Jerusalem – A 20-year-old Ultra-Orthodox man was indicted on today for allegedly setting fire to an Israeli flag at Jerusalem’s Shabbat Square on the eve of Memorial Day.
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Yehiel Hazan was arrested by an undercover police office Sunday evening during a rally held by the anti-Zionist sect Neturei Karta as the Memorial Day siren honoring Israel’s fallen soldiers sounded throughout the country.
According to the indictment, “When the siren sounded the defendant, along with other (protestors), began to clap his hands and growl aloud. He held an Israeli flag in one hand and set it on fire with the other. Then the defendant, along with some other people, stomped on it.”
Hazan is charged with rioting and dishonoring the state flag.
During the rally, some 150 people waved signs bearing anti-Israel slogans and clashed with police. The Neturei Karta members later torched trash bins on nearby Shivtei Yisrael Street.
Also on Memorial Day eve, a group of about 20 haredi Jews celebrated a birthday at Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park.
The Neturei Karta sect’s campaign against Israel has been going for years, but has recently intensified.
Last January four of the sect’s members, US and Canadian citizens, visited the Gaza Strip and spent Shabbat with members of Hamas. They noted that the visit was aimed at showing support for the Palestinian people.
Below video shows Ultra-Orthodox Jews of the Neturei Karta group provocatively walk around and disobey the stand still during the Israeli Memorial Day siren, in Beit Shemesh. April 19, 2010.
These people remind me of the Jews who burned down the grain houses in Yerushalyim during the destruction of the second temple. What did thye Navi say about them?
This is outrageous and just as much a chilul hashem as if he had burned a sefer torah. He should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Tens of thousands of young men and women have died to defend degel yisroel.
Neturei Karta is a test for practicing ahavas chinam. It’s so easy to abhor them for their hateful actions – so the test is to love them, in spite of their spite. “Hashem – help me to love the unlovely, as I would wish you to regard me when I do things that are also unlovely.”
And as a footnote: Would this 20 year have dared to burn a flag like this in Russia or China?
Keep him in jail they are crazy people.
It’s only a shmata
It breaks our hearts, they cause us so much pain. We are all of us hurting and angry when we read this. In the interest of trying to be good yidden ourselves please remember these people are still our (misguided) brothers, please don’t further bring pain to the yidden with words of hate and loshon hara. In the merit of all those who hold themselves back from hateful words may be we be zoche to see Moshiach soon.
these annual events are so staged today
why do the isreali Press get a Pass, where is their sensitivity
is their Duty to report more important then then the rest of the israeli’s who …. Stand still for (i forgot what is the Halachic time required to stand still)
Maybe those who don’t stand still also have a Duty to perform that gives them a Patur
Remember Israel is a democratic country with freedom of expression.
Shouldn’t all those young men in the video be …. in yeshiva?
As we clearly see, they are not learning. Normally they waste time, being neither productive or destructive. But on this day, when so many people mourn the death of children, parents, friends, these low-lifes are being destructive.
I would rather practice Ahavas chinam on the IDF soldiers who are protecting Yidden with their lives. and one way to do that is to respect their memories.
Reply to #5 .
You have a right to disagree with some sheetas, but you have to respect that shmata. People have given their lives for that shmata. This behaima is protected and can walk the streets in eretz yisroel because of that shmata. And YOU, whoever you are, can walk around with a yarmulka and maybe a burd in payes because of that shmata. You may be a shmata yourself, to some degree we all are. But don’t be a kufei toiv. This same guy walks the streets, rides the buses, breaths the air and stays out of bomb shelters because of that shmata. In not a tzionist by any imagination, but respect others, especially the mouth that feeds you.
IDIOT!! I hate to think who you are married to, and a bigger rachmunis to your children if that’s the way you are mechanech them.
Where do we find that the flag is the same as a Sefer Torah (lehavdil elef alfei havdalos)? I am looking in the Mishna Brurah and Igros Moshe, but I don’t find it……Please help me……..
Whats wrong with flag burning in a democracy?
