EDITOR: An internal conflict grows fast! The Jewish democracy Vs the Judaic Republic!
In the strange half-light of the Netanyahu regime, where he is riding all the tigers in the Israeli zoo, playing them against each other, a moment of great tension has arrived. The different camps all detest not only the Palestinians, but even more so, each other. The liberals cannot stand the Lieberman ‘Russians, who hate the Mizrahis, who cannot stand the Ashkenazi Jews, who treat them abominably, and so on ad infinitum. Netanyahu survives by feeding the extremes, and controlling them through a series of political dance steps which are becoming ever more complex and dangerous.
Especially after the bizarre episode of the Israeli Summer of tent protest, which seems to have never happened, but may well be still festering underground, waiting fora moment to emerge again, one can hardly think of a time more fraught in recent memory. The conflict between the westernised, liberal tendency symbolised by Tel Aviv, and responsible for the Two State solution and for ‘Jewish democracy slogans, and the Judaic Republic forces of the religious right, is now coming into its own, boiling over by the day. There seems no way the two can survive side by side, and many of the liberals now start seeing they have more in common with the Palestinians, than with the Iran-like Judaists. It is not going to be boring. This Khanouka, the tensions between the main tendencies of Zionism are as nasty as they were so many centuries ago, during the Macabeean struggle for power. In truth, the Judaists are a larger threat to the Jewish democracy, than are the Palestinians at this juncture, and many realise this, as the model crumbles. In the battle between the ‘Jewish democrats’ and the Judaic extremists, the latter must win, as they are more ‘Jewish’ by definition…
Below are some examples of the arguments between the mortal enemies.
Israeli city braces for 10,000-strong protest against exclusion of women: Haaretz
Ultra-Orthodox clashed with police officers, calling them Nazis over course of Monday; at least six were arrested or detained for questioning.
More than 10,000 people are expected at a rally in Beit Shemesh on Tuesday to protest the exclusion of women as well as violence against girls and women by Haredi extremists. The rally will begin at 6 P.M., near the Orot girl’s school.
The school’s arguably most-famous student is Na’ama Margolese, the 8-year-old American immigrant who became a focal point after Channel 2 news broadcast a story Friday night showing her facing a daily gauntlet of abuse from Haredi extremists as she walks to school. The rally was originally slated to take place in the courtyard of the school, but the venue was changed after organizers said Haredi extremists had threatened violence unless the location were changed.
On Monday night, MK Chaim Amsellem (Shas) visited the Margolese family at home and participated in their Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony. Amsellem gave Na’ama a siddur, or prayer book, in which he wrote a dedication: “When you walk to school, an entire nation is behind you.”
Beit Shemesh Mayor Moshe Abutbul had asked to visit the family for candle-lighting Monday but the Margoleses firmly rejected the request, even after repeated phone calls and text messages from city officials.
Meanwhile, violence continued in Beit Shemesh on Monday as Haredim clashed with police officers and attacked two television news crews. At least six people were arrested or detained for questioning.
The violent scenes in Beit Shemesh on Sunday, when a Channel 2 news team was attacked by 200 Haredi men, were repeated on Monday.
On Monday morning, dozens of ultra-Orthodox men surrounded police officers and municipal inspectors who came to remove, for at least the third time this week, a sign on Hazon Ish Street, in the Haredi neighborhood Nahala Vemenuha, ordering men and women to use separate sidewalks. The men tried to prevent the sign’s removal, calling the police officers “Nazis” and dancing around them in circles.
A few hours later a crew from Channel 10 was attacked as it tried to film a piece on education in the city. Police officers dispatched to the scene after the news team called for help clashed with dozens of Haredim. Some of them lay on the ground in an attempt to keep other members of the group from being arrested. Three people were taken into custody.
About an hour later, a second television crew was attacked as it filmed the controversial sign. The Channel 2 camera crew was pelted with eggs, and a videographer was physically assaulted. Police officers sealed off the street and found themselves facing around 300 Haredim who shouted at them to leave, threw rocks at them and set dumpsters on fire. Officers detained three suspects for questioning.
