In the early morning hours of Saturday, May 30, 2020, the holiday of Shavuot, Ayad al-Khalak, a 32-year-old autistic, left his home in East Jerusalem on his way to Alvin, the institution where he was educated and studied a profession.
At that time, A (name withheld from publication), a border guard policeman, was among the security personnel who conducted a chase after a potential terrorist - a response to a hot alert that came up on the communication system.
The fateful meeting between Ayad and A took place in the old city, in a small garbage room, near the Lions' Gate.
A shot, Iyad was killed.
Not long ago I sat down
for an interview with Hiri and Rana, Ayad's parents
.
They talked about "murder" and their expectation that the court would do justice to their late son.
"When you see the person who killed your son, how calm can you be?"
Father Khiri asked.
"I will continue to go to trial, because I am going to see that justice is done."
Less than an hour's drive separates the house of the Al-Khallak family from the home of the shooting policeman's parents.
Just as the days that have passed since the incident have worsened the condition of Ayad's parents, time has also affected A. and B., who are accompanying their son who is accused of reckless homicide, an offense for which the maximum penalty, if convicted in the trial that is being conducted against him, is 12 years in prison.
"They said that we did not express sorrow for Ayad's death, so it is important to note that already on the first day, through our lawyer, we participated in the family's grief. This is a tragedy, and we are people with hearts and feelings," Meid A. (45) wants to clarify.
"If I had the opportunity to sit down with Ayad's parents, when they are not intoxicated, I would do so. But right now I have to take care of my son.
"They may have thought they caught a scapegoat, but they ran into the parents and the legal team, lions and lionesses. We will fight until my last breath for A's absolute vindication. As long as I live, not a hair on my son's head will be harmed. We will not give up. My son did not shoot Autistic. For him, he shot an armed terrorist."
Iyad was a young man with a disability, without any intention to harm, but A is also a young man at the beginning of his life, who on that fateful day was a fresh soldier who had just finished his training, and needless to say, he does not have any criminal or other problematic past.
His mother has been working with autistic children for years, so this sensitive world is far from foreign to him.
"I have been involved in special education for 17 years, in a communication kindergarten," says L. (44).
"Teaches content, knows the characteristics. Gives children tools to deal with life. Each of them enters my heart, and beyond the hours in kindergarten, I bring the work home with me. My son knows exactly what children on the spectrum are, and if he understood that he was autistic, he He would protect him with his body - because that's how we raised him. And we still got into the situation."
A is the eldest son of A and L.
A. was himself an MP fighter in his regular service. "Naples, Ramallah, a bit of Jenin.
I was at the unfortunate event of Midhat Yosef in Nablus and in the team that caught the terrorist Amana Mona, who seduced the late Ofir Rahum in 2001. I had a significant service. A was supposed to enlist in the Golani, but decided in the 90th minute that he wanted the border guard." .
For years A cultivated his love for football.
He played in young teams, reached the youth, touched the adults, and among other things played in a mixed team of Jews and Arabs - but when the army called, he decided to change his path and enlisted.
"Our whole family served in the army, and I was full of pride that my son chose the Border Guard, because a large part of my side served there," says L.
"He was full of purpose."
A finished his training and was stationed in the Old City area of Jerusalem.
"You get the motivation in the MGB, whether you want it or not," clarifies A. "First of all, they teach you to row into contact, they shout in training 'you're being shot at,' 'there's a terrorist.'
They are taught to release a ball within 2-3 seconds, and there is no shift in which there was no incident.
One day they threw a Molotov cocktail at them, another day they overturned a table.
It's not easy, you are in a place where part of the job is to keep Jews from being harmed, and on the other hand, that Muslims are not harmed.
At the beginning and end of every shift, he would call, and if he couldn't talk, he would text.
Any parent whose son serves there will admit that he does not sleep well at night."
L.: "I remember a phone call from him when I was at work. He said, 'There was an attack and my friend was injured. I'll give you the name and you will read the Psalms for him.' I told him, 'Don't worry, with God's help he will be fine.' That and the anxiety were always there. He knew he was in a difficult arena."
