Why Was William Booth Detained?

The Times of Israel reported:

Washington Post reporter briefly detained in Jerusalem for ‘incitement’

William Booth taken into police custody outside Damascus Gate, released; colleague says he was ‘harassed’ by cops

Arutz 7 reported the same story in the following way:

Wash Post bureau chief arrested for paying Arabs to riot

William Booth, the Jerusalem bureau chief for the Washington Post, was arrested at the Damascus Gate today (Tuesday), on suspicion of incitement.

Police claim that Booth paid local Arabs money in order to cause provocations.

I've never heard of this journalist before but I found this by googling him:

The Washington Post suspended Mexico bureau chief William Booth on Thursday after he admitted to plagiarizing four sentences from an academic journal, an individual with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap.

In a story about the expansion of the Panama Canal, Booth took lines from the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, an ethical breach he called a "very serious lapse" but said in a public apology, released by the Post, that it was accidental.

"I am so sorry for what I did. It was a very serious lapse," Booth said in the statement. "This was not intentional. It was an inadvertent and sloppy mistake.

"I also want to apologize to my editors and colleagues, and especially to the readers of the Washington Post, for my failure to measure up," he said. "I hope to regain your trust. I will work hard to do that."

Hmmm. If what the Israeli police suspect him of is true, one may ask: Is paying people to riot some kind of way to gain my trust?

Here are two more versions of the story:

Ha'aretz:

Israeli police forces briefly detained Washington Post Jerusalem Bureau Chief William Booth and an employee of the Association for Civil Rights near Jerusalem's Damascus Gate on Tuesday.

According to another reporter at the scene, the two were detained on grounds of incitement and taken to a police station for questioning after about an hour delay.

Booth has since been released. Jerusalem Police have not yet issued a statement on the incident..

Jpost:

:Police on Tuesday briefly detained The Washington Post's Jerusalem bureau chief William Booth near Damascus Gate, according to a police spokesperson.

Williams was brought in for questioning after a civilian bystander complained to police about the reporter, accusing him of incitement.

According to the police spokesperson, a civilian reported to police that journalists at site were offering money to Palestinian youth to make disturbances.

It will be interesting to see how this story develops.

Update:

The Washington Post's bureau chief in Jerusalem says he was briefly detained by Israeli border police while reporting in east Jerusalem.

William Booth says he was interviewing Palestinians at Damascus Gate, an entrance to Jerusalem's Old City, when he and his translator were arrested Tuesday. The area has been the scene of violence in recent days.

Booth says after presenting government-issued press cards to an officer, he and his colleague were taken to a police station and held for half an hour before they were released. He says an officer told them they had been suspected of "incitement."

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld says the journalists were questioned in connection to an unspecified "incident" and quickly released after it was clear they were not involved.

Putting two and two together, William Booth's translator is an employee of the Association for Civil Rights! Do I smell agenda driven journalism?

Update: William Booth and the Washington Post were taken to task by CAMERA just last month.

MK Moshe Feiglin on the Temple Mount

Before you do this, please consult your local Orthodox rabbi:

Israeli Police Release More Bar Noar Murder Details

There was a gag order up till now. However, almost all of the details that the police released now, and even some that they did not, were posted on the internet in a forum for Israeli policemen. Anybody who knows how to use Google already knew this and more:

Four years after shooting at Tel Aviv youth center where 2 were killed and 11 wounded, police reveal that target of shooting was LGBT community leader who was believed by suspect to have sexually abused his 15-year-old relative.

A 19-year-old man put on a mask and ran into the Bar Noar LGBT center and began firing in all directions, killing two and wounding 11, in an attempt to avenge the sexual abuse of his 15-year-old relative by a grown man he expected to be at the center, police cleared for publication on Monday.

Police also cleared for publication that the whole investigation was cracked after a witness came forward, a man who was a member of the LGBT community and helped plot the shooting. The witness is not the same member of the community who was arrested last week for the abuse of the minor, and whose identity can still not be revealed.

Read the rest over a jpost.com.

I personally was surprised that it took the police so long to solve this crime (if indeed, it has really been solved). I am pretty sure that the area where the murders were committed is just full of surveillance cameras.

It has already been pointed out that following the savage murders in Bar Noar, members of the Israeli Left claimed that the murders were a result of incitement against homosexuals by the religious:

For four years, leftists blamed the religious sector, and especially hareidim, for the 2009 double murder in Tel Aviv's Barnoar club, which caters to homosexual youths. A gunman opened fire on youths at the club, killing a young man and a young woman, and leaving others crippled.

Now, police have arrested four people in connection with the attack. According to leaks, the police have solid evidence that the attack was carried out by a group of young men with criminal backgrounds in revenge for the alleged rape of their relative, a male youth, by ....

