Violence Erupts at Orthodox Jews’ Protest

Ultra-Orthodox Jews went on a rampage in the northern Israeli city of Haifa on Friday night, beating up two journalists at a protest prayer meeting against the screening of movies during the Sabbath, Israel radio reported.

Police called out reinforcements to restore order and made several arrests, the radio said. About 1,000 black-garbed Orthodox Jews attended the prayer meeting in a pedestrian mall in the largely secular port city.

The state radio station said its reporter Yoav Aviv was hit in the face and his tape recorder smashed by religious militants protesting what they regard as desecration of the Jewish holy day.

Another journalist, Yigal Kotzer of the newspaper Hadashot, was also attacked and injured.

In Jerusalem, 1,000 policemen were out in force to prevent ultra-Orthodox militants from marching on four movie theaters screening films Friday night. Wall posters in the religious neighborhood of Mea Shearim had called for a mass demonstration.

About 250 secular Israeli leftists rallied outside one of the theaters to protest what they call religious coercion and to affirm the right to stage entertainment in Jerusalem on the Sabbath.

The dispute over the theaters is the latest in a series of religious-secular clashes that have led some non-religious residents to forsake Jerusalem and move to Tel Aviv.

In austere Jerusalem, restaurants, bars and entertainment houses close before the Sabbath begins at sundown on Friday. In easygoing Tel Aviv, they are crammed with weekend revelers.

“To our regret, there is tension in Jerusalem between Jews, and for this we must be sorry from the depth of our hearts,” said Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem, who earlier appealed for calm. “Suddenly groups that have no responsibility for the city make . . . this the major issue as if the (biblical) Temple were being destroyed.”

Ultra-Orthodox anger was fueled Thursday night when an 11-year-old boy said an assailant clipped off his side locks in a Jerusalem street in an apparent anti-religious protest. The most observant Jews are barred by religious law from cutting the fringes of their hair.

About 25% of Jerusalem’s inhabitants are Orthodox Jews, but they enjoy disproportionate influence because of the city’s religious significance.