On the fateful Saturday of May 30, 2020, A remained at the base.
At 6 in the morning, right before he left for his shift, he called his mother and told her about the start of the schedule. She asked him to take care of himself and not forget to update when it was over.
It's just that immediately after the change of shifts, news about an armed terrorist in the field began to circulate on the communication system.
Police officers spotted a suspicious person near the Lions' Gate.
A was on his way there with his commander.
A few minutes later he called home again, this time asking to speak to his father.
"I didn't understand what it should be," L. recalls.
"Just now he spoke to me and suddenly he calls again."
A. will not forget those minutes.
"A said that there was an operational incident. I asked if he was okay, he said yes, the terrorist was neutralized and there were full forces. After some time he called again and said, 'There is a bit of a mess here.' As soon as I heard that, I started the car and drove in the direction. I was not interested is nothing.
"From the old city I went to the Russian field, because I understood that they went to fill out an action report, as is customary if, God forbid, something happens.
A was not there.
I got hold of someone from the command, who said that my son was under investigation by the police and that he had a lawyer from the Israel Police. I didn't know this was the procedure, but when I got to the police I realized that the story was different.
"The investigation lasted for hours, and there were already publications on the Internet that 15 bullets were fired, and how they were fired. When I met A there, at the end of the investigation, I asked him, 'How many bullets are missing from your cartridge?', and when he answered I realized that fake news was starting to be spread."
How did he get out of the investigation?
"Shocked. He couldn't believe how this bomb fell on him. He said, 'It doesn't make sense that the state behaves like this,' because the police told him, 'This is an autistic person, it's not a terrorist, how did you not recognize it?'
How did you not know?'
His world fell on him, an 18-and-a-half-year-old boy who just finished his apprenticeship."
L.: "When the investigation was over, even before I spoke to him, it was important to me to see that he was healthy and whole and to give him the warmth and love of a mother. I understood that he had gone through a journey during the investigation and was asked a lot of questions, which were shouted and tried to confuse him. He said that he did what he was taught, rowed for contact. When you hear on the news that there is a pursuit of a terrorist with a gun, I want to see what someone else would do."
In the end, an innocent and unarmed young man died.
E.: "A. received a report about a pursuit of a terrorist. The guy ran away from them, did not stop, what could be going through his mind? That he is autistic? There were autistic people who carried out an attack, there was a doctor who carried out an attack, a journalist, a teacher. In the instructions to open fire, a terrorist is a person which is a danger and must be neutralized. We are talking about the Lions' Gate, the Old City, the most explosive sector.
"Take the attack in Dizengoff that happened last April. A thousand fighters of Sheitat, Dovdevan and IMM were chasing after one terrorist, armed with a gun.
What do you expect them to do, diagnosis?
It took them eight hours to find him, do you think any of them care if an autistic person is standing in front of them?
You're chasing a terrorist - that's the report they received."
Rana (right) and Khiri al-Khalak with a picture of their late son, Iyad.
A.: "We immediately expressed sorrow. This is a tragedy and we are people with hearts and feelings", photo: Oren Ben Hakon
"Not a thing that justified"
If we stick to the indictment, it was two "blue" policemen who were at the tribal gate on the Temple Mount and noticed Iyad that morning.
The young man's behavior seemed suspicious to them.
Even when they approached him, they felt that he still looked suspicious - then one of them announced on the communication network about "the presence of a terrorist in the field".
When they asked Ayad to stop and identify himself, he started running away from them.
A. and his commander, who had just gone on duty, joined the hunt.
The commander called Ayad to stop, warned that if he did not do so he would shoot, and indeed shot twice at the feet of the fugitive, but did not hit.
Iyad entered a garbage compound near Shaar Aryot, which belongs to the Jerusalem Municipality.
At that time there were a cleaning worker and an employee of the Waqf.
Warda, Iyad's caregiver at the Alvin Institute, who was close to the scene, also entered immediately.
