Tel-Chai Nation

Moshe Abutbul, the mayor of Beit Shemesh who's part of the Shas party, can think of nothing better to do than blame the victims:

Beit Shemesh Mayor Moshe Abutbol has accused Bayit Yehudi party chairman Naftali Bennett of turning the city into “a battlefield,” local newspaper Chadash Beit Shemesh reported on Friday. [...]

“The attempt to foment unrest in the city is inappropriate and mistaken in any respect,” Abutbol wrote. “This is true even if the [Economy and Trade] Minister [Bennett] is looking for a good headline or to attempt to explain the bizarre ousting of [recently replaced Bayit Yehudi mayoral candidate] Mrs. [Aliza] Bloch in the middle of the race.”

Such reasons do “not justify turning Beit Shemesh into a battlefield and to further polarization between the various sectors in the city.” [...]

Abutbol’s terminology angered some residents coming as it does on the heels of several days of violent clashes between ultra-Orthodox extremists and police in the city last week.

MK Dov Lipman (Yesh Atid), who lives in Beit Shemesh, condemned Abutbol, saying that the mayor’s actions have contributed to the sporadic religious violence that has characterized the city over the last several years.

“The incitement began when the mayor sat quietly next to his spokesman as he said that they intend to turn Bet Shemesh into a larger haredi city than Bnei Brak and continued through his refusal to put up government funded cameras where the extremists act out and his decision to close a girls school because extremists made threats,” Lipman told The Jerusalem Post. “The mayor is responsible for extremist control in the city and as a result large numbers of haredim plan to join the general population in unseating him in October.”

Abutbol had harsh words for electoral opponent Eli Cohen (Shemesh Hadasha-Bayit Yehudi) last week, telling haredi website Kikar Hashabat that he should not have made comments regarding the rioting.

Abutbol is no stranger to controversy.

In 2008 he told television reporters that secular Israelis entering the hassidic neighborhood of Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet could be construed as causing “provocations.”

Translation: he's calling non-Haredis "filthy" and "pornographic". This is a most disgraceful man. He considers anybody who isn't Haredi to be some kind of an abnormal birth and deems only Haredis per se to have any worth. He vehemently refuses to help step up security in the city and does not deserve to be a politician.

Labels: haredi corruption, Israel, Moonbattery