Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox protesters riot in Beit Shemesh, Israel

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Beit Shemesh again. This is same place where the 8-year-old girl was cursed and spit on, same place where the female soldier was cursed for refusing to move to the back of the bus. It seems the protesters are mad about the public rally against gender segregation that was held there a couple days ago, after the incidents were publicized.

Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews protested on Thursday evening on a Beit Shemesh street, throwing rocks, blocking the road and burning trash cans. Police arrived in large numbers and have so far arrested three of the rioters.

The incident began as a small local gathering of about 20 people, who waved signs with slogans attacking Zionism. Shmuel Fefenheim, who lives nearby, said that "this group has been coming out every night recently with signs. Today, because of the atmosphere and people under arrest, someone decided to set fire to a large trash can and things spiraled from there."

Earlier on Thursday, An 8-year-old girl who became the symbol of a recent public struggle against gender segregation and religious extremism returned to school for the first time since a violent incident that sparked a nation-wide protest movement.

Na'ama Margolese turned into a household name last week after Channel 2 broadcasted a segment in which the young girl's described being spat on and accosted by ultra-Orthodox men over what they deemed to be her indecent apparel.

The story soon became a focal point for a rising protest movement against the exclusion of women in the public sphere, with thousands of Israelis amassing in Beit Shemesh to speak out against gender segregation.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/hundreds-of-ultra-orthodox-protesters-riot-in-flashpoint-town-of-beit-shemesh-1.404470

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/344457-kung-fu-fighting-christian-priest/

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Brooms versus Muslim Suicide bombers...... you decide.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Why Me and John Galt - Neither of your comments has anything to do with the OP story. There was also a devastating fire in Carmel last year, but it doesn't have anything to do with the story either. Let's try to keep this thread on-topic.

Back to the topic, about the increasingly violent confrontations between the ultra-Orthodox and secular society in Israel:

...Dov Halbertal, an attorney and lecturer in Jewish law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem...who is himself Haredi, has been visiting the home of Ashkenazi Haredi leader Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv for years. He has long warned against what he calls the politicization of religion, and against radicalization, such as that embodied by mehadrin buses or the Beit Shemesh zealots. He denounces "the vulgarization of religion that finds expression in the exclusion of women."

"This is not just an internal problem within Haredi society," he says. "Religion is taking over politics because it has a tendency to take over, and the ones who are pulling this cart are the silent ones," he says.

...

"Beit Shemesh and the buses are not the main problem," Halbertal claims. "They are symptoms of the politicization of religion. They are the results of extremists feeling secure because they're receiving backing from the establishment. They have tremendous backing and tremendous security because they receive funding from the state. After all, what motivates them is taking control of the country. How could buses be stopped in Mea She'arim [as happened several years ago] and the police do nothing? One day you'll find yourselves, secular women and the general public as a whole, silenced altogether."

Halbertal says "the solution is to use force against the extremists and to forcibly remove the skullcap from the state." He has taken a great deal of flak from his community over his call for separation of religion and state, so he knows how hard it is for sane Haredim to go against the flow. Like Horowitz, he too evokes contradictory reactions. His Haredi detractors call him a fascist and a leftist, but he also has supporters.

"The Haredi street is against me. The online commenters swooped down on me from every direction. They consider me less than dust. But there are quality people in the Haredi world, mainly young people, including the sons of yeshiva heads, sons of people in key positions, who tell me, 'Go ahead.' They tell me, 'we can't express ourselves, but you speak for us.'"

He understands why they aren't speaking out, but he believes the majority's silence is a show of cowardice and servility. "The little guy doesn't usually come out against the majority. But that is a problem. Martin Luther King, Jr., said that more than condemning the bad people, we must condemn the silence of the good."

