Burn Baby, Burn. This was the rallying cry of the Black Panthers, a revolutionary movement of the sixties committed to an armed insurrection and the establishment of a black socialist government in the United States. Apparently they are the new role models for a segment of Klal Yisroel. They are role models for the people who are burning cars and throwing stones. We’ve all seen the pictures by now of the burning streets in Jerusalem with Charedim standing around the fires. We’ve seen the torched police cars. But it isn’t the hooligans this time. It isn’t a group of fanatics protesting mixed seating on a bus. It is a group of normal looking Yeshiva Bachurim protesting the upcoming Gay Pride parade.
Yes the protest is just. But the stone throwing is not only unjust it is a reckless disregard for human life and property. It is wanton destruction. And if aimed specifically at another human being, it is attempted murder! I have heard that Edah HaCharedis head, Rav Moshe Sternbuch, has come out in favor of protesting this parade strongly but has opposed violence in doing so. But I don’t think his admonition against violence has been strong enough. Apparently these Yeshiva Bachurim are only listening to half of what he said. They are protesting. But they are doing so violently.
Instead of just the Gay Pride parade being Mechalel the streets of Jerusalem, it will be defiled by Charedim too. The violent clash will be between the gay paraders and the new “Black Panthers: Charedi Yeshiva bachurim. This takes the Chilul HaShem of a homosexual parade in Jerusalem and raises it to a far greater level of Chilul HaShem.
I don’t know what they think they are going to accomplish with such violence. The paraders aren’t going to back down. They are going to fight back. Blood will flow. And a sympathetic world will see a violent group of otherwise normal looking Yeshiva students burning down the city and throwing rocks at people.
If these violent protestors just want to show the world that the Torah is against homosexual behavior, the world already knows that. Nothing new will be learned by the world about the Torah’s position on homosexual sex. What they will now learn is that religious Jews can be just as violent and deadly as anyone else. We will indeed have fulfilled Ben Gurion's prophecy that we are a nation like all other nations... K’Chol HaGoyim. There is nothing special about Torah Jews. Our claim that “the ways of the Torah are pleasant and all its paths peaceful” will be dismissed as just another platitude. The ways of the Torah, they will say, are violent.
Of course there are those that will claim that the Torah often calls for violence. Look at our directives about Amalek, for example... or what Pinchas did to Zimri. But this is not one of those cases the Torah calls for violence. No where does it say in the Torah She B’ksav and Torah SheBal Peh that one must protest a gay pride parade with violence... a violence that endangers innocent people!
As for what Pinchas did, that too is not the same thing as now. Pinchas killed a leader in Israel, a prince, while he was committing an abominable act in public. If anyone catches a Gadol doing in public what Zimri did, then he may make a comparison. There is no such comparison to be made here.
If the past is prologue, I can predict what is going to happen. It is almost a Charedi ritual. When such things occur, there will be clashes between police and protestors. People are going to get hurt. The next thing you hear will be cries of “police brutality!
But before anyone screams police brutality if and when it the clashes happen, be assured that this has not been the case in the violence perpetrated thus far, at least in one instance. Here is an excerpt of a letter I received from a Charedi individual via e-mail. It tells his personal story. The story and the above picture speak volumes:
To be quite honest, even though I look like a Charedi, I unfortunately feel that I also hate Charedim to a large degree.
Allow me to relate a true story that happened to me today. I was riding my scooter on Rechov Herzel and I saw a big green dumpster in middle of the road in front of me. I had reached the corner of Rechov Hapisga of the Bayit Vegan neighborhood) and it seems that the dumpster had been set on fire and pushed to the middle of the street in order to protest the Gay Parade that is to take place on Friday. There was a police officer directing traffic, and I asked him if I could simply go around the dumpster (as I was on a scooter), and he agreed.
As I approached the dumpster, I found myself in the middle of a hail of stones. Actually, "stones" is an understatement - what was being thrown were cinder blocks. One after another - and they were being aimed at a police officer who was trying to direct traffic. The police officer left his car and ran for his life - literally. I made sure to move out of harms way, yet the stoning continued. I looked at who was throwing the stones - and I was surprised to see that the youths throwing the stones looked like normal Yeshiva boys. They were not neturei karta or semi-off the derech youth; they looked like standard Yeshiva boys.
After a while they stopped, and I was able to pass.
Before I am told that they are the tiny minority, and that most people don't agree with them: Why have no Charedi Rabbonim spoken out against the violence that is being directed at police, journalists, or anyone else in their way? Why is it that they have allowed the mob to go loose and feel that what they are doing is justified?
Yes, I know that all of the apologists will spin this however they want to, but at the end of the day, the Chareidi society in Israel is very, very sick - it would be wise of the American 'chariedim' in the USA to stop trying to defend people who are simply insane and out of control.
My advice: Heed this man’s call.
