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Ultra-Orthodox lawmaker arranged Sabbath rescue of Israelis on Jordan border

MK Moshe Roth set diplomatic wheels in motion, and stranded group crossed safely from Aqaba under tight security.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

An ultra-Orthodox MK arranged the rescue in the early hours of Saturday morning of a group of Israelis dangerously stranded in Jordan while trying to make their way back home, Israel National News network reported on Sunday.

Moshe Roth, a member of the Sanz Hasidic movement representing the United Torah Judaism party, received an emergency phone call late on Friday night from someone in a group of families whose flight from Larnaca, Cyprus, to the Israel-Jordan border at Aqaba had been repeatedly delayed so they arrived only around midnight.

As the crossing closed at 8 p.m. and would only open at 8 a.m., they were facing many hours of being in a country considered so currently unsafe to Israelis that the National Security Council categorized it with a Level 4 travel warning, forbidding entry.

The only exception is for rescue flights landing in Aqaba for citizens wishing to return from abroad while Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport is largely shut down.

Understanding the danger to the families that had no security forces to guard them, which overrode prohibitions of the Jewish Sabbath,  Roth immediately began contacting government officials, including his fellow party member, Deputy Transportation Minister Uri Maklev, members of the security establishment, and the Foreign Ministry’s Situation Room.

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The diplomatic wheels began turning, and the Jordanian officer in charge of the crossing was awakened and told to open it for the Israelis.

The group was then taken under Jordanian police protection from the airport to the crossing, a few minutes’ drive away, and at 3 a.m., the travellers passed through to the Israeli side, which is only a very short drive to Eilat.

“In the end, the ones who took action, made the effort, and cared were the Knesset members from United Torah Judaism,” said one of those rescued. “It didn’t matter to them who was stranded — religious, secular, young people, or families. They gave us genuine help without asking questions; their only concern was to help Jews in distress.”

The New York-born Roth spoke in his maiden address to the Knesset in January 2023 about his grandfather, a Holocaust survivor who had been beaten and nearly died “because of his Jewish identity,” and how important and “fundamental” a thing it is to increase that simple sense of identity in the country. He is currently the head of the Knesset’s Ethics Committee.