Monday night, the tires of 28 cars parked on a street in the village of Abu Gosh, where Arab and Jewish families live, were punctured. The area was painted with graffiti messages saying: “Racism or Assimilation,” and “Arabs out.” Police began investigating the incident.

This is the first time that the a Tag Mechir (Price Tag) operation takes place in Abu Ghosh, a Christian Arab village with a rich history of supporting Jewish independence since before 1948, and the only Arab village that has kept its neutrality, even during the worst days of the Intifada.

“There is a small group of evil conspirators who want to generate a chain of hatred and violence between Arabs and Jews in our country. This group gives our enemies around the world the means with which to blacken our faces. We will not allow them to succeed.

“This week we gave police and the Shabac (GSS) wide powers to catch them.

“I urge the security forces to act strongly against this despicable phenomenon.”

News of the incident shocked local police. Police sources said this morning to Walla News: “If it was, indeed, an incident of nationalist crime, it damages the very fabric of co-existence and neighborly relations of Arabs and Jews in this friendly village. Police view this very seriously, and will devote great efforts, as it has done so far, to reaching the perpetrators, capturing them and bringing them to justice.”

Last week, on the night between Thursday and Friday, two vehicles were set on fire in a parking lot in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, in East Jerusalem. A security camera recorded the ignition and the explosion. Both vehicles was damaged from the blast. The slogan Tag Mechir was spray painted on a nearby wall.

One day before the parking lot arson, the slogans Tag Mechir and Star of David symbols were spray painted on gravestones in a Christian-Orthodox cemetery in Jaffa. The tires of five parked car on a nearby street were punctured.

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem said Tuesday that it will not allow Jerusalem to use church property in the Old City for a festival because of alleged police action against Christians, according to WAFA, the official website of the Palestinian Authority.

Patriarch Theophilos III add that the festival “does not reflect in any way the true identity of Jerusalem,” according to his spokesman Issa Musleh.

Police allegedly attacked worshippers and clerics during Christian holidays, and WAFA told its readers that “Israeli fanatics attack churches, cemeteries and religious people.”

“It would not be sensible that anyone should expect any cooperation to make successful festivities not related to us or Jerusalem,” Musleh added.

A Turkish doctor has charged that her patients who have suffered from tear gas fired by police show signs associated with CR gas, classified by the U.S. Army as a combat class chemical weapon that can cause serious side effects and can be lethal.

CR gas was developed the British and was used in Northern Ireland and is used in riot control today in Egypt and Israel, but its use in Turkey was not documented until Wednesday. The use may be legal, but if it is being deployed, the Erdogan government has kept it under wraps and prevented people from knowing.

Police sprayed gas, either the usual CS tear gas or CR gas, on protesters Wednesday as the riots continued after nine days, and the death toll has climbed to three.

The government had instructed police to use restraint, but police violence was seen in Ankara where unions called for a solidarity strike in sympathy with Gezi Park demonstrations.

Police also used water cannons to disperse demonstrators, and among those arrested were the Ankara bureau chief for a television channel and a cameraman.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, following the pattern of Hosni Mubarak and Basher al-Assad, among others, has called protesters “terrorists” and has placed the blamed for the riots primarily on users of social networks. His police arrested 25 people early Wednesday for the high crime of tweeting “misinformation.”

“This is a protest organized by extremist elements,” Erdogan said Monday a press conference.

“Have they already banned freedom of opinion and I have not heard about it?” tweeted one user, (at)CRustemov, as the news spread. “What on earth does it mean to get detained over Twitter!”

Thousands of people have been detained since the beginning of the protests, but most of them have been freed.

“We will not give away anything to those who live arm-in-arm with terrorism.”

Hopes by Erdogan that the violence would end, after his deputy prime minister Bulent Arinc apologized for police violence on Tuesday, have evaporated.

No one expects Turkey to follow Middle East countries that have seen revolutions topple their rulers following Arab Spring demonstrations, but Erdogan has been acting like the deposed rulers.

“He’s not been behaving rationally at all,” Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul-based researcher with the Silk Road Studies Program at John Hopkins University, told US Today Wednesday. “He appears to be becoming almost delusional and refusing to accept the reality that these protests are mainly spontaneous and are being organized by small groups of people who’ve never engaged in politics before.”

