Calm was expected to return to the streets of Jerusalem yesterday after a court decision attempted to defuse clashes between police and ultra-Orthodox protesters.
Violent riots racked the city last week as thousands of ultra-胝rthodox ?or Haredi ?residents protested against the arrest of a woman accused of nearly starving her three-year-old son to death.
Jerusalem courts released the woman to house arrest.
The violence escalated last week, with 50 arrests and 18 police injuries on Thursday night as protesters threw bottles and rocks at police, who responded with water-cannons.
Extreme sections of Jerusalem? ultra-Orthodox community were angered by police intervention in the case of a Haredi woman suspected of starving her son over a period of two years.
The toddler was hospitalized last week, weighing 7kg. His mother is thought to be suffering from the psychiatric condition Munchausen? syndrome by proxy, whereby individuals attempt to draw attention to themselves by deliberately making someone else ill, typically a child.
But rumors over religious persecution have reportedly raged through Haredi neighborhoods and one rabbi described the case as a blood libel.
A Jerusalem Post editorial last week said that such rumors include claims that the emaciated toddler had cancer and that doctors were conducting experiments on the child. The article slates these as the ?onspiracy theories?of extremists and religious fanatics and reports that the doctor treating the child confirms that he does not have cancer and has gained weight in hospital
The woman, who is five months pregnant and has two other children, will now undergo psychiatric evaluation by a professional approved by social services and the Haredi community.
David Zilbershlag, media representative for the accused, said: ?he best outcome of the court? decision is that it has restored some faith in the system amongst the Orthodox community.?br />
Members of this community say the Haredi mother? imprisonment shattered the trust and good relations that had developed with social services, previously viewed with hatred and suspicion by a deeply insular, 赴ltra-conservative sector with rigid codes of conduct.
The Haredi custom of raising large families and abstaining from work on religious grounds results in high levels of poverty, and regularly attracts stigmatization and accusations of child neglect. Last summer, Israeli media reported that a four-year-old Haredi child was abandoned at Ben Gurion airport while her eight-member family boarded a flight to Paris.
?he stress is immense in those families where there is no money, no work and lots of children,?said professor Tamar El-Or, who lectures in sociology and anthropology at Jerusalem? Hebrew university. ?ragile people, like this woman, can collapse. But in this immense effort to protect the community and its ideological beliefs, a story is created about children being kidnapped ... and the religious leadership does not take any responsibility for thinking of solutions.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the