Sunday December 9 1:26 AM EST

Yidel Samet dies from blow at Protest

By MOSHE GROYNEM, HasidicNews.com Writer

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL (HN) - Reb Yidel Samet, 75 died last week in Israel from a blow he suffered. The son of the owner of a video store in the Geulah neighborhood in Jerusalem knocked the man to the ground in an attempt to push the man away from the store.

The video store, situated in the heart of the ultra-orthodox Hasidic neighborhood has long been a big controversy among the local Hasidic community. Hasidim do not own VCR's or watch movies, let alone adult movies that the store also offered. Leaders in the community claimed that the store was ruining the community and exposing innocent young Hasidim to movies and adult content. They had long urged it be closed.

On that particular day, some Hasidim were protesting against the store and reportedly throwing rocks at it, when Reb Yidel Samet, an elderly community member active in the campaign against the store, passed by. He stopped by to help in the protest when the owner called the police in fear, and attempted to disperse the crowd and the stone-throwers, in the course of which the man was knocked to the ground and suffered a concussion. He was taken the hospital and pronounced dead several days thereafter.

Bystanders caught the incident on video. The incident had, thus, generated public outrage in the community. Hasidim in the US were calling for a protest during the Israeli Prime Minister Arik Sharon's visit last week to the US. They were seeing the incident as just one more manifestation of the sinfulness of the Jewish state and its anti-religious and anti-god agenda. Only after the three suicide bombings occurred, did they call off the protest, so as to not to stage a protest in such a sensitive timing.

Several days after the incident the store was set on fire and destroyed.