I was living in peace with my neighbor. I have little in common with him, but we greet each other when we see each other and otherwise mind our own business. My building has three empty apartments. All of a sudden, a drug gang takes over those three apartments. The gang, which, it turns out, is run by a distant relative of mine, terrorizes me, but I stay put. Then, they occupy the whole building, demand protection from me, and ask me to help them blow up my neighbor’s building so they can build a second drug den. My neighbor gets confused, and starts pelting me with rocks because I am distantly related to the drug dealers. The dealers give me a hard time because they say that my blood ties to their leader are more important than living a quiet, peaceful and moral life.
They’ve made it impossible for me to work because they take protection from every business in my area and they’ve all been told not to hire me. They hit me up so hard for protection that I have no money left to do much on my own, so I take their leftovers just to stay alive.
I cannot rise up against them because they have become too powerful, and they can turn off my electricity and water. Regardless, I know I have nothing in common with them, and that they basically stole my apartment and my peaceful life, so I cannot in good conscience join them to fight my innocent neighbor.
I cannot give up either, because every inch of the building I live in really belongs to me and I have the deeds to prove it. The next-door building is probably legally mine, too, but I don’t need it and no one has lived in it for years. So long as the neighbor wants to live in peace, I have no interest whatsoever in proving he is a squatter.
Now, the drug gangsters, who can’t even get along with each other, started a fight between me and him, when in reality we never had any problems. Because the new crowd is so bad, he started to claim that he had squatters’ rights to his home, just so he can get help getting rid of the gangsters – and he’s so fed up he’d just as soon get rid of me too. Meanwhile, the real squatters are the drug gangsters, who may indeed be my blood relatives but whose ways are so far from those of my family that they endanger me and everyone who was around me and lived in peace until they came along.
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The above is the situation regarding charedim and the medine.
Charedim were living peacefully and quietly in EY before the tzioinim came along. It wasn’t the greatest life, but life wasn’t too good anywhere in those days. The Arabs were even willing to sell us land, as we made it clear we had no desire to do anything but make room for ourselves to live in peace as our numbers grew.
The tzioinim not only started with the British and the Arabs, but they mocked us and, like the misyovnim of old, tried to tear us away from Torah. They were nothing but schnorrers, and they were getting money to buy land for illegal purposes.
Now, they want us to join them in defending them against the neighbors with whom we lived in peace until they came along. (Hevron Tarpat -1929- was caused by tzioinim – zechor veal tishkach!)