Lod sales office aimed at national-religious sector torched

Lod, 15 km. southeast of Tel Aviv, has been on the front pages recently as three residents were murdered there last month.

By JONAH MANDEL
lod 88 248 (photo credit: Carl Hoffman)
lod 88 248
(photo credit: Carl Hoffman)
The Kardan real estate development firm’s Lod sales bureau was set afire over the weekend in what appears to be an effort to deter national-religious families from buying homes in the mixed Jewish/Arab city.
The office, located near Lod’s Old City, is offering around 300 homes for sale to national-religious buyers. Currently, approximately 75 such families live in a project nearby, who moved to the city to strengthen its Jewish character.
Lod, 15 km. southeast of Tel Aviv, has been on the front pages recently as three residents were murdered there last month. The cabinet recently approved a plan put forth by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to spend NIS 160 million to boost efforts to fight crime in the blighted downtown. As part of the program, a network of surveillance cameras will be affixed across the city and a control center will be opened to monitor the footage.
Asaf Weiss, who heads the recently formed Campaign for Lod’s Security, has no doubt that the fire was started by criminals, who have time and again made clear to members of the national-religious group that they are not wanted in the city.
Police and firefighters told him the fire was an act of arson.
The Campaign for Lod’s Security is a grassroots organization composed of residents – Arabs and Jews, secular and religious – who are dedicated to promoting the city’s security from within.
“Burning the office won’t deter us from bringing more families to the neighborhood. The national-religious [settling group] managed in the past few years to bring hundreds of families to Lod in order to strengthen the locale. The arson won’t stop us from acting to promote social change against the violence in the city,” he said on Sunday.
“I call on the national-religious public to continue and settle here, and be part of this important national and social project,” Weiss said.
Ben Hartman contributed to this report.