His behavior should come as no surprise. He has been living in his own dream world for the past Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar Assad, while reducing diplomatic relations with Israel to a their tier level.

He has since realized that choosing  Ahmadinejad and Assad as friends was the wrong decision, but Erdogan still is a cheerleader for Hamas and wants to visit Gaza.

Years of promoting Turkey as a shining example of prosperity, democracy and tolerance have gone up in smoke.

Property damage and massive injuries, many of them from CD or CR gas, have forced an Istanbul mosque dating back to the Ottoman empire to be converted into a makeshift field hospital.

Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid warned on Monday that if the government wants to stay in power, it will have to approve a committee’s recommendation on “equal burden,” including criminal actions against draft dodgers.

“If anyone thinks I entered politics only to solve the economic disaster that the previous government left in behind, they are making a big mistake, said the finance minister.

Lapid is proving himself to be a smart politician. He has the secular anti-Haredi public’s vote in his pocket, no matter what. He can scream to the rafters over compromises on the “Peri Committee” recommendations for equal military service for citizens  - well, at least for Jews – and can still agree to a compromise.

His threat to “dissolve the coalition” is real, but neither he nor the anti-Haredi public will mind if a small compromise is made because they know that a political bird in the hand is worth two doubtful birds in the bush. The alternative is a new coalition – probably one with Haredim – or new elections. Both options are really non-starters.

His party took home 19 seats to catapult his fledgling party into the number two spot, behind Likud Beiteinu, on the strength of his demand for equal burden in the draft, a break for the middle class and concessions to the Palestinian Authority for the sake of a peace agreement.

In fact, he has taken positions four-square against the demands of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Lapid even has sounded like a mild nationalist, stating that Jerusalem cannot be divided and making the totally impractical suggestion that Abbas take a step back and agree for interim borders for a new PA state. He even has approved funding for Ariel University located in central Samaria.

Concessions to the Haredim on the military draft is his red line, as he made clear on Monday after Naftali Bennett, chairman  of the Jewish Home party, argued against the Peri panel’s recommendations for criminal charges against draft dodgers.

He said he “does not want to see a police battalion” storm Bnei Brak to arrests Haredim draft evaders.

As with most apparent political crises in Israel, the hot air is a warning to the other side not to try to throw too much cold water on an issue, which in this case is the draft. After all of the thunder and lightning, some kind of compromise will be reached, such as changing the tone of the clause requiring criminal action against draft dodgers in return for extending the military draft for Hesder yeshiva students.

All of the noise has another advantage. It drowns out any mention of the massive draft dodging among many secular Israelis, the ones who voted for Lapid.

The drum beats for dissolving the coalition and risking new elections also silences any reminder about any obligation for the Arab sector.

If Bennett does not want to see a police battalion deployed in Bnei Brak, Lapid would fall over himself before allowing a police battalion to enter Umm-al-Fahm, home of the northern branch of the radical Islamic Movement.

Likud Beiteinu Tourism Minister Uzi Landau asked on Sunday why the Peri Committee did not recommend forcing Israeli Arabs to fulfill a duty of national service.

One obvious reason is that while there is a political benefit from taking aim at the Haredi public, no one is going to switch political support for someone who makes demands of the Arab sector.

Besides, the police would not dare storm Umm-al-Fahm.

And Lapid knows that Bnei Brak would not be a piece of cake, either.

Ten police officers were injured, one seriously, six required medical care in hospital, at a Thursday night demonstration of an estimated 35 thousand Haredim (police estimated the crowd at 25 thousand, the higher estimate comes from Channel 10 News), in front of the recruiting office in Jerusalem. Three demonstrators were also injured and were taken to hospital. Eight Haredi demonstrators were arrested for questioning.

Thousands of Haredim protested in front of the IDF recruiting office in Jerusalem, May 16, 2013. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

The demonstrators rallied “against the evil decree of conscription,” following publication of the proceedings of Minister Yaakov Perry’s “Equal Burden” Committee. Driven mostly by the more radical members of the Haredi community—while the established Haredi parties and political institutions did not urge their supporters to join, and some, including Rav Ovadia Yosef, discouraged participation—demonstrators threw stones and water bottles at the crowd control police, pushed garbage collection carts at them and set fire to garbage containers.

