About 100 yeshiva youths belonging to the ultra-zealous “Torah Camp” of the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel Party last night raided Ramat Hadassah, an immigrant-youth distribution center near Haifa, and claimed they had “rescued” 30 teen-age immigrants who, allegedly, were being brought up “irreligiously” by the center.
The raiders rolled into the camp in trucks, some equipped with loud speakers, and summoned the teen-age residents to leave with them. As inducements, they passed out cigarettes and candy to the teen-age residents. Camp instructors and other personnel fought the raiders and, when police reinforcements arrived, about 50 of the raiders were detained; However, Moshe Kol, head of the Jewish Agency’s Youth Aliyah department, who arrived soon after the police, requested that the 50 be freed, and they were released.
The claim that 30 of the teen-agers had gone away with the raiders was made in Jerusalem by Rabbi Menahem Porush, a member of Parliament. Camp officials denied that any of the youths left voluntarily with the raiders. They said that, since the camp is an open enclave, from which teen-agers may emerge for outings to nearby Haifa or elsewhere, they expect that those youths who are missing will return of their own will.
“Religious people will not be quiet,” Rabbi Porush said, “until every religious boy or girl gets a religious education in Israel.” Leaders of the raiding party charged that the teen-agers from the Ramat Hadassah distribution center “are being sent to settlements were pigs are raised, and are encouraged to apostasy.”
Mr. Kol indignantly denied these charges, calling them “groundless slander,” He said that no children with religious background would be or are being turned over to non-religious settlements or institutions. On the contrary, he said, one group of teen-agers was sent only yesterday, prior to the raid, to the Orthodox Ponivecz Yeshiva, in Bnei Brak, while others had already been prepared for enrollment in schools conducted by the Habad branch of the Hassidic movement.
Ultra-religious leaders today called for a special day of prayer in protest against what they called “putting boys and girls into apostasy.” They declared they will appeal to rabbis all over the world to back their protests against the “breach of promise” by the Agency’s youth immigration department, which had pledged to guard the teen-agers against irreligious upbringing.
Much indignation was voiced in many circles here today against the raid and the attitude of the ultra-zealots.
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