A scuffle with angry protesters forces prompt exit for education minister after visiting staff, students.
By MATTHEW WAGNER, JPOST.COM STAFFTamir 224.88(photo credit: Ehud Zion Waldoks)
A heated fracas broke out outside Mercaz Harav Yeshiva on Sunday afternoon as Education Minister Yuli Tamir emerged from the site of Thursday's terror attack after meeting with the staff and students at the yeshiva high school.
Angry protesters scuffled with photographers and police pushed back the crowds as Tamir came out of the building.
The education minister was escorted off the premises by her security guards in an unceremonious manner, amid cries of "Tamir is a murderer," and "Tamir has come to dance on the graves of the victims."
Following the incident, Tamir said that it was "regrettable" that "the rabble doesn't know its bounds, even after a perfectly civil meeting."
"They destroyed the atmosphere of common sorrow", said Tamir to Army Radio. "Some people, and I hope they are in a minority, cannot rise above themselves even in such moments, and cannot differentiate between politics and grief."
Tamir denied she was using the visit for political purposes. "One could have a very long debate about the Israeli policy in the last thirty years, but this is neither the time nor place," she said.
The incident underscored the animosity felt towards Tamir by some in the religious sector due to the continued cuts in the religious education budget and ideological differences between the religious Zionists and Tamir's Labor party.
Earlier, police arrested six right-wing activists who had gathered on Jerusalem's Armon Hantziv promenade and were planning to march to the family home of the terrorist who killed eight people in Thursday's Mercaz Harav shooting attack.
The six were planning to tear town the mourning erected at the home in the east Jerusalem village of Jebl Mukaber, police said.
The activists included right-wing extremists Itamar Ben-Gvir, Baruch Marzel and Noam Federman.
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