Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Aryeh King was lightly injured Sunday evening after being attacked by Hasidic supporters of convicted sex offender Rabbi Eliezer Berland in East Jerusalem.
The incident took place during public celebrations at the Tomb of Simeon the Just as King and Chief Rabbi of Safed Shmuel Eliyahu arrived at the site within the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
According to a police report, rioters began throwing rocks toward King and Eliyahu, while shouting toward Eliyahu: “He incarcerated the rabbi [Berland].”
Eliyahu was not injured in the incident.
Police said two rioters were arrested and that police forces were at the scene to restore public order.
“Unfortunately, some lawbreakers are trying to sabotage the event and hurt other participants. We won’t allow these extremists to disturb the public order and will show zero tolerance toward any kind of violence,” police said in a statement.
Eliyahu, who is considered one of Berland’s harshest critics, accused Berland of inciting his followers.
“Jerusalem’s deputy mayor has been injured by supporters of the criminal named Berland. A real criminal whose advocates nearly killed a person. I think those people require real repentance and that person [Berland] should be jailed immediately because he incites people to do terrible things,” the rabbi said.
Berland, the leader of the Shuvu Bonim religious cult, has served separate prison sentences in the past for sex offenses and fraud, and last year was implicated but not charged in the decades-old murder of a teenager.
Berland fled Israel in 2013 amid allegations he had sexually assaulted several female followers. After evading arrest for three years and slipping through various countries, he returned to Israel and was sentenced to 18 months in prison in November 2016 on two counts of indecent acts and one case of assault, as part of a plea deal that included seven months of time served.
He was freed just five months later, in part due to ill health.
He was arrested again, this time for fraud, in February 2020 after hundreds of people filed police complaints saying that he had sold prayers and pills to desperate members of his community, promised families of individuals with disabilities that their loved ones would be able to walk, and told families of convicted felons that their relatives would be freed from prison.
Berland was convicted last year under a plea bargain and given an 18-month sentence, but was released in December.
In November 2021 police investigating the murder of a teenage boy in the 1980s told a court that Berland had ordered the killing. Police said Berland allegedly sent the suspects who kidnapped and killed 17-year-old Nissim Shitrit, but that he was not present at the time of the murder.
Berland is linked to three suspects arrested for their involvement in the crime, which went unsolved for 35 years.
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