YWN-ISRAEL earlier in the week reported 17 Tammuz was a particularly difficult day for the nation’s firefighters, who fought major blazes in a number of areas, fires that claimed hundreds of thousands of trees. The largest fire was in the Beit Shemesh district, beginning near Moshav Tirosh. The blaze forced the evacuation of hundreds of area moshav residents, leaving a path of destruction. Jewish National Fund officials lamented the fact that it will take a half a century for the destroyed forest to replenish itself.
Beit Shemesh District Fire Chief Eli Peretz told the press that he suspects chareidim may be behind the devastating blaze, hinting that the recent battles undertaken by the chareidi community have led to violence, alluding to a chareidi arsonist in the case of the area forest fire on 17 Tammuz.
Beit Shemesh Mayor R’ Moshe Abutbul discarded the allegations as slanderous, adding that he personally spoke with fire marshals who do not suspect arson at all, questioning the motives of the fire chief’s inflammatory statements, statements that are being used to enable the secular media to promote its anti-chareidi agenda, speaking of a possible chareidi arsonist.
Abutbul explains it simply does not make sense that a chareidi individual would travel 15 minutes into the forest on a fast day to start a fire, criticizing the fire official for his racist and factually unfounded statement that only serve to fuel the fire of hate against the chareidi tzibur.
(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)
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4 Responses
“Blame the Chareidim for Everything”
Not a bad headline, but in one sense, one can argue that the survival of the Jewish people, and the kehillah in Eretz Yisrael, and perhaps the entire world, is dependent on the zechus of the Bnei Torah (you don’t think the world’s depends on the zechus of the people in Tel Aviv, or Greenwich Village, etc.). In the long run, the hilonim are irrelvant.
akuperma said:
“In the long run, the hilonim are irrelvant.”
In the long run every single Jewish Neshama is important, and no one is irrelevant. No matter how much Torah a person does or does not learn, they are most certainly NOT IRRELEVANT. In the long run, Am Yisrael wants, and desperately needs the Geula. It does not matter how a person might dress, behave, or talk, HaKadosh Baruch Hu in his infinate wisedome created each and every person, so therefore nobody is irrelevant.
It’s quite well known that Firefighters themselves are sometimes responsible for starting forest fires (Google “firefighter arrested for arson”). I would not be shocked if it turns out that the Fire Chief himself started that fire.
Or in the zchus of the animals.