"Protection" rackets happen all over the place. The person or group, often mafia of some sort, extorts his victim, the local business owners, to pay him for protection services. He offers, in exchange for a fee, to protect them from damage to their property and business, from theft, and the like. Often they pressure the resisting business-owner by showing what things they need protection from by wreaking havoc on the business, causing damage until they acquiesce.

In the Geula neighborhood of Jerusalem, the thugs, the ones who call themselves the sikrikim, wreak havoc on the local businesses. In the name of God they break windows, damage property, cause injury to people when they feel something is detrimental to their neighborhood, to their lifestyle.

Or, maybe they do so for other reasons. Maybe all that fighting, all that rioting, all that damage caused to shops in the name of tzniyus and whatever other excuses they used to justify their behavior, was all just the beginning of the extortion of a protection racket. Maybe they were just showing the local shops what will happen if they do not have the protection.

Bechadrei is reporting that yesterday they smashed the windows of a local ice cream shop and also left in the shop rotten fish and soiled diapers. In addition, they continued their fight against the Ohr HaChaim bookstore by gluing shut the locks on the store overnight.

That is nothing new, except perhaps the intensity. They have been doing this for a while. But now, according to the Bechadrei report, some young guys from the neighborhood have approached the storeowners who have suffered the damage and they offered protection services for a significant fee, promising that if they pay for the protection, their stores will no longer be attacked by the sikrikim thugs.

So, was it really all done in the name of God, in the name of keeping their lifestyle pure as they see it, or was it just a lead-up to a protection racket?

Or maybe they were really doing it to keep the neighborhood, and the protection is being offered by other people, enterprising young men. I'd like to see, if they are not in coordination with the thugs, how they plan to fend off the thugs next time they come to protest a shop.