TEL AVIV (KI) – Israel’s president Isaac Herzog sounded the alarm Tuesday over events this week in Tel Aviv in which secular and religious Israelis scuffled during public Yom Kippur prayer services, warning that the societal chasm poses a “true danger” to the occupying regime.
A religious group, defying a municipality order backed up by the supreme court, had set up an improvised gender divider for Yom Kippur prayers in a central Tel Aviv square, prompting angry protests from liberal residents that ended up thwarting the entire prayer service.Similar events, and similar protests, took place in public spaces across the occupied territories. .
Herzog spoke Tuesday alongside prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, war minister Yoav Gallant and army chief of staff Herzi Halevi at a ceremony at Al-Quds’ Mount Herzl military cemetery marking 50 years since the Yom Kippur War, which began with a surprise attack by Egypt and Syria that Israel’s intelligence and leadership infamously failed to anticipate.
“We must learn the lessons and truly understand that the internal threat within Israel is the most acute and dangerous threat of all,” he said.
He referred to this year’s events in Tel Aviv as “a shocking and painful example of how the internal struggle within us is escalating and becoming extreme.”
“I know that I speak for the absolute majority of Israeli citizens when I express deep sorrow and shock at the sight of our own people fighting one another,” he said.
“How did we get to this terrible situation, in which 50 years after that bitter war, sisters and brothers stand on opposite sides of the divide? Those who pour fuel onto this fire are a real threat to Israeli unity. It has to stop here and now. The division, the polarization, the never-ending disputes — they are a true danger to Israeli society and to the security of Israel,” Herzog warned.
“The enemies of Israel are commenting about this repeatedly and referring to the internal crisis within us as the beginning of the crumbling of Israel,” he warned.
“These are not just empty words... So that, heaven forbid, historians and leaders [won’t] look at these days 50 years from now, and see the terrible price this rupture exacted from us, and ask: ‘How did they not understand the magnitude of the danger and the depth of the abyss? After all, it was right in front of their eyes.’”
The comments came after Netanyahu on Monday evening accused the secular activists of “rioting against Jews”.
At Sunday’s event opening the Yom Kippur
services, activists from the Rosh Yehudi religious group strung up flags as a makeshift barrier, or mechitzah, between the male and female worshipers in Dizengoff Square. Protesters then pulled down the flags and removed the chairs that organizers had set up, effectively preventing the service.
The incident sparked angry exchanges of words between activists on both sides and one secular demonstrator was detained by police for some three hours before being released.
Hundreds of demonstrators could be seen standing next to the area of the prayer service and chanting “shame, shame,” at the participants. Most of the worshipers left shortly afterward.
Similar scenes played out again in Dizengoff Square and in a number of Tel Aviv neighborhoods and elsewhere as the fast day ended Monday evening, when groups attempted to erect gender dividers at public events and activists intervened.
The conflict around the prayer service comes amid a growing debate over the role of religion in public spaces that has become exacerbated as part of the protests against the regime’s judicial overhaul.
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