Like the social protests of the past year, the rally scheduled for tonight came together spontaneously on Facebook. Within hours of the airing of the television segment, Beit Lessin Theater actor Tsviki Levin started a Facebook group called, in Hebrew, “1,000 Israelis are going to Beit Shemesh to protect little Na’ama.” He soon linked up with the Be Free Israel (Israel Hofshit) movement, and additional organizations such as Hitorerut Yerushalmim (Wake up Jerusalem) joined them.
Na’ama Margolese, city officials, Tanya Rosenblit – who became a symbol of the cause when she recently refused to sit in the back of a public bus carrying Haredi passengers – and Zion Sultan, a local journalist and activist against religious coercion, will take part in lighting the Hanukkah menorah on stage.
Buses will be chartered, using donated funds, to bring participants from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and the Sharon region. Organizers say Meretz and Kadima are expected to charter additional buses for their respective party workers.
Israel Hofshit said politicians would not be allowed to address the rally or to conduct political activities, in keeping with the request of Beit Shemesh residents who say they don’t want the event to become political.
A group of Haredi residents of Beit Shemesh led by Rabbi Dov Lipman has asked to take part in the rally. Lipman has requested permission to address the crowd.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews ask Israeli media to help rid them of extremists: Haaretz
Ultra-Orthodox community says fear of radicals has created leadership vacuum; many think secular media plays key role in increasing pressure on Beit Shemesh, Jerusalem extremists.
By Yair Ettinger
One after another the Haredim came up to the reporters. Some gave their full names, some refused to give any name or – as with one leading rabbi – asked that their names not be published. Some approached in the streets of Beit Shemesh, some made a phone call.
They’re not reaching out to protest the media’s portrayal of the ultra-Orthodox, after Haredi residents of Beit Shemesh harassed and spat at religious Zionist schoolgirls, attacked a television news crew trying to film a sign that ordered women to walk on the other side of the street, and called the police “Nazis” when they escorted municipal officials who took down the sign.
They’re reaching out to plead for the help of journalists who work for secular newspapers, which many ultra-Orthodox now think will play a decisive role in increasing the public pressure on the extremists living in Beit Shemesh and Jerusalem. They want the police and the government to get on the extremists’ case, because the leadership vacuum created by politicians, rabbis and newspapers that serve the ultra-Orthodox world has left mainstream Haredim looking for help in places they normally wouldn’t go.
Changes are afoot even within the Haredi media. True, the ultra-Orthodox Yated Neeman newspaper warned in its lead headline on Monday of an “incitement campaign” against the ultra-Orthodox, which it said was aimed at breaking up the coalition alliance between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Haredi parties, as well as putting a damper on the goal of making more Jews Torah-observant. But several writers for Haredi websites are consistently and vigorously attacking the extremists – and even declaring them to be enemies of the ultra-Orthodox, no less.
“This is the time to create a barrier between us and the extremists,” said Aryeh Goldhaber, an activist in the Tov movement, which represents moderate Haredim on the Beit Shemesh and Betar Ilit city councils. “People, even among the secular population, are beginning to realize that those who are going wild in Beit Shemesh are a crazy extremist group spreading fear through the streets, beating people, vandalizing, using violence. The public is afraid of them, the rabbis are afraid of them. This has to stop.”
Tov representatives, who paid a visit Monday to the home of Na’ama Margolese, an 8-year-old girl who was spat upon by Haredim protesting the “immodesty” of religious schoolgirls on their way to class, see themselves as an alternative to the ultra-Orthodox parties United Torah Judaism and Shas. In addition to seeking a crackdown on the extremists, Tov also wants to develop a different model of ultra-Orthodox, said Goldhaber.
For instance, though many ultra-Orthodox men refuse to work for a living, Goldhaber does, and he is trying to foster a larger group of Haredim who both work and learn Torah. He helped found an ultra-Orthodox yeshiva, Metivta Beit Shemesh, that is one of the few Haredi yeshivas in Israel in which high school students take the bagrut matriculation exams.