Leftists are in no hurry to apologize for laying the blame at then-Interior Minister Eli Yishai's doorstep, and for assuming that the perpetrators were religious people who hate homosexuals.

Meretz head Zehava Galon said that she was “shocked” by allegations that the attack was not a a hate crime. She insisted that the murderers shot club-goers because of their sexual tendencies. She ignored the false accusations over the last four years.

"Taking a weapon in your hand and shooting up a place is a hate crime,” she said. “The scene of the crime was an institute of the (gay) community.”

MK Nitzan Horwitz also refused to retract the repeated accusations he has made over the years against hareidim regarding the murder, preferring to gloss over his off-the-mark attacks on specific populaiton groups, adding “If this is not a hate crime,” he said, “I do not know what a hate crime is. I do not know what passed through the murderer's mind, but the final result is a very grave hate crime against the gay community.”

Mr. Horwitz, it is so much easier to speak the truth than to twist the meaning of words in such a crooked fashion! The murderer did not hate homosexuals. He hated the man who sexually abused his relative!

Torat HaMelech: Case Closed!

Sanity prevails:

The Attorney General's office on Monday announced that it would not pursue charges against Rabbis Yitzchak Shapira and Yosef Yirmiyahu Elitzur, who authored the book that was considered controversial by some over claims that it incites against Arabs. The cases against Rabbis Yitzchak Ginsburg and Dov Lior, who gave a haskama - a stamp of approval- to the book will be dropped as well.

Interesting to note are the reasons for closing the investigation:

Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein said that the investigation was being closed because there is not enough evidence that the book was published with the intention to incite racism. Weinstein wrote that the Torat Hamelech is written in a general manner and does not call for violence. 

Readers of this blog already knew that.  Such a shame that the police harassed leading rabbis for no reason at all.  

Sexual Harassment?

Things have gotten way out of hand. They really have!:

An indictment was filed Thursday against Jerusalem resident Shlomo Fuchs, 44, an ultra-Orthodox man who hurled sexist slurs at a female soldier on a public bus in the capital.

Police officials said Fuchs' behavior was unruly, and that he sexually harassed the soldier, Doron Matalon, by humiliating her and making sexual remarks.

What did he do? Apparently he called her a "prutza", which means a slut or a harlot. Not a very nice thing to do, but does this amount to sexual harassment?

The court also stated that sexual harassment does not only apply when the harasser demands something of sexual nature from the harassed, but also when the harassed is humiliated based on remarks relating to his or her sex. The judge ruled such was the case in this incident, since "there is no dispute that Fuchs spoke bluntly and shouted harsh and humiliating words at the soldier aboard the bus, calling her a 'slut' three times."

"I am not a sexual offender," Fuchs told his attorney afterwards. "If anything – she harassed me. I wanted to move away and she kept moving closer."

Fuchs' attorney claimed this was not a criminal offense. "We live in a free country. We're allowed to curse, it's part of the freedom of expression," he explained.

If the court does decide this is a sexual harassment case, said the attorney, then any man who calls a woman a "bitch" or other curse words would be considered a sexual offender.

I have to agree with Fuchs' attorney. It seems to me that this is all a product of the media-fed frenzy of incitement against the ultra-Orthodox: the police and the court are abusing their power to legally harass Fuchs.

Once again we can learn a lesson from this. First of all, I do not think that the Rambam or the Chafetz Chaim would approve of calling this soldier a prutza, even if she did not follow the etiquette of the mehadrin line. We really should be careful about what we say. Even our mundane speech should be something that is worth studying.

Secondly, what I quoted recently from chapter 20 of "The Path of the Just".

Let's hope that things will calm down soon.

The Murder of Asher and Yonatan Palmer

I heard about this after the Sabbath was over. An incredible tragedy. I happen to know Asher personally. He was a truly fine young man. According to David Wilder, it seems that the Arabs have added a new method of murder to their terrorist arsenal:

However, lately, our enemies have begun using a new method in their continued attempts to kill Jews. Instead of standing on the side of the road and throwing a rock, they are heaving them from moving cars, coming at you from the opposite direction. They toss a rock out their window, in front of your car, just prior to passing you.

The impact is tremendous. The rock is flying at the speed at which the car was driving. When it impacts with the car moving in the other direction, the force is phenomenal.

I’ve been told of numerous such incidents in recent weeks, in the exact area where the ‘accident’ killing Asher and Yonatan Palmer occurred.

On Friday afternoon, this is exactly what happened. That’s why no one was seen fleeing on foot, because the rock was thrown from a moving vehicle. It hit the windshield, breaking it, hitting Asher in the face, causing him to lose control of the car. The rock was found in the wrecked car. A hole, the type of which caused by a thrown rock, was also identified in the windshield. Yet the police and army climbed up a very high tree, claiming that the ‘accident’ was Asher’s fault. They claimed that the rock entered the car as it flipped over in a rock-bed on the side of the road. All this in an effort to cover up the murder of two Jews by Arabs. According to my sources, the police have already concluded that the ‘accident’ was not an accident, that it was cold-blooded murder; the killing two Jews.

