Ariel Zilber told Border Police to disobey their orders and leave the extremist Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva. He was videoed doing this and, once the IDF saw the video, Zilber was arrested – as he tried to leave the country on flight to Rabbi Nachman of Breslov's grave in Uman, Ukraine.
Above: Ariel Zilber, left, and a Border Police commander 9-2014
From Yeshiva World:
VIDEO: Frum Soldier Detained For Calling On Soldiers To Refuse Orders At Yeshiva In Yitzhar
In April of 2014 IDF and border police forces took over the Ohd Yosef Chai Yeshiva in Yitzhar and turned it into a border police base. On Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Yassam (Special Forces) police attempted to create a provocation in Yitzhar, apparently in order to raise a media storm that would facilitate extending the seizure of the yeshiva. The attempt failed, however Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon extended the seizure warrant by three months. The status has not changed since then and most recently last week a new order was issued leaving the yeshiva in the hands of the border police for 10 additional weeks, until November 2014.
Following the extension of the seizure warrant, Ariel Zilber, a soldier and Yitzhar resident, was filmed on Wednesday, September 17 calling on border policemen to refuse orders and leave the Ohd Yosef Chai Yeshiva. Several hours after the video clip was publicized, Zilber was detained at the Ben-Gurion Airport as he was on his way to Uman for Rosh Hashanah. Zilber was taken for interrogation to the offices of the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) of the IDF. He was given a warning by an agent from the Jewish Department of the ISA and interrogated on suspicion of committing “the crime of vandalism”.
Honenu is assisting the soldier and has taken note of the difference in the treatment of a soldier from Yitzhar and the left-wing soldiers from Unit 8200, an Israeli Intelligence Corps Unit, who recently raised a media storm by calling on soldiers to refuse orders. “If only the system’s treatment of the [soldiers in Unit] 8200 was as efficient,” noted Honenu.
“Once again we see politically motivated discrimination in how the military authorities relate to soldiers refusing orders,” said Honenu attorney Adi Kedar.
“Against the Unit 8200 soldiers, who hold military secrets and classified information critical to the security of the State and are calling for refusing orders, they aren’t doing a thing. Concurrently they decisively acted and detained a soldier from Yitzhar within several hours after a video clip of him was publicized by the communications media. We hope that the soldier will be quickly released and able to celebrate Rosh Hashanah at his home,” added Kedar.
What Yeshiva World fails to report is that before the military took over Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva, they yeshiva's students rioted, attacking an IDF/border police base in Yitzhar and destroyed IDF vehicles and equipment.
It also falis to report that Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva was founded and is still led by extremist Chabad Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, who supported Baruch Goldstein's 1994 masss murder of Arabs praying at the Ibrahim mosque in Hebron and who is seen as the spiritual heir to the late extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane. (Ginsburgh holds no official position within the Chabad movement but is nonetheless one of the most popular rabbis on the Chabad street in Israel today, especially among Anglo Chabad followers and ba'al teshuvas.)
Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva's two junior rosh yeshivas (deans) who serve under Ginsburgh and who are his close students, Rabbi Yosef Elitzur and Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, co-wrote the notorious racist book Torat HaMelech which sanctions intentional murder (even the intentional mass murder) of Arab babies by the IDF during wartime because those babies will likely grow up to hate Jews anyway.
Ginsburgh endorsed the book.
The ISA (i.e., the Shabak, the Shin Bet) and Israel Police believe that most of the racist anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-Christian "price tag" hate crime attacks are committed by Ginsburgh's students and followers and link much of the extremist West Bank Jewish settler violence against the IDF and the Border Poice to Yitzhar and Od Yosef Chai, as well.
And Od Yosef Chai has been closed down previously by security services due to its students' violence and links to terrorism – for example, this incident in 2011.
Why does Yeshiva World fail to report any of this?
Part of it is likely just the lack of skill of its Israel reporter. But an equally large part of it, perhaps even the largest part, is that reporter's evident bias.
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