Dozens of people - both adults and children - allegedly threw stones and eggs at the officer, vandalized his car, and screamed at him, "Hardak! [Haredi cockroach, the current derogatory haredi slang for haredi IDF soldiers] We will kill you!”
Above: The officer's mother's car after the attack
IDF Officer Attacked By Haredi Mob In Mea Shearim – “There Was No Righteous Man In Sodom"
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
An IDF officer went to the Jerusalem über-haredi neighborhood of Mea Shearim to visit two of his soldiers, one of them a “lone soldier” whose grandfather had recently died, and says he was attacked there by a haredi mob, Ynet reported on its Hebrew-language site today.
Dozens of people - both adults and children - allegedly threw stones and eggs at him, vandalized his car, and screamed at him, "Hardak! [Haredi cockroach, the current derogatory haredi slang for haredi IDF soldiers] We will kill you!”
The officer is a Zionist Orthodox Second Lieutenant who lives in the right wing West Bank Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba adjoining Hebron.
The officer's family told Ynet he was careful to park his car next to the soldier's home "so as not to provoke [people in the neighborhood] and attract attention." That caution, however, was not enough to protect him from attack.
"He went to my car [after the visit], which is protected [with special shatter-resistant windows, etc.] because we live in Kiryat Arba, and…tried to flee, but the children laid down on the road [to block him], and he could not leave. [Other children and adults] continued to throw stones at him, and the windows were shattered. A few minutes later he escaped by the skin of his teeth," the officer’s mother, Yael, told Ynet. “They had murder in their eyes, just like the terrorists I met in Khan Yunis [in Gaza] in the last war, [my son told me]. No one in that mob [of haredim] tried protect me, [he said.] There was not one righteous man in Sodom.”
The officer said he called the police to report the incident, but they allegedly told him to come to the police station if he wanted to file a complaint.
Attacks on haredi soldiers have been common since the new draft law drafting haredi yeshiva students was first broached almost three years ago. But despite waves of threats and physical attacks of varying degrees of seriousness – including attacks in which special police riot units had to be called in to rescue haredi soldiers – almost no haredim perpetrating the attacks have been arrested.
Update 11:30 am CDT – The Jerusalem Post reports that Israeli politicians, including the prime minister, expressed outrage over the attack. Aryeh Deri, the head of the Sefardi haredi Shas Party, called the attack "terrorism." But the reaction from an unnamed member of the Ashkenazi haredi United Torah Judaism Party is classic:
…An official with United Torah Judaism, the political faction that represents an amalgamation of Ashkenazi haredim, said that those responsible for the attack constitute “an extremist, fringe group that is even more violent towards the ultra-Orthodox than it is to the greater public.”
“These are the same hooligans who attacked UTJ MK Moshe Gafni and MK Uri Maklev when they came into Mea Shearim to pray at a local synagogue,” the source said. “The Israel Police have been way too lenient with them, and it is in contact with their leadership.”
“What we saw today was the result of the police’s silence and capitulation to this group,” the official said.
What the UTJ official fails to say is that UTJ's own rabbis refuse to publicly condemn the incitement against haredi soldiers and the IDF, and also refuse to publicly condemn attacks like this.
Are Israeli police incompetent or indifferent (or have they been ordered off cases like this by politicians courting haredi votes)?
Yes.
But that doesn't change the fact that all of the so called non-extremist haredi rabbinic leaders openly oppose the draft of haredim and all of them openly oppose haredim volunteering to join the IDF – but none of them will openly condemn criminal behavior like this. And as we can see from the anonymous UTJ quote, this still applies to haredi politicians, as well.