Blogging will resume some time after Yom Kippur ends, tomorrow evening Israel time.

However, for 5 days now there have been riots in Acco all from an incident on the eve of Yom Kippur, well after Jewish residents had locked up their cars. It’s in all the major news outlets but they’re nearly all missing the crucial background.

The point is that any car, driving toward crowds of children riding their bikes on roads that are EXPECTED to be car free would look like a terror attack. It’s not about the kind of phony offense of religious sensibilities that even the Jerusalem Post is touting. It’s about threat to life. The rioting Jews are not religious: “… loutish Jewish youths – overwhelmingly not haredi …” (same Jpost link as below).

Muslims are trying to legitimise their own phony Muslim right not to be offended by equating it with a Jewish right and as usual the bigger picture is being missed.

If he’d driven past the people in North Tel Aviv where I am (who were picnicking in the parks) they wouldn’t have been “offended”, they’d have been pissed off that someone might hit their children.

From Jpost’s editorial today:

Just what Jamal was doing on Yom Kippur eve in a Jewish neighborhood – where virtually no cars except emergency vehicles are on the road – is in dispute. His claim is that, accompanied by his son and the son’s friend, he was picking up his daughter from her fiancé’s place. The Jewish youths say he was blasting music and smoking a nargila in an act of ostentatious provocation. The initial police report backed the youths’ version and suggested that Jamal was also intoxicated.

The last few “Sudden Jihad Syndrome” car attacks in Jerusalem have all been stopped with a gun by off duty security people or private citizens. Israelis have very little faith in on duty security services tackling Muslims. So many (even lefties) have told me that the law is not working equitably for Muslims (which is the inverse perception the rest of the world has!). Starting a riot, however, is wrong in every circumstance.

This whole incident smells like a manufactured Jihadi provocation directed from the local Mosque. I would not have been surprised if they were looking for the driver (and even his young son) to be shot (you can imagine this would be like hitting the jackpot for people who sacrifice their children).

Some comments on Israellycool about the roads in the Galil are very revealing showing that the ever increasing percentage of Muslim Arabs in the area has meant this trend (of non-religious observance of no driving on YK) has not really got going. Its the quiet Jihad but its all still Jihad in the end.

The comments at the JPost are amazing too, Israelis are really, really angry with their government and multiculturalism and this is the most dangerous place in the world to have tried this nonsense:

9. ET TU, Jerusalem Post editor?

You have misread the Acre riots. And you are clueless as to what Jews in Israel are feeling . We are afraid of these Arabs living among us. These Arabs that we are FORCED to live with . These Arabs that should be arrested for their treason against the state. They hate us and are only waiting for the opportunity to murder us. But this “mulit-cultural” nonsense is forced down our throats. the Jews are once again not even allowed to defend themselves in their own country.

As far as I can tell (people are very vague on this) there really is no enforceable law against driving, it just isn’t done. The police could stop you, but they’d just ask why you were driving, tell you to be careful and let you go. There is no religious police to enforce this kind of thing in Israel as it isn’t a religious state.

Now it is true that this happens in places where observant, religious Jews live in large majority: parts of Jerusalem, highly religious towns like Tzfat (Safed, Zefad, whatever) and many others on every Sabbath: but on a regular Sabbath in Tel Aviv Friday night traffic is bad and the restaurants serving pork or shell fish are full to overflowing.

On Yom Kippur, however, everything stops. Non-observant Jews and observant Jews alike, just hide the car keys. For sure, if your kid falls off his bike and needs the hospital nobody (from both those communities) would think twice about driving the car to the hospital.

But on Yom Kippur the non-religious Jews just organize their lives such that they don’t need to drive.

For sure many of them will not fast, and they probably stock up on DVD’s because the state TV channels shut down (but there’s plenty of other cable channels).

But they just don’t DRIVE their cars. The air smells good, the visibility gets better and from sundown to sundown the streets are full of people strolling or cycling along 10 lane highways. People have found a way to organize their lives that for just one day a year, nobody drives except for emergencies.

I left my apartment to have a look this year and I saw one pickup truck and 3 police cars moving. Slowly. Through the crowds of children on bikes.

Below is a slideshow of what that looks like in Tel Aviv that I found on YouTube, there are many more videos but this kind of gives a good idea.

Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv on YouTube

However, some of you may have heard the stories of violence in Acco this year. Of course this wide agreement among JEWS to selectively observe one of Yom Kippur’s rules and not to drive cars can be abused. As I’ve tried to explain, non-observant Jews almost uniformly observe this rule even though their usual behavior isn’t to observe the laws of the Sabbath (of which Yom Kippur is really a special case).

Arabs, on the other hand, don’t feel this need and as the streets in Jewish parts of Israel are full of children riding carelessly on streets that would normal be chock full of cars, if an Arab decides to drive through these parts, the children’s parents have a right to feel annoyed.

It’s just not something that other Jews do and if they do it, its an emergency and they are driving VERY VERY CAREFULLY (which is certainly not the norm here!)

This is the kind of background you’d never get when AP tell tales of Jews and Arabs fighting over something stupid like someone driving on Yom Kippur. Meryl Yourish picks apart the bias but without really explaining why driving in Jewish areas on Yom Kippur is such a big deal. That’s not a criticism of Meryl, I’ve never really understood or believed the no car thing here until I saw it this year with my own eyes.

Even when you read a first hand account, its not till you understand how widely observed the no car rule is that you get a feel for why fast moving cars driven by anyone, Jew or Arab, on Yom Kippur are SUCH A BIG DEAL.

Sometimes you really do just have to be there.

Blogging will resume some time after Yom Kippur ends, tomorrow evening Israel time.

Based on the verse in the Book of Leviticus that “You shall afflict your souls,” many people believe that Yom Kippur is a day of suffering. But the rabbis disagree, saying you’re not meant to suffer, but rather to ignore the physical and focus on the spiritual.

If you get a headache, they argue, you can’t adequately concentrate on your sins and repentance.

Thus headaches on the the Day of Atonement are unnecessary, says Dr. Zev (Jeremy) Wimpfheimer, a senior physician in the emergency medicine department of Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center. Wimpfheimer is testing a drug which, taken in pill form before the fast, will hopefully prevent those fasting from developing a headache. He wants about 200 people to try it before the onset of the 25-hour fast Wednesday evening.

While this is very interesting, I mention this as yet another example of Jerusalem Post incompetence.

Dr. Zev Wimpfheimer is an Israellycool reader and real-life neighbor and friend. His real name is not Jeremy. That would be his brother, another Israellycool reader and real-life friend (not to mention occasional contributor and guest on an Israellycool podcast). What makes this piece of journalism even sloppier is the fact that Jeremy used to do freelance work for the Jerusalem Post.

I wonder if Zev can find a drug that makes a Jerusalem Post journalist competent.