Rabbis’ disgrace

Analysis, Boaz Okon, Yediot, December 8 2010 [front-page; Hebrew original here and at the bottom of this post]

Okon

In 1834, a clothes salesman in London refused to sell an article of clothing to a customer.  The refusal stemmed from the fact that the buyer was “just a Jew.”The Jewish buyer sued the salesman, but the court in the Timothy case supported the salesman.  It was not a just trial, but the judge employed a sacred principle, the freedom of contracts, according to which a person can choose with whom he wants to enter into a contract and whom he does not.  This sanctity was a disgrace and a refuge for ugly prejudice.  The court’s non-intervention only supplied ammunition to the strong and violent versus the human and the weak, and the usual outcome of giving “freedom to wolves,” as Prof. Isaiah Berlin put it, is “death for sheep.”  Since then, the sanctity of the freedom of contracts has been made subject to the demand of good faith.  It can no longer serve as a refuge for racists.  In the Israeli ruling in the case of Naamne vs. Kibbutz Kalia, Judge Miriam Mizrahi ruled that one cannot rely on freedom of contracts to prevent Arabs from entering a water park.

Now Jewish clerics are using a different sanctity, the sanctity of the Torah, to cover their racist shame.  They will find that the sanctity cannot legitimize the ugliness.  Their prejudice will also be consigned to the dustbin of history, along with the ridiculous ritual that surrounds it.

The infamous Nuremberg Laws forbade, in 1935, mixed marriages between Jews and Germans, and barred Jews from employing German maids (under age 45) and laborers.  This prohibition was intended to portray the Jews as a kind of pest, not quite human.  They became a persecuted bloc on the basis of generalizations and slander.  Gideon Hausner, the prosecutor at the Eichmann trial, would later say that in Israel, “we do not make ethnic distinctions.”  But here, rabbis, who receive their pay from the state coffers, forbid people to rent apartments to Gentiles, to Arabs, because it “causes evil and makes the public commit the sin of intermarriage,” and because they have among them “enemies and people who persecute us to the point of endangering lives.”

The racism does not start with the rabbis.  Discrimination is everywhere, in almost every neighborhood.  For this very reason, we must not stand by when people try to turn it into ideology.  In 2004, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel sought to rein in inciting rabbis by instituting disciplinary proceedings against them based on the Jewish religious services law, which forbids a rabbi to behave “in a manner unbecoming the standing of a rabbi in Israel.”  Nothing was done.  The feeble response only increased the rabbis’ impudence.  And so it happens that rabbis can excel in quoting Biblical verses but still have the morals of gang leaders.  If they cannot be prevented from holding benighted opinions, they can be prevented from receiving a salary from the state, a salary that is also funded by taxes paid by Arabs.  The criminal code states explicitly that “anyone who publishes something with the aim of racist incitement is subject to five years of imprisonment.”  Racism is defined there as “persecution, humiliation, shaming… or inciting antagonism towards… parts of the population… due to affiliation with a particular race or national-ethnic origin.”  The silence of the law enforcement agencies towards displays of racism is not a sign of liberalism or tolerance.  It is a sign of weakness.  If this law is not implemented, darkness will prevail in which we will not be able to distinguish rabbi from charlatan, angel from demon.  In practice, this could mark the end of the rule of law.

What’s the problem?

Well, for starters, in its Safety and Security rules, Birthright makes an explicit commitment to participants, parents and, presumably, insurers:

Our tours do not travel to or through areas of the West Bank, Gaza or East Jerusalem, other than the Jewish Quarter of the Old City.

In addition, Birthright has been repeatedly criticized for providing young Jewish-Americans a skewed perception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some of the most scathing criticism has come from within the Jewish-American community. For example, here is a remarkable piece of soul-searching from a Hillel campus organizer:

So what am I doing behind this Birthright table, trying to rally Jews and only Jews to go to Israel with a program whose agenda is to make them rabid, unquestioning supporters of its actions?

Birthright has a response to this kind of criticism, which is particularly interesting in the context of the Hebron visit video:

“The conflict bubbles up,” said Barry Chazan, a professor emeritus of education at Hebrew University and education director for Birthright Israel.

