Reform and Conservative Rabbis provoke Violence At Kotel

For years the Reform and the Conservative movements were on the same page as  Satmar and Neturei Karta, not to recognize the State of Israel .... they even took the word "Tzion" out of the siddur!
Now they suddenly want to "daven" at the kotel!

 Violent skirmishes broke out Wednesday morning at the Western Wall as Reform, Conservative and Women of the Wall leaders and activists brought Torah scrolls into the site in defiance of administrative regulations.

Although security guards from the Western Wall Heritage Foundation allowed the protest prayer group of some 200 people to enter the main site, orderlies of the foundation fought physically, but unsuccessfully, to prevent them bringing the Torah scrolls into the women’s section.

Orderlies manhandled the progressive Jewish leaders and activists bearing the Torah scrolls and those protecting them, while haredi protests grabbed hold of the Torah scrolls and fought with the activists.

Yizhar Hess, director of the Masorti (Conservative) Movement in Israel was knocked to the ground by orderlies and protestors but was unharmed.

Eventually several Torah scrolls made it into the women’s section for Women of the Wall’s monthly service, while a pluralist prayer service was conducted in the upper plaza of the site.

The prayer protest rally was staged to protest the failure of the government to implement a government resolution approved in January to create a state-recognized pluralist prayer section at the southern end of the Western Wall.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, head of the Reform Movement in North America Rabbi Rick Jacobs rejected accusations that the protest prayer rally was a provocation, as administrator of the Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz has asserted.

“No movement in the history of humanity has ever moved forward simply by quietly waiting,” said Jacobs.

“The Jewish people love this place and have come here over millennia, and we are here as part of the Jewish people to assert that the Kotel is also ours, Judaism is also ours, the Jewish state is ours, and we come here out of love, strength and deep commitment that Israel will be a home for all Jews, and that this sacred place of the Kotel will also be a symbol of that inclusivity and that pluralism and that strength that comes from our Jewish diversity and Jewish commitment.”

The rabbi noted that the various movements and organizations of progressive and Diaspora Jewry were working including through the Knesset, the courts, to achieve their aims, but that the rally was about being present on the ground as well.

Regarding the skirmishes that broke out as a result of the rally, the rabbi pointed out that it was protestors and not the progressive worshipers who had been the source of the violence.

“We came with dignity, but we were not met with dignity or respect and that’s a real shame that there are people who can’t understand that we want a place here, but we don’t want the whole place.”

Hess said that “all civil rights protests” and activists are labelled provocateurs, but ale denied that the rally had been a provocation.

“We came here to demonstrated that we’re connected to the Kotel and to demonstrate that this place is sacred to all of us and the fact that the Israeli government is not implementing what was agreed is disgraceful,” said Hess.

“We’re here to say there is more than one way to be Jewish in Israel and at the Kotel, and if this resolution is not implemented we are here to demand a third section at the Western Wall itself with men and women praying together.”