The MGB fighters arrived, and A. fired. Iyad was hit in the stomach and fell on his back. According to the indictment, at that moment the commander shouted to A. "Stop."
A shouted to Ayad not to move, and the two policemen who started the chase also entered the compound.
One of them, speaking Arabic, asked Ayad, 'Where is the gun?'
Iyad rose a little, pointed at Varda and muttered something.
The policeman turned to Varda and repeated the same question.
The nurse did not understand what it was about.
"What gun?"
Tried to find out.
"At the same time as the nurse's torture, and although Iyad was on the ground wounded as a result of the first shot, he did not hold anything in his hands and did not do anything that justified it, the accused shot at Iyad's upper body, and this while taking an unreasonable risk that it would cause Iyad's death." That's what the indictment says.
"Because of the words 'he did not commit anything that the righteous', an indictment was filed," says attorney Lt. Col. (Res.) Efrat Nachmani-Bar, from A's defense team, who previously served as the chief deputy military defense attorney.
"He was then a month and a week after his training, in his first operational event. Part of the doctrine of combat that is taught, and rightly so, is that if there is a doubt, then there is no doubt. This is because of cases where terrorists were lying wounded on the ground - and yet they shot.
"Furthermore, there was a case at the Nablus Gate where a terrorist lay wounded with a knife in his hand. They knew he had a knife, yet they neutralized him. Here they thought it was a gun, which could cause damage even from a distance of ten meters, and we are talking about a closed room with many people around. In the case of Sha'ar Nablus, the case was closed within 24 hours, and the only difference is that there it was a terrorist and here it was an autistic person. In real time it was impossible to know. They say that he should have understood that Ayad's movement did not justify shooting, and this is exactly wisdom in hindsight."
E.: "As a father, I look for frame after frame, like Shimshash do.
Three months ago there was an incident at the Lions Gate where a police officer was injured, and you will hear what screams there were in the connection. They are not in an air-conditioned place. These are screams. The Lions Gate was closed on the same day as in the case of my son with the code 'Lion', where all the gates are closed , there is no going in and no going out. So let's say there was a call of 'cease', from the commander, who heard? After all, a second before that the commander also fired, and not a single bullet. In the end, this is a tragedy for both sides."
A tragedy in which a disabled person who did no harm to anyone was killed.
E.: "We are now sitting in an air-conditioned room, maybe I'm hiding something under my shirt and you don't see? My son went out to prevent a killing spree. That's what he was taught. You probably know that a member of the security forces must consider the report of another member of the security forces. A pilot who goes up to bomb A terrorist's car doesn't really know who is there. It relies on information it received, and if they tell it - it will shoot.
"Why should terrorists be neutralized? Let the police run away, let them run away. Who can know at that second what my son felt, was his life in danger? He knows that now he, a terrorist and innocent civilians are together in a garbage room. If the fighters start to think, then the killing of The next soldier is already around the corner."
At the end of last week, the police officer Major Barak Meshulam, who was run over by a Palestinian car thief near the Ra'anana intersection, was killed.
Then the question of opening fire procedures came up again.
At the funeral, Ariela, the policeman's widow, lashed out at the Minister of Internal Security, Amr Bar-Lev, and shouted in his ears: "Why don't they let the policemen shoot? Shame on you."
L.: "Mistakes will continue to happen, and they cannot be stopped. Iyad was 32 years old, and even his parents said, in your article, that he functioned like a 9-year-old child. He has an intellectual disability (developmental intellectual disability), which means he does not understand situations, autistic low level.
Show me a 9-year-old boy who is left to roam the Lions Gate alone, even if you want your child to be independent.
They didn't escort him out of the house, which is a mistake, and it's important that people know that.
I have to vent my anger, but why didn't Ayad borrow?
All this could have been avoided.
How could my son know that he has special needs?
It is impossible to identify such things in a nine-second scene."
Is this not similar, in your opinion, to the incident in which Elor Azaria shot a lying terrorist in 2016?
