January 2010 Vol 1, Crime and Courts
Barking mad - man bites cop
Jerusalem - Refusing to muzzle his criticism of Israel's temporary settlement moratorium, an Israeli settler took matters into his own teeth and bit a policeman to mark his outrage, a newspaper reported on Monday.
Eighteen-year-old Ephraim Haikin, a student at a Jewish seminary in the hardline settlement of Yizhar in the north of the occupied West Bank, was apparently doggone mad during a November 26 rally against the moratorium.
An Israeli court found him guilty of "aggressing a civil servant carrying out his duties" and damaging public goods by slashing the tyres of a police jeep, the Haaretz daily said.
The youth was sentenced to a month in prison and three months community service, it said.
The settlers of Yizhar are among the most hardline in the West Bank and are doggedly opposed to a 10-month limited moratorium on new housing starts that Israel imposed in November after months of US pressure.