“But it’s not a seminar in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. … The fact that they don’t meet the head of the Palestinian Authority doesn’t mean they’re not experiencing issues of the conflict.”

Indeed.

Invitation to seminar

On Friday, July 9, the Ministry of Justice and the Jewish Legal Heritage Society will present a two-day seminar on Jewish laws concerning the Land of Israel.  [An invitation in Hebrew can be seen here and a translation is appended at the bottom of this post. H/T Dena Shunra.]

While I am not an expert on Jewish law, even a layman’s superficial examination of the itinerary reveals an extremely problematic agenda for a government. At best, this event serves as an official stamp of approval for the settlement movement; at worst, it provides legitimacy for extremist and hateful views. Here are the discussion topics:

Lior

Rabbi Dov Lior, the Chief Rabbi of the settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, provides the most extreme example.  At the New Jewish Congress in November 2007, Rabbi Lior called for a “return to real Zionism,” explaining that the Jewish People must settle and conquer the Land of Israel and that the latter commandment:

involves military force, with all the associated risks.  For many years we did not have the ability to fulfill this Torah commandment, but now we can – and so we must!  We must not fear the threats of the evil ones, but we must rather persist, and not allow the weakness of our government to become a ‘weeping for generations.’

There is no term in the Halacha that states one must consider innocents during war. Of course we must stop terrorists from shooting, even if the only way to do so includes harming civilians.

Even more remarkable is Rabbi Lior’s view of Baruch Goldstein’s terrorist attack in Hebron in 1994, when he murdered 29 Palestinian worshippers in the Cave of the Patriarchs and injured many more.  When Goldstein’s coffin was brought to Rabbi Lior’s own settlement of Kiryat Arba for burial, Lior delivered a eulogy in which he praised Goldstein, saying that he:

was full of love for fellow human beings. He dedicated himself to helping others.

Rakover

Another lecturer headlining the event will be former Israeli Deputy Attorney General Professor Nachum Rakover, President of the Jewish Legal Heritage Society.  In an interview with BBC, Rakover posited that — when it comes to Israel — any State law that provides an obstacle to settling the Land of Israel in its entirety should be subverted.  The quote reads:

Our right to the ‘Land of Israel’ is a very important precept, according to the Torah.  There is a Hebrew idiom – the law of the land is the law – but there are laws between man and God which cannot be changed.  This applies to giving up land because the settlement of Jews in the ‘Land of Israel’ is one of the most important precepts of the Torah. The Torah was given for the purpose that Jews will preserve the Torah in the ‘Land of Israel’ in its entirety.

Ministry of Justice

The Jewish Legal Heritage Society

—

Seminar on Jewish Law: The Land of Israel: Vision and Fulfillment

Friday-Saturday night, 27-28 Tammuz, 5770 (July 9-10, 2010)

Plaza Hotel, Upper Nazareth

Tour on Friday

Lectures on Saturday

• The centrality of the Land of Israel in Jewish and general law
• The commandment of settling the Land of Israel: “And you shall inherit it and you shall reside therein” – Nahmanides
• Obligation to take risks to settle the Land of Israel
• The commandment of redeeming land in the Land of Israel
• “And the land shall not be sold in perpetuity”
• “Show no mercy unto them”
• “Every person has four cubits in the Land of Israel”

With:

• Rabbi Yaacov Ariel, Rabbi of Ramat Gan
• Prof. Dov Lior, Rabbi of Kiryat Arba-Hebron, head of Yeshivat Nir
• Lawyer Michal Tikochinsky, Beit Morasha
• Prof. Nachum Rakover, the Jewish Legal Heritage Society

—

The seminar will begin on Friday morning. The tour, in honor of the 150^th anniversary of the birth of Theodor Herzl, will be run by the Jewish National Fund. On the tour we will go back to the days of redeeming land in the Land of Israel, visit beautiful, special and interesting sites, and observe past and future projects. We will visit settlement outposts and have lunch at the JNF center in Lavi Forest. We will conclude with a visit to Beit Keshet, and go from there to the Plaza Hotel in Nazareth.