A.: "Absolutely not, oh my, what you say. We are talking here about an incident that took nine seconds. My son had one fact: that he was chasing an armed terrorist. Azaria's case is different, because he had maybe ten minutes. This is an operational incident Danger, there are civilians in the area, what do you expect him to do? What have the Border Guard, the Israel Defense Forces and the state done since then to prevent a similar incident in the future?
"We are now in July. Go to the Lions' Gate, and who is wearing a coat there now, in the height of summer? Or a terrorist, or someone who may not be mentally healthy. And what are the chances of you identifying, if you received a report of a terrorist? They said that Iyad presented a certificate that testifies to his condition. Forget one thing , and I don't want to hurt the family, but he didn't know how to speak either, so who exactly did he present a certificate to?"
The scene of the incident, May 2020. E.: "What did they expect, that the fighters in the field would make a diagnosis?", Photo: Shamkan, Kaan11
"mobile waiting under the house"
In June 2021, the police investigation department filed an indictment against A, with the charge being reckless homicide.
"We were sitting at home," L repeats.
"Our youngest daughter came down the stairs and asked, 'Mom, is A going to prison for 12 years?'
I said to her, 'What are you talking about?', then I went online and learned through the media that my son had been charged.
"My daughter was as white as lime, she almost fell down the stairs. In between we had to locate A on the phone, and he didn't answer. He was at the base. Why do that and not deliver the message directly to us? Why do we need through the media?"
Attorney Nachmani-Bar says that she heard about the filing of the indictment against A just before it went to the media, and the wording of the words also spurred the defense. is at the base, with a weapon. I want to contact his parents and commanders so that he can have an escort in the difficult moment.' to the wall, and fired at him.
"Because of the phrase 'with their backs to the wall', the headline that appeared the next day in the newspaper was 'with their backs to the wall'. Everyone will imagine a Nazi execution in their head, whereas we know that Iyad was not against the wall - and they know it too. In an internal correspondence they said 'We were aiming in the direction We asked to amend the indictment, so as not to mislead the public. They refused, because their honor is more important than fairness."
A.: "We are talking about a soldier, and even in the Mashash they say that they believe he acted in good faith.
If so, how could it come to such an indictment?
He was treated as the last of the criminals.
And I will tell you something as a father: if my son was a criminal, I would get him the best criminal lawyer, shut his mouth and get a minimum sentence.
But he is not a criminal.
He doesn't go to clubs, doesn't drink.
A moral and educated child.
I wish all parents a child like him.
"That's why the best plea deal would be if they dropped the indictment. They would avoid greater grief for Iyad's family, because this family doesn't know anything. I won't give up. It will only make the other side sad when I go for the whole pot. As the trial progresses and continues - so It will be bad for both sides. Sometimes it will hurt more, and sometimes it will hurt more for the other side. Someone needs to stop it, and if Kobi Shabtai had gone out to the media immediately after the incident and backed my son up unequivocally, and not as covert backing, there might not have been an indictment. Probably Shabtai does not deserve to be commissioner."
E. has not left Shabtai in the last two years.
The family has a photo in which A is seen photographed with the commissioner on the day of his enlistment, when Shabtai was the commander of the MGB.
A. keeps sending the picture to the commissioner's personal cell phone and reminds him: "You promised to bring him home."
A.: "I told Kobe Shabtai that there would not be an incident for which I would not ask for answers, and God forbid because I want to get other soldiers involved, but they will get involved, because I am going to save my son. It will be on him and not on my conscience. I told him face to face, 'If You will not back my son, you will fail in everything'. And today you see castrated policemen who are afraid to respond."
Ayad's case became a symbol: a young Palestinian with a disability died at the hands of a member of the Israeli security forces.
Last week, a call went out on Twitter to come to court to support the Al-Khalak family at a hearing that was supposed to take place on Thursday and was finally postponed to September.
"Protest against police officers who kill innocents and do not bear the consequences," one of the readers is heard in the video.
"Against the judicial system that time and time again discriminates against the Palestinian residents."
To this day, A., who is currently on discharge leave, is threatened.
E. and L.'s house is networked with security cameras, and all the surrounding fencing is modified according to the police's requirements.
