Calls to seal off ultra-Orthodox areas add to Israel's virus tensions

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Calls to seal off ultra-Orthodox areas add to Israel's virus tensions

Rules enforcement highlights problem of getting message across to minority community

Oliver Holmes and Quique Kierszenbaum in Jerusalem
Mon 6 Apr 2020 05.30 BST

It wasn’t a typical police operation. Two Israeli officers were to go undercover, although not posing as drug dealers or arms traffickers. For this particular assignment, they were to disguise themselves as ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Their mission on Friday was to bust an illegal gathering in a synagogue. People were praying together, a practice that is now against the law in the era of the coronavirus. Once the officers got inside to confirm the crowd, more units barged in and dispersed people.

Forces left the area, according to police, but: “An hour later, it was reported that people had returned again.” At that point, officers handed out fines amounting to nearly £4,000.

The operation in the county’s north was one small part of a sometimes fruitless nationwide effort to impose Covid-19 restrictions on a deeply religious and often cut-off community that has been slow, or even opposed, to change their way of life.

Officials fear the result has been an explosion of cases in neighbourhoods populated with the minority, which makes up more than 12% of Israel’s nine million citizens.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/calls-to-seal-off-ultra-orthodox-areas-adds-tension-to-israels-virus-response

[edhopper]

1. The Orthodox

have a negative effect on Israel in so many ways.

[nycbos]

2. I identify as a secular jew.

But I know the most imporant thing that you can do in Judaism is saving life or Pikuach Nefesh. Pikuach Nefesh overrides all other rules. So the ultra-orthodox putting others at risk are violating the most important rule of Judaism.


There are similar problems amongst the ultra-orthodox in Brooklyn.

[3Hotdogs]

3. They have a large population in Lakewood, N.J.

Newark Star-Ledger reports several large group violations per week, by members of this sect.

[Voltaire2]

4. Stupidity seems to be a common quality

every religion’s strict adherents exhibit, in fact they flaunt, their ignorance idiocy and stupidity as if it were a proof of piety.

[Major Nikon]

5. Israel Health Minister Who Called COVID-19 'Divine Punishment' Tests Positive For Virus

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2020/04/israel-health-minister-who-called-covid-19-divine-punishment-tests-positive-for-virus/