THREE Israeli rabbis have added their weight to a new ultra-Orthodox campaign which uses scare tactics to prevent their communities from surfing the Internet.

The campaign claims that the internet, among other things, causes droughts and cancer.

One poster in an Haredi area claims:

Where there is Internet, there are no rains. Let’s remove the idolatry from among us. Hundreds of thousands of cancer patients (suffer) because of the Internet.

YNet News reports that, fearing the community’s exposure to secular culture, different establishments within the haredi sector published the intimidating declarations, in addition to quotes from prominent rabbis – among them Rabbi Ovadia YosefÂ – that describe Internet use as the root of impurity.

Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv was quoted as saying:

The connection to the Internet is an abomination, and the one who does it in his home brings abomination into his home.

And Rabbi Shmuel Halevi Wosner reportedly said:

The Internet causes disease and all types of adversity. Since the creation of the world, there has never been invented a tool so dangerous and corrupting like it.

Hat Tip: Michael Cohen