He says Haredim like him fall between the cracks.
“Instead of helping us, the establishment ignores us or makes it hard for us,” said Goldhaber.
The Beit Shemesh municipality did not allocate land for the yeshiva, forcing the founders to solicit donations from the parents of prospective students and rent a building. Goldhaber said the Education Ministry does not officially recognize the yeshiva and that it has faced many bureaucratic obstacles.
“The more support we get from the outside, the more effective we will be able to be,” he said. “But if we aren’t granted legitimacy, both from the public at large and from the ultra-Orthodox population, if we don’t manage to establish more normal yeshivas where you can take the bagrut, then we’re on the sure path to civil war.”
Another area resident, a Hasidic man who lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh, called on the police to take action against the extremists.
“The police have to crack down on them,” he said. “They’re violent, they threaten us, they’re strangling us and their own rabbis. They don’t let anyone live.”
The man said his wife quit what he said was her “kosher” job, for which she studied at a Haredi institute for professional training, because extremists warned them they would put up flyers condeming them if she didn’t.
“Their rabbis don’t dare say a word to them,” the man said. “I think that the ones responsible for excluding women here are the state, the police – for not doing anything about them.”
Netanyahu is fanning the flames of religious incitement: Haaretz
Israel only has a very brief time left while change can still take place. It must either stop feeding the fire that is consuming it, or the country will cease to exist.
By Sefi Rachlevsky
Benjamin Netanyahu is not guilty. He learned that trick the first time he was elected. After he took part in orchestrating the rallies inciting against Yitzhak Rabin (“With blood and fire we will expel Rabin” ), along came the assassination. Netanyahu recognized the significance of the role he played and was certain the right wing was going to collapse in the next election. But miraculously, the non-right didn’t raise the assassination or the incitement during the election campaign – the shooting was reduced to the act of a single bad apple – and Netanyahu became prime minister.
Netanyahu is not the first to identify the formula. In the 1980s several fires broke out on Israel Air Force bases. It was always the same firefighter who was the first to notice the fire, arrive, put it out and reap the praise. As the incidents piled up, an undercover investigation began. The firefighter, it turned out, was the one setting the fires.
The Hasidic man from Beit Shemesh who was interviewed for a TV news segment that aired Friday has revealed the truth even to those who excel at repression. He is the product of an educational system that incites its students, creates segregation between boys and girls from childhood, and teaches boys that religious law states that spilling their seed is the worst of all sins – and that the spilled seed of sinning Jews gives rise to all the demons in the world, which are responsible for every tragedy, including, of course, the Holocaust. When the Israeli government allows itself to fund such an educational system, a place like Beit Shemesh can be expected to flourish. It’s clear to the product of this incitement that if a “normal man” like him doesn’t forcibly cover the arms of an 8-year-old girl, the world will be filled with his demons.
This normal man from Beit Shemesh continued to cover the arms of truth when he said “we have rabbis, and they’re the ones who order us to take action.” And that is the essence of the incitement. In the rallies that led to Rabin’s assassination, Netanyahu was assisted by Rabbi Dov Lior and his followers. Menachem Livni, the operational head of the Jewish Underground in the early 1980s, who was convicted of killing Arabs, has said Lior was the one who pressured him to kill and sent him out to do so. Lior was not questioned seriously, nor was he put on trial. He later went on to announce that his former student – Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Muslim worshipers in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron in 1994 – was a martyr, greater than all the martyrs of the Holocaust. And several rabbis have said Lior was the rabbi who ruled that Rabin should be killed because he was a rodef and moser, meaning that he was seeking to kill Jews and give up Jewish land. Rabin’s would-be assassin, Yigal Amir, attended many of Lior’s gatherings.
