Calev Myers, a Messianic Jewish lawyer in Jerusalem has petitioned the Attorney General of the State of Israel to dismantle the Yad L’Achim organization
A bold move indeed. To view previous posts on Yad L’Achim, click here.
Cross-post by Gev over at the Rosh Pina Project:-
Calev Myers, a Messianic Jewish lawyer in Jerusalem has petitioned the Attorney General of the State of Israel according to section 50 of the Associations Law, 5740-1980, to dismantle the Yad L’Achim organization, led by Rabbi Dov Shalom Lifshitz, because of their promotion and instigation of persecution and denial of civil rights and democratic privileges to Israeli citizens whose faith they disagree with. i.e. Messianic Jews and Christians in the State of Israel. Yad L’Achim’s anti-mission leader Alex Artovsky is due in court March 9th to face charges that he was involved in instigating a religious hate crime by inciting a riot involving hundreds of Orthodox Jews raiding a Messianic Jewish Congregation’s worship service back in 2005. The petition also cites Yad L’Achim’s appalling track record against Israeli Arabs, Reform Judaism, Jehovah Witnesses, New Age groups, the Kabbalah Centre and non-Orthodox forms of Judaism, including kidnap, breaking-up families, breaching the privacy act, hate-spreach etc…
The Petition states:
“And we stress that the longer the destructive incitement by Yad L’Achim continues without interference, the greater the chances for a repeat of the violence against innocent citizens, whose lifestyle is not to the liking of the Organization’s activists.”
JewishIsrael have characterised Calev Myers’ fight for the civil rights of Messianic Jews in Israel as a crusade against Orthodox Judaism. How empty would such a statement seem if the KKK had said the Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in 60’s America were just a crusade against the White Man!
The position of the Jerusalem Institute of Justice has also found support from the Haaretz editorial team, who wrote here:
“Yad L’Achim is a blatant violation of Israel’s Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty.
The organization’s shady links with the establishment are not new – for years, its activists have provided information to rabbinical courts seeking to stick their hands into sensitive cases at the Social Affairs Ministry. More than once the group has enjoyed the assistance of ultra-Orthodox politicians such as Menachem Porush, who as deputy social affairs minister in 1991 wrote to a court pleading for mercy toward the group’s activists who had kidnapped an orphan from relatives who were “not religious enough.” But the Interior Ministry employees’ collaboration with the group outdoes even that abhorrent precedent.
The government must call its employees to order immediately, to explain to Interior Minister Eli Yishai that he is not responsible for maintaining the purity of the Jewish race according to the formula of ultra-Orthodox zealots, and that any collaboration with Yad L’Achim is, in effect, a grave instance of persecution.”
The US State Department’s report on International Religious Freedom published , October 2009 named Yad L’Achim as an organisation that concerned them, Yad L’Achim was first named in the annual report in 2001.
Here is Yad L’Achim’s response to a past State Department report. They describe missionaries doing exactly what the anti-missionaries are doing!
Tags: Christianity, Israel, News