Hate crime in Lod: Arabs threw rocks at a sukkah that had been erected and dismantled the thatch

September 19, 2021   

Baruch Goldreich, married and father of two, a resident of the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood in Lod, erected a sukkah on the eve of Yom Kippur - and finished building it before Shabbat, Parashat HaAzinu. Obey the 'Torah' and celebrate Sukkot safely: This way you are 10 times more protected In preparation for Shabbat, Baruch traveled with his family - and when he returned on Shabbat night, a surprise awaited him: rocks that tore apart the thatch. As a result, he wrote: "If I had Twitter, I would go on the 'feed', I would announce and say that a hate crime was committed against me, I would file a complaint for hurting religious feelings. But I understand that in the State of Israel, crimes against Jews are not interesting..." In a conversation with Haredim 10, Goldreich says: "What I wrote is despair. I'm not going to report it to the police, because they won't do anything about it. If it were the other way around, if they were to hurt an Arab in a religious way - they would take action. They don't do anything here..." He predicts that "there will be more stories in the coming days, I don't know if they will burn Sukkots, but they will break and destroy. Exhausting and discouraging." Baruch talks about the neighborhood's residents' concerns: "There was a question in the neighborhood about whether to build a sukkah on the eve of Yom Kippur or near the holiday, in order not to leave it standing empty for three or four days and thus reduce vandalism - these are the considerations of people in the neighborhood. "I sleep in a sukkah, I'm not afraid, I hope no one gets hurt. It's scary because someone might get hurt. Some residents will choose not to build, but every year there are more sukkahs. "The long-time residents in the neighborhood didn't build sukkahs for years, before the Torah-oriented groups arrived. The majority didn't build sukkahs for many years - because they would harass and burn their sukkahs. Slowly there are more sukkahs, 50-60 sukkahs a year, every year there are more. But take into account that they will be destroyed here and there." Baruch mentions: "Last week, a stone was thrown at someone on the road in the neighborhood and her car was smashed. Such a stone killed Yigal Yehoshua four months ago. But the police are not willing to give her confirmation that this was a nationalist incident. Why? Is it a neighborly dispute? "Since her incident, stones have been thrown several more times in the same place. It's a human life. So if the police don't do anything there on the road - then what will stones do on my sukkah? The police are indifferent, they're not in the loop. File a complaint and your case will be closed.".