Today, the Netanyahu government is giving Lior tens of thousands of shekels a month in the salaries he receives in various capacities. When Netanyahu returned to Israel as a victor after confronting U.S. President Barack Obama earlier this year, he went straight to Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, pointed to the podium where Lior was sitting, and said that was the elite commando unit leading the Jewish people.
The “normal” bad apples who called Israelis soldiers “Nazis” also have rabbis. Lior has ruled that soldiers who evacuate outposts are like Nazis, and should be treated as such. The Netanyahu government is continuing to waste millions of shekels on education that passes on the kind of values embraced by Lior – who also heads a large hesder yeshiva, combining Torah study and military service. And it’s not just Lior. This week Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Netanyahu’s “moderate” partner, ruled that Jewish doctors should not treat non-Jews or secular Jews on Shabbat. In 1997 Netanyahu told the late Rabbi Yitzhak Kadouri that Israel’s leftists had forgotten what it means to be Jewish. In that spirit, most young Jews are now being taught what being Jewish is all about: segregation, and the creation of hierarchies that fervently discriminate.
If I wanted to establish a school system that separates redheads from everybody else and teaches them that they are inferior, that the sight of them causes demons to be born and so they should not be seen, I would probably be either hospitalized or arrested. But the Israeli government is sending most of the first-graders it classifies as Jews to religious schools, whether Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox. Those schools are doing essentially the same thing; they are operating an apartheid system that discriminates against girls.
At the end of the McCarthy era, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that separate is not equal. For all that he was a Republican, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent federal troops into Arkansas to uphold the right of black students to attend the same schools as whites. In Israel there’s no need to send in the army; it would be enough to stop funding every segregated school. No so-called education system that segregates boys and girls should get a single shekel from the state. That would be enough to stop the madness.
Israel has a clear choice to make. It can continue with the Netanyahu government – which is igniting, fanning and subsidizing the rabbinical flames of incitement and, as the fire consumes all, promises to take care of the bad apples – or another government can step in and put out the fire.
Each of the three instances since 1977 in which the right lost the vote all had something in common: In all three cases, the public became more aware of the domestic threat, consisting primarily of religious extremists threatening to take over. By now it’s no longer just a threat. Israel only has a very brief time left while change can still take place. It must either stop feeding the fire that is consuming it, or the country will cease to exist.
EDITOR: Who is on the side of democracy now:
Shaul Arieli could hardly be described as left wing in European terms. He was a Colonel in the Israeli army, and on most issues is on the right. Yet in this struggle between the ‘Jewish democrats’ and ‘Judaic republicans’ he is on the left…
In the end, Kahane won: Haaretz
The evil spirit that is blowing from the corridors of the Knesset and government is based on supra-state principles – the biblical promise to the Jewish people trumps the Palestinians’ terrestrial rights.
By Shaul Arieli
The Israeli public’s disregard for the freeze in negotiations with the Palestinians stems from a perception of reality opposite the one in 1993, when the Oslo Accords were signed. The willingness for compromise and dividing the land has been replaced by the faith that “it’s all mine.” The illusion that you can get the bride (the Land of Israel) without the dowry (the Palestinians) has returned and taken over the Israeli consciousness.
The danger of losing the Jewish majority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River is obscured by soothing “facts” such as the disengagement’s removal of Gazans from the ledger, the erasure of a million West Bank residents from statistics-bureau publications, and a “promise” that the next confrontation will enable a national “price tag” that will transform Jordan into the Palestinian homeland. There are also “democrats” among us who think they are authorized to offer the Palestinians Jordanian citizenship, or “Israeli citizenship contingent on allegiance to Zionism,” so that Jews alone will maintain the right to decide about land on which Palestinians live.
The injury to personal security and the economy in the days of the intifadas seems like a distant nightmare. Operation Defensive Shield, Operation Cast Lead, the security fence, the exclusion of Palestinians from East Jerusalem and the doubling of the number of settlers are perceived as the only appropriate answer to Hamas’ terror, but also to the diplomatic path Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has chosen. The security coordination and the war on terror by the Palestinian security forces in the West Bank are viewed as self-evident and guaranteed to last forever, even though Hamas-ruled Gaza shows us that things can develop otherwise.
