It is a couple of days after Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement) and the local press is still discussing who won the war. No, not the disastrous Yom Kippur war of 50 years ago, but the Dizengoff War.
On the evening of Yom Kippur, (last Sunday) a group of right-wing religious fanatics held a prayer service in the center of secular Tel Aviv, on Dizengoff square. While pubic prayer services are allowed, the separation between men and women during any event (including public prayer) is forbidden by law. And when the organizers of the prayer service in Dizengoff square attempted to set up separation barriers between men and women arguments arose between the religious attendants and secular people living in the neighborhood, arguments that ended in fighting (and violence) between the two groups and the police had to intervene.
Why the police did not intervene earlier to prevent the law-breaking activity of the organizers of the prayer service is not clear, but when realizing who today their supreme commander is, will explain a lot.
And looking a bit further into the organizers of the prayer service will make it even more clear that this event was not a spontaneous expression of religiosity, but an organized event to remake the secular bastion that Tel Aviv (still) is.
The man behind the prayer service and the attempt at separation of the genders is Israel Zeira, the director of an organization called “Rosh Yehudi”, which has been active in attempting to return secular citizens to the religious fold. He is also the CEO of an extreme Yeshiva in Hebron and came to live in Tel Aviv to realize his dream and makE the first Israeli city a Jewish religious one. And it is not surprising that he is actively backed by Itamar Ben Gvir the fascist and ultra-religious (i.e. Jewish Supremacist) minister in the current Israeli government.
On Yom Kippur itself, there were several attempts throughout the city to hold public prayer services that were stopped or prevented by secular Tel Avivians. Also in other cities in Israel, the same happened.
The reactions from politicians were as expected. Disturbance of religious prayer service by “leftist Extremist” (according to prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu) is unacceptable, especially when the Jewish people is trying to unite on the Holiest Day of the Year. Others used similar terms and some went as far as calling it anti-Semitism but any mention of the simple fact that through the separation of the genders, the law was broken was conspicuously absent from the politicians condemnations. Thus, all effort was placed in attempting to keep the big Jewish Lie alive: “We are All Brothers”, “We are all Jews”.
It is becoming more and more clear (and the events at Dizengoff Square may accelerate this), that apart from having been designated by some Rabbis (who are they to decide?) as being Jews, there are large gaps in Israeli unity. And the largest barrier, that appears to be mounting is the religious-secular confrontation. More and more, with the support of the current government that is fully dependent on the religious parties and pays a heave price for this through political blackmail, it is becoming clear that there are forces in Israeli society that are working to turn Israel into a Jewish-Religious state, i.e. a state were Jewish law is above Democratic law and where secular people will be forced to adhere to religious laws that they do not believe in or agree with.
The attempts of the Netanyahu government to interfere with the judicial system (and with the Supreme Court) is no more than an expression of the aims of the religious parties to force their will upon the people of Israel, one way or another.
But, while the events in Dizengoff square are worrisome and may be an indication that the religious fanatics are becoming more confident about their “cause” and the fact that political leaders are willing to support them, it may also (finally) have awoken the sleeping dogs.
The secular people have, it appears, long held back their anger, precisely because “we are all Jews” but that now appear to start to change. Secular people are realizing that, even if we are all Jews, that does not make one group of Jews better than the other, or allows on group of Jews to force their worldview on others. Even with such a sensitive event as a prayer service on Yom Kippur, apparently there are limits to what the secular population is willing to accept.
It brings to mind the most famous scene from a 1976 movie called “network” where people opened their windows, on instruction from a commentator on television and shouted at the top of their lungs:
“WE ARE MAD AS HELL AND WE ARE NOT GING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE”
I hope you found this article interesting and I welcome any comments you may have.
If you register on the site, you will be receiving a notice when new articles are posted.
