Hundreds of Haredim Riot in Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh

Haredim hurl rocks and bottles at police, call police "Nazis," and intimidate witnesses to child's starvation: "There were tactics here befitting organized crime."

Jerusalem haredi riots spread to Beit Shemesh
Ultra-Orthodox riots continue over arrest of mother suspected of starving her son for years. Hundreds take to streets, hurl rocks at security forces, set trash bins on ablaze. District Police Chief Franco: 'We're responding to the violence, we're working to restore order'
Efrat Weiss • Ynet

Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox men are continuing to riot in Jerusalem on Wednesday evening. The riots began in protest of the arrest of a mother suspected of having starved her toddler son. Garbage bins were torched in several locations and the rioters are hurling rocks at security forces and yelling "Nazis" at them. Bar Ilan Street has been partially closed off to traffic.

Police have deployed reinforcements, including officers mounted on horseback. Water hoses are also being used to disperse the crowd. Throughout the day a total of 26 ultra-Orthodox rioters were arrested.

The protest has also spread to outside Jerusalem. More than a hundred haredim began rioting in Beit Shemesh in the evening, are also hurling rocks. Police have been alerted to the scene and are working to disperse them.

Jerusalem District Police Chief Aharon Franco is closely monitoring the efforts to, as he said, "restore order to Jerusalem." Franco said that Jerusalem police have deployed in great numbers to deal with the situation.

"I hope the calm can be restored. There are a lot of residents here that are suffering because of a handful of troublemakers. It's wrong for everyone to be blaming the police, right now the police are dealing with the riots, we're responding to the violence."

Following the riots Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat ordered all city services to the Meah Shearim and Geola haredi neighborhoods suspended "in an attempt to prevent the threat posed to municipal employees in the area".

The Jerusalem Municipality said that the services will not be renewed "until such time that providing them will not entail risking human life." The mayor said he regretted the harm done to those who had not participated in the uprising, and that he hoped services would be renewed soon.

In a hearing held earlier in the day at the Jerusalem District Court, the head of the special investigation team said of the reactions to the mother's arrest: "There were tactics here befitting organized crime. Doctors, police officers and witnesses were all threatened." 
 
Police are continuing to collect testimonies from doctors who treated the toddler, who is currently hospitalized at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital for severe malnutrition. Experts have posited that the woman in question suffers from Munchausen by proxy. Welfare officials suspicious that she may be actively harming her son set up cameras in the boy's hospital room, allowing the investigators to catch the mother on tape disconnecting the child's feeding tube. Investigators believe she starved the three-year-old till he reached a horrifying 7 kilograms (about 15 pounds).

The mother's arrest has been remanded till Friday. She has additional children, and is pregnant.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Haredi protests reach Beit Shemesh
Etgar Lefkovits , THE JERUSALEM POST

Haredi riots over the arrest of a woman suspected of nearly starving her three-year-old son to death spread to Beit Shemesh overnight Wednesday.

Some 100 protesters gathered in the city, hurling rocks at police.

Fierce protests in Jerusalem's Geula and Mea She'arim neighborhoods, which had ceased at midday, resumed Wednesday evening, snarling traffic on main city thoroughfares.

Police arrested 26 people participating in the renewed demonstrations.

Protesters gathered at the capital's Rehov Bar-Ilan, shouting Psalms, mingled with cries of "Gevalt!" Some of the protesters hurled stones at police. Israel Radio reported after midnight that an ambulance had arrived at the scene after a woman was lightly injured in the protests.

Police attempted to control the crowd, subduing the more violent individuals who tried to push into the busy intersection. They also used powerful water hoses to try and disperse the haredi crowds.

The continuing violence prompted Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat to instruct all city welfare offices in the Mea She'arim and Geula neighborhoods to close until workers no longer faced a safety threat.

Two municipal welfare offices in the area have been targeted by haredi assailants in back-to-back attacks this week.

In the afternoon, the demonstrators pelted police and motorists with stones and set garbage bins on fire, Jerusalem Police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.

A Border Police officer was lightly wounded in the hand by a rock, and at least 20 haredi protesters were arrested in the rioting. Repeated shouts of "Nazis!" and applause incited the crowd every time a protester was dragged into a police van.

Outside the city, garbage bins were also set on fire in Ramat Beit Shemesh, police said.

The protests came a day after a court-imposed gag order was lifted on the arrest of the woman, a Mea She'arim resident who is five months pregnant.

The woman apparently suffers from Munchausen's-by-proxy, a psychiatric disorder that entails abusing someone, typically a child, to draw attention to or sympathy for oneself. She is suspected of severely abusing her child for two years, until he weighed a mere 7 kilograms. She has not been cooperating with police investigators.

The woman's London-born husband, a 30-year-old yeshiva student, has said he was unaware of any abuse on the part of his wife, who is a native of Jerusalem.

On Sunday, rioters broke into the welfare offices near Mea She'arim and proceeded to wreak havoc, breaking things and shouting, "Nazis! We will burn you!"

On Monday, rioters converged on a different welfare office in the city and set one of its doors on fire.

The suspected child abuser was arrested last week after meeting a social worker. Wednesday's protesters insisted that those responsible for the woman's arrest wrongfully accused her.

"We know the family," said demonstrator Yaakov Avraham Fruchter. "It's a good family, and no one ever sinned … It's just a blood libel."

Chana Weisvish also called the woman's arrest the "blood libel of 2009."

"She said something to the big doctor that didn't suit him, so he said to her 'You won't see your son for three years,' and he took revenge on her. So he brought social workers that testified against her that she's not a good woman …

"We will not be silent about it, because if they can get away with it once, then they'll do it again."