Ruling another people, deprived of civil rights, is no longer considered contrary to the democratic regime and a threat to Israeli society’s moral strength. The evil spirit that is blowing from the corridors of the Knesset and government is based on supra-state principles – the biblical promise to the Jewish people trumps the Palestinians’ terrestrial rights, the land transcends the state when it comes to realizing the messianic destiny, halakhic rulings vanquish the rule of law, the Knesset’s laws defeat the rights of the minority and the individual, and the power to silence defeats the right to protest.
The international position and American pressure, which dragged Yitzhak Shamir to Madrid in 1991, once again are dismissed with Oom-Shmoom scorn, to borrow a derisive term for the United Nations from David Ben-Gurion. Israelis are convinced that the number of standing ovations from the U.S. Congress during Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech assures him another term as prime minister free of pressure, for the most part. After all, it’s clear you can give a speech at Bar-Ilan University while rejecting the parameters for a permanent agreement. You can declare a freeze and allow tens of thousands more Israelis into Judea and Samaria. So it’s possible to warmly adopt the Quartet’s proposal while refusing to present an Israeli proposal to counter the Palestinian one.
The erosion of Israel’s image and credibility among world leaders and global public opinion is presented as “that same anti-Semitism in other garb.” The process of delegitimizing the booming settlement enterprise and the opposition to continued Israeli control of the territories are termed “wild incitement.” The latest excuse: The upheavals in the Arab world will lead to an anti-Israeli Islamic Winter not dependent on our actions, since, after all, “the Arabs are the same Arabs and the sea is the same sea.”
When I bumped into far-right politician Baruch Marzel in Hebron recently, he explained the shift in Israeli perception succinctly. “The truth won out,” he said, against the backdrop of a Shuhada Street shockingly empty of its Palestinian residents. “The evidence for this is the ever-smaller number of people who attend the memorial for Rabin as opposed to the ever-growing number who attend the memorial for Kahane.”
IDF opposes plan to try Jewish extremists in military courts: Haaretz
Suggestion follows incident where about 50 assaulted a top Israel Defense Forces officer and vandalized military vehicles on a West Bank base.
By Chaim Levinson
The military prosecution opposes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to try violent right-wing activists in military tribunals, partly because it wouldn’t be an effective way of convicting Jewish extremists and partly because it would further politicize the army, sources said.
They said military prosecution officials made the comments in closed meetings last week.
Cabinet officials have authorized the IDF to further examine the option of using the military tribunals.
The military tribunal suggestion was one of several steps Netanyahu approved earlier this month, after dozens of right-wing activists clashed with police officers in Jerusalem and about 50 assaulted a top Israel Defense Forces officer and vandalized military vehicles on a West Bank base.
In addition to approving trying the right-wing activists in military courts, which would expedite their sentencing and likely make their punishment more severe, Netanyahu also approved placing Jewish extremists under administrative detention without a trial, a measure usually reserved for Palestinians suspected of being security risks.
Netanyahu did not consult with the military prosecution first, even though it is responsible for bringing suspects to trial in military courts. A senior officer in the military prosecution said he heard about Netanyahu’s proposal from the TV news.
Netanyahu, who has reiterated his plan in meetings with IDF officials, did consult with Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman and Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich before announcing his proposal.
The army expressed its opposition to the use of military tribunals when military prosecution representatives met last week with officials from the Justice Ministry and the State Prosecutor’s Office.
They said trying Jewish extremists in military courts would have no practical benefit over trying them in civil courts, since military tribunals must adhere to the same standards of evidence. The IDF officials also said the plan would create further political rifts within the army, which they characterized as a strategic problem for Israel’s military.
They also argued that this has been attempted before – in the 1970s, when it met with minimal success – and that those being tried would be likely to petition the High Court of Justice against the use of military courts, and might very well win.
