THE CLUB HAS BEEN BURNED. WHAT should be done now?

About a decade ago a movie was produced in Hollywood – “Men in Black.” The plot is based on a trite theme: seizure of power in the USA and then in the rest of the world. The attempt failed in the end, and that is why nowadays there is no world supremacy of any kind.

Israel has also got its “men in black.” They are not aliens, however, and their closest aim is a more modest one – just a State of Galaha here in Israel, and the sooner – the better. But what place will be prepared in that kind of state for other citizens – conservative, progressive, non-believing Jews, chess players and just goys? A quite unenviable place, one may conclude, looking at the behavior of the Hassidei Gur in Arad.

For quite a long time already these “men in black” have not let a small group of Messianic Jews and Christians in peace, trying to drive them out of Arad. The deeds and behavior of Hassidei Gur towards these differently minded Arad citizens cross the lines of lawfulness more and more often. The local Orthodox Jews, considering themselves the masters of the town (and with the total connivance of the mayor and the police), keep acting more and more aggressively.

They behave like sectarians. It’s hard to believe that the Jewish religion, which has given the world the Ten Commandments, allows such violence against one’s neighbors – allows the violence of the Hassidei Gur in Arad. And now, after the acts of vandalism, the first fire flared up.

On the night before the 4^th of August this fire consumed the chess club, where the Christians kept certain stuff for the needy and the Holy Scriptures, including the Torah in Russian and in Hebrew.

By the irony of fate, by the door of the club, hanging on the wall in a frame as if a kind of “mezuzah”, there was a letter of the Gur congregation’s leader, which he published in a newspaper during his election campaign. In this letter he promises equal rights to all the citizens of Arad, in case he is elected as mayor.

Interestingly, these barbarian methods did not influence seriously the traditional chess tournament held on Saturdays. The next Shabbat not only the habitués of the club gathered at its door, but also those who came to express their sympathy for the injured party. The chess players washed the soot off the equipment that had escaped destruction and started playing chess despite the incendiaries’ intentions.

The chess players (more than 30 people) have turned for help in solving this conflict to the municipal authorities and to the mayor personally several times – both orally and in writing. Last year they even wrote a letter to Tommy Lapid – then the Minister of Justice from the “Shinui” party. They got no answer to their requests.

Somebody even joked bitterly, looking at all this situation: the only way to protest left for them is to become Christians – then, maybe, something is going to change?

Nobody was caught red-handed regarding the arson, but everyone understands who is behind it. The municipal authorities and the police still don’t get involved in the situation, hoping, it seems, that the problem will fade away by itself. While the tension increases, the members of the city council, who the chess players turn for help to, keep silence, with their tails between their legs.

Based on the materials of the newspaper “Vesti,” of 11.08.2005