There are other details which have not yet been released, and I’m hesitant to fully publicize them for the moment. Some of Asher’s possessions seemed to be missing and have not yet been found at the scene of the crash. There are also signs of possible additional violence at the site. These details prove, without any doubt, that the accident was Arab terror.

The police, not yet weary of the additional pain they’ve already caused the Palmer family are continuing to torture them; they went to court to obtain an order allowing them to perform an autopsy on the two bodies. Jewish law, excluding unique circumstances, forbids autopsies. However all evidence, including examinations of the bodies, the car, and the scene of the attack are proof enough. Why continue to cause unnecessary suffering?!

Indeed, many have pointed out that the police and army acted irresponsibly.

May Asher's and Yonatan's family be comforted in the rebuilding of Zion.

תכלה שנה וקללותיה

Arabs Dressed as Hareidim Nabbed in Jerusalem Neighborhood

This happened not to far away from my home:

Residents of the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood of Jerusalem were reeling Friday night after an attempt by Arabs to break into Jewish homes in the neighborhood – dressed as Hareidi Jews.

The two “Hareidim” were seen walking around the neighborhood Friday night by residents, and at about 9:30 PM, a resident named Eliran saw the pair attempting to break into an apartment near the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in the neighborhood. He called police, who came within minutes. The Arabs began to run, and Eliran joined police in chasing them. He nabbed one of the Arabs himself, while police chased down and tackled the second one.

The two were quickly questioned, and they told police that a third member of their gang was awaiting them at the nearby Har Hamenuchot cemetery. Police converged on the site, and he, too was arrested. Residents praised police, and especially Eliran, for his quick thinking and quick action.

Torat HaMelech - Part 4

Methinks the Israeli Police has got its priorities all wrong. Jews are barely escaping being lynched in Jerusalem, and the police are dedicating valuable manpower to confiscate copies of Torat HaMelech from the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva:



Hat tip: Jameel

Torat HaMelech

Take it from Cosmic X and his half century of life experience: If you see people reacting to a particular book in a totally irrational way, chances are that the book contains truth that is painful to them. Lacking the option of debating the contents of the book and proving the author wrong, the only weapons left for such creatures are slander, intentional distortions, ad hominem arguments and the like. In certain countries police harassment and judicial terrorism are also part of their arsenal.

I first saw the book "Torat HaMelech" when I went to the rally to support the soldiers that waved the banner proclaiming that they refuse to evacuate settlements.

I did not buy the book back then. I came to the rally to support the soldiers and not to buy books. What's more, the subject of the book was not on the top of Torah topics that I felt that I had to know.



However, the media circus surrounding the book including the utterances of certain media savvy rabbis, plus the police summoning the rabbis that gave approbations for the book for questioning, all these piqued my interest. The utter irrationality of it all told me that there must be some painful truth in "Torat HaMelech" that certain people want to suppress. I decided to buy a copy.

I still have a long way to go before finishing the book. So far it has proved informative and interesting. The multitude of sources cited by the authors is a sign of the long hours of research that went into preparing the book. Perhaps I will write a complete review when I am finished.

The So Called "Child Starving" Mother Case

This should be interesting:

Deputy Health Minister Ya'acov Litzman instructed the Health Ministry ombudsman for dealing with complaints about medical professionals, Prof. Chaim Hershko, to conduct a broad investigation into the affair of the haredi mother suspected of starving her child, Israel Radio reported on Wednesday. The probe is to examine alleged shortcomings in the medical system's conduct in the case, including of medical officials and those around the mother's psychiatric assessments.

Perhaps we'll get to know the truth. Personally, I do not buy the Hospital/Police/Israeli MSM version.

BTW, check out this blog (in Hebrew) that has lots of info on the case.

Israeli Police Surrender To Arab Threats of Violence

From (IsraelNN.com)

Ichud Leumi MK Aryeh Eldad is reportedly en route to Umm El-Fahm in order to replace Baruch Marzel as the party's election booth monitor there.

In response to the police decision to block Marzel from entering the city and carrying out his duty, MK Eldad said: "The Israel Police, apparently at [Attorney General Menachem] Mazuz's instructions, surrendered this morning to the Arab terror of Israel's enemies from within. The State of Israel has announced openly that it surrenders to violence, blackmail and treachery from the Arab sector."

The Commander of the Police's Amakim Region, Brig-Gen.Zohar Dvir, met Land of Israel activist Baruch Marzel at Barka'I Junction on Highway 65 and handed him an official letter announcing he could not enter Umm El Fahm. Police said the decision was "based upon intelligence reports of a serious danger to the public safety and in order to make it possible to hold elections properly and without disorder."

