Haredi Man Asks High Court To End Israel’s Remembrance Day Siren And Minute Of Silence Calling Them A “Classic Characteristic Of A Dictatorship”

A haredi man with a history of anti-Zionist vandalism – including defacing Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust memorial – has petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice to limit the sounding of what has been until now the nationwide siren on Remembrance Day, the national day of warning for Israel's war dead.

“Thanks Hitler for the wonderful Holocaust you organized for us! Only because of you we received a state.” – Elhanan Ostrowitz's graffiti at Yad Vashem last year.

Haredi Man Asks High Court To End Israel’s Remembrance Day Siren And Minute Of Silence Calling Them A “Classic Characteristic Of A Dictatorship”
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

A haredi man with a history of anti-Zionist vandalism – including defacing Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust memorial – has petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice to limit the sounding of what has been until now the nationwide siren on Remembrance Day, the national day of warning for Israel's war dead. The Times of Israel reports that Elhanan Ostrowitz wants to limit the siren’s sounding so that it only sounds only at special memorial sites and army bases.

When the siren sounds, all car traffic (except emergency vehicles on a call) is by law mandated to stop in place. Drivers and passengers get out and stand at attention in silence. Pedestrians and Israelis who are inside of buildings also stand in place and in silence.

Ostrowitz’s petition reportedly calls this nationwide one minute siren-sounding in memory of Israel’s war dead a “classic characteristic of a dictatorship.”

Ostrowitz also claims that he, “like many of Israel’s citizens,” feels the siren stops people from freely expressing their opinions and beliefs. His petition also claims that the siren also causes unnecessary panic among the public. And the petition also insists that the law mandating “all work and traffic be stopped” during the siren is undemocratic because it limits people’s freedom of expression, impacts their occupations and infringes on other their basic rights.

He also told the court in his petition that most people who stand at attention do so “out of fear and against their personal belief.”

These government mandated acts “define dictatorships…[and] Israel is the only place in the Western world, or maybe the entire world, where a siren is sounded in the entire public sphere,” his petition claims.

Ostrowitz is notorious in Israel for vandalizing Israel’s national Holocaust museum and memorial Yad Vashem and the Ammunition Hill war memorial with anti-Zionist graffiti last year.

At the time the Jerusalem Post reported that the graffiti was extensive and very offensive.

"The main courtyard of the museum, the Warsaw Ghetto courtyard, was covered with slogans that stretched more than two meters tall and five meters wide, encompassing entire walls surrounding the memorial statue in the front of the courtyard. The vandals most likely entered the museum campus from the Jerusalem forest, which surrounds the museum," the Post reported.

Slogans Ostrowitz and his co-conspirators painted included: “Thanks Hitler for the wonderful Holocaust you organized for us! Only because of you we received a state,” "If Hitler hadn’t existed, the Zionists would have invented him,” and "Israel is the secular Auschwitz of the Sefardic Jewry."

After his arrest, Ostrowitz reportedly told police that if he had the training and the expplosives, he would have blown up Yad Vashem instead of simply defacing it.

A large percentage of Israelis are Holocaust survivors or their children.

Related Posts:

Yad Vashem Defaced With Anti-Zionist, Pro-Nazi Slogans.

4 Neturei Karta Members Confess To Vandalizing Yad Vashem.

Neturei Karta Man Linked To Yad Vashem Desecration Says He would Have Blown Up The Knesset If He Had The Means.

Comments

[jancsibacsi]

What about the thousands of nonsensical rules that they impose on others,he is complaining about the one rule that he has to abide by this guy is a madman.

[derech eretz kadma l'torah]

As much as I am critical of many of the actions of both hareidi communities and leadership, I think it highly unfair to indict whole communities amd their leaders for the actions and beliefs of one lunatic who clearly needs to be hospitalized in a locked-down setting.

[jancsibacsi]

derech eretz kadma l'torah--You are really of youre rocker where do you take from the writings here that a whole community is indicted? you are hallucinating and you are paranoid no one here said that the whole community is guilty of this one persons bahaviour.

[Ben]

Why is this guy is free and not in jail after defacing Yad Vashem? Why is he allowed to file any petitions with any courts?

[Rebitzman]

It's a democracy. He can petition.

He's an idiot - it will never happen, but.......

[Joe Field]

Posted by: Ben | March 24, 2013 at 09:06 PM

I don’t know what the disposition of the Yad Vashem case was; nevertheless, in a democracy everyone has the right to be an idiot, so he is exercising his right, for all to see that he stupid.

[Joe Field]

I do agree that if someone has the ability to pay $40 for a lb. of shmurah matzoth, and he wants to help out someone to earn a living, by all means that is ok. Nonetheless, let’s look at a different story, a person I know personally, who is in his 50st all his life he only used shmurah matzoh for Passover, but, unfortunately this year he cannot spend even $21.00 per pound. So he bought one pound for $21.00, guess what broke his heart, the shmurah matzoth box didn’t even had 6 whole matzoth’s, which he wanted for both Seder nights.

