Idan Meir, a yeshiva student who knew Shimon and the defendant from their joint studies at the yeshiva, and who rented his apartment to Shimon (hereinafter: "Idan"), also identified Shimon in his police interrogation in the video of Shih Jarrah (P/79A, page 10, lines 252, 286-287). In his testimony in court, Idan gave a more hesitant version. He identified that the man documented in the video "looked similar" to Shimon (p. 149 of the transcript of the hearing of July 9, 2025, lines 11, 17), and that "from what we saw" he was Shimon (ibid., line 19), even though this identification was uncertain and Idan claimed that Shimon could not be identified "clearly" (p. 150, lines 1-2). As I will detail below (paragraph 54), I prefer the version that Idan gave in his police interrogation, in which he identified Shimon, over the version he gave in his testimony in court, and in any event, and as noted, in his testimony in court as well, Idan identified Shimon, albeit with a lower level of certainty.
The documentation in the video of Shih Jarrah, which is consistent with Shimon's descriptions of the sequence of events that preceded the incident in the version he gave to the police, as well as Shimon's identification of himself and the defendant in the video of Shih Jarrah, the identification of Shimon by Idan, and the identification of the defendant by Idan and other witnesses in the video of Shih Jarrah, as I will expand below (paragraphs 44-46, 48-58) - all of these constitute support for the version given by Shimon in his interrogations with the police.
- Additional support for Shimon's version in his police interrogations can be found in a security camera video documenting the refueling operation at the Paz gas station on the evening of October 9, 2023 (hereinafter: "the gas station video"), prior to the Sheikh Jarrah incident. In the video, two men are seen walking towards the gas station's pumps (9:34:34 p.m.). The two are dressed in black pants and white button-down shirts with long sleeves. One of the men is thin and slightly shorter, has bristles, and wears sneakers with a thick and wide white sole. The other man, with a mustache and beard, wears black shoes. The two men try to fill a bottle of water with gasoline at the gas stations at the station - without success (at 21:35:26). At some point, the thin man approaches the driver of a Honda car parked near one of the gas stations, and the two are talking (meter 21:40:55). The Honda driver refuels the Honda, and then takes out the throttle, the thin man approaches him with an empty bottle of water in his hand. The two lean with their backs to the camera so that you can't see what they're doing (21:43:28-21:43:52). Then the thin man walks away with a bottle in his hand.
Shimon's descriptions of walking with the defendant on the evening of 9 October 2023 to the Paz gas station, as well as of one of the drivers who stopped to refuel at the station, are consistent with the footage in the gas station video.