During the protests we are conducting for the honor of heaven against those who attempt to breach the wall of religion, we must act properly and according to the rule of Torah. We must not undertake any violence.
After weeks of unrest, the leader of Jerusalem's Eidah HaHareidit, Rabbi Yitzchak Tuvia Weiss, has called for an end to violence. Disturbances erupted this week during demonstrations against the opening of the Karta parking facilty on the Sabbath and by hareidi religious activists in the Geulah neighborhood of Jerusalem who tried to prevent police from carrying out an autopsy on a stabbing victim. In a letter that has appeared on posters distributed throughout hareidi religious neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Rabbi Weiss calls for caution during protests, with demonstrators ensuring that neither persons nor property be damaged.
The letter, titled "A Message and a Warning," says that "during the protests we are conducting for the honor of heaven against those who attempt to breach the wall of religion, we must act properly and according to the rule of Torah. We must not undertake any violence, such as throwing rocks, setting fire to trash bins, spitting at officials, and damaging property."
This is the first letter against violence that the Haredi leadership has issued since the beginning of the latest round of mass demonstrations by the community several months ago.
According to sources in the hareidi community, what prompted Rabbi Weiss to publicize the letter was the Tuesday night "lynch" attack by several hareidi youth on an Arab taxi driver in Geulah. Approximately 20 youth surrounded and attacked the taxi that had just dropped off a passenger, and they used an axe, smashing its windows and dragging the driver out of the vehicle and beating him.
The driver was treated in a local hospital for head injuries, and the vehicle was badly damaged. According to witnesses, the youths had drifted from a protest in Kikar Shabbat, Meah Shearim's large public square, after the conclusion of a protest against the attempted autopsy of the stabbing victim, who was killed by an Arab worker of the rooming house he was living in on Sunday night.
As the level of violence at protests has increased in recent weeks, more hareidi religious leaders have been speaking out against the damage resulting from the rioting in their own neighborhoods. On one call-in radio program geared to the hareidi community this week, for example, a large number of callers decried the rioting and the "lynch" incident, blaming the trouble on "wayward youth," who neither learn in Yeshiva nor work.
Former MK Yisrael Eichler, a prominent hareidi religious radio host and community activist, blamed the violence on police incitement of naïve youths, who were being manipulated by political and media forces for their own interests. He condemned the violence, calling on parents to ensure that their children do not participate in the violence. However, he said, the protests were necessary, because as hareidi Jews, the community had an obligation to stand up for Torah principles that were being "trampled upon" by the secular powers that be.
Speaking to Ha'aretz, one hareidi community leader said that the youths were "street thugs, not 'our people.' It's up to the police to deal with them, we have problems with them throughout the year. They cause much damage to our neighborhoods and attack Arabs in our neighborhoods at every opportunity," he said.