Here’s a blog post from Beit Shemesh, Israel:
Warning: The Badatz is Coming, and Why We Should Be Worried
As residents of R/BS, we are all fed up with the rising tide of violence and intimidation that has charaterized this town for the past 10 years.
Just this morning, new signs were put up, threatening another round of violence. This time, the excuse is that the iriya is enforcing the local by-laws, that require people to pay for hanging up signs on buildings: including tznius signs. Rather than pay the fee, they have decided to cause mayhem.
Not everyone is aware of the source of the extremism — the arrival of people loyal to Edah Hacharedis. These young individuals, composed of Yerushalmi families of various affiliations, are even more radical than their parents.
What is important to emphasize is that this is not a small group of disaffected youth; the violence goes all the way up to the top, to the rabbis that incite and/or support the violence — Rabbis Shia Rosenberger, Naftali Rottenberg, and Nosson Kopshitz.
This past summer, we witnessed an outbreak of violence, unprecedented in the history of Bet Shemesh. Not only were there the usually garbage burnings and graffiti, the Yerushalmim, supported by their Rabbis, burnt a forest, poured oil on a major thoroughfare, threw rocks at a bus, scattering glass shards on women and babies, and disrupted the lives of the residents of Bet Shemesh for nearly a month.
All the while, these criminals received support from their rabbis. When the three worst criminals were arrested (one of them, the son-in-law of the Burka lady), the rabbis of the Edah Hacharedis called a protest, attacking the "Zionist entity" for "abusing innocent charedim."