Jerusalem Police Chief Yossi Parienti said the protest organizers failed to meet the terms of their license and the police will investigate them.

Giant ads posted in Haredi neighborhoods called for a “rally of tens of thousands” against “the Zionist regime in the Holy Land,” which is engaged in a culture war against the Haredi population.

“Remember, your fate and the fate of your descendants is in your hands,” said the rally ads issued by Haredi community leaders, arguing that only participation by tens of thousands in the protest would save the public from the scourge of the draft.

The head judge of the Eda Haredit (Haredi Community) court, Rabbi Tuvia Weiss, told the protesters that the Haredi Community opposes any compromise on the draft. Finance Minister Yair Lapid said that his party will fulfill its promise to voters on the equal burden. He wrote on his Facebook page that serving in the IDF is not an “evil decree.”

The office of Minister Yaakov Perry response to the rally was that the emerging new bill regarding the draft is part of a much needed reform necessitated by the reality in Israel and the current state of sharing the national burden, alongside the preservation of the value of Torah study. According to the committee, the recommended path for Haredi society begins with military service and continues into civilian employment.

Tomorrow, Friday, is Rosh Chodesh Sivan (six more shopping days until Shavuos), and as they have done every Rosh Chodesh, the Women of the Wall have announced that they’ll meet y’all at the women’s section of the Kotel. Except this time around they’re doing it with judicial sanction, following two decisions—one of them after a dead-in-the-water appeal by police—of Jerusalem courts that the ladies’ prayer, with tallit and tefillin, does not constitute a violation of the public order.

Which means they won’t be arrested, as has been the case for some 25 years. And if anyone dare yell at them, or spit, or tell them they’re going to hell in a decorative tallis bag – they, the WOW opponents would likely be cuffed and detained by the men and women in black.

Yes, they’ve won a battle, a long one at that—but the war is far from over.

On Tuesday, as Kikar Hashabbat reported, United Torah Judaism MKs held a special meeting with the deans and principals of the major Orthodox women’s seminaries in Israel, and it was decided to initiate a central prayer service at the Kotel, with, possibly, thousands of seminary students, as they put it: in response to the provocation by the Women of the Wall.

A senior UTJ source told Kikar Hashabbat that they’re not looking to create a counter provocation, only to prove to all the people of Israel that kosher Jewish women are the true women of the Wall, who pray and supplicate by the Kotel year-round, not just on Rosh Chodesh, and not to start riots.

There’s probably a secret place in a dungeon under some Casbah, where all the press officers for all the different organizations in the world can meet late at night and critique each other’s self righteous lies. This one probably wins a big, free drink next meeting…

Just in case, during the Knesset debate of the WOW V. WOW extravaganza, a representative the Police Department said that—in keeping with the recent Magistrate Court order, the police would protect the Women of the Wall from harm.

Take that, other Women of the Wall!

On Thursday, the day before Rosh Chodesh, it turns out that several Haredi leaders, including, most prominently, Maran Aharon Leib Shteinman, widely regarded as the Gadol Hador for Lithuanians, have determined that thousands of seminary students may leave home early Friday morning for a heartfelt prayer at the plaza by the “remnant of our Temple, the Western Wall.”

Meanwhile, a contingency of Orthodox “Women for the Wall” announced that they, too, are coming at 6:30 AM—best way to get a good spot at this point—to pray and recite Psalms “for the sake of Israel and against the greatest threats to the Torah and Judaism born by the Women of the Wall.”

Their initiative has won the support of two prominent National Religious religious Zionist rabbis: Rabbi Dov Lior and Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu—provided they agree to abstain from violence.

Anyone who uses the words “cat” and “fight” in the comments below this report gets a stern warning for sure…

“We just want to pray quietly and with kavanah (deliberately),” Ronit Peskin, director of “Women for Wall,” told Srugim. “Women need to pray and demonstrate that they could set an example, without reacting to their screaming and provocative behavior.”

She stressed that every woman must come with full intention of sanctifying God in every part of her manner and prayers.

Shira Pruce, Director of Public Relations for then original Women of the Wall told The Jewish Press that she was honored and delighted for having inspired so many thousands of women to come and pray at the Kotel on Rosh Chodesh.

“If women of the Wall has inspired thousands of women to come to the Kotel, Amen V’amen,” she said.

