Labor Party leader MK Shelly Yacimovich has come out publicly and unequivocally against the media, accusing the press of launching a racist campaign inciting against the chareidi tzibur at large. 

She told Reshet Bet Radio that in one case, a decision was made to air the comments of a protester who said “The chareidim are multiplying like roaches and they must be stopped”, questioning the judgment of one who decides to air such disparaging remarks.

She questioned how a generation after the Holocaust such remarks can be aired in the Jewish state by a member of the Jewish community. She added that her voice has been quite audible when it comes to discrimination against women, but added that the press has an obligation to screen material towards fulfilling a journalistic responsibility while censoring out vulgarity and other statements that simply shouldn’t be aired.

Yacimovich, who was a senior member of the mainstream media prior to entering Knesset, pointed out that in the past, when the secular communities battled the chareidim usually have been on the defensive but in this case, most interestingly, the chareidim “have decided to teach us a lesson”.

She questioned the tone used as well as the terminology, a vicious lexicon that only seems to be used when addressing the struggle against chareidim, listing some of the challenges undertaken by the liberals who are seeking to champion this battle. Her list includes those who cannot hear kol isha, stating emphatically “they simply shouldn’t serve as officers in the IDF”. There are also those who refuse to include core subjects in the schools, met by the response “We are sick and tired of raising these primitive ignorant people in our country – the parasites”.

Yacimovich questions the willingness of the liberals to break all the rules in dealing with chareidim, those calling to shut schools, to ban dati leumi officer cadets from serving as combat officers, and those calling for cutting electricity and water from chareidi communities, seemingly not bothered with the concept of collective punishment here.

The Labor party leader stated that in her years of covering stories relating to the chareidi community, she doesn’t recall seeing anger at today’s level, aware the chareidi community has reached its limit, admitting that despite her best efforts, she simply doesn’t understand the “holy chilonim (secularists)” today and their obsession with the lifestyle of others.

“I truly want chareidi children to learn core subjects, and towards achieving this goal I will do my utmost to persuade them, but this cannot be compelled upon an entire community. For in truth, somewhere in my brain I am simply uncertain if this will contribute to a better life for them without a full realization of what that life entails. Perhaps for him, the chareidi child, mathematics and English are less pressing than another class in Talmud. I don’t know” she adds.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)