"My son is threatened one rank before the highest," says A.
"It's a shame and disgrace, and it's sad that it's happening in our country. I sent him to serve in the army, it was an operational incident, not a criminal one. He didn't get up in the morning and say, 'I'm going to shoot a terrorist today.'"
A's trial began last February in the Jerusalem District Court, two years after the incident.
A. and his parents arrive for discussions accompanied by security, their heads covered so that they will not be identified.
Before the trial, they are brought into a nearby hall, and only at the beginning of the hearing are they taken to their bench, and an apron hides them.
"You get a phone call, 'Be ready at X hour,' and an hour before a car is already waiting for you on the street corner," says E. about the tense trial days.
"My son gets a crazy escort, and then another team comes to pick us up. A jeep in front, a jeep in the back. Crazy."
L.: "When we enter the court I ask 'Why do we have to be here?'
I didn't expect that my son's service would look like this. We have strong security, and I'm still not calm. I don't always hear what's being said in the discussion, because I'm constantly looking around to make sure someone doesn't come in and hurt us. I live in fear. Up the stairs of a house The sentence I'm shaking. I'm afraid for our lives. Sometimes I say that maybe it's a dream, and that if I pinch myself I'll wake up."
The late Iyad in his childhood,
"They tried to drop a bag on A"
Groups of protesters from both sides gathered outside the court in Jerusalem.
On A's side you could see MK Itamar Ben Gabir, who even confronted Rana, Iyad's mother. "Ben Gabir was not invited, he came, he supported," explains A. "My son is not a fighter in the occupation army.
Service in the IDF is his duty. If we don't send our children to serve, who will protect us?
"There were terrible signs that the Mageb was an 'extermination unit', there was a coffin of an Mageb fighter that was displayed in Tel Aviv. And what kind of people came? The one with the peepers outside who wrote 'Justice for Yayad'. We handed out flowers on the day of the hearing. The Arabs who were there took pictures , smiled and said, 'Amen, let there be peace,' and the anarchists took the flower and threw it away."
Do you see Ayad's family there?
L.: "His mother cursed me for not sleeping at night. It's true, I can't sleep. Both sides hurt. If I saw his mother, I would tell her that my son shot a terrorist armed with a gun and not an Iyad. A is a boy who knows the other."
E.: "I don't judge them by their anger, but the anger is not about us. My son is not the state, he is merely a representative. Let them go to the Minister of Internal Security, to the commander of the Security Guard.
If the opening fire instructions are changed here, soldiers will die on the right and the left.
A person who wants to hurt, nothing will help.
In the last five years, there have been around a hundred attacks in the Old City area, most of them at the Lions' Gate.
This is not an invention.
Each event has a date, time and how many were affected.
Everything is with me."
A's family moved to the house where she lives shortly before the incident.
She used to live in Or Yehuda, in the building where the family of the late Major Hadar Cohen, the Border Guard police officer who was murdered in February 2016 at the Nablus gate, lived. E. remembers seeing Hadar in the building, as well as the difficult days after her death. And in general, since the case of his son He makes a point of going and comforting bereaved families. He was, among others, at the home of the late Sgt. who was killed in Bnei Brak.
"On the one hand, it strengthens me to see that my son is alive. On the other hand, I can't look these families in the eye," A. admits.
"Some of them were with him at the base, in training, his friends. My son could have been in the same situation, I can understand them and they can understand me."
Do you feel that you are left alone?
E.: "Everyone can hug and support from afar, but you and the nuclear family are alone in front of the whole world. Apart from cleaning the house, I do nothing. Can't spend time, have fun. Can't put a smile on my face. Biting lips, breaking my head. Any parent would do that. When you catch a weak person, it's easiest to break him down, and that's what they did to my son. They caught him a few weeks after the training, tried to drop a huge case on him, but we won't give up. My son will be strong, because he's a fighter, And the victory will be exclusively his."
