You see them whenever there are people in need, be it a
disastrous traffic accident, a large-scale catastrophe or a
murderous terrorist incident. It's not hard to pick them out
among the rescue forces. They are conspicuous in their
yellow vests, but it is mostly their personal appearance
that makes them stand out among the rescue workers: bearded
faces, black kippot and tzitzis trailing from
the side. They are the chareidi rescue workers, often the
first to reach any incident where a lot of people have been
injured.
They spring from many different groups, running the gamut of
chesed organizations such as Ezer Mitzion, Ezra
Lamarpeh and others; the highly trained, experienced
Hatzoloh workers; all the way to ZAKA (identification of
calamity victims). They are perform truly holy work that is
appreciated and admired even by those far removed from the
Torah lifestyle.
In photos continually streaming to the media from any
disaster site in Israel, they are conspicuous not only by
their appearance but by their sheer numbers. Vast numbers of
volunteers quickly report to rescue the injured, administer
first aid, help the other rescue forces and attend to the
bodies of the niftarim.
Last Shabbos night, these same forces were not absent from
the scene of the tragic terrorist attack at the
Dolphinarium. The chareidi chesed and rescue
organizations dispatched their men to the scene of the
attack to help. One could see their emergency vehicles
zooming down Bnei Brak streets, hurrying to the scene to
help save lives. The chareidi volunteers are motivated
solely by a desire to help. They don't wait around to be
thanked or to receive certificates of appreciation. They do
what they do out of a deep recognition of both the holiness
of life and the respect due the deceased.
Our local hedonistic, satanic, hate-filled antisemites,
however, never let facts get in their way. Those who
probably never put aside their gluttony to help someone in
distress. Those who on Shabbos night, according to MK Rabbi
Gafni, stayed in the comfort of their cozy beds while
chareidi rescue teams from Bnei Brak and Jerusalem went out
at the height of Shabbos Kodesh to attend the victims of the
bloody attack. They were the ones who spent the whole
Shabbos in a witch-hunt, furling defamatory, destructive
remarks against the chareidi public.
Who stood at the head of this witch-hunt? Tomy Lapid, "a
disgusting Tel-Aviv hedonist," as Yossi Sarid described him.
He could not rest until he had labeled the Chevra Kaddisha
as, "collaborators with the Islamic Jihad." His reasoning?
Their supposed refusal to bury the non-Jewish victims of the
attack in Jewish cemeteries. The local media took advantage
of the holiness of Shabbos in order to spread the libels of
Tomy and his friends.
Of course, there was no way in which the Chevra Kaddisha
could react, for -- of course -- the Chevra Kaddisha doesn't
work on Shabbos, and it is doubtful if any of its members
even knew about the despicable libel being spread against
them. Members of the organization could not understand how
they could have refused to bury someone on Shabbos. . . for
they don't work on Shabbos. "No one approached us, and in
any case, we would not have refused," responded the director
of the Chevra Kaddisha on motzei Shabbos, upon
hearing of the blood libel.
The Ha'aretz newspaper decided to investigate the
source of the libel. Their reporters found out that MK Sofa
Landver from the Labor party was the one who had informed
the media of the refusal of the Chevra Kaddisha to bury the
non-Jewish victims. And where did Landver get her
information? She told Ha'aretz that she heard it from
one of the Tel Aviv municipal social workers, who claimed he
had spoken with the Chevra Kaddisha. But in an interview
with another reporter, Landver said that she didn't really
think that any social worker had spoken with the Chevra
Kaddisha. Ha'aretz continued its investigation,
finally reaching social worker Yaron Levitt, who admitted
that he had spoken to no one concerning burial of the non-
Jewish victims. "He assumed that burial in regular
cemeteries would be problematic because they weren't
Jewish," according to Ha'aretz.
This is the source of the lowly fabrication that occupied
the Israeli media throughout Shabbos, Rachmono
litzlan. No media person ever stopped to ask himself why
it was that the Chevra Kaddisha refused to bury the non-Jews
on Shabbos. The lapid of hatred, who has been silent
since sinking into the depths of the Opposition, took
advantage of the festering blood and the burning pain in
order to spread his fiendishness and hatred towards mitzvah
observers. The local media, of course, thoroughly enjoyed
every evil word, and I guess, in the spirit of fairness,
they may have added, "Our reporter has yet to receive any
response from the Chevra Kaddisha. . . "
The fact that this was a base fabrication came out only
after Shabbos. This is not the first time that non-Jews have
been victims of terrorist attacks, and the Chevra Kaddisha
has halachic solutions to such scenarios. Cemeteries have
respectable places for burial of those whose Jewishness is
in question. In addition, there are kibbutz cemeteries where
anyone can be buried with musical accompaniment if the
family so wishes. The main problem lies not with the Chevra
Kaddisha but with the local municipalities in the State of
Israel, who have yet to execute the law enacted by the
Knesset, according to which secular cemeteries must be set
up wherein non-Jews and anyone desiring non-halachic burial
can be interred. No such cemetery exists throughout the
entire Tel Aviv area.
If anyone is collaborating with the Arab, Islamic and
antisemitic camps, it is Tomy and his gang, who even in the
midst of deep mourning over the horrible tragedy don't stop
celebrating the carnage, just like the Palestinians in
Ramallah. They don't want to miss any opportunity to attack
the enemy they hate with the most virulent hatred: the
chareidim. The facts are irrelevant to them.