He can't vent his opinions in the Haredi press. "If I write in Yated Neeman, I'll be immediately thrown out of the community. The community is terrorized by way of such issues as matchmaking. After all, everyone has to arrange marriages for his children. But if you say a word or two in favor of secular people, they won't want to match anyone to your children. So you have a responsibility. The upshot is that your average Haredi is captive. Therefore only those handful of people who are not submissive can do something that might lead to change."

"There are many matters about which the public has an opinion, but keeps it to itself," concurs a Haredi man who refuses to give his name. "People don't want to oppose, and they've gotten used to the extremists calling the shots. It's a dictatorship."

...

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/sane-voices-1.404546

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Why Me and John Galt - Neither of your comments has anything to do with the OP story. There was also a devastating fire in Carmel last year, but it doesn't have anything to do with the story either. Let's try to keep this thread on-topic.

Back to the topic, about the increasingly violent confrontations between the ultra-Orthodox and secular society in Israel:

My bad, I didn't read the title correctly. But again this story goes to show that religious wingnuts don't have a place in the 21st century.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Another ultra-Orthodox protest - this one was evidently not violent, but it's caused an even bigger controversy:

Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews protest in Jerusalem against 'exclusion of Haredim'

Some protesters are wearing yellow badges to protest their alleged persecution for being Jews.

Over a thousand ultra-Orthodox men assembled Saturday night in Jerusalem’s Kikar Hashabbat (Sabbath Square), in protest of what they termed the exclusion of Haredim, a response to the recent outrage over the exclusion of women in Beit Shemesh and elsewhere.

The protesters also expressed their solidarity with Shmuel Weissfish, one of the leading activists in the radical Sikrik group. Weissfish is slated to begin his two-year prison sentence on Sunday for vandalizing a computer store in the same Kikar Hashabbat.

Some of the protesters are wearing yellow badges, with which they mean to express that they are being persecuted for their Jewishness.

...

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/hundreds-of-ultra-orthodox-jews-protest-in-jerusalem-against-exclusion-of-haredim-1.404783

Israeli politicians decry ultra-Orthodox protesters' use of Holocaust imagery

...

'Putting on yellow badges on children is a gross offense to Holocaust remembrance,' Opposition Leader Tzipi Livni says on her Facebook page.

...

“Even in the debate we are holding today, there are lines we must not cross.” Livni continued. “Hilltop youth calling IDF officers Nazis and now Haredim with yellow badges are sinning against the collective memory of the Holocaust and meaning of the State of Israel”

“Prisoner uniforms and yellow badges with the word ‘Jew’ written in German are appalling and shocking,” leader of the Labor Party breakaway party Independence Barak said in a statement issued Sunday morning. “The use of the yellow badge and young children holding their hands up in defeat is crossing the line.”

...

Some of the protesters were wearing yellow badges; others were dressed in prisoner uniforms symbolizing the prosecution of Jews by the Nazi regime during World War II. The protesters were trying to express by way of analogy that they are being persecuted for their Jewish way of life by Israel’s secular majority.

...

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israeli-politicians-decry-ultra-orthodox-protesters-use-of-holocaust-imagery-1.404855

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Apparently the suckage is universal whenever religious zealots of any stripe bump up against enlightened, modern reality.

[Saddle Bronc 124]

An idea: how about have public-transit terminate all services to Beit Shemesh, then licence some private co's (with no regulations, especially on vehicle-loading) to supply services at two levels:

1. from neighbourhood to nearest ones still having services
2. from that neighbourhood to anywhere else

Edited January 2, 2012 by Saddle Bronc

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

An idea: how about have public-transit terminate all services to Beit Shemesh, then licence some private co's (with no regulations, especially on vehicle-loading) to supply services at two levels:

1. from neighbourhood to nearest ones still having services
2. from that neighbourhood to anywhere else

This was an Egged bus. Egged is a private bus company, the largest in Israel (private although heavily subsidized by the Israeli government.) However, all transportation systems are technically subject to Israeli law regarding non-segregation.

