The Internet causes draught and terminal disease - so claims a new marketing campaign publicized in the ultra-Orthodox community and aims to curb use of the world wide web.
"Where there is Internet, there are no rains," read one of the posters that were pasted in central haredi spots. "Let's remove the idolatry from among us. Hundreds of thousands of cancer patients (suffer) because of the Internet."
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 Yosef - that describe Internet use as the root of impurity.
"The connection to the Internet is an abomination, and the one who does it in his home brings abomination into his home," Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv was quoted as saying.
"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," reportedly wrote Rabbi Shmuel Halevi Wosner.
The fear-inducing posters blame the inability of teenagers to study and the destruction of tens of thousands of homes on the web, and use gimatria, which assigns numeric values to Hebrew letters, to prove that Internet equals cancer.
