A leading Chassidic rabbi in Israel condemned today the picketing yesterday of the Israeli consulate here in a statement released through the American section of the Jewish Agency.
Rabbi Yekutiel Halberstam, the famous Klausenberg Rebbe, sent a cabled message through S.Z. Shragai, head of the Aliyah Department of the Jewish Agency in Israel, in which he said he had no connection whatever with either the demonstrations or the stone-throwing in the Mea Shearim quarter of Jerusalem or with the demonstrations organized in New York.
The Rebbe said in his statement that he was “opposed to and condemns all these activities conducted both in Israel and outside Israel.” He said that the “only solution” in the current controversy between the ultra-Orthodox groups and the Israel Government was joint cooperation of all segments of religious Jewry in an effort to develop a viable solution of the current problems “and in the increase of immigration of religious Jews to Israel.”
Rabbi Halberstam’s statement was seen as indicating that a solution to the controversy was being worked out in Israel and that there was, therefore, no justification for the ultra-Orthodox demonstrations in New York City. Rabbi Halberstam left the United States four years ago with a group of his followers to create a settlement in Kiryat Tzans, near Natanya.
The demonstrators who picketed the Consulate yesterday afternoon under the watchful eyes of mounted police carried placards which condemned “pogroms against our brethren in Israel” and assailed “missionary exploitation of economic distress” in Israel.
At the close of the two-and-a-half-hour demonstration, the Consulate distributed a statement quoting Prime Minister Levi Eshkol’s condemnation before the Israel Parliament last week of the “deplorable attempt” by “a small group of Jerusalem students to resort to violence” in trying to stop Sabbath traffic near the Mea Shearim section of Jerusalem and his warning that the Israel Government would preserve public order in the area.
A group of the demonstrators asked to see Consul General Katriel Katz. However, they were met outside the Consulate by Moshe Aumann, a consul. He told the group that the Consul-General would not receive them because of the swastikas smeared on the Consulate building for which five demonstrators were arrested. The group asserted it deplored the swastika incident and had so told the consulate.
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