Approximately 1,500 ultra-Orthodox men gathered at Shabbat Square in the
capital’s Geula neighborhood on Saturday night to protest what they called the
“oppression” and “incitement” of the “secular community” against
them.
Dozens of men wore yellow Stars of David on their jackets with the
word “Jude” in the center, and banners bearing slogans such as “Zionists are not
Jews” and “Zionism is racism” were paraded at the rally.
“Orthodox Jews
demand the presence of international forces to protect them,” another sign
read.
Police arrested two protesters when dozens tried to block Bar-Ilan
Street and throw stones. Police dispersed the crowd.
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Public attention
focused on the ultra-Orthodox community last week following a documentary that
Channel 2 broadcast, highlighting abuse that haredi extremists were directing at
national-religious schoolgirls in Beit Shemesh.
At Saturday night’s
demonstration, young children were brought onto a stage erected in front of the
square, wearing black-and-white-striped clothes and bearing the yellow Stars of
David on their lapels.
“What’s happening is exactly like what happened in
Germany,” said one man wearing a yellow star, who gave his name only as Moishe.
“It started with incitement and continued to different types of oppression. Is
it insulting that we wear these stars? Absolutely, and it hurts people to see
this, but this is how we feel at the moment, we feel we are being prevented from
observing the Torah in the manner in which we wish.”
The protest was also
called in support of Shmuel Weisfish, an activist in the ultra-Orthodox
extremist group known as the Sikrikim (Sicarii), who was convicted of assault
and other offenses and will begin a two-year prison sentence on
Sunday.
Directives from the stage urged protesters not to speak with the
press, and at one point men gathered around a camera crew in an attempt to force
them to wear yellow stars.
The crew retreated to a police
cordon.
Angry crowds also followed uniformed police, shouting at them and
calling them “Nazis.”
“It’s like how it started with the Nazis – very
slowly,” American yeshiva student Salomon Hoberman said, defending the use of
the yellow stars.
“They’re separating us from the Jewish people because
we’re following the way of the Torah. They hate us because we’re going the
Jewish way.
And there’s only one Jewish way.”
A haredi woman, who
declined to give her name, said, “We didn’t come to demonstrate, we came to show
our power, and that our power is forever.”
The sentiments that several of
the protesters expressed to
The Jerusalem Post bore a central theme of religious
coercion against the ultra-Orthodox community.
“How can this country be
called a democracy when they are trying to force us to adopt their culture and
their standards?” asked Shimon Levy, a young haredi man from a veteran Jerusalem
family. “We were here before the state [was established] and yet there are
people telling us what we may and may not do in our own
neighborhoods.”
He asserted that “the hatred and incitement being
directed at us because we do not want to take on the ethical standards of the
secular [community] is simply intolerable.”
Opposition leader Tzipi Livni on Saturday night criticized the haredi protesters for wearing yellow stars during the protest.
"With all due respect to the right of groups in the haredi community to
protest, and that is their elementary right, to put a yellow star on
their children does serious injury to the memory of those killed in the
Holocaust," Livni stated.
"I hope that the heads of the haredi public condemn these acts, because
they hurt the common cause that all of us still share," she added.
Meanwhile,
Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef on Saturday addressed tensions
between secular and haredi communities in Israel, saying in his weekly
sermon, "We do not hate the secular people, but rather love them, we
bring them closer."
Yosef spoke out against extremism, stating
that "there are haredim carrying out forbidden acts, that our Torah
forbids, they must be denounced."
Jpost.com staff contributed to this report.