It looks like the parade has been called off …or at least moved to another location. And the Charedi protests that had been planned have been called off as well. The new venue will be the Hebrew University stadium at Givat Ram. This is a positive development. Obviously.
But it should be noted that all the violence perpetrated by so many Charedi hooligans had little if anything to do with it. It was the parade organizers themselves who suggested the change in light of a high security alert declared by the government due to military action in Gaza which killed 19 Palestinians.
It is now prudent to reflect upon what all this violence has wrought. I don’t think I need to rehash my last post on this subject. But one thing that has happened has not yet been touched upon: Police brutality.
Normally I am the first to defend the police who are simply trying to do their jobs. But in the highly charged atmosphere of Jerusalem of the past few days, there has certainly been more than one occasion where police went too far.
I have been told about one such incident by a reliable source. Apparently one Charedi Yeshiva student, who was sitting quietly in his apartment looking into a Sefer, suddenly had the police burst into his room, grabbed, slammed against the wall, and virtually beaten to a pulp. He was then arrested and taken to jail.
A holocaust survivor (I believe it was his aunt) who witnessed the whole thing said that in her worst days in a concentration camp, she did not see this level of brutality. The bruises this innocent young man received will take months to heal, according to his doctors.
This young man was not involved in any way in any of the demonstrations. He is a non-violent individual. But he was treated worse than a sexually deviant serial killer about to commit another rape and murder!
There is no excuse for such treatment. This kind of brutality cannot be allowed to go unpunished. There has to be an independent investigation into acts like this. And it is my understanding that there were many other incidents similar to this one. I have received numerous emails with stories very similar to this one. As bad as such a parade would have been, and as bad as was the violence that erupted because of it making it even worse, the police brutality makes that horrible situation an even worse one.
But I cannot simply say that the police decided to just start attacking Charedi Jews. That isn’t what happened. The case I cited above cannot be looked at in a vacuum. There is a context here. Charedim were committing violent acts and endangering lives. They were probably taunting police in the process. The police are human beings… trained to respond in kind to violence. And they did so. So what ever blame is to be placed on the police for such violent, and even sadistic brutality, one cannot ignore those who were responsible for bringing the police into it in the first place. It was the violent protestors… throwing rocks at innocent bystanders, setting dumpsters and police cars ablaze, blocking streets… that forced a police response. No doubt the police in the event I cited were chasing down some hooligan who went into that apartment building. It is also likely they thought that the fellow had ducked into that apartment, sat down and feigned having been there the whole time. They didn’t buy that and proceeded to brutalize what turned out to be an innocent young man.
I don’t know if this is actually what happened. I am speculating. But it is not an unlikely scenario. Nor does it excuse what the police did. And they have to answer for it. This must never be allowed to happen in a Jewish state again. It is beyond outrage.
But it is the Charedi rioters themselves who must share some of the responsibility for this brutality. They have brought shame upon themselves and the Torah community from which they come. Innocent people have gotten hurt …some directly and some indirectly as was the case here. And they should be taken to task for it.
But I doubt that they will. Because as part of the agreement to call off the protests, the delegation of Charedi leaders asked that all anti-parade protesters who have been arrested in recent days be released. While I think that there are probably a lot of innocent people arrested, like this fellow in this incident, there are probably a lot more who deserve being locked up. Unfortunately it looks like the guilty will go free with the innocent.
If I were in a position to do anything about it, I would make sure that those who were responsible for the violence were prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. No blanket amnesty. I would throw the book at them. But Charedi leadership has instead decided to just let it pass. And that means that no lessons will be learned. And the rioters will end up believing that their actions were just.
And they will end up doing it again.