The issue has also been addressed in an inquiry committee report on Baruch Goldstein’s 1994 massacre of 29 Muslim worshipers in Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs, which found that law enforcement problems in the West Bank would not be allayed by use of the military.
Beyond that, the problems are exacerbated by the soldiers’ difficulty in enforcing laws violated by settlers, the report found.
Rabbis maintaining ‘disturbing silence’ amid uproar over gender segregation: Haaretz
Beit Shemesh is a microcosm of the wider ultra-Orthodox community, and of Israel itself; many wonder where the rabbis have gone.
By Yair Ettinger
The small bubble of tension that is rising about Beit Shemesh bears notice. Local elections are still far off on the horizon and Mayor Moshe Abutbul (Shas) sits confidently atop a wide, stable coalition that guarantees him the support of the Labor Party (the world of Beit Shemesh is filled with wonders), yet two opposition forces are kicking into high gear, preparing for a political showdown.
What distinguishes these two forces, which compete with each other, is the fact that both operate on the Haredi playing field: the “Tov” party, which has under its belt an ultra-Orthodox political success (it managed to send a representative to the city council after the last elections, overriding the objection of local rabbis and religious functionaries ); and the “Am Shalem” faction, led by Shas renegade and former MK Haim Amsalem, who recently established a power center in Beit Shemesh.
These two rebellious movements appeal to moderate Haredim, English-speaking Haredim, disappointed Shas members, Haredi “home-owners” (referring to ultra-Orthodox who work for their living ) and others who are alienated from traditional leaderships of Shas and other mainstream religious parties. Beit Shemesh is filled with such off-the-mainstream Haredim, particularly in the town’s new neighborhoods.
Eli Friedman, chairman of “Tov,” and Dov Lipman, a representative of Am Shalem, gave interviews on secular media outlets, and Lipman expressed himself on Facebook. Their viewpoints acutely attack Haredi extremists, and strike squarely against Mayor Abutbul. Nobody can cast doubt about their strict level of Orthodox observance, and for both, it is important to be identified as a “Haredi” activist; but under current extremist circumstances in the city, they sound as though they belong to Meretz. The future of these two movements remains unclear, yet both bear witness to important facts of the past and present in Beit Shemesh. And Beit Shemesh is in many ways a miniature representation of the Haredi world, and of the State of Israel as a whole.
Many wonder about where the rabbis have gone. Can it be that the current media uproar, in which virtually every day Haredi extremism reaches the front pages of the newspapers, hasn’t reached the rabbis’ attention? Can it be that the norms of the outside, secular political world are completely foreign to them? Are the statements and denunciations uttered by the prime minister kept away from them? Do the rabbis have nothing to say about acts of violence that occur in Beit Shemesh?
The simple answer is that the Haredi rabbis, particularly in the Ashkenazi community, do not feel committed to any agenda or public viewpoint, certainly not anything rooted in media coverage. They do not “respond” and, assuming they are aware of public consternation concerning the Haredim, do not feel obligated to expectations of any sort harbored by secular Israelis, who believe they (the rabbis) should deal with this or that phenomenon.
Not only that, but if Haredi rabbis do have an official position, it is one of complete negation of what they see as a campaign against the Haredi community, as another attempt to uproot religion. The closest thing to a response has been headlines such as one that appeared in Bnei Brak based newspaper “Yated Ne’eman” on Sunday which said, “The tendentious and deceitful incitement continues.”
Another key reason is the leadership crisis among Haredi rabbis. The Haredi community is awaiting for comments from Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, the Lithuanian Haredi leader, and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader oh Shas, neither of who have addressed the incidents so far.
None of this, however, is directly relevant to Haredi extremists in Beit Shemesh, who do not oblige dictates given by the mainstream Haredi world. In recent years these elements seem to have spun far from the main Haredi rabbis.
