Five protesters were arrested Sunday evening during the disturbances that took place in a demonstration against the draft law in Jerusalem; two of them were arrested for attacking police officers and three more for throwing stones and objects. The suspects were transferred for further interrogation.
During the demonstration, the chairman of United Torah Judaism, Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, was attacked by demonstrators as he made his way to his home in Jerusalem. The demonstrators pelted his vehicle with stones, punched and beat the vehicle, and shouted insults at him. During the incident, the minister remained in his vehicle and a few minutes later a police force rescued him. Later, Deputy Inspector Shlomi Tubul, commander of the Lev HaBira precinct in Jerusalem, was also attacked with stones.
Deputy Inspector Tubul said overnight Monday, at the end of the huge rally of the Jerusalem Faction and the Eda HaHaredit––both anti-Zionist communities––that the police had no choice but to use force against the protesters.
“At a certain point, the protest turned into a violent disturbance with the participation of hundreds of troublemakers,” he said, adding, “In the last few hours, stones, objects, planks, and everything else were thrown at the police and security forces operating in the area. At this stage, when the protest turned into a violent disorder, we ordered it to be dispersed.” But “The lawbreakers did not disperse and continued to disturb the public order, throwing objects at the police forces and setting fires on the road, we had to act with force and measures to disperse the disturbances to repel them and stop the riot.”
The deputy inspector then said, “It cannot be ignored that a significant part of those lawbreakers were children – it’s not certain that all of them are of the age of criminal responsibility. This is not the first time that we, and I personally, have come across children who are at the forefront of disturbances in this area. This is a worrying, dangerous, and wrong phenomenon that deserves every reproach and must be uprooted.”
The thousands who gathered at the Shabbat Square intersection in Jerusalem were treated to the sight of a Haredi grownup who stood there proudly with an improvised gallows and a hanging rope, with the unambiguous sign, “Either be Jewish or be crucified.” Another handwritten sign read, “We will continue to educate our descendants to prefer a bullet to the head than to enlist in the army of Shemad (spiritual annihilation – DI).”
The messages on the other signs, held mainly by children, also revolved around death and the readiness to become martyrs. “We will die and not enlist,” was written on some of them. “Be killed and don’t enlist,” was written on others. Considering that those who were actually killed in the past year in the war were not Haredim but religious and secular Israelis made this claim to martyrdom grotesque, even ghoulish.