Which was the quote I was hoping for, naturally.

In fact, in the spirit of peace and mutual respect, the WOW leadership has acquiesced this one time only to obey the police instructions and not bring out a Torah scroll to their event. Apparently, according to the cops’ psak, it’s fine for women to wear tallit and teffilin, but it violates something terrible if they dare hold up a Torah.

In an unusual move, police have detained the Jerusalem Mufti, Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, on Wednesday, according to an AP report.

The detention followed Arab attacks and violence against Temple Mount tourists on Tuesday.

The police did not say what the Mufti’s specific involvement was.

Over the past few months, Arabs have been escalating the level of their violent attacks on the Temple Mount to include stoning and firebombs.

In April, the Waqf, controlled by the Mufti, informed the Prime Minister of Israel that “World War 3″ would break out if MK Moshe Feiglin visited the Temple Mount.

In 2006, Hussein stated in an interview that suicide bombing by Palestinians against Israelis was “legitimate, of course, as long as it plays a role in the resistance”.

In 2011, at an event marking the 47th anniversary of the founding of the terrorist organization Fatah, Hussein quoted a controversial hadith, stating: “The Hour will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jews will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

In short, the man’s got a history.

Police said the Mufti would be released later today, but still, even for this short time, this was a nice gift to Israel on Jerusalem Liberation Day.

Toronto area police figuratively twisted the arm of a Chabad synagogue rabbi to cancel a scheduled appearance of radical Islam whistleblower Pamela Geller, who last month also was yanked from a speaking appearance  at a New York synagogue.

The latest politically correct censorship keeps Geller out of  the Chabad Thornhill synagogue in suburban Toronto, where she was due to speak next Monday.

Geller has campaigned against the Islamization of America, and she has been behind the anti-jihad signs that were posted in the New York’s subway system.

The salt in the wound inflicted by the Toronto police ban is that it was instituted by none other than the hate crimes unit of the police. Preaching against hate is grounds for a hate crime in the New Age New Speak.

And it just so happens that the Chabad synagogue Rabbi Mendel Kaplan is the same rabbi who serves as police chaplain.

Therefore, according to the York Regional Police Department’s logic, Geller’s appearance at the synagogue where he is rabbi “would place him in conflict with the values of our organization, which support a safe, welcoming and inclusive community for all.”

That is New Age talk for a “safe, welcoming and exclusive community for all” who are not included, such as Geller.

Police deny that they “threatened” to remove Rabbi Kaplan as police chaplain if he were to allow Geller to speak, but a York Regional Police spokesman told the Toronto Sun that if she spoke at the synagogue, “Then we’d have to reassess our relationship with [him].”

That is not a threat in New Speak. It is a “hint.”

The Jewish Defense League has rescheduled Geller to speak somewhere else in the city, but the police have not yet said she cannot appear.

The Canadians United against Terror group is launching an “anti-bullying” campaign and will picket York Regional Police headquarters Wednesday evening.

They have support from the capital’s newspaper, the Ottawa Citizen.

It wrote in an editorial last week, “The York Regional Police department should be ashamed. ….Insp. Ricky Veerappan, who heads up the force’s so-called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Bureau, … told a reporter, “Some of the stuff that Ms. Geller speaks about runs contrary to the values of York Regional Police and the work we do in engaging our communities…..

“Veerappan’s conduct is appalling. Canadians expect police to respect Charter provisions protecting freedom of speech. They are not supposed to act as censors at the behest of a particular community.”

By the way, Veerappan is a member of  York Region’s Muslim community, which wanted to bar Geller from the country altogether, according to the Citizen.

Geller is familiar with censorship by those who not politically correct.

The Great Neck Synagogue in suburban New York last month canceled her appearance because of “security concerns.”

The synagogue explained to members on its website, “As the notoriety and media exposure of the planned program this Sunday have increased, so has the legal liability and potential security exposure of our institution and its member families.

“In an era of heightened security concerns, it is irresponsible to jeopardize the safety of those who call Great Neck Synagogue home, especially our children, even at the risk of diverting attention from a potentially important voice in the ongoing debate.”

Is there a concern for security stemming from the spreads of radical Islam in America?

Geller said in response to the ban at the Great Neck synagogue, “It is a very sad day for freedom-loving peoples when fascist tactics trump free speech.”