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Ultra-Orthodox Jews attack Christian tourists in Jerusalem
Haaretz ^ | Jonathan Lis

Posted on 06/28/2006 2:06:59 PM PDT by Michael81Dus

A group of 50 pro-Israel Christian tourists came under attack Wednesday from some 100 residents of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea She'arim in Jerusalem. Three of the tourists and a police officer were wounded in the attack. They received treatment at the scene. The tourists arrived at Mea She'arim wearing orange T-shirts with the words "Love your neighbor as yourself" printed across them. As they neared one of the squares, the local residents apparently identified them as Christians and began to hit them. Police forces in the area stepped in to stop the violence, but did not make any arrests. Police say they are waiting for the tourists to file official complaints.

(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...


TOPICS: Israel
KEYWORDS: bigots; rop; unsaved
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To: Michael81Dus

One more thing. Ultra Orthodox is misleading.

Perfectly normal people are "Ultra Orthodox" too. These are a unique sect living a unique existence in a unique area.


61 posted on 06/28/2006 2:34:58 PM PDT by Sabramerican (Bandar Bush in 08: Continue the Legacy)
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To: B-Chan
Shame on these so-called "ultra-orthodox" for besmirching Judaism with their aggression.

If these article is factual, then I agree with you and any attackers needs to be locked up/taken to court for assault.

62 posted on 06/28/2006 2:35:38 PM PDT by Sic Luceat Lux
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To: Sic Luceat Lux

p.s.

that was a joke.


63 posted on 06/28/2006 2:35:54 PM PDT by durasell (!)
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To: Sic Luceat Lux
That's absolutely false. Where'd you come up with that garbage yam? Tell me?

I suggest you read the thread and stop making a fool of yourself but hey, it's just a suggestion. It's not like I'm going to attack you for your beliefs.

64 posted on 06/28/2006 2:36:21 PM PDT by rogue yam
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To: tflabo

Oooops,,,Correction...Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem cancelled.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4618465.


65 posted on 06/28/2006 2:37:09 PM PDT by tflabo (Take authority that's ours)
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To: MeanWestTexan
I love Jewish people. But you have to be a little careful about talking religion with them if you're a Christian. Many of them will say something along the lines of "Fine, just don't try to convert me," so you can see that it's an issue in general, not just in Jerusalem. I expect that the fact that it was GERMANS coming in there and telling them who to worship didn't make the situation any better especially of the people were Ashekenaziim.
66 posted on 06/28/2006 2:39:11 PM PDT by ichabod1 (Let us not flinch from identifying liberalism as the opposition party to God.)
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To: Sic Luceat Lux
And that's false too. Where do you get this??

It's not false. SOME tend to dislike Christians. Just like SOME Christians tend to dislike Jews. Who knows WHY but facts are facts. People are fallible and can be quite stupid at times!

I "get this" from personally knowing a number of Russian Orthodox CLERGY whom have been physically shoved, SPAT upon and cursed at by Ultra-Orthodox Jews (my brother included). It has happened to people I know in Jerusalem and in NYC.

67 posted on 06/28/2006 2:39:14 PM PDT by blinachka (Vechnaya Pamyat Daddy... xoxo)
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To: ichabod1
No, it's because certain Christians have attempted to forcibly conver Jews throughout history, and it's led to pogroms and death.

"Throughout history" includes today. Where today are Christians doing this?

68 posted on 06/28/2006 2:39:32 PM PDT by rogue yam
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To: Sic Luceat Lux
Where'd you come up with that garbage yam? Tell me?

You know he's not going to be able to back that up. He's one of those that likes to post cr@p and then run away. People like that come out a lot on threads like this.

What s/n does RCW2001 use these days?

69 posted on 06/28/2006 2:40:11 PM PDT by mgstarr
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To: 1st-P-In-The-Pod; A_Conservative_in_Cambridge; af_vet_rr; agrace; ahayes; albyjimc2; ...
Sounds like a minor brawl. I used to live close to Meah Shearim and they normally just ignore tourists. The fact that there are such completely different versions of this shows that some media outlets have an agenda.

