Haredis at Mount Meron post-disaster made things worse by attacking female IDF soldiers helping with rescue
As if it weren't bad enough that the stampede at Mount Meron led to at least 45 people dead, members of the Haredi clans who'd acted irresponsibly made the travesty worse by attacking lady IDF soldiers:
Since we're still on the issue, this Jerusalem Post article, while all too obviously biased against Benjamin Netanyahu, does reveal where something went wrong involving the supreme court:
There is some hopeful good news, that there are Haredis now who're questioning the price of their own autonomy, and in addition, it's also revealed:
And then, about those with a wakeup call:
Home Front Command female soldiers who came as part of the rescuing team to the disaster at Mount Meron were attacked by people who attended the event, the IDF Spokesperson Unit said on Saturday night.Here's more about this disgust:
The female soldiers, who came to rescue and evacuate those who were wounded, were attacked verbally and physically.
The IDF stressed that the force who carried out the mission ignored the attack and continued with aiding the victims.
The issue was brought up by the soldiers after they returned to the base on Friday night.
The IDF said that it condemns any attack, verbal or physical, against its soldiers – men or women.
Soldiers of the Israel Defense Force’s Home Front Command were physically and verbally attacked by ultra-Orthodox Jews while they were assisting in searching for dead and wounded in the deadly crush during Lag B’Omer celebrations at Mount Meron, the IDF said late Saturday.Those ultra-Orthodox who attacked the soldiers do the victims of the tragedy even more of a disfavor, desecrating their memory by hurting people trying to help. The lady soldiers are trying to save lives, and this is how they're repaid? Obscene. This is exactly why more such disasters will occur in the future.
“We entered the gravesite to search for injured people and suddenly a commotion began that there are female soldiers in uniforms who are touching the wounded,” a soldier told Army Radio earlier.
“They started to kick and spit on us. The female soldiers were kicked, spit on, and punched from every direction,” the radio station quoted the soldier saying. Hebrew media reports said five female soldiers were targeted.
The military confirmed the incident, saying in a statement that “the force continued on its mission and ignored the harmful behavior.”
“The IDF views this incident very gravely and condemns any violence — physical or verbal — toward female and male soldiers. The IDF in general and the Home Front Command in particular will continue to extend a hand, to assist and to save any citizen or resident in a time of need,” a spokesperson for the military added.
Since we're still on the issue, this Jerusalem Post article, while all too obviously biased against Benjamin Netanyahu, does reveal where something went wrong involving the supreme court:
However, according to Likud sources, in 2011, the state asked to take control of the site in order to correct its long-standing safety problems and manage the annual Lag Ba’omer event properly. That move was appealed by the religious nonprofits that controlled the site since the Ottoman era. The Supreme Court issued an injunction that halted the government’s efforts. By 2015, a compromise was reached that gave the nonprofits three years to make changes that were never made.So it would seem that not only do we have a case of potentially Haredi nonprofits who sabotaged efforts to safen the site, the supreme court practically enabled it. This is another reason why something must be done to change the legal system so the court won't interfere in issues regarding public safety. And the aforementioned nonprofits just confirmed there are forms out there who're very bad, and don't deserve their business.
There is some hopeful good news, that there are Haredis now who're questioning the price of their own autonomy, and in addition, it's also revealed:
On Thursday, hours before the disaster, Interior Minister Aryeh Deri bragged to the Haredi radio station Kol Hai that he had successfully prevented Health Ministry officials from limiting the number of attendees over coronavirus fears. Deri lamented that the professional echelon at the ministry did not grasp that attendees would be protected by the spiritual influence of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, the second-century sage commemorated at the Meron festival.I'd always been aware for a long time Deri was an otherwise dishonest politician, and this naive vision of his - along with his own actions - certain drive home the perception he's a most atrocious, unreliable person, who believes being religious alone automatically protects you from harm. A lot of good that did during WW2 and post-Oslo accords. It's clear he has to take responsibility, and who knows if he will?
“The government clerks don’t understand,” he said. “This is a holy day, and the largest gathering of Jews [each year].” Bad things, he suggested, don’t happen to Jews on religious pilgrimage: “One should trust in Rabbi Shimon in times of distress.”
Even as he bragged of his and the Haredi community’s political power, he then deployed, instinctively, the rhetoric of victimhood. He urged listeners “to pray for the world of Torah and for Judaism, which are in danger. They’re in great danger.”
And then, about those with a wakeup call:
No complaint from secular Israel could make Haredi society question the strange autonomous bubble it had constructed as a cultural defense against the state’s modernizing influence, nor the power of the Haredi rabbis and their courts, whose egos and squabbles had divided the holy site into disconnected courtyards and helped drive Friday’s deadly chaos. But the shattering images from Meron cut through the glib self-assurance and silenced, at least for the moment, any boasts about Haredi self-rule.I sure hope this is a sign some Haredis will reevaluate their lifestyle and leave it. Because the irresponsibility their leaders are indoctrinating, as Deri for one demonstrates, has long led to this awful situation.
And as the confident voices dwindled into shocked silence, other voices came to the fore, cries of angry self-critique that are rarely heard from the mainstream of Haredi society.
The voices all carried a single message: The state’s kowtowing to our leaders has brought this disaster upon us.
Yossi Elituv, editor of Mishpacha, the largest-circulation Haredi weekly, urged his followers not to focus only on police errors or lack of government oversight.
“Our community also has a duty to learn lessons,” he wrote on Friday. The first lesson: That the state must step in and end the chaos. “Our first and immediate task is to free the mountain from the control of the [religious] endowments…. The state needs to establish a professional authority to run the site….Take the mountain away from the endowments and confer on it the status of the Western Wall, with zero tolerance for rule-breaking.”
On Sunday morning, Elituv followed up with a four-word tweet: “State investigative committee, now!”
Moty Weinstock, an editor at the Haredi weekly Bakehilla, reached the same conclusion.
“Any solution at Meron that amounts to less than bringing order to the entire mountain, canceling the religious endowments and dismantling all the areas designated [to specific sects] will ensure the horrifying images come back,” he declared.
On social media, in other newspapers, including the Hasidic mainstay daily Hamevaser, and in countless media interviews, Haredi Israelis asked the same questions and leveled the same complaints.
A community that had convinced itself it could flout the demands of state authorities has suddenly and with growing confidence and earnestness begun to cry out for “order” and “authority,” to demand that the state impose its control, the rabbinic courts’ pride and vanity be damned.
Labels: haredi corruption, Israel, Judaism, Knesset, military, misogyny, Moonbattery, political corruption