This is not iran, I think everybody may have an own opinion he has thousand’s. of people with him, stop the charges on this guy it will only get worse
I always wondered why its OK for the secular photographers (who come for the express purpose of filming chareidim) to “disrespect” the siren and run around taking pictures……
How horrible to say it’s only a shmatta. It doesn’t matter what you think of the flag. In every country in this world it is a crime to burn their flag. You do the crime- you do the time. He should be jailed for a long time for that act. If you oppose the country you live in either leave or protest legally
these few outcasts ; publici ty this is what they want if haaretz wouldnt cover it they wouldnt do it
why call these crazy people ‘ultra-orthodox”??????
They break every din of loshen harah and are despised by virtually all “ultra-orthodox”
jewry. I certainly never heard any Rabbinic authority supporting them.
Ah! Its wrong to burn the flag but its ok to want to take away from the medina a $100 billion as the previous story describes.
This is a controversial issue everywhere. In the US there have been initiatives to constitutionally forbid flag burning. However, it appears to me given my constitutional law training that flag burning falls within the protected rights possessed by US citizens under the 1st Amendment. The SC ruled clearly many times that speech isn’t restricted to mere verbal articulation.
That said, they did it in Israel. There is no written constitution. There is not the same level of freedom. They feel it’s important to engage in this form of civil disobedience, and they should also be prepared to pay the price. If they seek more freedom rather than the destruction of the State, they should consider moving to the US.
If he hates Israel so much, why doesn’t he move to Germany~
Where did all these crazies come? The ones defending them are just as nuts. Its embarresing to be associated with these morons.
If they hate Israel so much, why do they live there? Could it be all the free welfare, or maybe the free defense? Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
Poor guy is not an Arab. If he were, the burning would get attention in media in a positive way: look, how Israel made poor Arabs to suffer, it brings up hatred, oy, oy, oy. No Arab would be arrested for that.
When they burn garbage they are hurting their OWN family and neighbors! The stench is toxic! The entire street has to be closed off, traffic is halted, and precious resources have to be used to put out the fire. In the USA they would be arrested. In Israel they get full benefits, are exempt from taxes, army duty, and they rely on donations from the USA for their daily support. There are normal ways to protest-this is disgusting. Stop giving these people your tzedaka-there are genuinely poor people who really need that money that don’t cause other JEWS and Goyim anguish and chillul Hashem.
Send them to gaza without IDF protection and will see how long they will last….No wonder people hate us when they see pictures like this it makes most of us good Chasidim look terrible.
good keep him there. what a disgrace, what a chilul hashem.
#83 Nobody has a right to publicly spew hatred even if it is legal, neither Nazis nor NK’s. There are more important causes to defend than the right to publicly display hate.
I understand the anti-Tzioni view. I agree with them that behind the Israeli flag is terrible immorality and shmutz. But let me ask you defenders of NK (I’m not talking to those who are so brainwashed they can’t think straight), if you want the blood thirsty murderers, the suicide bomber nation, to take over the Israeli government? Anyone who can think straight will also know that the UN “peacekeepers” who would promise to be “peacekeepers” should the government of Israel cease to exist, will “surely make sure” the Jews have “peace” . Ahem. So do you want the Muslims or the “peacekeepers” to take over? The answer will undoubtly be a resounding no.
Therefore, we need to appreciate the good that the Zionists do wether we like it or not and nobody has a right to bite that hand even the NK’s.
We also need to pray that Moshiach should come speedily in our days so that we can have a true Jewish government with real and lasting security and Eretz Yisroel will not be defiled with tumah anymore.
To retaliate, those who support Israel should burn pictures of Jew-hating Muslim reshiim such as Arafat, Abbas, bin Laden, Amadinejad, Sheik Yassin, Nasser, Assad, Saddam Hussein and Ismail Haniyeh (the leader of Hamas) , yemach shmom — aliong with pictures of the Neturei Karta traitors such as the so-callled “rabbis” Moshe Hirsch, Yisroel Duvid Weiss, Moshe Ber Beck and Yosef Goldstein (yemach shmom), to symbolize Gehinom, where all of those who thankfully are already dead, like Nasser, Arafat, Saddam and Yassin are — and where the rest of them, including and especially the Neturei Karta blasphemers and heretics, are going.
This vid is not in Beit Shemesh as it writes above. Rather it is the unmistakable Kikar Shabbat.
so much sinas chinam over a silly flag
Lets Better Daven That משיח
should come already!!!
They should be stripped of their Israeli citizenship and deported. Those who are not Israeli citizens should be immediately deported. Better yet, ship them all to Gaza and let them be Palestinians.