“Could you please stop murdering us?" After all, we haredim do not go onto the Temple Mount! That’s the message for Palestinians the supposedly liberal mainstream haredi newspaper Mishpacha wrote in both Hebrew and Arabic in today’s edition.
Don't Stab Us, We Don't Go To The Temple Mount, Mainstream Haredi Newspaper Tells Arabs – In Arabic
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
“Could you please stop murdering us?" After all, we haredim do not go onto the Temple Mount!
That’s the message for Palestinians the supposedly liberal mainstream haredi newspaper Mishpacha wrote in both Hebrew and Arabic in today’s edition in an opinion article written by Mishpacha’s deputy editor, Aryeh Ehrlich.
The first paragraph of Ehrlich’s article, which opened with that plea, was written in both Hebrew and Arabic, the Jerusalem Post reported, so Muslim terrorists wouldn’t fail to get the point.
The vast majority of top haredi rabbis forbid Jews to go onto the Temple Mount. They base their rulings on the idea that it is uncertain where the exact location of the Holy of Holies and the ritual area of the old Jerusalem temples stood. Because under halakha (Orthodox Jewish law) those special areas of the Temple cannot be entered, even today, without obtaining a high level of ritual purity – a level that cannot as it now stands be obtained by anyone – these haredi rabbis rule that Jews may not visit any part of the Temple Mount.
“Us, the haredi community, we have no interest in going up to the Temple Mount in our time. We oppose this vehemently. Moreover, Jewish law see this as a severe prohibition - punished by spiritual excommunication. So even if you have solid information on Israeli desires to change the status quo at the Dome of the Rock - something which is incorrect to the best of our knowledge - the haredi community has no connection to it. So please, stop murdering us,” Ehrlich wrote.
During this most recent spree of terrorism, Palestinian terrorists have frequently targeted haredi Jews.
Ehrlich faced a firestorm of condemnation on social media sites in reaction to his article.
“How wretched and ghetto like can you be? Is this your version of ‘loving your neighbor as yourself’? Of loving your fellow Jew,? Are you are calling on Arabs not to murder haredim because they don't go up to the Temple Mount but insinuating ‘go and murder those who do? Disgusting. What about just calling on them not to murder. It would be more humane and more Jewish,” one comment on Twitter said, according to the Post.
And on the haredi news website B’hadrei Haredim one commenter wrote, “What about other Jews who aren’t haredi, them you should kill?????”
In response to the widespread condemnation, Ehrlich wrote on Twitter that the Islamic Movement in Israel was trying to create a religious war, and it had incited Palestinians to attack Jews who look religious.
“My article in the Mishpacha Magazine says: This religious war is wild incitement based in imaginary rumors. Most people who observe the religious commandments don't go to the Temple Mount, if only because of the religious prohibition. The article was trying, naively it must be admitted, to tear the away the mask from the murderous Palestinian aggression which has been going on for decades, and to neutralize the false Islamic incitement,” Ehrlich wrote.
Meanwhile, defending Ehrlich and the haredi community from these acts of terror are IDF soldiers and police, the overwhelming majority of whom are not Orthodox or haredi and who do not in any way have a “religious” appearance. At the same time, the haredi community still refuses to serve in the IDF or the police, and has vehemently criticized – and sometimes physically attacked – the tiny number of haredim who have disregarded haredi community pressure and enlisted.
[Hat Tips: physicallen, Seymour.]