Sunday, November 22, 2009

The result of the hafganot

A Guest Post by Rafi G

The hafganah of the Eida and its followers against Intel (We should name the weekly Eida Hafgana something like "the what they will protest against next week hafgana") stepped up a notch this week, though the details of that do not interest me all that much.

At hafganot, police provoke, protesters provoke, things get hot, people get hit, people get hurt, people get arrested. The Eida is now complaining that the Gaavad got hit in a scuffle and how dare they, but that is part of the risk of taking part in a [semi-] violent hafgana, so no sympathy from me (though the police could have used more tact and avoided the Gaavad).

What does interest me is a new phenomenon that is being reported by the Haredim website, That is, somebody spray painted the sheim hamefurash on the street leading up to the location of the hafgana. Some rabbonim who saw it said protesters should avoid walkign there, and it is a problem to erase it as well, so they covered it up with carton so people would not inadvertently step on it. The Gaavad himself said it is not a big deal, as a heretic who writes a Torah imbues it with no holiness, and this would be the same.

My point is that this is where the hafganot have taken us. They have done nothing but create fresh hostility and hatred against religion, and they have accomplished nothing in the form of increasing any level of shmiras shabbos by anybody, not publicly nor privately. They are now getting the secular to not just oppose the haredim, but to actually defile the name of God publicly, as a response.


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