NEW YORK. Not just Gaza. Thousands of kilometers from the Palestinian enclave, the scene of the war between Israel and Hamas that has been going on for over three months, separated by a sea and an ocean, in the central part of New York, a district called Crown Heights Brooklyn was the scene of one day Clashes between members of the Orthodox Jewish community and law enforcement. The reason? An underground tunnel, just like Gaza, that members of the Hasidic enclave had illegally built. The scenes of the escape from the tunnel and the clashes with police went viral yesterday, flooding the internet and social media.
The protagonists of Monday's “suburban battle,” mostly men in their teens and early twenties, were filmed tearing down wooden panels and support beams at the Crown Heights headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch, a movement that spread Hebrew internationally and a branch of Hasidic Judaism is. in turn is based on the spiritual renewal of Orthodox Judaism. Rioters tried to stop police and workers from filling a secret tunnel that had been illegally dug to reach a closed women's toilet. Other footage from the temple on Eastern Parkway shows police trying to hold back dozens of men who forced their way into the twenty-foot-wide area under the women's section, knocking over wooden benches in anger. The synagogue's leader, Rabbi Yosef Braun, condemned those involved, saying they were “ready to destroy and deface the holy walls” and described the event as “breathtaking.”
Members of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement had been digging the tunnel for nearly a year, apparently to reach an abandoned women's mikvah, a ritual bath used for immersion to achieve purity. The goal was a violent “expansion” of the synagogue, according to the Jewish newspaper “Forward,” although it is not clear why the “underground” solution was chosen. However, the secret plan was not successful and the tunnel was discovered last month – reports Israel National News – when some citizens living in houses next to the synagogue reported suspicious noises coming from underneath their homes.
When the plan came to light, synagogue leadership called in engineers to assess the damage, and concrete mixers arrived Monday to fill the tunnel. This was enough to unleash the wrath of Hasidic youth. Gaza's imitators attacked the synagogue's brick walls with hammers in hand. Some even managed to enter the makeshift tunnel. A video shows a man brazenly drinking from a can in the tunnel as police tried to keep his colleagues at bay on the way down. According to the Forward, some of the rioters were also seen taunting police and filming their attempts to enter the tunnel. Officers also arrested several people outside the synagogue. The guerrilla warfare lasted several hours, with agents coming and going carrying tied-up “rebels” out of the tunnel. According to the New York Post, at least a dozen men were taken into custody, one was charged with obstructing government administration, another received a misconduct citation, while a dozen were charged with crimes against minors. The point is to understand whether the Crown Heights Tunnel is the only tunnel or whether it was actually designed as a connection to a larger and more branching labyrinth. Just like in Gaza.