Limited Prayer

Haim Watzman is an opponent of Jewish settlement in areas under Israel's control that are part of the Jewish people's historic and religious homeland but not under its formal soverignty, i.e., Judea and Samaria. He's observant, too.

But, he wrote that:-

I will not pray in Hebron as long as it remains a symbol of violence, lawlessness and intolerance

.

And why?

Because:

The settlers in Hebron, and the teenage riffraff who joined them to defend the disputed house that was the epicenter of the recent confrontations, say they are asserting the Jewish people’s claim to its second-holiest city. The opposite is true. Each act of wanton destruction committed against Palestinians, each stone thrown at an Israeli soldier or policeman, is a blow against Jewish rights in Hebron.

Now, while I agree that the damage done by the riffraff, funny term that, was quite negative, and I wrote about it - not in the Forward but at Arutz 7 (here and also here) -, might I suggest that Watzman has gone out on a limb: for if violence limits prayer, he'd find very few places in which to do so. And Hebron's Arab violence should also, then, count for quite a few negative points in the political accounting.