By Yechiel Sever
Two weeks after a complaint was filed with Beit Shemesh Police against Ha'aretz photographer Alex Libak for verbally attacking a four-year-old chareidi girl and her mother and spitting in their direction, no action has been taken.
The incident was reported in Yated Ne'eman, and in a follow-up interview the mother recounted the details to a Yated reporter. "I was walking down the street with my daughter," she said. "She was one step behind me, and suddenly I heard shouting. I turned around and saw Ha'aretz photographer Alex Libak shouting at my daughter and positioning himself in a threatening manner opposite her.
"`What are you shouting at her for?' I said to him, and he replied in a bizarre and inexplicable manner, saying, `She yelled at me.' This never took place. This is a four-year-old girl walking with a thumb in her mouth. I was stunned by his reply, but he kept shouting and cursed me as well. `That's how you raise her?' he shouted and spat at us.
"It goes without saying," she continued, "that this incident made no waves in the mainstream media, which chose to ignore this criminal act almost entirely. Where it was reported, the photographer invented lies and denied spitting at us."
Libak is an Israel Prize laureate.