Buses will be available from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa.

The trip will be guided by representatives of the JNF.

For further information: Tel: 02-624-7041, Fax: 02-624-0162, email: jewishl@zahav.net.il

—–

—–

Lag B’Omer is a secondary Jewish holiday dating to Talmudic times whose origins are obscure. In Israel, one of its most widespread manifestations is the lighting of bonfires on the holiday eve, which this year (2010) occurs on Saturday, May 1.

Some celebrate by burning symbols of enemies in the bonfires. When I was a child, notebooks from the classes of particularly hated teachers served that purpose. In recent years, right-wing groups have organized to encourage the burning of photos and effigies of national enemies.

On Thursday (April 22 2010), IDF Radio revealed that a Kahanist group was adding a new national enemy to the pantheon of effigies burned at bonfires and getting ready for a mass distribution of the materials required. One of the organizers told listeners:

Today the enemy of Israel, even though he does not pretend to be an enemy of Israel, is Barack Hussein Obama. Just like you said that you used to burn pictures of Israel’s enemies. That is how I remember that I too used to burn pictures of Arafat, Sheikh Yassin, Hussein. Today our enemy is Obama.

It will be interesting to see whether the Anti-Defamation League will weigh-in on this new development.

Effigies of Obama distributed for burning on Lag B’Omer

Ma Boer, IDF Radio, April 22 2010 10:24 [Click here to listen to original recording in Hebrew]

Rino Tzror: Hello to Guy Varon, our correspondent in the territories. So they started to distribute effigies and pictures of Obama?

Guy Varon: After we have seen right-wing activists burning pictures of Saddam, Nasrallah and Arafat in recent years on Lag B’Omer, this year there is a new star, US Pres. Barack Obama.

Rino Tzror: Did you see an effigy of Obama?Guy Varon: We saw the effigies and the pictures. I also want to add that we say Barack Obama. These right wing people really like to say Hussein Obama.

Rino Tzror: Right.

Guy Varon: Pictures and effigies of the superpower leader will be distributed this year ahead of Lag B’Omer by rightwing activists. They explained that as far as they are concerned he is an enemy of Israel. His behavior harms Israel more than anything. For them the message is that Obama is bad for the Jews.

Rino Tzror: And they’re going to burn him on bonfires, like they used to burn pictures of Hitler, of all kinds of enemies of Israel. Is that the way Obama is going to be treated this Lag B’Omer?

Guy Varon: That is definitely the intention of the people who are giving out the pictures and the effigies.

Rino Tzror: Stay with us. Now we are going to talk to Bentzy Gopstein. Good morning.

Bentzy Gopstein: Good morning Rino.

Rino Tzror: You are a follower of Kahane, right?

Bentzy Gopstein: Right.

Rino Tzror: Who started this project of Obama effigies?

Bentzy Gopstein: There are a few friends together. They decided that today the enemy of Israel, even though he does not pretend to be an enemy of Israel, is Barack Hussein Obama. Just like you said that you used to burn pictures of Israel’s enemies. That is how I remember that I too used to burn pictures of Arafat, Sheikh Yassin, Hussein. Today our enemy is Obama.

Rino Tzror: No, I never burned Hussein. We used to burn Hitler. We used to go for the real villains, not the ones who maybe were and maybe weren’t.

Bentzy Gopstein: I don’t think maybe he is and maybe he isn’t. I think that Hussein Obama who wants to freeze construction in Jerusalem every minute, he would even like to just freeze Israel over. He pretends to be a friend but actually he loves Islam. He is an anti-Semite, nothing less.

Rino Tzror: So who is responsible for the actual industry, who produces them, how many, do you have any idea?

Bentzy Gopstein: There are printing presses that print it and then stick it on.

Rino Tzror: What picture of Obama did you choose?

Bentzy Gopstein: A nice one.

Rino Tzror: A nice one. With or without a keffiyeh? Did you add one? Did you touch it up?

Bentzy Gopstein: No keffiyeh. A real picture of him conveys a keffiyeh, even if you don’t put one on him.