This is the same police that bends over backwards (no pun intended) to let homosexuals parade in Jerusalem.

Bad Laws Promote Terrorism

I had an interesting conversation the other day with a friend of mine, a policeman in the Israeli Police. I was interested in certain details regarding the incident where a couple of weeks ago where an Arab bulldozer operator went on a rampage, using his bulldozer to kill three Jews and tens of others here in Jerusalem.

The official version of the story is as follows. A policewoman shot and wounded the terrorist, causing him to pass out and stop the rampage. Then another police officer climbed on the bulldozer and checked his pulse to see if the driver was indeed dead. At this point, according to the police, someone threw a rock at the terrorist, and this caused him to regain consciousness. (Please stop laughing. Stranger things have happened here!) He continued the rampage until Private M., an off duty soldier, took a gun from a security guard and shot the Arab. Afterwards a member of the SWAT team fired two more bullets into the terrorist.

According to rumors the policeman that took the terrorist's pulse instead of making sure that he would no longer murder was himself an Arab. My friend the policeman said that he didn't know the policeman but that he had also heard the rumor. As our conversation progressed I realized that this policeman knew less about the incident than I did. However, he told me some interesting facts that help explain why the police behaved the way they did.

He told me that police are not allowed to fire their weapons unless it is to stop an imminent danger. For example, if a policeman sees someone holding a Molotov cocktail he is forbidden to fire. If the person cocks his arm in order to throw the cocktail, the policeman can fire at him. Once the cocktail leaves the person's hand, the policeman is not allowed to fire, since this will not prevent anything; the Molotov cocktail is already airborne!

My policeman friend justified the action of his pulse-taking colleague, saying that he acted according to the law. He also claimed that it was against Jewish morality to kill the terrorist when he was lying there unconscious. I quickly corrected him and told him that according to Judaism killing this terrorist was a big Mitzvah. He replied saying that we don't live in Biblical times and that Israel is a democracy.

I then asked him another question: Why did the SWAT team guy fire at the gravely wounded terrorist? This was apparently contrary to the law which he had so eloquently and passionately explained to me! My friend did not have an answer.

I learned from this conversation that all a terrorist has to do after going on a killing spree is to play dead or raise his hands in surrender. If he does so no one is allowed to kill him and he will enter one of Israel's jails, complete with VCRs, DVDs and cellular telephones. He can sit and learn for his college degree in prison until the next "prisoner swap".

A victim of Arab terror and a victim of Israeli law:

Two Bouquets of Roses For Israel's Finest

After yesterday's post, When Keystone Cops Get Sinister, which dealt with the darker side of th Israeli Police, today's post is a salute to the men in blue. The first bouquet:

Residents of Tel Aviv, Holon, Bat Yam and Rishon Lezion held their breath Tuesday night as police alerted the public to a suicide bombing plot that was already in motion in the region. After a dragnet that lasted approximately two hours, several Palestinian Authority terrorists were apprehended by police. They confessed to the planned attack and led officers to a dumpster in Rishon Lezion where they had stashed their explosives earlier in the day.

Bouquet number two:

The mysterious murder of 18-year-old Maayan Ben Horin in northern Israel some 40 days ago has been solved.

An indictment was filed with the Haifa District court Wednesday morning against a 17-year old Bedouin who was arrested for the crime on February 2.

The boy, living in a tent in the area where the body was found, had attempted to rape Maayan, a police investigation revealed, but after she fought him off, he murdered her with repeated brutal blows to the head.

Head of the Police's northern district central unit Menachem Hever said, "A DNA test was conducted and a perfect match between the suspect and material found on the murdered was found."

Believe me, I prefer today's positive post over the negative one I put up yesterday.

When Keystone Cops Get Sinister

Read Joe Settler's report on the deceit of the Israeli Police Dept. Be sure to visit the links in his post.

Arutz 7 has more:

Nadia Matar, co-chair and founder of the nationalist grassroots organization Women in Green, recalls a demonstration she organized 13 years ago protesting the Oslo Accords - and in which she was brutally arrested by then-Deputy Jerusalem District Commander Mickey Levy. Levy accused her of attacking him, but when a film of the event was later produced showing the opposite, the charges against her were abruptly withdrawn.

Matar now asks that State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss block the expected appointment of Levy as Israel's new Deputy Police Commander. In a letter to Lindenstrauss, Matar asks that he investigate Levy's past, noting that Levy "faced a disciplinary trial in the Bureau for Investigations Against Policemen for perjury - but was strangely acquitted [despite the film]."

Arutz 7 has the film of Levy "arresting" Matar, even though she was not doing anything illegal.

So Mickey Levy falsely charged Nadia Matar of assault and lied under oath. He certainly should not be promoted.