Watch the video below. The man on the left is yelling bitterly at the progressive prayer crasher on the right: “One minute, come, explain to me, one second, it’s important to me because that’s the point I wanted to make. I am at Kaplan every Shabbat (referring to the weekly protests at the intersection of Ayalon Highway in Tel Aviv – DI). Every Shabbat. I am a secular hi-tech professional living here, in Tel Aviv. So, what do you mean when you say, ‘You?’ When you say ‘You,” who is ‘You?’ Is it the color of my skin? The kippa? Who is ‘You?’ Who is ‘You?’ Come, explain to me, you, the enlightened leftist, who is ‘You?’ Because I’m at Kaplan, I’m at Kaplan every Shabbat, like everyone else, fighting for my democracy. And one day out of the year, when I decide to don a kippa, suddenly I become ‘You?’ Who is ‘You’ that you lay a stigma on like that?”
שימו לב לסרטון הזה, המתפלל מסביר למפגינים שהוא הייטקיסט שכל שבת מפגין איתם בקפלן. pic.twitter.com/ULuf6mv88m
— ?????Ariel Iluz? (@Ariel_iluz) September 27, 2023
When a few hundred “progressives” decided to ruin the Yom Kippur experience for thousands of their secular neighbors in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities they did not expect to strengthen their victims’ resolve to claim their Jewish identity, as much of it as they wished. It also exposed Ehud Barak’s and Shikma Bressler’s anarchists as the crypto-fascist Falange that they are, whose proclaimed goal to save the democratic and Jewish state of Israel is, in fact, the opposite: destroy democracy and eradicate Judaism.
Guy Baruch, a rank & file secular Israeli, tweeted on Tuesday: “It’s amazing what one Yom Kippur can do for a Kibbutznik Jew – I’m wearing a kippa starting today. Antiochus failed, the Romans failed, the Muslims failed, you too will fail. Don’t touch my Judaism, there is a limit.”
מדהים מה יום כיפור אחד יכול לעשות ליהודי קיבוצניק – אני מתחיל ללכת עם כיפה מהיום.
אנטיוכוס לא הצליח, הרומאים לא הצליחו, המוסלמים לא הצליחו, גם אתם תכשלו.
אל תיגעו לי ביהדות,
יש גבול.— Guy Baruch (@Guy_Baruch) September 26, 2023
And another Israeli Yaniv Turgeman tweeted on Tuesday: “I am Jewish, Israeli and secular from Givatayim. Thanks to the expulsion of the Jews from prayer on Yom Kippur at Dizengoff Square, I decided to take it upon myself to purchase tefillin and don tefillin. Following that shocking event, it is important to me that my two children Rotem and Leni who live in a secular city will watch their father don tefillin with a tallit every morning and learn what Judaism is.”
אני יהודי, ישראלי וחילוני מגבעתיים.
הודות לגירוש היהודים מתפילה בערב יום כיפור מכיכר דיזינגוף,
החלטתי לקחת על עצמי לרכוש תפילין ולהניח תפילין.
בעקבות האירוע המזעזע הזה חשוב לי ששני ילדי: רותם ולני שמתגוררים בעיר חילונית,
יצפו באביהם מניח תפילין עם טלית בכל בוקר וילמדו יהדות מהי— Yaniv Turgeman (@YanivTurgi) September 26, 2023
Soon enough, the rejection of extremist progressives reached deep inside the opposition parties, and while MKs Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid blamed everything on Netanyahu because this is what they do, Gideon Sa’ar, Gantz’s partner in the National Union Party, tweeted on Tuesday:
“‘The Jews know how to hate,’ said the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to me more than once – and he received heaping doses of hatred from all sections of the Israeli people throughout his life, each part in its turn. This phrase has been echoing in my ears since last night following the ugly events in Tel Aviv on Yom Kippur. They were followed by ugly reactions from Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, Lapid (yes, you too Lapid!). Each of them tried to add another toothpick (or some fuel) to the fire, instead of trying to put it out.
“What “leaders” fuel a fratricidal war at the end of Yom Kippur? Some things must not be disputed: the judgments of our courts must be respected. There is room for everyone in our public space. And yes, this also includes the Jewish heritage we all share. Those who insult and humiliate religious Jews do not protect the character of the city of Tel Aviv as a liberal and free city. On the contrary. They do not remove partitions but raise the walls between the parts of our people.
To my friends who are fighting shoulder to shoulder in defense of democracy in Israel, I say: Do not be tempted by attempts to turn the protest into a campaign against the religion, Jewish tradition, or our right to the land. All of these will fail. There will be no civil war!”
MK Chili Tropper, also from National Unity, posted on Tuesday: “There is no justification in the world for the offensive behavior toward the worshipers in Dizengoff Circle. All the great ideologies and values in whose name the protestors acted are lost as a result of the behavior of the protestors who throw prayer books on the floor, the female protestor who tugs at the fringes of a worshiper’s tallit, and the group that blasphemes and curses with hatred and harasses worshipers during the Kol Nidrei prayer. Even those who oppose with every fiber of their being the gender segregation or the Rosh Yehudi activity should shun this despicable behavior.”
It’s a trend, folks, and I must say, there’s only one surefire way to quash this trend in its infancy: to respond to thuggery with even more thuggery. As I noted earlier today (A Belligerent Ben Gvir Declares Public Prayer in Protesters’ Faces at Dizengoff Circle), Itamar Ben Gvir is determined to start a little war over the right to pray at Dizengoff Circle this Thursday, despite what all his allies in the national religious camp are telling him.
Only Ben Gvir can turn a fledgling movement of secular Israelis who are curious about their tradition into a train wreck of monumental proportions.
Please fasten your seatbelts.
