JERUSALEM (VINnews) — After a period in which police appeared to have internalized that their uncouth and violent approach to the Chareidi community’s violations of COVID-19 regulations would not gain anything, the violence returned in spectacular manner during the Sukkos holiday. It appeared as if police had decided not only to target Chareidi violations of the new regulations but to use as much force as possible to intimidate people into maintaining the new rules.
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Journalist Ariel Elharar has made it his goal to document and publish as many of the police excesses against Chareidim as possible and to compare them with the soft approach to demonstrations against Prime Minister Netanyahu and other secular events which violate the regulations. Elharar publishes these excesses on his Twitter site and in the past has even succeeded in gaining the intention of Internal Security minister Amir Ohana, who demanded that a certain policeman be suspended after he intentionally punched a Chareidi protester in the face.
However Elharar and others believe that police are acting based on the ferocious incitement published daily in the Israeli media. It is hard to separate fact from fiction but the media spends an inordinate amount of time targeting Chareidi infringements of the lockdown rules, whil ignoring blatant violations by secular individuals and groups. In one case last week, an unprecedented 20 minutes at the beginning of the main news program were devoted to Chareidi violations and to the situation within the community.
While arguably Chareidim are the hardest hit by the new wave of infections sweeping Israel, with some 1 in 3 infections occurring in the community, it is not only for lack of adherence to regulations but rather due to the close quarters and large families in the community, meaning that if just one member of the family was exposed, 10 to 12 other members living in proximity may be infected. In the case of yeshivas, hundreds may be infected together, leading to the absurd claim that Chareidi yeshiva students had tried to get infected in order to go to a hotel during the Sukkos break.
Even in Ger where 7 million shekels were spent trying to set up barriers and prevent the spread of the virus, hundreds were infected because the close proximity did not allow for people to maintain total separation from one another. Secular people view this as intentional and describe it in malevolent cartoons like this one:
Title: 9000 new sick persons: ‘The Chareidi sector’s contempt will cause calamity”
It is hard to imagine a more incendiary and inciteful cartoon than this one and it is on this background that police brutality can be understood- but should not continue to be tolerated. Chareidi MKs must call out police on their behavior as well as journalists on their continued ruthless incitement and generalizations against the community. At the same time communities neglecting the regulations must realize that they are harming the reputation of thousands of others and must conform with the regulations religiously- as they can indeed save lives.
Jews, especially visibly frum Jews, have always known that we had to avoid chilul Hashem. The halachos of chilul Hashem are not determined by whether the viewer of an event is being fair, rather by whether visibly frum Jews do something that causes others to feel distainful of Torah. When frum neighborhoods, especially in Eretz Yisroel but also in chutz la’aretz, are full of frum Jews violating distancing rules, and the infection numbers are through the roof, it is a chilul Hashem ke’pshuto. Notnto mention a violation of nishmartem me’od es nafshoseichem and al ta’amod al dam re’echa. We need ti stop getting defensive and fix our behavior, so our camp is clean, then the chilul Hashem will stop.