New York Times 9/17/71
The brutal pogrom, staged on Saturday, August 7th, by the Israeli police in Jerusalem against innocent Jewish men, women and children, must not be forgotten. Steps must be taken assure that there will be no repetition.
This completely unprovoked attack was carefully planned in advance. While the streets and quarters of the section, where the most pious Jews of Jerusalem live, were perfectly quiet and peaceful, film and television crews arrived to record a spectacle that was as tragic as it was unprecendented. Shortly thereafter hundreds of steel helmeted policemen came upon the scene and entered private homes, yeshivas and synagogues and began to beat people--evn those who were praying in the houses of worship!--in a style that brought back the evil memories of the Cossacks and the Nazis. The Jewish victims, who had no warning at all, did not resist but the merciless beatings continued until there was a large number of wounded which included scores of American tourists, American students and an American rabbi. 15 Americans were among the many hauled off to jail where the shocking mistreatment was relentlesskly kept up. The staging of the "show" included a peculiar detail: some policemen systematically forced a number of young boys to throw stones in order to provide suitable "action picture" for the cameras.
The signed eyewitness accounts are heart-rending. A delegation of nearly 100 American citizens went to the American Consulate General to protest against this unheard-of attack on Americans.
THE AIMS OF ZIONISM
The increasing assaults on Yeshiva students and rabbis in the streets of Jerusalem and this latest almost incredible police provocation are a logical consequence of the basic Zionist aim to fight against the rule of the Torah in the Jewish community and to "emancipate" the Jewish people from its religious faith. First came the stablishment of the Zionist state in the Holy Land, although the Torah forbids any Jewish state before the coming of the Messiah. Now the ZIonists continue in the same direction by persecuting those who still uphold the sovereign rule of the Torah among the Jews and who steadfastly have refused to recognize the legitmacy of the Zionist state. The Zionist fraud and deception is increased by its usurpation of the name of Israel and by the Zionist pretense of represtation of the Jewish people. Actually, the existence of the Jewish people is based solely on one fundamental principle: the observance of the commandments as specified in the written and oral law of the Torah. Anyone, denying this principle, excludes himself automatically from the Jewish community.
WE APPEAL
As Jews we appeal to our fellow Jews to follow the ways and the laws of the Torah without compromise and not to be misled by the clever and ubiquitious Zionist propaganda.
OF THE UNITED NATIONS, who have expressed their special interest in Jerusalem for well over twenty ears, we ask: Those residents of Jerusalem, who have refused Israeli citizenship, have often petitioned the nited Nations for the speical personal status that is due to them. The increasing lawlessness of the Jerusalem police makes it imperative that the fortcoming General Assembly grant this special citizenship to these Jerusalem residents without any further delay.