Six Daat Emet activists were attacked yesterday in K'far Chabad after going there to distribute pamphlets against religious coercion. One of the activists suffered a head wound and was sent to the Asaf HaRoefeh hospital in Tzrifin for treatment.
"We came to do to them what they do to us in Ramat Aviv Gimel," explained an activist from the organization, which is made up of people who left religion and is linked to the Shinui political party. A Chabad spokesman responded, "We threw them out again."
Yesterday afternoon six activists went to K'far Chabad with fliers they wanted to distribute. "We came because we were told that Chabad didn't champion violence," one of the activists, Ilan, explained. "We wanted to respond to what they have been doing the past several weeks in Ramat Aviv Gimel and the rest of Tel Aviv; they come into the schools and try to get children to become religious. We tried to distribute fliers meant to make the read and think. Suddenly about a hundred students attacked us with sticks and stones."
"It's a good thing they threw them out"
The Chabad movement's spokesman, Menachem Brod, said that the activists broke into private property without permission. "They entered the yeshiva dormitories and distributed slanderous material against the sages of religion and the rabbis, just to create a provocation. There is a difference between dialogue and ideas and slander. If they threw them out, it's a good thing they threw them out."
MK Yossi Pritzki of Shinui, who yesterday announced that he plans to make an official complaint against the Chassidim who participated in the fight, said that "It is inconceivable that Chabad activists can come to a secular neighborhood and preach a return to religion while secular people cannot go to K'far Chabad and pass out fliers to adults. It shows how much tolerance and openness exists in the Chabad movement."
From: Maariv July 12, 1999