The word "nigger" features prominently in the videos taken by Eddie Beckford and his wife Lura, a Messianic Christian couple living in the desert town of Arad. The videos, going back to 2005, show anywhere from a handful to a mob of local Gur Hassidim harassing them and other Messianics in town. Eddie Beckford, 61, is a black American, hence the racial slur.
"Nigger, go back to Harlem!" chants one gleeful man in the midst of hundreds of shouting, singing, fired-up hassidim...
The term "bastard" is also popular with the Gur Hassidim seen in the videos, but it's usually in reference to Jesus...About two months after the video was taken, the club, near the entrance to the town's market, was burned down in the middle of the night. (Rebuilt, it now has bars over the rear entrance.) Some time later, dozens of liters of gasoline were poured around the club's perimeter in the daytime, when several elderly Russian immigrants were playing chess inside, say local Messianics.
Members of the Arad congregation, which numbers about 50, say they've had their tires slashed dozens of times. They've been surrounded, threatened and cursed by Gur Hassidim in the market, on the streets or in their homes for about five years. In all this time they can only recall one arrest of a suspect, and he was released immediately...
Virtually every Tuesday night, about 15 of them come to chant outside his house. "This is where we used to hold our prayer meetings. They got a permit to demonstrate, and now we hold the prayer meetings elsewhere, but they keep coming to my house and bothering my wife and kids...Full Story
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