Search

‘This will end in blood’ – Rabbi mobbed by leftists, rescued by police

The scene was ‘reminiscent of the darkest times in Jewish history,’ says Religious Zionist Party head Bezalel Smotrich.

By World Israel News Staff

A prominent Religious Zionist rabbi was harassed by a mob of left-wing protesters in Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening, requiring the police to extricate him and a colleague from the fray to safety.

Yisrael Zaira, the head of the Rosh Yehudi movement, which also has a synagogue in the coastal city, is currently embroiled in a legal dispute with the municipality over Yom Kippur prayers.

The city of Tel Aviv banned temporary partitions for single-gender prayer in public spaces, which are a fundamental element of Halacha (Orthodox Jewish) law.

Zaira has argued that banning the temporary barriers, which would be used for several hours during prayers on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, constitutes a restriction of freedom of religion.

Hundreds of protesters swarmed the street outside of the Rosh Yehudi synagogue on Dizengoff Street, demonstrating against the prayer partitions and a Torah lesson at the site taught by Rabbi Yigal Levinstein, who has made comments critical of the progressive LGBT agenda.

Footage circulating on social media showed protesters screaming at Zaira and Levinstein, calling them “Nazis” and “fascists”, as well as hurling obscenities at the two men.

Read  El Al to operate rescue flights from Amsterdam on Shabbat

The pair were escorted to safety by police, as protesters chased after them on the street.

“Last night we saw a scene that seemed to be taken from dark times in Jewish history,” said Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in a media statement.

“A rabbi and a [visibly] religious citizen are being brutally attacked by a violent mob because of their faith. Gantz and Lapid are silent and it will end in blood, and this blood will be on their hands.”

Levinstein said that he “arrived last night at Rosh Yehudi, to support my friend Israel Zaira. Israel gave up a comfortable life and a private home in a settlement…and came to live in Tel Aviv only to increase love and strengthen Jewish identity.

He said that the incident was evidence of widespread incitement by the Israeli left-wing and said he believed the demonstrators had been manipulated by nefarious forces.

“The entire Israeli people [must] understand how good people fall for incitement and progressive rhetoric and become so aggressive ‘in the name of peace,'” he said.