In the past six months, the police have arrested 76 people for rock throwing incidents in Jerusalem. Thirty were youth, between the ages of 12-18, and 46 were adults. Of those arrested, 17 youth and 10 adults were served with indictments. Some of the youth are in detention, some are under house arrest. A representative of the Jerusalem police insisted that the police are doing everything possible to halt the rock throwing incidents, but the young age of the rock throwers makes stopping them difficult.

At the meeting, Jewish residents from east Jerusalem neighborhoods including Ma’aleh Zeitim and Beit Yonatan in Silwan shared stories and videos of frequent rock throwing episodes. The residents noted that every day past two weeks, groups of kids had been at the main intersection at Ras-al-Amud, near the Mount of Olives cemetery, and throwing rocks at passing cars for the entire day.

Rock throwing is nothing new in the area but it has picked up in intensity since a private security guard killed a Silwan resident on September 22 after he threw rocks at the security vehicle during an early morning patrol. Because of the high number of security cameras in the area, almost every rock throwing incident can be taped and made public almost immediately.

During the meeting, the police representative announced that they had arrested three suspects in connection with the episode on Friday afternoon with Be’eri. Be’eri was driving in the Silwan neighborhood on Friday afternoon with his son when he was confronted by four youths throwing rocks at his windshield. While trying to flee from the area, he accidentally hit two of the youth, the Elad spokesperson told the Post. The incident was photographed by the international media, prompting outcry.

Meir Indor, the head of the Almagor Terror Victim’s Association, testified about his experience on September 29, when he said he was a victim of a lynch situation on the road between the Mount of Olives cemetery and Hebrew University, when he was stuck in a traffic jam with taxis on all sides and students from a nearby school pelted his car with rocks. “This is an area where Jews have been buried for 3,000 years, and now people are afraid to go to the cemetery.” He said he had been at two funerals of terror victims where people leaving the ceremony had been stoned at the same intersection. “Both times it’s happened when the funerals end at the same times as the school lets out,” he said. “It’s like [rock throwing] is part of their school program.”

“Every time a child throws a stone, they should arrest the father,” Indor told the Post. “This worked in Yehuda and Shomron and it could work here.” Indor is starting a citizen’s forum to enforce security in the area near the Mount of Olives cemetery, following his attack.

Lack of police presence and action was a consistent complaint among the Jewish residents of east Jerusalem. “I stand on my balcony with the border patrol and I watch the kids throwing rocks, and the police leave the scene even before they stop. They don’t do anything to stop it… they were even throwing rocks at 7:30 this morning!” said Beit Yonatan resident Eldad Rabinovich. Danon showed a series of photographs depicting a boy walking to school with his backpack, and picking up large stones along the way and throwing them at cars.

“The police is trying to prevent reoccurrences of these serious events, with a response to the events in the field or in discussions with factions in the area,” said the police representative. He noted that when the suspect is under 12, the age of criminal responsibility, the police talk to the child’s parents.

The Almagor Terror Victims organization said over the weekend that it would establish a forum for public officials and security officials to come up with ways to prevent violence against Jews living in Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem. The organization said that it had already signed up a number of top security officials for the forum.

VIDEO—The Shalit family’s campaign and its supporters has now received a counter-response. An animation clip recently uploaded to YouTube, entitled “Gilad Shalit Waiting for an Operation,” presents the supports of a prisoner swap deal to secure the release of the Israeli soldier held in Hamas captivity as playing into the terrorist group’s hands.

The Facebook users who chose to show their support for the soldier by adding a badge on their Facebook profile picture are also the targets of ridicule in the animation clip. They, along with characters with “Tel Avivian” characteristics, are also accused of harming efforts to release the soldier.

Representatives of the Almagor Terror Victims’ Association sent out a link to the video on Monday, but it remains unclear who is behind the clip itself.

At the end of the clip, its authors wrote, “Like the majority of the Israeli population, we pray for the speedy return home of Gilad Shalit. We are proud of the solidarity being shown by the Israeli public, the massive caring being displayed by the country’s residents. This is true proof of the mutual responsibility that characterizes our people and its willingness to take action and provide support in times of crisis.”

However, the authors explained, “Each and every one of us must ask himself whether some of this support actually promotes Shalit’s return, or whether it merely worsens the situation, pushes off his return, and weakens Israel against the enemy. In order to bring Shalit back, it is necessary that we understand the rules of the game in the Middle East as they really are, and not as we would like them to be.”

In conclusion, the animators wrote, “The four long years of Shalit’s captivity indeed prove that we must re-examine our course of action until now. However, they do not obligate Israel’s surrender, of all things, to those interested in its destruction and receiving all of their demands. Such surrender is liable to be an eternal source of trouble that will cost much innocent blood.”

Two weeks ago, Hamas posted a video on YouTube showing two armed and masked men next to images of Gilad Shalit taken from the video clip of the soldier released a year ago.

In the video, one of the men is waving a rifle in his hand, while the other takes some papers and objects out of his bag. At a certain point, the screen goes black, and the words “Will the mission be completed?” are written across the screen. At the end of the clip, the sound of a weapon being cocked and gunshots are heard.