I saw the strangest announcement - it said that many haredim were appearing at the local branch of the Ministry of Interior today to print out new identification cards to replace worn out cards with worn out photographs - ostensibly because with tighter inspection expected in Tuesday's elections, playing it safe means having a fresh identification card rather than a worn out one that some suspicious inspector might invalidate.
The announcement goes on that Richard Peres, a city councilman, contacted the police and the Ministry of Interior and warned them to be on the lookout for fraud (people trying to get other people's id cards with their pictures, perhaps?). The police subsequently sent down an officer to inspect everyone in line and check their id cards.
Richard Peres is not known for his love for haredim (though I dont know if he is anti-haredi), and is also the main person behind the idea of splitting Bet Shemesh into two cities. With these people doing nothing wrong, refreshing your identity card is a perfectly legal activity, there was no place to bring the police into the matter. The police should have told him to jump in the lake or else come to them with actual claims of a crime.
I understand people are jumpy and prefer to err on the side of caution, considering the situation, but that does not give anyone a right to treat innocent people like criminals.
The only justification would be that these people were brought to the office by activists from the Koach party - the party that was responsible for at least much of the fraud (or attempts at fraud) in the previous elections, and maybe that justified raising suspicions. Perhaps the activists should have been questioned rather than the people refreshing their ID cards.
Religion Magazine
