ARWAH SHEIKH ALI, RESIDENT OF OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM, ALLEGES ISRAELI POLICE BRANDED HIM WITH A STAR OF DAVID IN 2023.

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Israel's Attorney General will charge 7 Jerusalem District Police officers for branding a Palestinian man's face with the Star of David after arresting him in 2023.

“A police officer put a taser to my head. I felt something hot on my face," Arwah Sheikh Ali said within days of his arrest by 16 Israel police officers. "These are not police—this is the mafia.”

The 22-year-old old Ali was arrested at his home in the Shuafat refugee camp, in front of his wife and children, Ali later told reporters. He said they handcuffed him, shackled his legs, blindfolded, beat and branded him.

During a court hearing in Jerusalem Magistrate's Court three days after Ali's Aug. 16 arrest, judge Amir Shaked observed that police had “no reasonable explanation” for how Ali was injured. Just as troublesome, police also had no explanation for why the body cameras of all 16 police officers who had allegedly participated in the arrest did not record it.

At another court hearing the next day, another judge refused prosecutors' request for permission to detain Ali five more days. 

Instead, the judge released him on bail, citing his injuries.

“From the photos shown to me, it appears that the arrest was accompanied by severe violence,” the judge, Adi Bar Tal, said.

Jerusalem District Police denied they branded Ali, said they suspected he was dealing illegal drugs and added he resisted arrest. The marks on his face, they claimed, came from a boot.

“This is a field trial by the media,” Jerusalem District Commander Doron Turgeman said at the time. “I trust the officers who were there and their credibility.”

Commander Turgeman resigned two weeks ago. The official statement announcing his retirement said he became a police officer in 1992 following service in the Israeli army's Golani Brigade. The storied brigade includes a battalion described by the Progressive Israeli newspaper Haaretz as the force's "Rottweiler."

The seven Jerusalem District cops will be charged with aggravated assault, abusing a helpless person, obstruction of investigative proceedings and abuse of official power, according to a statement by Israel's Department of Internal Police investigations, first reported by the Times of Israel.

The officers are also accused of deleting footage of the violence from all of the body-worn cameras each of them had.

Police brutality is largely unpunished in Israel. Out of 4,401 complaints submitted in 2021, only 1.2 percent resulted in charges, according to a 2023 report by Israel's comptroller. 

Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer who spoke to the New York Times about the case, said the branding stood out to Jews.

“There’s something about this case that captures the mind of people who usually would look away when it comes to police brutality against Palestinians,” he said. “It is a very symbolic abuse, one that many Jews remember or have an immediate connection to because in the past Jews have been victims of similar humiliation.”

At least 37 Palestinian prisoners have died from lack of care, mistreatment or murder in Israeli custody since Oct. 7, 2023.

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