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.
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
Cozy knits, sparkly bobbles and Santa hats were all the canine rage on Sunday, as hundreds of sausage dogs and their owners converged on central London for an annual parade and get-together. The dachshunds’ gathering in London’s Hyde Park came after a previous “Sausage Walk” planned for Halloween had to be postponed, because it had become so popular organizers needed to apply for an events licence. “It was going to be too much fun so they canceled it,” laughed Nicky Bailey, the owner of three sausage dogs: Una and her two 19-week-old puppies Ember and Finnegan, wearing matching red coats and silver