Liberman says ultra-Orthodox rioters who attacked 2 servicewomen are ‘terrorists’

The ultra-Orthodox rioters who attacked two female IDF servicewomen in Bnei Brak yesterday were “terrorists,” Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman declares.

Speaking with reporters ahead of his party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset, Liberman rejects claims by coalition lawmakers and Haredi politicians that the rioters only represented a “handful of extremists” rather than mainstream ultra-Orthodox opinion, citing statements against the IDF and conscription by leading rabbis.

Former Sephardic chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef told followers to tear up and flush enlistment orders and that when the military police arrive, “you should stand up to them,” Liberman recalls. “He is not marginal, he is the mainstream.”

“When Yitzhak Goldknopf, the chairman of the United Torah Judaism party, talks about the draft in terms of the yellow star, this is not marginal. When Rabbi Hirsch says it is a mitzvah to be a deserter, this is not marginal. He is the leader of the Lithuanian public,” he adds.

Sunday’s violence was also fueled by “the government’s revolving door policy,” Liberman continues, noting that all of the suspects arrested during the riot have already been released.

He calls to station battalions of border police in Bnei Brak in order to establish order.

Liberman’s comments come shortly after Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs tells a conference organized by the right-wing Besheva Group that, despite the violence, he does “not think there is a governance problem.”

“There have always been extremist factions, but the mainstream of the Haredi public is law-abiding and upholds its way of life,” he says.