Haredi party leaders condemn mobbing of female soldiers

Aryeh Deri, the chairman of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, condemns today’s mob attack against two female soldiers in Bnei Brak as “entirely contrary to the way of the Torah.” He also argues that such behavior harms the Haredi community and its efforts to exempt yeshiva students from military conscription.

“The Shas movement strongly condemns the acts of violence, vandalism, and rioting by a handful of extremists in Bnei Brak. These actions are entirely contrary to the way of the Torah; they harm the entire Haredi public, cause a desecration of God’s name and and inflict heavy damage on the righteous struggle for the Torah world,” he says, using an expression referring to the network of full-time yeshivas that form the backbone of ultra-Orthodox society.

“Get out of our camp!” he declares, echoing former Sephardic chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, one of Shas’s spiritual leaders, who issued a statement minutes earlier saying that those involved in the incident “must be denounced and cast out from the community.”

United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf also weighs in. “I was shocked by the footage” of the incident, says Goldknopf. “I strongly condemn the violence against security forces in Bnei Brak. This is contrary to the Torah.”