L.: "Fortunately, our two daughters are mature and understand what we are going through, but it is also difficult for us as a couple. There are people who would have broken up the package a long time ago, because picking ourselves up is not easy. Life has stopped, but we will not break up. We will give our lives for the family And for the sake of the child, even if it costs us health - and it does."
E.: "A. received a report about a pursuit of a terrorist. Iyad ran away from them, did not stop, what could be going through his mind? That he was autistic? There were autistic people who carried out an attack, there was a doctor, a journalist, a teacher. In the instructions to open fire, a terrorist is a person who poses a danger And it must be neutralized", Photo: Efrat Eshel
"This is not a reality show"
The family is fighting, among other things, through the "Warrior, not a criminal" campaign, which is helped by fundraising on the beactive website.
Beside her is an experienced legal team that includes, in addition to attorney Nachmani-Bar, attorney Alon Porat and attorney Col. (ret.) Sharon Zaggi-Pinchas, who served as the chief military prosecutor until three years ago, and even filed the report at the time The charge against Alor Azaria.
The team is familiar with quite a few similar cases from the past, and will claim, among other things, that there is no uniform policy on the matter.
For example, the case of Col. Israel Shumer, who in July 2015 chased after Muhammad Hani al-Kasbah who threw a stone at his car. Shumer shot al-Kasbah in the back and killed him. In April 2016, the chief military attorney closed the case, and the High Court also rejected a petition that was filed on the subject.
Shumer still serves in the IDF as head of the Operations Department in the Operations Division.
"We have accumulated knowledge of almost 60 years in a military court," says attorney Nachmani-Bar. "A is not an ordinary policeman, he is a soldier on mandatory service, and it is unthinkable that there would be a different prosecution policy for soldiers in olive green and soldiers in Mag." B. Make sure that there is a uniform policy regarding all soldiers on duty, regardless of which organization they are in. It was mandatory to close the case, but I said in court that they were conducted like a reality show, according to populism and not according to legal considerations."
At the beginning of the year, a group of MKs from the right, including Itamar Ben Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, Mai Golan, Yariv Levin and Yoav Kish, submitted a bill "Immunity of IDF soldiers in operational events".
The purpose of the law is for soldiers to have immunity from criminal liability for activities they performed while performing their duty - immunity that will remain even after discharge from the service.
According to the law, only a special committee will be allowed to remove immunity.
The law is stuck, like many things that suffer from the political gridlock.
No. Such a law will no longer help.
Next month he is supposed to take off his uniform and be released from the service, after the last two years he was both a police officer and a defendant. "When he comes home I will salute him for having served the country at all," says A. "He is carrying a crazy burden on his shoulders, and he still saluted the flag on the last Memorial Day .
This is the education he received from home.
"There were days when I wanted him to break the tools, but when you see the system, the Border Guard, providing covert backup - it allows some air. It's not enough, because in the end, the event could have been closed in one second. A system that doesn't back up its fighters, it doesn't have right to exist".
L. does not know even now what her son will do after his release and what his life will look like in the future.
"Even if he enrolls in studies, how will he pass them? His head is busy."
And if the trial ends in acquittal and life gets back on track?
A.: "My son will not forget the tragedy for the rest of his life. It will accompany him, even if he comes out eligible. You are talking about a child who lost the good years and will lose the next ones as well. What will happen when he wins? He may breathe a sigh of relief, but not beyond that . The stain and the yoke will remain, and surely the pinch in the heart as well. As close as I am to him, I cannot feel what he is going through, but I know and am convinced that my son did not regret it."
In response, the Police Investigations Department (MPD) stated:
"The decision to file the indictment was made in a matter-of-fact and professional manner, based on evidentiary considerations and in accordance with the law.
The trial is ongoing these days, and because of that we cannot expand beyond that.
As for the date of distribution of the indictment to the media, the defendant's attorney was informed about the submission of the indictment before its distribution to the media.
In this matter, the Public Complaints Ombudsman ruled on the state representatives in the courts that the Public Prosecutor's Office acted according to professional judgment and did not deviate from the provisions of the existing directive.
shishabat@israelhayom.co.il
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