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.