"This year, 22 soldiers were killed in Lebanon, and not one
chareidi draft dodger was killed in the tents of Torah,"
claims Am Chofshi, the instigators of this scandalous
campaign.
Publicity postcards circulated by the Am Chofshi organization
continue: "You fight for us, and now we'll fight for you.
Separate religion from money." On the other side of the
postcard is a picture of two soldiers gazing at a military
cemetery.
An additional comment on this postcard is: "More than 3000
elderly people in Israel are waiting for beds in nursing
homes -- but there aren't any. But this year too fictitious
chareidi organizations will steal tens of millions of shekels
from the public coffers."
These appalling and galling statements, publicized this past
week in Yediot Acharonot sparked a series of irate
reactions, the main one being the demand to arrest the
leaders of the provocative campaign and to place them behind
bars.
MK Rabbi Avrohom Ravitz reacted to these intolerable remarks,
saying: "A new breed of antisemites has risen in Israel.
Everything that occurs in the chareidi public gets their
goat, and they are trying to de-legitimize Israel's chareidi
community. We don't want anything to do with them. They are
not fitting debate partners for us, and I hope that Israeli
society will know how to rise above petty considerations and
to condemn this peripheral antisemitic phenomenon. There is
no doubt that if remarks like these were made in other
countries, all would raise the roof about their antisemitic
intent. We must strengthen ourselves and our ranks, and
travel in the cavalcade of our spiritual world until the
coming of the Moshiach. If we constitute that cavalcade, the
dogs can bark."
The general secretary of Degel HaTorah, Rabbi Moshe Gafni,
sent letters to Attorney General Eliakim Rubenstein and State
Prosecutor Edna Arbel, as well as to the Inspector General,
Police Commander Yehuda Wilk, demanding that an immediate
investigation be conducted against the heads of Am Chofshi,
and that they be brought to justice "as suits a law-abiding
state charged with safeguarding of the well-being of its
citizens."
Rabbi Gafni said: "Publicizing half-truths and outright lies
meant to incite the public at large against the chareidim,
who are identifiable by their external appearance, is liable,
chas vesholom to provoke inflamed groups to inflict
physical harm on this public which is depicted as the source
of all the disasters in the State. The members of Am Chofshi
reached rock bottom, by using death and bereavement as the
basis of a publicity campaign against a sizable sector of the
populace, a large part of which serves in the army."
"The expressions used in this defamatory campaign are
reminiscent of the negative connotations employed in dark
periods of Jewish history, when Jews were presented as
responsible for society's economic, security, social and
political ills -- and the results are well known. During the
relatively brief history of the State of Israel, we have seen
what systematic incitement campaigns are liable to engender,
in a period when what is needed is more unity, tolerance and
mutual respect."
Deputy Housing Minister Rabbi Meir Porush, accused Labor's
chairman, MK Ehud Barak, of sparking an incitement atmosphere
which drew Am Chofshi into this very aggressive campaign.
"Ehud Barak opened the Pandora's box for the incitement and
antisemitism which began to bubble above the surface. Barak
initiated the witch hunting in the chareidi sector, and the
provocation is snowballing. Who knows how far things are
liable to go," Rabbi Porush declared.
MK Rabbi Avrohom Yosef Laizerson sent a pointed letter to the
Attorney General Eliakim Rubenstein, in which he demanded
that an investigation of the heads of Am Chofshi begin
immediately, and that the Attorney General take all of the
legal measures in his power to halt this wild, brutal and
unforgivable incitement against hundreds of thousands of law
abiding citizens of the State.
"It is exasperating to see how far these provocateurs are
willing to go in their appalling incitement. It is outrageous
to see them exploiting the sacred war victims in a crass and
shocking manner, in order to defame chareidi Jewry and make
it the butt of the hatred of the citizens of the State," he
said.
MK Yitzchok Cohen (Shas) said that he is amazed how Arnon
Yekutieli, one of the heads of Am Chofshi, who himself never
served in the army, can make such radical and provocative
remarks. "It's antisemitism for its own sake," he said.
