Unholy Fire in Bnei Brak

The unrest started last Thursday, a day after the appointment of Israel’s new police commissioner, former border police chief Kobi Shabtai. The preceding weeks had seen a number of reports in the press comparing the strict enforcement of the lockdown in the Arab sector to the relatively lax enforcement in the chareidi sector, and the police felt pressured to act. In fact, however, the lockdown regulations were already being fully enforced, in addition to fining simchah halls that violated regulations, according to Shai Gerbertchik, police spokesman for the chareidi community.

On Thursday last week the police got the opportunity to prove that there’s no selective enforcement. Undercover cops on duty in Bnei Brak were exposed by a group of yeshivah bochurim, who attacked them and smashed the windows of their vehicle. The officers made their way back to headquarters bruised and battered. In ordinary times the police would have turned to the Bnei Brak municipality to demand that the attackers be handed over, and the matter would have ended at that. Communication between the municipality and the police is good, and no one had any doubt that the attackers’ action didn’t bring honor to Hashem’s Name.

“Instead of that,” says Gedalia Silman, director of the Bnei Brak municipality, “the police decided to assert control in heavy-handed fashion. At a late-night hour, when the streets are filled with yeshivah bochurim making their way home from yeshivah, hundreds of riot police poured into densely populated streets of Bnei Brak and began making arrests while firing stun grenades indiscriminately. Within minutes the streets were packed with crowds of mostly young people.”

Add to the mix the fact that many yeshivos are currently closed due to the coronavirus guidelines, which means that with nothing to get up for in the morning, many young people to stay up and wander the streets until all hours of the night. (According to Mayor Avraham Rubinstein, negotiations on school closures between chareidi officials, the Health Ministry, and the prime minister’s office yielded no results. The chareidi representatives demanded that educational institutions be reopened, with bochurim who have recuperated from the virus allowed back. The Health Ministry refused, out of concern that it would set a precedent for a more widespread opening of educational institutions.)