Main > Missionary activities > Yad L’Achim Battling Huge Missionary Campaign in South

Yad L’Achim Battling Huge Missionary Campaign in South

November 20, 2013

A battle over every intersection. Yad L'Achim activists block the phone number of the missionary hotline at the Lehavim junction in the south

The missionaries are waging a massive shemad campaign throughout southern Israel. As part of the campaign, they are unfurling huge banners at busy intersections and distributing spiritually poisonous propaganda to passersby.

In addition, they are bombarding cities with signs and placards that call on the public to follow in the ways of J., R”l.

At key intersections in Beersheva, Ofakim and Yerucham, missionaries are brandishing signs bearing their message, waving to drivers and handing out brochures. At the same time, they are stuffing mailboxes with their brochures, approaching parked cars with their flyers and implementing a sophisticated telemarketing campaign that offers free books on “that man.”

Attesting to the enormous scope of the missionary campaign in the south is the record number of phone calls that have been pouring into Yad L’Achim’s hotline. Callers are reporting on the missionaries’ constant presence at central intersections, where they hold up signs and distribute dubious material.

In Beersheva, the capital of the Negev, the missionaries have spread out across Reger Steet, the city’s main thoroughfare, and key intersections, as well as at the central bus station, the entrance to the industrial zone, the “Big” shopping center, the pedestrian mall, the courthouse area, the university campus, Soroka Medical Center and the municipal open-air market. At each of these central locations, the missionaries have set up booths with huge signs and are distributing missionary material to innocent passersby.

A Yad L’Achim flyer, written in Russian, warns residents in the south of missionary activities in their neighborhoods

In response, Yad L’Achim has been dispatching beefed up teams of activists wherever the missionaries are taking up positions in order to alert the public as to their nefarious goals.

Last Thursday, shortly after the missionaries set up a booth at the Beersheva open-air market, Yad L’Achim activists appeared on the scene, prompting public outrage against attempts to lead Jews astray. Faced with a riot situation, the police asked the missionaries to fold up their booth and leave. The scene was repeated at an academic center, where the missionaries were asked by the campus security people to leave.

As part of their campaign, the missionaries took out ads in the local and national media, including the Calcalist economic newspaper and the local Yediot Negev newspaper. In response, Yad L’Achim took out its own ads, warning the public against falling into the missionaries’ trap. Yad L’Achim even had a role in getting one of the local newspapers to refuse to accept missionary ads.

A short while later, the panicked missionaries announced in one of their internal publications: “Yad L’Achim is trying to block our newspaper advertisements.”

Yad L’Achim’s counter-missionary operations in the south are being coordinated by Rabbi Binyamin Vulcan, who is dispatching teams on the basis of information that is flowing in around the clock.

“In every place where we arrive, within minutes, the general public begins to understand who we’re dealing with and people enlist to help us,” says Rabbi Vulcan. For example, a huge missionary sign hung up on Beersheva’s main street, Rechov Yitzchak Reger, was spontaneously removed by residents.

Yad L’Achim this week reissued its call for an amendment to the missionary law that would put an end to the unchecked spread of missionary activity that is claiming innocent Jewish victims.