For decades, groups affiliated with Edah Haredit have claimed that various construction projects desecrate ancient Jewish graves and have staged often violent protests and riots against contractors, developers, and the government archaeologists who cleared the sites for construction. In almost every case, the haredi claims have proved false – transparently so.
Haredim Protest Alleged Grave Desecration, Three Arrested
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Dozens of haredim affiliated with the vehemently anti-Zionist Edah Haredit haredim umbrella organization demonstrated in Jerusalem yesterday.
According to a report in Yeshiva World, the haredim were protesting what they claim is the desecration of ancient Jewish graves at a construction site on Yosef Burg Street in the city, not far from Israel’s High Court of Justice.
Police, who responded to a call for help from construction workers at the site, arrested three of the haredi protesters.
For decades, groups affiliated with Edah Haredit have claimed that various construction projects desecrate ancient Jewish graves and have staged often violent protests and riots against contractors, developers, and the government archaeologists who cleared the sites for construction.
In almost every case, the haredi claims have proved false, in some cases transparently so. Israeli media reported two years ago that in a page ripped from the American Mafia's handbook, at least one of these groups existed primarily to criminally extort developers and contractors by using threats of violence and disruption of construction schedules to force them to hire haredi rabbis as site “supervisors” akin to kosher food inspectors and funnel money to the group in other ways.
As is usual when dealing with Edah Haredit, which is frequently violent, police did nothing about the extortion other than to occasionally arrest some of the violent haredim. But most of those haredim who were arrested were either never prosecuted or were given slap on the wrist sentences that most often involved no jail time. Even mobs of Edah Haredit haredim who have attacked haredi IDF soldiers and police with bricks, concrete and iron rebar are rarely arrested, let alone prosecuted.