Beit Shemesh – Israeli police say a TV crew has been attacked by a group of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men in a city that has become a symbol of violent religious extremism.
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Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld says ultra-Orthodox men surrounded a Channel 2 news truck and hurled stones at it, lightly wounding one member of the TV crew.
He says the rioters also stole TV equipment. The attack took place in Beit Shemesh, a city of 85,000 just outside Jerusalem.
On Friday, Channel 2 aired a story about tensions in the city between modern Orthodox residents and the extremist ultra-Orthodox Haredi sect.
The story featured an 8-year-old American girl who says she is afraid to walk to school in the morning because the town’s Haredim have spat on her and cursed her.
While there are always two sides to a story (I’m being “dan l’chaf zchus”), there is no place for such violence. Who do these people follow? It’s scary to think they have some “rav” that gives them the notion this is OK. Sigh – this is one reason I don’t define myself as “religious”. It’s become a pejorative adjective.
Until משיח comes and sends off these impostors dressed as Yidden, I’m afraid we can do very little. They are violent, uneducated hoodlums and their leaders are spineless self-appointed fools.
This is a place where they spit on sephardim and those that aren’t like them (exactly what is says to do in the Shulchan Aruch!). What hope does a TV crew have??
Why doesn’t the police arrest these Hareidim? What makes them think that they can take over a city? The Zionist Orthodox were there before them.
It’s simply driving me nuts how a few dozen of “zealots” can taint an entire sector of the population that numbers in the hundreds of thousands. How can we put a stop to all this already? Over the last few weeks Hashem’s name is being desecrated wholesale, and it really hurts.
Someone really needs to open up a few jail cells in the holy land and fill them with the zealots who throw stones. Do it now! Jail now!
People didn’t understand me properly.
Everyone other than the media know that they are a tiny minority. It’s only the anti-semitic media that incites against ALL charedim.
Can you imagine if one of our Gedolim was there? Would they throw rocks? Would they scream threats?
Of course not.
Our Gedolim are failing when their students act like behama gasos instead of Torah Jews.
Beautiful ruach lekoved chanukka and they should be proud of spitting on another Jewish child inn eretz hakodosho. In Auschwitz my 12 year old cousin who attended B.Y. in Europe was gassed with other Jewish children. The SS doctors on the ramps of Birkenau did not make a distinction between “chareidi” and the “freie”. Without the Palmach[mapam] and the haganah[mapai] the epitomies of Yiddishkeit would have been Jordanian subjects. This reflects ahavas yisroel and the spirit of ner chanukka. Sometimes I wonder whether risking my life to daven in Concentration Camp was worth while to experience this riffraff. A perfect example of achdus.
The battle around Jerusalem in 1967 was won by Israeli paratroopers and it was Rabbi Goron , a’h who wore the paratroopers wings who blew the shofar when the zahal reached the kotel, not chareidim
The police have been contacted about this many times. They haven’t done what they should be doing. Many of the politicians in this area are either afraid or in cahoots. Either way, it’s an unfortunate accepted “fact” around this neighborhood that the police aren’t a go-to solution.
Is it just me or does the secular state of Israel
And their leaders
Make a bigger chillul hashem