Honenu has represented many citizens whose fundamental rights, including freedom of expression and freedom of protest, have been violated with regard to pride marches. Please click here for a list of relevant posts.
Friday, October 7, 2022, 10:57 Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado: “The claimant was detained at the Pride March in 2020. He sued with the assistance of Honenu and received compensation. He was detained again at the Pride March in 2021. He sued again and received compensation. The big victory is that he was not detained this year, in 2022. We proved that a constant, just, and uncompromising battle can lead to results on the ground.”
In June 2020, a youth was detained while he was walking with a friend in Jerusalem near the Pride March as they were on their way to the yeshiva that they attended in Jerusalem. Both of them had a clearly religious appearance. They unintentionally passed the site of the Pride March gathering that took place that evening. Policemen at the site did not hesitate to detain them for a lengthy interrogation as if they were criminals, on baseless grounds that they had attempted to cause a disturbance. Seven other youths, also religious, were detained with them. Each one of them was on the way to his destination without any connection to the Pride March, but the police were not convinced.
After the policemen stood the nine youths on the side of the street, body-searched them and their pockets, finding nothing, a border police officer arrived and told all of them that they were being detained for questioning at the Central Unit of Jerusalem Police Station. The officer explained to them that they were suspected of being on their way to protest the Pride March and in doing so to disturb the public order. They were held at the police station until the middle of the night. Two of them, the above-mentioned youth and his friend, sued the police, and with the intervention of the Jerusalem Small Claims Court, the two sides agreed that the police would pay each of them 5,000 NIS in compensation. Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado represented the youth.
The following year, on the day of the Jerusalem Pride March, the youth was detained as he drove from the Shomron region to his home in Jerusalem. When he reached the Hizme Checkpoint through which traffic from the Binyamin region enters the Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood in northeast Jerusalem, a police detective approached him, ordered him to stop, and examined his ID card. Then the detective ordered him to pull over and told him that he was being detained. After a short questioning on site, he was taken in a police car to the Lev HaBira Police Station and from there to the Central Unit of Jerusalem Police Station for interrogation. He was unconditionally released to his home after the interrogation. He sued the police, and in early October 2022, the court ordered them to pay him 5,000 NIS in compensation, to which the two sides agreed in a compromise between them.