Police: Acre Yeshiva fire was arson

None hurt in Saturday night's blaze in city's Hesder Yeshiva; evidence transferred to crime labs.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Galilee police and fire services said Sunday that a fire that broke out at a yeshiva in Acre on Saturday night was caused by arson. Evidence from the fire scene at the city's Hesder Yeshiva has been transferred to the police's crime labs. While nobody was wounded in the incident, damage was reported. Earlier this month, yeshiva head Rabbi Yosef Stern told The Jerusalem Post that the recent rioting in Acre was not an isolated phenomenon, but rather part of a much larger problem with Israeli Arabs that would have to be dealt with "Acre is a national test of how we as Jews deal with the threat posed by the radicalization and Islamization of Israeli Arabs," said Stern in a telephone interview with the Post. "What happened here in the past few days is not restricted to Acre. Similar trends are playing out in Karmiel, lower Haifa, Jaffa, Lod and the Galilee," he said. "Demographically, the Arabs present a real threat. I call on Jewish families to move to Acre and to other towns in an attempt to strengthen the Jewish presence. If we don't do something, within 10 years we will be facing a major demographic problem." The Spirit of the North [Ruach Tzfonit] Yeshiva, which today has 170 students, was established four years ago in response to a sharp drop in the Jewish population in Acre's Wolfson neighborhood. On its Web site, the yeshiva heads describe the process. "Up until four years ago, it looked like Israel would lose a city for the first time in history. Slowly, Jews began to leave the neighborhood, and Arabs began to move in." According to the Web site, the local synagogue emptied out and an attempt was made to turn it into a mosque. The yeshiva was founded to counter this trend.