Chareidi modesty squads intimidate merchants

Haaretz reports

Ultra-Orthodox modesty patrols in Netivot are threatening local business with boycotts unless they conform to strict religious standards. The group's actions are stoking religious tensions in the normally calm southern town and police opened a criminal investigation into the matter Tuesday following a Haaretz Hebrew edition report.

The gang members - whom ultra-Orthodox residents of the city say are a minority group not supported by the rabbis and community - enter local businesses, assess the situation and complain about the employees' dress. They approach the store manager and warn him that if the saleswomen do not switch to completely modest clothes, they will see to a boycott of the store.

Some of the local store owners capitulate to the demands and in return receive a faux kashrut certification in the form of a sticker that states: "The king's daughter is glorious within. Daughter of Israel, you are the daughter of a king - dress accordingly," which is affixed to dozens of store windows around town.
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"The guy came into my store and saw one of my female workers wearing a small shirt," said the owner of a shoe store, "it wasn't a tank top, just a small shirt. But he started shouting that if the worker did not dress appropriately, he would cause financial damage, and claimed 'just as you can tell the workers when to come and when to go, you can tell them what to wear.' I didn't want to hurt my business and therefore I agreed, and I received certification."

Another local merchant, the owner of housewares store, described what happened to him. "Two weeks ago one of the guys came into my store," he said. "'I have the entire ultra-Orthodox community behind me. If you don't sign this paper and affix the sticker, we will boycott you,' he said to me. I didn't give in to his degenerate blackmail, but I didn't want to get into a fight with the whole ultra-Orthodox community and that's why I didn't file a complaint with the police." The ultra-Orthodox community in Netivot, which comprises about 25 percent of the city, denounced the phenomenon. [...]

R Avraham Goldstein & his Puerto Rican Community

Chareidi boycott of Hadassah - a bluff

JPost

Although anonymous haredi groups have publicly claimed they are boycotting Jerusalem's two Hadassah-University Medical Centers (in Ein Kerem and on Mount Scopus) due to the Hadassah Medical Organization's handling of the "starved haredi toddler" case, on Tuesday both Hadassah and Shaare Zedek Medical Center, the city's other major hospital, reported no indications of a boycott.

A Hadassah spokeswoman said that while there may have been a handful of haredim who had told Magen David Adom ambulance drivers to head for Shaare Zedek instead of Hadassah because of their "anger" over the affair, its emergency room has "not seen any decline" in the number of haredim coming for medical care in the past week.

The spokeswoman for Shaare Zedek confirmed that it had not noted any increase in haredi patients coming to its own emergency room in the past week.

Despite media reports that Hadassah wanted to "strike a deal" by discharging the three-and-a-half-year-old child or transferring him to another hospital in exchange for a cancellation of "the haredi boycott," the Hadassah spokeswoman said it would continue to treat the boy, whose physical condition has improved significantly since his mother was barred from the pediatrics ward two weeks ago. He has gained three kilos beyond his then seven-kilo bodyweight and is functioning much better. Channel 1 reported Tuesday night that the boy would be transferred to Tel Hashomer hospital by Thursday. [...]

Rap's posting on Proselytization in Latin America

I am really curious about the continuing high level of interest in this article- according to the Blog's statistics. Relative to the times this post has been read there have been rather few comments. Most of those who read the post arrive at this blog by Google with the search terms Rabbi Avraham Goldstein,Mishpacha. The article was posted over two weeks ago - what is the reason for the interest in this article? In addition few of those interested are from Latin America.

Chareidi Riots in Jerusalem

You don't have to be Chareidi to believe Conspiracy Theories!

Time Magazine - Ten Conspiracy Theories

# The JFK Assassination
# 9/11 Cover-up
# Area 51 and the Aliens
# Paul is Dead
# Secret Societies Control the World
# The Moon Landings Were Faked
# Jesus and Mary Magdalene
# Holocaust Revisionism
# The CIA and AIDS
# The Reptilian Elite

Obama - the squandered stimulus

Washington Post - Robert J. Samuelson

It's not surprising that the much-ballyhooed "economic stimulus" hasn't done much stimulating. President Obama and his aides argue that it's too early to expect startling results. They have a point. A $14 trillion economy won't revive in a nanosecond. But the defects of the $787 billion package go deeper and won't be cured by time. The program crafted by Obama and the Democratic Congress wasn't engineered to maximize its economic impact. It was mostly a political exercise, designed to claim credit for any recovery, shower benefits on favored constituencies and signal support for fashionable causes. As a result, much of the stimulus's potential benefit has been squandered. Spending increases and tax cuts are sprinkled in too many places and, all too often, are too delayed to do much good now. Nor do they concentrate on reviving the economy's most depressed sectors: state and local governments; the housing and auto industries. None of this means the stimulus won't help or precludes a recovery, but the help will be weaker than necessary [...] Here, as elsewhere, there's a gap between Obama's high-minded rhetoric and his performance. In February, Obama denounced "politics as usual" in constructing the stimulus. But that's what we got, and Obama likes the result. Interviewed recently by ABC's Jake Tapper, he was asked whether he would change anything. Obama seemed to invoke a doctrine of presidential infallibility. "There's nothing that we would have done differently," he said.