The planned haredi gathering against the Internet organized by Ichud Hakehillos Letohar Hamachaneh (Union of Communities for the Purity of the Camp) will be censoring the news reported about it, FailedMessiah.com has exclusively learned.
Originally published at 5:49 pm CDT on Thursday, May 17, 2012
Haredim Demand To Censor Media At CitiField Gathering
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
The planned haredi gathering against the Internet organized by Ichud Hakehillos Letohar Hamachaneh (Union of Communities for the Purity of the Camp) will be censoring the news reported about it, FailedMessiah.com has exclusively learned.
Ichud Hakehillos Letohar Hamachaneh has decided to admit news organizations or reporters deemed to be friendly to the gathering, while barring all others.
News organizations and reporters who are admitted must first agree to allow Ichud Hakehillos Letohar Hamachaneh to review and censor whatever photos, videos, recordings and reports they make at the gathering or from information gathered at it before those photos, recordings, videos or reports are published.
The move appears to be aimed primarily at haredi news websites and haredi photojournalists.
Ichud Hakehillos Letohar Hamachaneh has apparently also moved to shape perception of the event by limiting the number of tickets available for sale in non-hasidic areas of Brooklyn, particularly Flatbush. FailedMessiah.com has been told of non-hasidic haredi synagogues which repeatedly tried to get tickets to sell to or provide their membership. These synagogues were allegedly repeatedly promised tickets by Ichud Hakehillos Letohar Hamachaneh. But in the end, after weeks of trying, none received any. The Flatbush community is seen as being less sympathetic to the organizers outlook than other Brooklyn haredi communities. For the same reason, the Chabad area of Brooklyn, Crown Heights, was excluded, as well.
The event is now sold out, although it is unclear how many tickets were distrubuted by Ichud Hakehillos Letohar Hamachaneh to supporters at discount prices or at no cost.
Censorship and skewing the audience are not the only controversies surrounding the gathering.
Many haredi victims of child sexual abuse complain that the approximately $2 million dollars spent on this gathering would have been better spent instituting programs and training to curtail child sexual abuse and help victims. Some have even organized a protest of the gathering.
The controversial gathering’s initiator, Rabbi Nechemia Gottlieb, a Lakewood educator, allegedly savagely beat children in a school he ran there, FailedMessiah.com exclusively reported eight days ago.
Gottlieb carried out this savage abuse over a period of years before he was finally removed from the school.
But like many other haredim who commit crimes against children in the haredi community, Gottlieb was not reported to police. Instead, parents were threatened and intimidated, and Gottlieb was protected, by powerful haredi rabbis including, allegedly, Matisyahu Salomon. Salomon, the mashgiach ruchanai(spiritual supervisor) of Lakewood yeshiva, is a key backer of the anti-Internet gathering.