Coteret

Rabbi Elitzur

UPDATE: Yaniv Reich provides a handbook for journalists and activists interested in exploring this issue further.

Friday’s (December 11 2009) torching of a mosque in the West Bank village of Yasuf, did not take place in a vacuum.  The “price tag” terror tactic has been public knowledge for more than two years. Rabbis publicly sanction and encourage these attacks.

The Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in Yitzhar is a notable example. Its head, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg,  is the author of Baruch Hagever, an ode to Cave of Patriarchs murderer Baruch Goldstein. In early November the yeshiva’s dean, Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, published the “Handbook for the Killing of Gentiles.” On December 4 he published an article with specific instructions for terror activities in response to the “settlement freeze.”

Investigative reporting by Haaretz has been following the funding sources behind the yeshiva. On November 17, it exposed generous financial support from the Israeli government. This morning (December 15 2009,) it uncovers US federal tax exemptions for its American donors and slams the US administration for sanctioning this practice.

Below is a key excerpt. An annotated full text of the report is provided after the jump. The original yeshiva report to the Israeli Registrar of Associations can be downloaded here. Mondoweiss’s investigative reporting on the Central Fund of Israel can be read here.

This is the same yeshiva whose rabbi said it is permissible to kill gentile babies because of “the future danger that will arise if they are allowed to grow into evil people like their parents.” In his latest book, the head of the yeshiva, Yitzhak Shapira, who bears the honorable title of rabbi, even permits killing anyone “who, through his remarks and so forth, weakens our kingdom” (Obama, beware!)…According to the fund’s latest financial statement, it gave some $8 million to religious organizations in 2006, earmarked for establishing synagogues and schools, aiding the needy and “urgent security needs.”…So the next time the White House spokesman condemns the torching of a mosque near Nablus, some reporter ought to ask him why respectable American citizens contribute to the Od Yosef Chai Shechem yeshiva, one of whose leading rabbis wrote the following incendiary words of incitement: “[Civil] Administration inspectors have not dared to enter Yitzhar since the freeze edict. Their experience with Yitzhar, and its heat, are responsible for the fact that every entry into the settlement by hostile elements requires large forces and ends with extensive damage to army and police equipment, even greater damage to Arab persons and property, and a region that continues to burn in every direction for several days” (Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, Hakol Hayehudi, December 4, 2009).

U.S. tax dollars fund rabbi who excused killing gentile babies

Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent

The White House condemns the torching of a mosque, yet respectable Americans contribute to a yeshiva whose rabbi said it’s okay to kill gentile babies. It is no surprise that the American administration tacitly, if unenthusiastically, accepted the excuse that the map of national priority zones the cabinet approved on Sunday does not violate the decision to freeze construction in the settlements.

Read more…

Adelson

UPDATE/ADDENDUM: December 10 2009 — Noam Sheizaf at Promised Land and Bryan Altinski by e-mail both point out that by supporting this legislation, I’m ultimately undermining the same freedoms I’m trying to defend. Point taken. No end justifies the means. Especially when freedom of speech is at stake. I wrote, “in this atmosphere one is tempted to clutch at straws,” and I have.

On Friday (December 4 2009) we surveyed US casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson’s ongoing intervention in local politics, trading American money for Israeli influence. Engaged for nearly two decades in building a highly effective local network of neo-conservative institutions, Adelson wanted more. In July 2007 he launched Israel Hayom, a blatantly pro-Netanyahu newspaper engaged in highly uncompetitive practices. We quoted Israeli prize laureate Nahum Barnea of Yediot, who, in a recent Globes interview, bluntly warned that Adelson was a clear and present danger to Israeli democracy.

This morning’s (December 9 2009) Maariv reports (full text after jump) that a bi-partisan Knesset bill seeks to bar foreign ownership of Israeli newspapers

A large group of Knesset Members is seeking, through new legislation, to restrict control of the Israeli media by people who live abroad. The bill calls to ban people who are either not citizens or residents of Israel to receive a license to own a newspaper.

Good news.

Lieberman

This has been a terrible year for Israeli democracy. Already fundamentally flawed — more than three million stateless and right-less Palestinians under effective Israeli control for42 years; institutionalized discrimination against an “enfranchised” Arab minority; severe restrictions on religious freedom — what is left is being undermined. The freedom of expression and association of Israeli citizens has driven an extraordinarily open public debate for a country at war. Since the the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000, however, these rights have been constantly questioned by the security establishment and right-wing partisans . The Gaza war accelerated the process exponentially. Dissent was systematically silenced and the domestic media debate was all but monolithic.

Read more…

UPDATED AT BOTTOM

Last Tuesday (December 1 2009) an investigative report in Haaretz  revealed that Machanaim a US 501c3 tax exempt charity is funding the Task Force to Save the Nation and the Land (aka SOS Israel)

the organization that offered every soldier refusing to evacuate a settlement, and the Kfir Brigade soldiers who publicly demonstrated their opposition to evacuation, NIS 1,000 for every day they spend in military prison

Bounty award ceremony

The report criticized the Government for not taking action against a registered association inciting mutiny, noting also that it might be a good idea to ask the US to cease providing tax-exemptions for the funder.

Perhaps in an attempt to improve its image in the eyes of the Israeli public, SOS Israel has expanded its range of monetary awards to IDF soldiers. Arutz Sheva, a settler news service, reports that

A soldier holding the rank of Corporal, was awarded 1,800 shekels ($475) by the SOS Save the Land of Israel group Sunday for shooting a terrorist who tried to kill two Jews at a gas station 10 days ago.

This was too much even for the IDF leadership, which usually avoids any kind of confrontation with the fundamentalist establishment: Channel Ten TV News reported Monday night that legal action could be expected against SOS Israel.

Still no word on the tax-exempt funding from the US, however.

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Further info on the “gas station incident”: (1) Haaretz news report; (2) Video of the Palestinian attacker being run-over by a settler after he had been shot and disabled.

UPDATE: December 9 2009 — Israeli attorney general orders investigation of SOS Israel. Better late than never. Will that be enough for the IRS to rescind tax-exempt status for the US charity funding it?

Steinberg

RELATED POSTS: Israel Harel, Zionist Strategist (on NGO Monitor’s fundamentalist allies) | Globes on the hypocrisy of right-wing “democrats” | NGO Monitor to examine US charity supporting sedition in the IDF (not) | Prof. David Newman: Thanks to NGO Monitor, Israel has joined an elite group of states — Syria and Algeria | Exposing Gerald Steinberg and NGO Monitor, ctd. — Dimming the “halo effect”

Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor, and his associates in government, have entered a new phase in their campaign to suppress Israeli human rights NGOs. This morning (November 27 2009) Haaretz’s English edition ran an op-ed by Steinberg. No longer satisfied with de-legitimization, Israeli neoconservatives have begun taking concrete parliamentary action to silence internal dissent. Because of a sense that some of the remaining freedoms of Israeli democracy — expression and association for Israeli citizens – were under dangerous assault I agreed, for the first time in years,  to byline an op-ed addressing Steinberg’s (both op-eds, side-by-side, can be viewed here). Below is an annotated version of the op-ed, with comprehensive links to supporting documentation.

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