“The main problem concerning Beit Shemesh is our silence, the disturbing silence maintained by religious, Haredi people. We are the first people who really ought to come out and oppose such extremism,” stated Rabbi Dr. Dov Halbertal Sunday. Halbertal suggested that if a prominent figure, such as Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, issued a denunciation of violence emanating from the Haredi fringe, it would cause convulsions in the Haredi world, including its extremist fringes.
Yet Elyashiv persists in his silence, as do the main Haredi media outlets. In their eyes, the Haredi community is the subject of a serious blitz, and those from the Haredi camp who are willing to cooperate with the media are playing into the hands of those who wish to uproot the Torah. Any criticism that does exist in newspapers such as “Mishpacha,” Hebrew for “family,” or “Be Kehila,” Hebrew for “in community,” is very subtle indeed.
Even so, the winds of change are blowing. The call for change, for stopping the Haredi gangs, for putting an end to extremism, are coming from the Haredi street. Until last week, these voices were mainly heard in internet forums, where members can comment anonymously, but on Sunday they were clearly visible in the headlines of Haredi websites, such as “Kikar Shabat,” Hebrew for “shabbat square,” that called on extremists by name, and called to denounce them. One example is journalist Asher Gold, who called on members of the public to join a religious-nationalist protest in Beit Shemesh on Tuesday.
Many are not prepared to put up with the tyranny of Haredi gangs in Beit Shemesh, or incidents such as the recent one where little girls are spat at, and not just because they understand how much damage the extremist minority is doing to the ultra-Orthodox majority.
EDITOR: Fine moral sense…
If you read the piece below, you understand that the main worry of these worthy rabbis is not that Haredis in Israel are doing something which is both wrong and immoral, but the fact they are damaging the image of Israel… The real problem for one is: “what will the Goys say?”….
Haredi violence is damaging Israel’s image, U.S. rabbis say: Haaretz
As news of clashes between police and ultra-Orthodox activists reaches Brooklyn’s Hasidic neighborhoods, the response is clear: A denouncement of violence.
By Shlomo Shamir
Violent clashes between Israel Police forces and ultra-Orthodox activists amid a public outcry over the exclusion of women from the public sphere is damaging the image of the Haredi community in the United States, Brooklyn community leaders told Haaretz on Tuesday.
“The violent clashes show Israel in a horrible light and cause a great deal of damage to its image in America,” one Hasidic rabbi, a resident of the Borough Park neighborhood told Haaretz.
“If Jews strike Jews, what will the gentiles say?” asked one rabbi.
Reports of violent clashes between radical Haredi activists and security forces in the central Israel town of Beit Shemesh have been slowly spreading through Brooklyn’s ultra-Orthodox communities.
But when community leaders are asked on their take on recent unrest in Israel, their response is as unified as it is harsh – an unequivocal denouncement of extremism and violence.
“The extremists in Israel’s Haredi camp are giving a bad name to the virtue of modesty,” the leading rabbi told Haaretz, with other leaders expressing dismay at what they called the “moderate” response of Israeli authorities.
New York Democratic New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind added that “if a young Hasidic man would have spat on or hurt a girl in Borough Park he would have been immediately arrested and handled in the most stern of way.”
“Incidents of harassment and injury against people of all race and creed are unacceptable and unforgivable where we are,” Hikind added.
When it was recently discovered that a local Brooklyn bus line was enacting gender segregation, the city put an immediate stop to the custom and the line was cancelled. Segregation is only tolerated in private bus lines which service religious neighborhoods.
Speaking with Haaretz, some rabbis explained that cases of religious extremism were rare in Brooklyn, since the religious population of those areas was mostly homogenous. “95 percent of Borough Park residents are Hasidic Jews,” Hikind said, “which is also the case in Williamsburg and Flatbush.”
Even outbursts within those communities rarely reach the public eye, community leaders added, with Hikind saying that “a factor which prevents ugly riots of the kind we’re seeing in Beit Shemesh is the general feel of ‘what would those among whom we live would say?'”
Jewish leaders have also said that Hasidic communities have also been maintaining an exemplary coexistence with the many Arab and Muslim immigrants who have settled into the area in recent years.