Another onlooker agreed, saying: "I am sure that she is innocent. I know her personally, she is a woman who nurtures her children, nurtures her house, nurtures everything. A pure woman. She sits all day, from eight in the morning until 10 at night, every day by her son … It's really not appropriate for a religious woman to sit with those criminals, women with drugs in jail."

The city said Wednesday that the offices would reopen as soon as workers were no longer facing "life-threatening" danger, and expressed regret over the inconvenience caused to neighborhood residents not involved in the violence.

The city added that the two days of rioting had caused hundreds of thousands of shekels in damages, including to two municipal vehicles and 50 garbage bins.

Aharon Rose, an expert on haredi customs and history at Hebrew University, explained that the organizers and participants at these riots were representative of the radical right in the haredi community, but other haredim were nonetheless responsible for not being active in trying to stop them.

"They have more power than their numbers would warrant," he said.

The welfare offices had briefly reopened on Wednesday morning under heightened security, said Ruti Matot, director of the children-at-risk division of the city's welfare department, which held an emergency meeting on the security situation in the morning.

Matot said the welfare authorities had been unaware of any problems in the family until they were recently contacted by the city's Hadassah-University Medical Center in Ein Kerem, where the boy had been hospitalized seven times over the last two years before medical officials determined that his mother was abusing him.

She said the other children in the family had not been abused, noting that people who had the rare syndrome tended to attack one specific child.

"There is no cause for concern regarding the other children," Matot said.

In the meantime, a court order has barred the woman, who is in custody, from seeing her hospitalized child, who remains in serious condition.

The order, which can be renewed, is in effect until September 1, the welfare official said.

Update 8 am CDT – Hadrei Hadarim has some great pictures of the Jerusalem riots:

 

 

Many more pictures here.

Comments

[Dr. Dave]

Munchausen by proxy parents can be good parents.

They tend to focus on just one child and can be a good parent to their other children.

[yossel]

That's no consolation to the child who's a victim of their disorder.

[Hometown Postville]

This is so twisted. The Haredi jumping to the defense of this woman when they can hardly stand to look or listen to women otherwise. It's almost like they are crazed because some dirty little secret became known. Why should they get so up in arms when usually they don't care what anyone else thinks of them? I would be curious to know how this woman would be dealt with by her own if allowed to go home. Sounds like a bunch of pent-up testosterone!

[WoolSilkCotton]

I still think Mr. Shoe-on-Head is the best photo.

[Yochanan Lavie]

WSC: His name is Reb Shuman, get it.

[steve]

The Jerusalem police will now be afraid to arrest any haredi for any crime for fear of such repercussions. The haredim are looking to establish a defacto state within a state in Jerusalem. They would surely prefer to set up their own system of justice which will allow all their criminals, including the child molesters, to walk freely.

[justayid]

An aside: googling on "southern agrarians and baal tshuvas" get zero hits.

I think its time for me to write an essay on communitarianism and response to modern society and alienation.

Downside - I will actually have to read the Southern Agrarian Manifesto.

[WoolSilkCotton]

YL, good one!

Instead of Borsalino, his headgear is by Thom McAn.

[Yochanan Lavie]

The picture is cropped so we don't see his feet. Maybe that's where he wears his hat. After all, we don't want to imitate the goyim.

[steve]

Maybe it's by Buster Brown.

[MisterApikoros]

These are not tactics befitting organized crime. I don't ever recall the Gottis leading riots which trashed Howard Beach. I don't remember Bugsy Siegel trashing Vegas. Quite the opposite, actually, in both places.

This is reminiscent of blacks trashing South Central LA after the Rodney King beating.

[Alana]

It's going to be pretty hard for them [the Haredim] to explain away surveillance footage. You can't make up things like that!

[DK]

The Zionist have no jurisdiction in the haredi enclaves. This is an invasive attempt to expand secular Zionist control. If there is a problem of child starvation in the community--and I am certainly not saying there is--the Gedoylim will take care of it.

We don't require Zionist "assistance," thank you very much.

And by the way -- Failed Messiah is a self-hating Jew.

[David Willig]

How about cutting off all water and electricity to the area until they stop the riots? They don't acknowledge the State that provides these services? Then let them live with candles and well water.
And their so called Rabbis, who do not put a stop to this rioting are not "gedolim". They are moral pygmies. I do not forgive them for they know exactly what they are doing. They have created this mob for their own political power and are know terrified less this mob turn on them.
I will not give a penny to any cause, any widow or orphan, any prospective bride, who has been endorsed by any of these pygmies. Let them all stew in their own juices, let them live in the 17th century if they want, but I will not help them.

[WoolSilkCotton]

Cutting off all utilities and emergency services for a few days, especially before Shabbos, would definitely give them something to think about besides destruction.

I predict the rioting will continue until someone gets killed. One of them will accidently kill another, or they will provoke a policeman to shoot. Then they will realize that it's not all fun and games.

[Dorian]

"...The Zionists have no jurisdiction in the haredi enclaves. This is an invasive attempt to expand secular Zionist control. If there is a problem of child starvation in the community--and I am certainly not saying there is--the Gedoylim will take care of it.
We don't require Zionist "assistance," thank you very much..."

I am always happy when ignorance contradicts itself...
They freely visited the hospital and the docters to look for so called Zionist assistance...they didn't object...
If they would've objected they should have taken the child to the States, to the 'Mekka' of Naturei Karta and have it treated there. Money wouldn't be a problem; they have enough funds (which origins is food for another topic!). It's even very likely an Iranian leader would have been glad to pay for it as a tool for good publicity...
Jurisdiction..? Chareidi enclaves? You assume way to much for a parasite..

[David Willig]

Am I the only one who thought DK was being satiric?