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If only just a few Haredim were calling police ‘Nazis’ and women ‘shiksas’
I live on the seam in a neighborhood divided between Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox.
And in my neighbor’s words: It’s a dumpster fire. And we’re watching it spread across the country as everyone’s hands are tied, with a mumbled wish: “This too shall pass.”
I’d like to ask all of those who don’t live on the edge of this dumpster fire to please hold off on your kumbaya suggestions until you’ve lived with it consistently on your back porch. Not two streets away, but on your doorstep – where you witness hate-filled riots every single week, year in and year out, and see it spread.
You’re not seeing the scale, intensity, and insidiousness of this brand of Haredi extremism that realizes how easily and willingly its growing masses can shut down the country. But I hope the next election brings change or that someone higher up will wake up and unbind the hands of law enforcement.
Oh, the Difference a Front Row Seat Makes
I live on the street that borders both the dati leumi (religious Zionist) and the Haredi neighborhoods in Beit Shemesh, a city approximately halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. We have a front row seat to Haredi extremism that political, religious, and community leaders talk about in the abstract. A view that even our neighbors one street away in our same neighborhood do not have. Visitors and even new neighbors see a riot on our street and say, “That’s awful! But it’ll get taken care of. Just a handful of hundreds of extremists throwing a tantrum. Just add more ahavat Yisrael (love for the Jewish people)…”
Funny, I think. We/the world has made this mistake before. But I understand that it’s hard to predict the future. Even the CIA declared that “Iran was not in a revolutionary situation” in 1978 (the shah was overthrown by the ayatollah in 1979).
The line of thinking for most people goes something like this: It’s a small minority of kitzonim (extremists), not the vast majority of Haredim, who incite and shut down traffic. Only a few call the police “Nazis” or our women “shiksas.” The rest aren’t like that!
I’ve also been at those types of riots, where the participants were from other neighborhoods or paid or seemed a little off. They were just “the kitzonim.”
But on Tuesday, I saw with my own eyes that I have been wrong for the past eight years of living on this street. I would always call the rioters “kitzonim”; I live a bit further up the street – not as close to the riots as I could be. My neighbors’ apartment window faces the riots directly. They always called the same people “Haredim.” After the other night, I too will say “Haredim.”
Tuesday night, at 9:30 p.m., against my better judgement and best sense of self-preservation, I stepped out to see if the riot was over (it had started at 6 p.m.).
Humiliating Capitulation
It wasn’t over. For 3.5 hours, the police had rerouted traffic, preventing access to the roundabout at the end of my street, which is a major thoroughfare in Beit Shemesh, inconveniencing countless people and the 47 bus lines that have stops along that intersection.
Hundreds of young Haredi men were milling about in the roundabout screaming “Nazi” at the police, who were monitoring from the sidewalk; yelling “shiksa” in my neighbor’s face; and shouting and blocking any unlucky non-Haredi driver who happened to have made it through the police blockades into the intersection.
To our utter amazement, as the cars got stuck, the police stood back and waited. As fires were set at the roundabout, the firefighters waited down the block to let them burn out on their own.
Cars stuck? No reaction from the police. Then a boy in a crowd across the street threw a rock at the police. They stormed after the crowd with their batons. I muttered, “Finally.” Then a kid standing next to me responded: “No! They hit everyone. Those guys didn’t throw the rock!” I just stood there dumbfounded.
For hours, the police had not moved these rioters from the roundabout. They’d removed the law abiding drivers instead. Because “the rioters don’t listen.”
According to my neighbors, it’s due to national-level policy. Law enforcement’s role in our country has been reversed to: tell the law-abiders to move back so these law-breakers won’t have someone to attack. Just stand back and let them destroy your neighborhood in peace. For as long as they like.
Boys learning in night seder (evening studies) in the neighborhood yeshivot came running to the roundabout. Local boys. Not “kitzonim” –– regular black-hatted, white-shirted, Haredi yeshivah boys. Who then joined the others in blocking cars, shouting “Nazi,” and throwing rocks. And the discussions on the sidewalks and the cheers by the Haredi bystanders were not silence at all; they were support.
Finally a water cannon truck showed up at around 10 p.m., four hours after traffic had been stopped there – and the Haredim all ran from the street. Some of the boys took the firehose at the shopping center on the corner, turned it on, and started spraying back. I’m assuming there was a good reason why the truck was not sent earlier to clear the roundabout for drivers at 6 p.m.. My neighbors’ granddaughter was working at the bakery on the corner, and her grandfather went in to get her and she came out visibly shaken with rage. They would have to drive her home, as there were no buses.
On every Friday night and Shabbat for the past eight weeks, this is what has been happening, under the guise of “Shabbos”: People blocking streets, mobbing cars, shouting at drivers and their frightened children, lying down in front of cars in the street. With the police waiting a short distance away. It’s not about keeping Shabbos holy. They’re literally stopping and damaging cars. It’s simple bullying.
No Consequences
And with no consequences. Not a ticket. Not an arrest. Not only does it intensify, it encourages. Teenage boys are able to fight “anti-Torah” oppressors (the State of Israel); meanwhile, the oppressive law enforcement protects them while they break the law and attack others. Who’s in charge?
So, others shrug off when I get on a bus and hear hisses around me to sit in the back. When young kids laugh and call me shiksa in a parking lot, and I ask to speak to their rebbe (teacher), and he just shrugs. When young Haredi schoolgirls start yelling “I’m glad they died” out their classroom window at family members at a cemetery on Yom HaZikaron (Israel’s Memorial Day) during the siren. When they are emboldened enough to travel to Alon Shvut to storm a justice’s private home. And my well-meaning neighbors point to their Haredi coworkers who say they are embarrassed and that these kitzonim are just the outliers. I too know many Haredim who are ashamed of this behavior, but they are the ones who are the outliers. It looks like the Haredi mainstream is now justifying extremism.
If not, why haven’t the leaders of the “Olam HaTorah” – the ultra-Orthodox, Torah-observant world – condemned this behavior? Instead: They rally to shut down the country in the name of Torah. Why is no one concerned that now “Torah” communities are above the rule of law and fomenting hatred of Jew against Jew?
The temperature is rising. Rapidly. And we’re shrugging it off.
I hope that instead of sidelining this issue when thinking about the upcoming elections, voters and leaders wake up and consider whether they vote for a government that will continue to embolden a growing minority with the power to shut down the country, without a care how much it costs any individual or society. I hope someone in leadership realizes that continuing to do nothing empowers a community that encourages its youth to regard every other Jew in the country as a “Nazi.”
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