There are better places for missionaries to get "fresh meat"

 

FRmail me to be added or removed from this Judaic/pro-Israel/Russian Jewry ping list.

Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.

70 posted on 06/28/2006 2:40:18 PM PDT by Alouette (Psalms of the Day: 10-17)
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To: Michael81Dus

Here is an article from 9 years ago that describes this community. These folks are not Zionists, they detest the State of Israel as a secular abomination and they seem to wish to return to the delights of the shetl.

Robert Fulford's column about ultra-Orthodoxy in Jerusalem
(Globe and Mail, June 4, 1997)
Senator Daniel P. Moynihan says in his recent book, Miles to Go: A Personal History of Social Policy, "The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself." Societies work only if culture and politics are reconciled, but they are in conflict everywhere these days, and nowhere more dramatically than among the divided Jews of Jerusalem.

The 4-A bus that takes me from my apartment in downtown Jerusalem up to the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University (where I'm roosting for a few weeks) weaves through the most contentious urban district on the planet, Mea She'arim. From the bus window you don't need to read the street signs to know where you are. Suddenly crowds of ordinary office workers are replaced by legions of men in black--black suits, black hats, usually black earlocks.

They are called, by everyone except themselves, "the black hatters." They belong to the growing ultra-Orthodox haredi community (haredi literally means "trembling," as in "trembling before the lord"). Suddenly they dominate the streets, and we bus riders move like time travellers from a bustling, modern city into an 18th-century Jewish village in Poland and then quickly back to modernity. In the process we visit a conflict of cultures that has lately coloured discussion of the future of Jerusalem.

The people in Mea She'arim, and in similar communities elsewhere, live much as their ancestors did in eastern Europe centuries ago. They read no newspapers, hear no radio, watch no TV. They are exempt from army service (a source of bitterness among other Israelis) and they are as opposed to the state of Israel as they are to birth control--just getting them to participate in the 1995 national census required an elaborate dance of diplomacy. They are passionate about female "modesty," and will sometimes throw stones at women whose legs and arms are not, in the haredi view, adequately covered. The black hatters are even more fanatical about keeping the Sabbath, and about drivers who intrude on what they consider their haredi streets between sundown Friday and Saturday.

While many other things are prohibited on the Sabbath in Mea She'arim, stoning is acceptable--even, apparently, mandatory. This grotesque tradition goes back decades. In Muriel Spark's 1965 novel, The Mandelbaum Gate, she mentions that "the Orthodox Jews would gather on a Saturday morning, piously to stone the passing motor-cars, breakers of the Sabbath. And across the street, streamers stretched from building to building, bearing an injunction in Hebrew, French and English: DAUGHTERS OF ISRAEL, OBSERVE MODESTY IN THESE STREETS!"

This year, as supporters of the party in power, the black hatters won a concession. Two weeks ago, after battles with the police made international news, the government closed Bar-Ilan street to all traffic, except emergency vehicles and local residents, for an hour and 45 minutes from the start of the Sabbath on Friday night, then from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, and then during the last hour and 45 minutes before the end of the Sabbath.

But this didn't mollify the black hatters. On the first Sabbath of the limited traffic ban, they were out once again, lining the street, stoning the cars that went by during the hours when driving was permitted. They didn't pause to savour their triumph, which to them was not a triumph but merely one tiny step toward recreating what they believe to be the only authentic and virtuous Jewish culture.

Secular Israelis and Jews from elsewhere have habitually looked on Mea She'arim with tolerance, even affection. While most Jews in Jerusalem rarely go to a synagogue, they are vaguely allied with Orthodox Judaism. The synagogue they don't attend is an Orthodox synagogue.

But their patience for the black hatters is wearing thin. I talked for a long time, for instance, with an angry secular woman who told me that she and her husband and their friends speak constantly of leaving Jerusalem for Tel Aviv. If they go, it will be because the fanatical haredi influence has poisoned the cultural atmosphere of the city.

