Recent poll reveals steep rise in racist views against Arabs in Israel; many participants feel hatred, fear when overhearing Arabic, 75% don’t approve of shared apartment buildings
Over half of the Jewish population in Israel believes the marriage of a Jewish woman to an Arab man is equal to national treason, according to a recent survey by the Geocartography Institute.
JERUSALEM – In Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, where the rule of law sometimes takes a back seat to the rule of God, zealots are on a campaign to stamp out behaviour they consider unchaste.
“These breaches of purity and modesty endanger our community,” said 38-year-old Elchanan Blau, defending the bearded, black-robed zealots. “If it takes fire to get them to stop, then so be it.”
An ultra-Orthodox couple from Beit Shemesh are under arrest for allegedly assaulting at least some of their 12 children. Sadly, that’s not earth-shattering news in a country where child abuse seems to be on the rise. That some of the couple’s children may have engaged in incest only adds to the grotesque revelations.
Yet what makes this story truly bizarre is that the 54-year-old wife and mother involved also heads a sect of several dozen women who maintain a Taliban-like dress code requiring them to cover their faces and wear multiple layers of clothing.
Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, in another ultra-Orthodox household, several people are under police investigation for abusing two toddlers. The youngest remains hospitalized and in a coma. The mother allegedly “corrected” the children’s behaviour by whipping them. Police insinuate she may be part of a sect which adheres to violent child-rearing practices.
Under Operation Tikva, through which thousands of people in Ethiopia are provided with clean water, money for food and educational services, they are also reminded often that they are Jews and that the people of Israel are waiting for them.
What makes Operation Tikva different than other Jewish aid programs in Ethiopia, however, is that neither the Israeli government, the Jewish Agency for Israel, nor any other recognized aliya organization is involved in it. In fact, The Jerusalem Post has learned it is a program run by Messianic Jewish missionaries, and very few people in Israel even know about it.
It seems that while Israel has officially stopped encouraging the immigration of thousands of Ethiopians either via the Law of Return or the Law of Entry, other groups have taken up the task.
These Messianic Jewish missionaries continue to be active in far-flung villages of northern Ethiopia, telling local farming communities there that God, Israel and the Jewish people are rooting for them, even though their ancestral link to Judaism is tenuous at best.
Out of concern that Israel will be labelled a proselytizing nation, the Justice Ministry this week asked Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar to stop converting citizens of foreign countries. But Amar is proving reluctant to do so.
In a meeting on Sunday, attorney Harel Goldberg of the Consultation and Legislation Department in the Justice Ministry requested that Amar halt these conversions. Goldberg had sent a letter to Amar more than a month ago warning of the legal problems involved with the practice.
But an aide to Amar who deals with the conversions said that, together with the ministry, they still hoped to find a way to continue the practice.
Legal experts in the ministry and in the Attorney-General’s Office have opposed drafting any regulations that would give a religious authority the power to convert citizens of foreign countries.
Violence against Christian evangelical and Messianic Jewish communities in Israel increased significantly during the period between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008, according to the US State Department’s Annual Report on International Religious Freedom.
The report, released last week, put blame for the “tensions” on “certain Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities.”
But except in one case, the report, which noted numerous incidents of discrimination or violence against Christian or Messianic Jewish communities or individuals, failed to prove that the perpetrators were Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox.
According to the US State Department, Jehovah’s Witnesses representatives reported a significant increase in assaults and other crimes against their members over the past 12-month period. Violent incidents were up from one to two a month in early 2007 to eight to nine a month in early 2008.
On October 23, 2007, suspected arsonists set fire to the Narkiss Street Baptist Church in Jerusalem. The pastor of a Russian Messianic Jewish congregation that meets in the church said that Yad L’Achim , a haredi anti-missionary organization, had threatened him and his congregation over the few years leading up to the attack.
Two items recently crossed my desk. The first was an article that appeared in The Jerusalem Post written by Matthew Wagner entitled “Haredim move to silence ‘treif’ music”. It was about a movement to ban musicians who produce or perform any music which the Guardians of Sanctity and Education deem inappropriate. Musicians playing such music would be banned from playing in wedding halls, their CDs would be banned and their concerts disallowed.
The other item was a breaking news piece from JTA indicating that Rabbi Benzion Twerski had resigned from a task force in formation being brought together to deal with sexual abuse in the Orthodox community. New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, also an Orthodox Jew, is establishing the task force to deal with this scourge. Twerski resigned because of the many threats against him and his family made by several individuals from his community.
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