For many years, Egged has operated segregated bus service in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods after their request for it, but Egged officials claim this is "voluntary" on the part of the passengers - that it does not require passengers to segregate by gender, but that passengers are asked to choose to do so. This is not entirely true - many bus drivers on routes through neighborhoods like Beit Shemesh have ordered male and female passengers to sit separately, and refused service to customers who would not agree. And as we've seen, some of the passengers have taken it upon themselves to enforce gender segregation.

[Brother Hesekiel 2,235]

The more of this stuff surfaces, the more people learn about these blinded-by-hate wackos, the more they will agree that creating the state of Israel was a really bad idea. After WWII the allies thought . . . keep the Jews as far away from Europe as possible, and we won't have to deal with these problems again. But look how that worked out? Now we have a decades-long Middle East crisis, gazillions of U.S taxpayers' money flowing to support Israel, Israeli politics influencing U.S. politics, politicians with Israeli passports in the U.S. government, flotilla attacks, genocide . . . and it's just getting started.

I'm almost certain that a few decades from now a lot of people will ask for a strong man again who rules with a strong hand. History repeats itself they say, and unfortunately for the Israelis who have common sense and would like to live in peace with their neighbors, these Orthodox Jews are spoiling it for them. May the force be with them when the time comes.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Bro I think the lesson is not 'Israel should never have been created' which is a defensible position although I would personally disagree with it.

No, the lesson is, any religion in it's extreme elements is a backwards and negative thing.

[_Simpson_ 250]

Bro I think the lesson is not 'Israel should never have been created' which is a defensible position although I would personally disagree with it.

No, the lesson is, any religion in it's extreme elements is a backwards and negative thing.

Created, yes. Different location, yes yes yes.

[Susita 175]

No, the lesson is, any religion in it's extreme elements is a backwards and negative thing.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

A large number of secular Israelis are past fed up with how the state system enables extremism among the ultra-Orthodox. This article is really harsh in its condemnation:

It’s time to cure the disease of ultra-Orthodox education

Young Haredim are educated to totally despise the values of the secular state, which is why they have no problem scaring a little girl or calling policemen Nazis.

By Nehemia Shtrasler

Blessed be the yeshiva student who scared the little girl on her way to school. Blessed also be the one who spit at and cursed female passersby. Blessed be the ultra-Orthodox man who called the female soldier a prostitute, and blessed be those who demonstrated in striped prisoners' garb and stuck yellow stars on their clothing.

All this taken together might finally shake up the secular majority and force it into action. All this might make 90 percent of the population understand that there's no point in condemning the spitter or putting the one who cursed on trial. They are merely symptoms of a serious disease, and whoever deals merely with the symptoms is wasting his time and could even make the disease worse.

The disease is ultra-Orthodox education. It's an education that puts young Haredim through a thorough brainwashing, which ends with them believing that democracy is the evil regime, that equal rights for women is totally treif, that freedom and humanism are only good for the goyim, and that studying math, English and history is idolatry. They also learn that to go out and work for a living is a terrible embarrassment, and that to serve in the army is worthy of contempt, suited only to the secular donkey - who is stupid enough to sacrifice his life for the "homeland."

Young Haredim are educated to totally despise the values of the secular state, which is why they have no problem scaring a little girl or calling policemen Nazis. Their leaders have a clear goal: To provide the community with good living conditions at the expense of the secular donkey, who they believe should work hard, pay taxes and sacrifice his life in the army. Thus they can continue to shirk their duty while continuing to blackmail.

The part that's especially galling and absurd is that the secular majority, in its foolishness, is financing this destructive process. It gives huge budgets to the independent Haredi educational system. It gives allowances to married yeshiva students, as well as grants that are far higher than what a soldier gets during his compulsory service, or a student studying medicine or engineering. This is because the secular population is suicidal. It is slowly but surely wiping itself out with its own hands.

...

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/it-s-time-to-cure-the-disease-of-ultra-orthodox-education-1.405172