A nonprofit settler group took over a building in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood that belongs to the family of Michael Ben-Yair, a former attorney general and retired District Court judge. The group controlled the building for years, collecting rent totaling hundreds of thousands of shekels from Palestinian residents, without the knowledge of the legal heirs of the building’s original owner.
Ben-Yair discovered two years ago that his grandmother’s house had been taken over by the group. No one from the Justice Ministry’s Administrator General and Official Receiver Division, rabbinical courts or a settler group had tried to find her legal heirs. Since then, he’s been waging a legal battle to wrest the building from the settlers, and to allow its Palestinians residents to remain there. On his journey, Ben-Yair discovered the settlers’ contorted and legally dubious methods to “Judaize” Sheikh Jarrah.
‘They could have easily found us.’
— source Jews For Justice For Palestinians | Nir Hasson | Jun 15, 2021