Four chareidi residents of Yerushalayim are in jail after being arrested by customs police on suspicion of smuggling thousands of smart phones into the country, Shtieble.net reports.
The four are suspected of illegally importing a number of smart phones, including the iPhone4, Galaxy S3, iPods and others, with an estimated value of 2 million NIS.
The primary suspect was followed as he left Ben-Gurion International Airport in the direction of Tel Aviv. He met with the other suspects in the case. At the time of their arrest police found thousands of smart phones in the vehicle. They were remanded by Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court Justice Oded Shacham, who agreed to a police request to order them held in jail for an additional five days as the investigation continues.
The remand is to prevent them from interfering with the investigation, which police fear would be the case if they were released on bail.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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11 Responses
Hey YWN – do you realise that by calling them “Chareidi phone smugglers” as opposed to just “phone smugglers” you are sluring the entire Chareidi community..??
What’s going on with us? Doesn’t anyone have any yiras shamayim anymore? Sheesh.
I thought they wanted Hareidim to stop learning full time and participate in the economy (oh, but that doesn’t include competing with the well connect oligarchs who run Israel’s economy).
Wasn’t Smartphones outlawed in the chareidi community?
How can they be selling something that might cause others to stumble?
Sometimes I think that maybe the lack of (secular) education amongst (Israeli) chareidim is what causes them to look for a way to make a living through not-so-legal means, such as this sort of smuggling.
If they would simply have learned a respectable profession, they wouldn’t have had to get into such things to ‘earn’ money.
# 5
Sure… Bernie Madoff had a respectable proffesion , & he didnt get into such things to earn money… right? or did he ??
I BH have a lack of secular education, and i still BH managed to found and build a BH very successful business..
I happan to know ofa large number of college educated people who are out of a job today..
so please stop this nonsense that the lack of secular education has anything to do with succes in business
P.S. the owners of B&H Photo who employ more then 2,000 people and have build a world famous business also lack a secular education…
What does secular education have to do with this? Does knowledge of Shakespeare or French history enable you to sell iPhone4, Galaxy S3, iPods, etc.? Does being able to do quadratic equations enable you better avoid taxations or import monopolies?
“the owners of B&H Photo who employ more then 2,000 people and have build a world famous business also lack a secular education…”
@mogold, I work at B&H and they don’t employ anywhere near 2000 people…
Also, the mere fact that some folks are successful without a secular education does not in any way negate the value of a secular education. B&H is full of people who have no education and are therefore stuck in very low-paying jobs with no other options remotely available to them.
As a general rule, education increases earning power tremendously. Please don’t bring ‘proof’ otherwise by pointing to the few luck people who were successful.
“the owners of B&H Photo who employ more then 2,000 people and have build a world famous business also lack a secular education…”
@mogold, I work at B&H and they don’t employ anywhere near 2000 people…
Also, the mere fact that some folks are successful without a secular education does not in any way negate the value of a secular education. B&H is full of people who have no education and are therefore stuck in very low-paying jobs with no other options remotely available to them.
As a general rule, education increases earning power tremendously. Please don’t bring ‘proof’ otherwise by pointing to the few lucky people who were successful.
Chassidishe Gatesheader, you remind us of bleeding-heart liberals finding excuses for black drug-dealers and murderers: “The poor guy, he got no education, his father was mean to him. Therefore, your honor, as you see, it’s not his fault. Let him back on the street” (to continue dealing in drugs and kill a few more before he’s caught again).
yes, #7- I do think a secular education can help with some of these things. If you want to learn how to deal with monopolies then you need a legal education to fight these things in court. You need a good business education to learn how to sell things, import them, set up and run a company. Yes, there are some who are successful without a secular education but many who aren’t. And, maybe the successful ones could be even more successful with the right education. Hashem set up the rules of the world – as our punishment for our part in the sin of eating from the eitz hada’as, men have to toil in work in order to earn a living. We have to do it through natural means along with heavy doses of learning and tefila to be successful. Statistics show that more educated people earn more money so those are the rules Hashem set up in nature. My rebbe teaches us that we must now take those rules and do what we’re supposed to in order to be successful.