“Only in Museums”: When Hatred Drops the Mask

After two Chareidi babies died, a leading media voice said the quiet part out loud — and exposed a moral collapse that can no longer be ignored

In the aftermath of the horrific tragedy in a Jerusalem daycare — where two innocent babies, just three and four months old, lost their lives — Israel crossed a line that should terrify every thinking Jew.

As families were sitting in shock, as parents clutched incubators and prayed for breath and life, something darker surfaced online. There were voices that didn’t merely lack compassion — they rejoiced. “Two less Chareidim,” some wrote. Not arguments. Not policy. Not ideology. Celebration at the death of babies.

That alone should have stopped the country in its tracks.

Even Yair Lapid — hardly known for restraint when it comes to inciting against Chareidim — felt compelled to condemn the reactions, writing that the death of infants is “terrible and heartbreaking” and must never be dragged into political debate.

But the most chilling moment came not from anonymous trolls.

It came from the media itself.

A reporter from Channel 13 wrote publicly on X:

“The goal that the State of Israel should strive for: that in 50 years there will be no Chareidi society. At all. Only in museums.”

Read that again. Slowly.

Not reform.
Not integration.
Not disagreement.

Erasure.

The tweet was eventually deleted — not because it was false, but because it was seen. And once seen, it could not be unseen. The responses were swift and furious. One person asked a question that cut to the bone: “Is this in German?” Others asked the obvious — what would happen if the word “Chareidi” were replaced with “Arab” or “leftist”?

The answer, of course, is obvious. Careers would end. Investigations would open. Headlines would scream “fascism.”

But when it comes to Chareidim, the rules change.

The reporter later issued a so-called clarification. He claimed he was misunderstood. That he meant something “sociological,” not theological. That in the 21st century, there is “no place for a closed society” and that Chareidim represent an “existential threat.”

This is not an apology.
It is a refinement of the same hatred.

Let’s be clear: calling for the disappearance of an entire Torah-observant community — especially in the wake of dead babies — is not social commentary. It is dehumanization.

And once a group is dehumanized, anything becomes permissible.

What makes this even more obscene is the hypocrisy. In recent years, horrific abuse cases were exposed in secular Israeli daycares — real crimes, real victims. Yet no one declared that secular society should be “eliminated.” No one suggested it belongs in museums. No one blamed an entire ציבור.

Only when tragedy strikes Chareidim does the mask slip.

This is not about daycare policy.
This is not about sociology.
This is about a decades-long campaign to turn Chareidim into Israel’s acceptable target — blamed, mocked, stripped of dignity, and now, apparently, written out of the future altogether.

And here is the uncomfortable truth many refuse to face:

When people cheer dead babies, when mainstream media figures fantasize about a future without Torah Jews, when entire communities are portrayed as a disease to be eradicated — this is no longer political disagreement.

This is moral rot.

A society that cannot weep for a dead child because of how his parents live has already lost its way. A media culture that dreams of museums instead of בתי מדרש has forgotten what kept the Jewish people alive for 3,000 years.

The Chareidi world does not need to justify its existence to anyone.
It does not need permission to live, learn, or raise children.

And no amount of incitement — dressed up as “modernity” or “progress” — will erase the people of the Torah.

Not in 50 years.
Not ever.