Wednesday, July 5, 2017, Jerusalem

At around lunchtime on Wednesday – a favored time of the day for police provocations and arrests in Mea She’arim, it seems – a group of undercover policemen disguised as “ultra-Orthodox” soldiers again entered the anti-Zionist enclave of Mea She’arim in an attempt to provoke disturbance and protest from the area’s residents.

With their car stuck in traffic, the three “soldiers” – who were all dressed to look like ultra-Orthodox Jews, with all the trappings – got out of the vehicle, ostensibly to fix it. Neighborhood residents quickly gathered around, and it wasn’t long before the by-now-familiar taunt of “Chardakim” was heard.

“Chardakim,” a combination of the Hebrew word “charedi” – meaning ultra-Orthodox – and “chaidak” – meaning a bug or an insect – is the derogatory epithet used to describe someone from the ultra-Orthodox camp who has joined the Israeli armed forces and thus, by definition, has left the fold – even if he retains the trappings of Orthodoxy. Torah law unequivocally forbids Jews from raising an army, indeed even from establishing a state of their own, before the arrival of the messiah.

During Wednesday’s totally non-violent (on the part of the residents) action, two ultra-Orthodox bystanders were arrested; by the numerous plainclothesmen who had previously amassed at the scene – in anticipation for any “disturbance.” Scores of schoolchildren, out for lunch and recess, were also terrorized.

Wednesday’s action was the latest in an ongoing string of provocations, which the police call "a wide array of overt and covert actions carried out by the police against the phenomenon of incitement against uniformed men."

The operations subsided somewhat last month, after pictures were publicized which clearly showed the police antagonism and brutality against innocent civilians; now it turns out that the operations have begun again