A Reform Synagogue in Raanana has been attacked for the third time in a year
As the report says:
“This is the third time in the past year that the synagogue is vandalized,” Rabbi Gilad Kariv, head of the Reform Movement in Israel, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. “In the past we refrained from drawing media attention to such attacks, which we thought were isolated incidents committed by wild adolescents. There were also no security cameras on the site, but that will probably change now,” he said.
“This event is an escalation, evident in the fact that whoever did it also wrote what they did on the synagogue's wall too,” Kariv continued. “It is a severe attack, which also shows there are elements concerned over the community's success,” he said, noting that some 180 Bar-Mitzvah ceremonies are celebrated in the synagogue every year.
Despite the glass shards falling into the two kindergartens within the complex, the pre-schools functioned as usual on Thursday, head of the Ra'anan congregation Rabbi Tamar Kolberg told the Post, noting that “such incidents happen to us all the time, especially before the holidays.”
“But these acts won't stop the [Reform] movement or our community; they just strengthen our belief that Israeli society has a long way to go before it reaches true pluralism,” she said.
Now had this kind of thuggery happened in the UK, or France or the US, we'd all be up in arms with the usual suspects blaming the other usual suspects. We'd be quite justified in protesting against the rise in anti-Semitism and how terrible it is becoming to be a Jew in the diaspora.
But in Israel? Our national homeland? Shards of glass in a kindergarten?
I hope there will be a solid condemnation of this a disgusting act of religious fundamentalism and hatred from those who are quick to attack anti-Semitism here. I hope, but I don't expect.
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