Jerusalem – Police are turning a blind eye to ultra-orthodox efforts to block traffic on a central Jerusalem street every Saturday, with hundreds of religious men often resorting to violence in a bid to prevent cars from desecrating Shabbat, secular activists reported on Sunday.
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“Neviim Street is the last road you can still drive on in the center of town, and now they are trying to close it off, too,” said Eyal Ackerman, head of the Jerusalem Free Israel Movement that has been organizing protests against the ultra-orthodox in the past few weeks.
Although the police have successfully prevented the total closure of Neviim Street, secular drivers have complained of ultra-orthodox zealots kicking, hitting and throwing bottles and their cars when they attempted to drive through the street.
The Jerusalem Police responded to the allegations that its forces have done little to prevent the vandalizing of cars and disruption of traffic on Saturdays, saying “several dozen ultra-orthodox men participated in Saturday’s protest, calling out against the desecration of the Sabbath.”
These ppl don’t realize that’s what will cause them to stray away even more. Maybe every time there own kids do a melacha because of ignorance they should also beat them instead of telling them that is asur, and if they already do beat them am sure they won’t stay frum, fact is that its a huge chillul hashem what they are doing and they deserve to get arrested for vandalism
“Jerusalem Free Israel Movement”.
Horrible name. Sounds like a pro-palestinian group that wants israel to be Jerusalem-free
in this instance i agree, that charaidim need to stop vandalizing vehicles or violence. charaidim need to stop burning homes hurting or burning peope ect. whats the difference between the tailiban and lehavdil…….invite other people for cholent or set a true example for others to see that goes a longer stretch….if oothers see charaidim using violence or negativity you are distancing people from seeing what torah is all about….i think all this is from ignorance….
So sad. We should be crying over the chilul shabbos and use those tears to teach our wayward brothers about the beauty of halacha. We should hug them rather than spit and attack. Instead of crying over the tinokos shenishbu we’re crying over the chilul Hashem caused by so-called charedim.
Now I can only wonder why Chabad is so successful in mekareving others as compared to these people…
screaming, throwing things and obnoxiousness towards your own brethren will never lead to peace. So if you know that acting like a mob won’t help, but only make it worse, are you even allowed to do it?
I was taught that vandalizing automobiles is chilul Shabat. When did the halachah change?
i understand those that think they are defending god but hey fellers all you are doing is turning off more people Rabbi Berel Wein recently wrote a great article in it he stated that the vast majority of European Jews prior to the war where not religious We live in illusions and myths the madness needs to stop just like they decided last year that certain girls could not be in their publicly supported yeshiva sorry the extreme right really sucks
These people should get together with NK and move to Iran. Who needs this filth. They dress like us, and they tell people they are one of us, but in reality they are nothing but filthy animals in our clothing. Violent pigs have no place in a Jewish world. Period.
Reb Shlomo Carlbach Z’L said, how can a frum Jew pass a non religious Jew on shabbos and not invite him for the meal.
The only way to make another Jew keep shabbos is with showing a brother some love.
Peace n’ Love!
Eretz Yisroel is a democracy and its the right of any yid to be shomer shabbos or be mechallel shabbos if that is what he/she wants. These lunatics who somehow believe they have a right to control how others lives should be thrown into jail for a few days so they might think twice before assaulting others.
Besides the negative image of Chareidim presented by these protesters, there is even a greater “Chillul Hashem” involved:
The protesters send the following message to the drivers: “Hey, you can’t drive in or near our frum neighborhood on Shabbos.” This implies that driving on Shabbos is not the issue, but driving in/near frum neighborhoods. The irreligious driver, who mindset is of “Western tolerance”, will, at most, be alerted to “live and let live”. They will think that perhaps they were “insensitive” for driving through a frum neighborhood, but will not understand that driving violates the Torah and is an affront to the G-d of Israel.
Thus, the protesters’ message is a Chillul Hashem, because it condones driving through non-religious neighborhoods. I lived in Jerusalem, understand the mentality and actions of these protesters, and upon consultation with Rabbonim, we came to the above conclusion.
According to the article, they were “hitting and throwing bottles AND their cars…” All I can say is, “Wow…”