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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan | |
| Jordanian police threaten to jail Israeli pilgrims for praying | |
| 2017-07-25 | |
Jordanian police on threatened a group of Israeli tourists that they would risk being tossed in the calaboose Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit! if they prayed anywhere in the country, an Israeli official said Monday. The tourists were in Jordan to visit the Tomb of Aaron, the biblical high priest and brother of Moses, who tradition holds is buried on Mount Hor, near Petra, at a site known locally as Jabal Haroun. "It emerged that they were not allowed [to show] any religious symbols," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon told The Times of Israel. He said the incident occurred either Sunday or Monday. One of the tourists, Rabbi Menashe Zelicha of Bnei Brak, said the coppers told his group that "in all of Jordan it is forbidden for Jews to pray." "We are not allowed to pray in the morning, no tefillin, no prayer shawls, nothing ‐ we cannot pray, even in the hotel, even inside our room," Zelicha told the Kol Chai radio station. "Policemen came into the hotel and were shouting and went wild, saying that in a minute they would take us out of Jordan if we made even a tiny squeak. They told us, ’Whoever prays will be taken to jail.'" Zelicha said that when his group went through the border crossing, authorities "began checking the suitcase and checking everything. They refused to let us bring in books. They removed the prayer shawls, the tefillin; they removed one person’s tzitzit. "One guy had on him a driving written test booklet, they took it. They took people’s skullcaps. People were left with only their shirt and trousers." Israeli diplomats stationed in Jordan asked the tourists to "lower their profile and to listen to instructions from the police," Nahshon said. The Israelis were also advised to leave the country sooner than they had planned, given the tense situation in Israel and the West Bank in the wake of a July 14 shooting attack at the Temple Mount, as well as the stabbing attack on an Israeli security guard and death of two Jordanians at the Israeli embassy compound in Jordan on Sunday. Jordanian authorities did not respond to requests to comment on the report, but a diplomat said Jordanian officials warning Jewish pilgrims to keep a low profile was not uncommon. In the past, Israelis have complained that border officials prevented them from crossing with tefillin and prayer shawls. | |
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