Moses: Police Used ‘Different Standard’ for Kosel Closures

YERUSHALAYIM

Although the Kosel plaza has returned to normal since the disruptions on Sunday morning, chareidi members of Knesset are continuing to press the issue and demand answers for the outrageous turnabout in police policy toward the chareidi public and Women of the Wall.

In a debate over a no-confidence motion in the Knesset on Monday, United Torah Judaism faction Chairman Rabbi Menachem Eliezer Moses decried the police decision to close the Kosel to thousands of mispallelim in order to escort a few dozen women and allow them to conduct their ceremony.

During his speech in the plenum, Rabbi Moses turned to the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, Likud MK Moshe Feiglin, who was presiding over the debate, and asked why the police don’t bar the Moslem worshippers from entering Har Habayis in order for him to visit there. (Feiglin only recently had a public falling out with Likud Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu over his insistence on being permitted to enter the area, regardless of Arab reaction.)

“Would it enter anyone’s mind that the police would keep the Moslems behind barricades while MK Feiglin went in and out? Why, then, is it that when it comes to this group of provocateurs at the Kosel, the police operates according to a different standard? Why doesn’t it prevent these women from entering and disturbing public order?”

The Kosel, he said, has always been accessible to all, and kept scrupulously clear of controversy, and it should be returned to its former condition of peace and holiness.

Rabbi Moses also noted the role of the Egged bus cooperative in Sunday’s incident. Instead of adding buses to the lines serving the Kosel in order to accommodate the large numbers of people who were expected to arrive that morning, Egged ran the usual number of buses, which was insufficient, and contributed to the general inconvenience and discord as crowds of travelers were kept waiting at bus stops.

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