A columnist in Jerusalem Report magazine, Ze'ev Chafets, argued recently that Orthodox intransigence may eventually affect Israeli policy on Jerusalem. For decades, politicians of all parties have held firmly to the opinion that Jerusalem is non-negotiable; none of it can ever be given up. Palestinians, on the other hand, insist that East Jerusalem should be their capital. But if feelings about Jerusalem change among the secular majority of Israelis, then perhaps an accommodation with the Palestinians could eventually be made.

As Chafets says, "Once most Israelis, even the least observant, felt a deep attachment to Jerusalem. But as the city has grown increasingly ultra-Orthodox and anti-Zionist, it has become a symbol of religious repression and fanaticism to many." Can the annoyance of the secular Israelis reach the point where it will reshape policy? Certainly, as Alice Shalvi wrote last week in the Jerusalem Post, many Israelis now believe that rifts within the Jewish population have reached the point where they are potentially more harmful than the conflict between Israel and its neighbours.

Up at Hebrew University, a professor of political science told me, with a rueful weariness, "One of the ironies of the state of Israel is that we have a Jewish problem." On the bus back downtown, moving again through Mea She'arim, I read the first lines of W. N. Herbert's poem, "The Angel of Tourism," in the Times Literary Supplement--


71 posted on 06/28/2006 2:40:32 PM PDT by robowombat
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To: Michael81Dus

"People are people, some good, some bad."
Bert Stiles (Serenade to the Big Bird)


72 posted on 06/28/2006 2:40:49 PM PDT by Valin (http://www.irey.com/)
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To: Michael81Dus
Leviticus 19:18 “‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge
against one of your people,
but love your neighbour as yourself.
I am the LORD.
b'shem Y'shua

73 posted on 06/28/2006 2:41:01 PM PDT by Uri’el-2012 (Hosea 6:6 I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings)
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To: yellowdoghunter

It's a Jewish State. They don't offer "freedom of religion", never have. That said, you're welcome to have a church or a mosque. Just don't harrass the Jewish people. This isn't like Saudi Arabia where they'll put you to death for it or anything.


74 posted on 06/28/2006 2:41:02 PM PDT by ichabod1 (Let us not flinch from identifying liberalism as the opposition party to God.)
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To: rogue yam

You're the one that is exhibiting illiteracy.

Israel is not rife with anti Christian bigotry.

This thread proves it by the fact that this made news. It's a man bites dog story. Unique and particular.


75 posted on 06/28/2006 2:41:29 PM PDT by Sabramerican (Bandar Bush in 08: Continue the Legacy)
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To: durasell

LOL. You know sometimes it seems that way.


76 posted on 06/28/2006 2:42:06 PM PDT by Valin (http://www.irey.com/)
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To: blinachka

FYI: My brother is a Russian Orthodox preist...not an Orthodox Jew.


77 posted on 06/28/2006 2:42:09 PM PDT by blinachka (Vechnaya Pamyat Daddy... xoxo)
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To: ichabod1
And your statement about "Christians' gig" is misinformation.

It is "misinformation" that evangelism is part of Christianity? That's news.

78 posted on 06/28/2006 2:43:06 PM PDT by rogue yam
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To: ichabod1
They don't offer "freedom of religion", never have. That said, you're welcome to have a church or a mosque. Just don't harrass the Jewish people.

A new definition of Freedom of Religion?

You are not free to practice your religion unless it includes a right to harass Jews?

79 posted on 06/28/2006 2:43:52 PM PDT by Sabramerican (Bandar Bush in 08: Continue the Legacy)
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To: Michael81Dus

"Other sources say a guy who knows Hebrew has handed them out T-Shirts saying "convert and become a Christian" (or so) in Hebrew letters, which would make the anger of the orthodox understandable."


Not by any standard I use.


80 posted on 06/28/2006 2:45:27 PM PDT by ansel12
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