Jerusalem, June 21, 2017

In a religious neighborhood in Jerusalem, adjacent to the world-famous Mir Yeshiva, Israeli Army provocateurs attempted to instigate trouble.

At around 9.30 PM a uniformed Israeli soldier, dressed in religious garb, entered the Bais Yisroel Synagogue complex – which serves the local religious community as well as the Yeshiva students – ostensibly to participate in the prayer services.

The residents and congregation-members, who understood quite well that the soldiers did not just “happen by” – rather that they came intentionally to stir up trouble (and many were doubtful, especially in observing the conduct of the soldiers, that they were religious at all; rather that they were masquerading as religious Jews to provoke them) – were vociferous in their disapproval.

A spontaneous protest erupted (completely non-violent, to the chagrin of the provocateurs and those who sent them, no doubt) and was only disbanded with the arrival of the local police.

There have been, as previously reported, a number of similar incidents in recent weeks; incidents of Israeli police provocateurs masquerading as “religious” soldiers and entering the ultra-Orthodox areas in order to instigate a reaction from the residents, with a heavy undercover plainclothes force ready to violently quash any protest.

It will be recalled that, in a recent interview on the official military news channel, one of the army commanders declared that he intentionally frequents the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods wearing a skullcap and religious-fringes (neither of which he usually wears) in order to indoctrinate the religious Jews and get them accustomed to the idea of a “religious” Zionist soldier and normalize Israeli army service in their community.

The residents of these neighborhoods consider acts like these as grave provocations and missionary activity. They abide by, indeed conduct their entire lives according to, the Torah – which expressly and unequivocally forbids Jews to have an army and wage war on any other nation; they want to live peacefully with all of their neighbors, as they did before the advent of Zionism.