Personally, I don’t use shmurah matzoth, but, I could understand the pain and shame numerous families go through just to buy food, let alone shmurah matzoth. Please don’t tell me that there are organizations that are helping needy people. Yes that is true, but not every person is willing to ask for help. And that is the shame.

Finally, in this story the question begets, why two different prices, I could see a higher cost in Anchorage Alaska, than Brooklyn NY, due to the shipping cost, but in Manhattan v Brooklyn, that is a pure rip-off.

[Darth_Zeidah]

"I do agree that if someone has the ability to pay $40 for a lb. of shmurah matzoth, and he wants to help out someone to earn a living, by all means that is ok. Nonetheless, let’s look at a different story, a person I know personally, who is in his 50st all his life he only used shmurah matzoh [continued on page 295]."

Sorry, Joe Field, but I think this is ample proof that you have lost your marbles.

In case you have not yet noticed, the topic for discussion on this thread is that a "Haredi Man [Has] Ask[ed] High Court To End Israel’s Remembrance Day Siren And Minute Of Silence Calling Them A “Classic Characteristic Of A Dictatorship".

C'mon, Joe Field, if you are so wasted now how will you feel after drinking four full glasses of Manischewitz's Grape Juice?

[real]

http://chaimhalpernscandal.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/films-are-ossur-znus-is-muttar.html#comment-form

This wosner is RCH's mechutan and he is trying to 'deflect' attention from him.

[Bob Guthrie]

"American Christian Fundamentalist Asks US Supreme Court To End The United States’s 9/11 Remembrance Day And Minute Of Silence Calling Them A 'Classic Characteristic Of A Dictatorship'."

Yeah, this scenario would also fly tout suite, with no repercussions to the whole of the American Christian Fundamentalism either.

[Yochanan Lavie]

Bob G; Don't think the Westboro Baptist Church won't do something like this.

[Charles]

Lets hope the courts throws this out AND makes him pay for all court related costs. This is the only way to cut down on such nonsense challenges.

[(The other) Eli]

He could be right. After all, who is more familiar with dictatorships than a haredi?

[Alter Kocker]

This person's views are an insult to every Israeli who fought and died for their country. It is a slap in the face. The defacement of Yad Vashem should carry a penalty of public flogging. This ignorant piece of human feces should be visited by each and every Israeli soldier and receive from them their testimony as to what and who they are willing to give their lives in defending. I doubt that Mr Ostrowitz has the testicles to put on that uniform, but he will surely attempt to wipe any national pride off the map. In my books, he should be horse-whipped instead of entertaining this ignorant request to the high-court.

[John Nagle, Silicon Valley, CA]

How about a general siren ban? No remembrance day siren, no shabbos siren, no Islamic call to prayer. All of those can be replaced by phone apps.

[JessicaR]

There are two issues operating here: the unquestioned need to memorialize the Holocaust and the method chosen to do it. One may wholeheartedly support the former and question the latter.

While NO event is equivalent to the Holocaust, let me draw an analogy to the 911 murders of U.S. citizens. Suppose the US had mandated that all traffic stop and all U.S. citizens stand at attention for three minutes--one minute for each thousand people who perished.

As an American, I naturally want to remember this event. But I can also imagine that the *compulsory public ritual* could be easily manipulated by the government to stir up feelings of anger against Muslims and enhance support for wars of aggression against, say, Iraq or Iran or Syria or Pakistan or Afghanistan or Yemen or Somalia, where US troops are acting, albeit largely under the radar. Feelings about this event have also been used to numb Americans to the realities of waterboarding and other forms of torture carried out by the U.S. government.

Furthermore, these policies seem to have motives other than the protection of Americans--control of oil and an increased number of campaign contributions from defense contractors come to mind.

It is my view that citizens of democracies need to look critically on compulsory expressions of piety, patriotism, and other strong emotions. These feelings can easily be manipulated and misused.

And making an entire nation stand at attention *at the same time* does smack of militarism.

The man I loved with my whole heart, who is now deceased, survived the Holocaust in hiding while he was a small child. The fact that I question a particular method of memorializing the Holocaust does not mean that I care less about the suffering inflicted on him and his family--who lost several members in Auschwitz. On the other hand, while we never discussed it, I would imagine that he would disagree with me on this point and would stand at attention for the six million.

[Darth_Zeidah]

"This ignorant piece of human feces"

Why all this pomposity? If you meant "shit" why didn't you type "shit"

[A. Nuran]

If Israel were a brutal dictatorship he'd have been disappeared.

[Russian PhD]

Suddenly this Haredi pseudo-human piece of garbage recognizes High Court of Justice? Will he also welcome the Court ruling against segregated buses and Saturday roads blockings? No, because Haredi scum love democracy and freedoms only when it apply to THEM.

[yakov]

this man has a vaild point- but painful to the many who choose not to see