The Israel Police probe into an alleged slingshot attack said to have damaged the building of the Supreme Court in Jerusalem has yet to yield any evidence of an attack, Channel 14 reported on Wednesday.
Three weeks after the Israeli Judicial Authority suggested that right-wing protesters who gathered outside the court carried out the alleged attack, “there is no progress in the investigation,” a senior police official stated.
“The spokesperson for the Judicial Authority issued a defamatory statement without allowing us to complete the investigation. As we already noted, that statement reflects their opinion alone,” he said.
“There is no evidence of firing. The story about the slingshot didn’t come from us, but from the Judicial Authority spokesperson,” the official said.
Thousands of right-wing Israelis gathered outside the Supreme Court on June 5 for a rally against what organizers called the court’s interference in managing the war against Hamas and other government decisions.
The event was organized by the Tekuma movement, an NGO founded by activist Berale Crombie, alongside groups that represent some of the families of fallen Israel Defense Forces soldiers and Israeli hostages.
Two days after the demonstration, the Judicial Authority announced it had discovered that a window of the Supreme Court building had been shattered in an apparent attack with an airsoft gun or slingshot.
“This is an unusual, grave and unprecedented incident,” the body said in a statement. “The proximity to the protest held at the same time and the messages voiced during it against the Supreme Court are troubling.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog was among the first leaders to condemn the alleged shooting, stating that “violence, incitement and vandalism are completely unacceptable and must be firmly eradicated.”
Opposition leader Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid Party) blamed the government led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the alleged attack.
“It was the government that organized the rally,” he said. “The incident is the direct result of its incitement. I already warned over a month ago: If the prime minister does not stop this, it will end in political murder.”
For his part, Netanyahu called for law enforcement and political leaders to “condemn and act decisively against all manifestations of violence and incitement—without exception” in the wake of the allegations.
Crombie told Channel 14 on Wednesday that the lack of evidence “proves that this was a false blood libel against 100,000 right-wing protesters,” meant to “divert media attention” away from his rally.
Noting that participants “behaved respectfully and upheld public order,” he said the Judicial Authority’s rush to condemn the protesters before the investigation was completed revealed the court’s “true face.”
“I call on President Isaac ‘Bougie’ Herzog, who was the first to rush to condemn the right-wing protesters following that inciting statement, to retract his vile remarks from that evening, which unjustly pointed a blaming finger at the right-wing camp,” Crombie said. “I also call on anyone else who mistakenly condemned the ‘shooting incident’—which, it now turns out, never even occurred—to do the same.”