Israel – Seventeen were arrested in Ashkelon, while undreds of ultra-orthodox demonstrators blocked roads and set fire to garbage bins in Jerusalem late Saturday night to protest plans to relocate graves at Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
The police are now girding for further unrest by ultra-Orthodox Jews across the country during the planned evacuation of human remains to make way for a bombproof emergency room at Barzilai.
Saturday night, the police deployed in force along key arteries in Jerusalem, including Bar Ilan Street and Route 1 leading into the capital, to prevent attempts to obstruct roads.
Earlier in the evening, a spontaneous demonstration took place near the Satmar yeshiva in the Mea She’arim neighborhood, with participants calling for “the prevention of any possibility to desecrate the graves.” In ultra-Orthodox districts, leaflets called for “the Land of Israel to go to war.”
Members of the Israel Antiquities Authority are due to arrive at the site Sunday morning to begin work on the excavation that would remove human remains believed to be thousands of years old.
They will be protected by hundreds of police officers, including units specializing in riot dispersal, which began deploying late Saturday night. Meanwhile, Barzilai officials are on alert for possible attempts to injure the medical staff and disrupt their work.
Law enforcement officials said they will respond harshly to any attempts by protesters to disrupt the antiquity authority’s excavations.
“The Haredim will not allow the relocation of the graves to occur quietly,” said a senior police official. “While they did not succeed in preventing this evacuation, they will certainly do everything to deter a similar thing from occurring in the future.”
Although the Ashkelon hospital has served as the flashpoint of the latest tensions, police in the south do not expect heavy rioting there. Nonetheless, police have fanned out in the south, with officers from around the country deploying in the area as backup.
Police say that due to the thin presence of the Eda Haredit, the extreme religious sect that has spearheaded violent demonstrations against the authorities, they do not expect serious clashes in Ashkelon. Senior figures of the Ger Hasidic dynasty in Ashdod told the authorities that they do not intend to take part in the unrest.
Security forces intend to ring-fence the hospital and guard the entrances to the city to prevent demonstrators from infiltrating the site. Sources say the ultra-Orthodox may try to reach Ashdod before dawn.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reversed an earlier government decision to move the emergency room – a costly venture. Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman had not wanted the wing moved for religious reasons.
After the cabinet approved Litzman’s proposal, the ministry’s director-general, Dr. Eitan Chai-Am, resigned in protest. Due to the heavy criticism by medical officials and the press, Netanyahu ordered a special task force headed by a top aide to investigate the matter.
After the prime minister determined that the remains should be relocated and the emergency room built on the site originally designated, Litzman did not resign. Barzilai officials said over the weekend that the hospital was quiet, and that staff members were anticipating a decision on the start of the bones’ relocation by the antiquities authority. The relocation process, in which the remains will be handed over to the Religious Services Ministry, is expected to begin within the next few days.
The hospital also completed fencing work around the area expected to hold the emergency room.
“According to plans, the evacuation of the gravesites will continue for two to three days,” said a hospital official. “This will enable the start of digging to put the foundation in place for the emergency room right after the Shavuot holiday.”
According to the medical center’s management, “The hospital is operating as per usual. The police are making contingency plans that will enable the full functioning of all the hospital’s divisions during the evacuation of the gravesites.”
Dr. Leonid Eidelman, the chairman of the Israeli Medical Association, visited Barzilai on Friday. “The bombproof emergency room is critical for the residents of the south, and we are hopeful that its construction will be completed quickly,” he said.
Eidelman warned the police commissioner of the danger that Barzilai medical staff could be the targets of violent acts by protesters against the removal of the remains.
“The police have made it clear that they have acted with determination to prevent any possible harm to the hospital,” the medical association said in a statement.
The only “good news” in this story is that this time around the police have been authorized to use all necessary force to keep these meshugaaim from interrupting the respectful removal of these goiyeshe bones to be reburied at another site. Its about time that the security forces showed some backbone against the real chillul hashem going on here which is a small number of chareidim acting against the law and engaging in violent and destructive behavior.
If the graves is from jewish people why moving them? Is this a jewish state? Give it back to the arabs, if we not keeping the Torah laws what’s the point of a jewish land
Yechskel does not meet bar ilan. On one side it meets shmuel hanavi and the other malchai yisroel which is known as “kikar hashabbos” and where the protests usualy are/was.
#1 who told you its goiyisha atzumas ? do you think that all the rabonim is seeking trouble for nothing if there is a chiuv to be moicha we got to be moicha . in spain in poland in ukraine we can ask they shouldn’t touch the graves of our forfathers only in the so called state of israel we can’t ask to leave them alone let’s see what you will say when the government will digg your fathers kaver what will you say . This people in israel is fighting our fight we should help them and not ripe them off
why didnt the charedim protest the removal of REAL jewish graves (the ones in this article are most likely not even jewish) when israel evacuated gush katiff?
i smell a political agenda…
Why didn’t Litzman resign in protest?
The secular anti religious Israeli government hates Judaism and has been seeking to destroy the Torah way of life the last 62 years . In the early 1970s they forced orthodox jews to submit their dead to autopsies and used to cut up religious Jewish bodies all over the place. They have no respect for the dead because these people are atheist. In gush katif they dug up over 50 bodies ,so much for their respect for the dead. What is needed that all observant Jews unite and overthrow this evil anti Torah government.
I was there, at kikar hashabos last night. hundreds????? some troublemakers lit a fire and ran, maybe 5-10 people hanging around
it is high time that the authorities start cracking some heads on these ignorant criminaly insane savages,and lock them up and throw away the keys
To all of you who protest moving these goyishe bones, where are you when it comes to protecting live Jews? All you nuts care about are Old Bones, protecting child molesters in Brooklyn and in E”Y, and in the meantime, you collect funds from the Governments in the US and E”Y. Why don’t you do something productive with your lives? First of all, go to school and learn how to spell in English. Then get a job and stop ripping off the Government. Then take a bath once a month or even more and then we can start talking.
imagine it would have been your grandfather wouldnt you do evrything to save his kever including demonstrations and sitting on the floor and shout on the police so what are these pepole fault that they died years ago emagine your kever being dug up in a thousnd years and no one would do any thing to stop them we have to thank the eida that they do the dirty work instead of us!!! Thank you eida hachreides !!!
To all the imbeciles on this thread. Jewish graves can be moved. They always have. the halacha permits it.
The Jewish sources (e.g. Mishna, Tosefta, Talmud) state very clearly that when a city must expanded, the graves (Jewish graves of course) are moved away for the need of the living.
For example תוספתא בבא בתרא א’ יא’ “כל הקברים מתפנים חוץ מקבר המלך וקבר הנביא”; Tosefta Bava Batra A, 11. “All graves can be moved except for those of a king and a prophet.”
In the time of the Second Temple, this is what happened and archeology shows that when Jerusalem expanded to the north, the burial caves that were in the area were emptied and transferred to new burial caves outside the city.
Its amazing how little about halacha these wackos actually know. These protests are being lead for political reason and are a HUGE chilul Hashem. And those who agree with these protests are guilty of the same.
You aren’t supposed to move the bones of a person. Even when the Soviets were trying to build on Rebbe Nachman’s grave the Lubavitcher Rebbe zl, Satmar rebbe zl and Rav Feinstein zl did everything they could to prevent even Rebbe’s gravesight and that of others to be moved, the same goes with the people who were burried in Uman. Zohar explains that it harms the body to move it. This is why we don’t cremate people, you are really not supposed to move a body once its burried.
Its simply disrespectful to dig up these bodies.
Rebbe Yoel Titlebaum Zl was more right than ever.