Haredim to protest in DC against Israel

Atra Kadisha, Satmar to attack "desecration of graves" by gov't.

By JONAH MANDEL
haredim detained at Barzilai (photo credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS)
haredim detained at Barzilai
(photo credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Atra Kadisha and other haredi groups will be holding a demonstration in Washington on Tuesday to demand of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that he “stop archeological excavations and construction in the Holy Land that is desecrating ancient Jewish cemeteries in gross violation of Jewish law.”
A statement released by the group, which dedicates itself protecting Jewish cemeteries, also denounced “the Israeli police’s beatings of peaceful demonstrators protesting the clearing of five ancient cemeteries and continued action to empty a cemetery in Jaffa in order to build a hotel.”
RELATED:Hundreds of haredim riot in JaffaRabbi Lazar Stern, a spokesman for Atra Kadisha, said the group planned to protest outside the White House, and to deliver petitions to the Israeli Embassy.
Aiding Atra Kadisha in organizing the demonstration is the Central Rabbinical Congress of the US and Canada (CRC), a consortium of anti-Zionist haredi groups founded by the Satmar Hassidim, who will also be participating the rally.
While Atra Kadisha and the Israel Antiquities Authority by and large maintain a working relationship when collaborating on digs in Israel, Satmar has no such rapport with the Zionist state, and in a fiery announcement in the Satmar newspaper Der Yid called to join the demonstration “for our holy Torah and our pure faith.”
Declaring the Israeli government an “infidel regime,” the announcement under the CRC banner explains that the state destroyed ancient cemeteries in Ashkelon – a reference to graves moved to build the reinforced emergency room for Barzilai Hospital – and “disgracefully discarded holy bones.”
“Seeing that their evil scheme succeeded,” the announcement continued, “they began unrooting a Talmud-era cemetery in Jaffa” while “viciously beating” those who came to protest, imprisoning hundreds of them, including rabbis and scholars.
“Their hand is still outstretched to uproot a burial cave in Nazareth,” the announcement said.
Hence there lies a great duty on each and every one to “go to war against the criminals and rebels in the King’s courtyard, the heretic regime that decided to occupy the remainder of Israel” in the Tuesday demonstration against Netanyahu, which will also be an opportunity to announce to the world “that we have no part with the Zionist State, whose entire existence is in contradiction to our holy Torah.”
The announcement is signed by many rabbis, first and foremost Rabbi Yekutiel Yehuda (Zalman Leib) Teitelbaum, one of the two Satmar rebbes, who leads the Williamsburg court.
Similar demonstrations were recently conducted around North America in protest over the digs in Israel. The organizers of Tuesday’s event hope for a turnout of at least 2,500.
On Monday night, hundreds of members of the Eida Haredit held a demonstration at Ben- Gurion Airport, from where Netanyahu was set to take off for the US. Demonstrators held signs calling the premier a “cannibal leader” and demanding he cease disturbing ancient graves.