Rino Tzror: It conveys it to you. How many effigies did you make?

Bentzy Gopstein: A few hundreds. We are in production now. Some have been made. We distribute through Facebook. We opened the group “Hussein Obama comes to the bonfire.” That is where people will join and receive the effigies.

Rino Tzror: And who are the people who take the effigies or the pictures that they want to burn?

Bentzy Gopstein: A lot of people. We have inquiries from children all over the country.

Rino Tzror: Children. That’s the problem. Maybe you are ruining them.

Bentzy Gopstein: We want to educate children while they are small. When you burn it, when you have a Lag B’Omer bonfire with children, education begins with children. We want to teach them that we have to trust God, not Obama.

Rino Tzror: Thank you, Bentzy Gopstein.

Bentzy Gopstein: You’re welcome.

Feiglin

Moshe Feiglin heads “Manhighut Yehudit — The Jewish Leadership Movement” an extremist theocon group, which in recent years has established a strong presence in the Likud. Feiglin-endorsed candidates performed strongly in the 2008 Likud primaries and make up a large part of the party’s current Knesset caucus. Vice Premier and Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe (Bugi) Yaalon famously used the podium at a Manhigut Yehudit conference to call Peace Now “a virus”.

Writing in Maariv’s online edition ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day warned Israelis that the current geopolitical environment was leading to a second Holocaust (full translation at bottom):

There are two historical lessons that we should remember well from the Holocaust period:

One is that the armies of Czechoslovakia and France, which were much stronger before the war than the German army, went down before it like dominoes, because their leaderships failed to understand the nature of the conflict and based itself on peace processes.

The second lesson, which pertains directly to us as Jews, is that before physical destruction there is spiritual destruction.  Before we are murdered, our dignity is murdered, and we are rendered illegitimate.  Der Stuermer always precedes Auschwitz.  When you agree to be humiliated, you have not forestalled your end, you have brought it closer.  Jewish history is being written today in the State of Israel.  The desire to destroy the state is the same desire to destroy the Jews — to fight against the good.

When the state’s leadership lets Biden or Erdogan or any other diseased leper humiliate us, it sows the hope and uncontrollable desire of destroying us.  When Ahmadinejad started to talk about Israel’s destruction — it should have been clear that from Israel’s standpoint, he had lost his right to take a breath of air in this world.  Since we did not eliminate him, he has been gaining strength, he and his ministers roam freely around the world, whereas Israel has become a pirate ship that has lost the legitimacy for its existence and its ministers are wanted for arrest in European capitals.  We have returned to the days of the “Jewish question,” we are no longer in 2010, we are in nineteen thirty-something.

Whoever warns against a preemptive strike in Iran and prefers to let the world do its work, is behaving just like the Jewish community leaders who sharply attacked anyone who tried to go against the current of the German annihilation machine.  It is clear that resistance had a heavy price.  But the price of appeasement and cooperation was a thousand times more terrible.

Readers abroad who are amazed that the mainstream Israel media provides a platform for this kind of messaging should take a look at this ad, which ran on the front-page of the Jerusalem Post on April 7 2010.

—-

Lessons of the Holocaust are still relevant in 2010

Op-ed, Moshe Feiglin, NRG [Maariv online], April 11 2010 [Hebrew original here]

I am very ashamed of the Holocaust.  How my people were taken, stripped, humiliated, tortured and led—before the eyes of the joyous Poles, Ukrainians, French and other offspring of Christian enlightenment, how newborn babies were impaled on pitchforks on the way to the death pits, how millions were led to the factories of death, and suffocated and burned, fertilizing with our people’s ashes the fields of Poland and Europe—and all with almost no resistance.

I am very proud of the Holocaust.  If the German Asmodeus, the essence of absolute evil in the sharpest and clearest manner ever revealed in history, if it sees me, the Jew, as its ultimate enemy, then that means that I am on the other end of the scale—in other words, there is something very good about my people.  If it represents absolute evil, then it is very afraid of the absolute good — God — that I represent.

There is no way to explain the Holocaust.  I know survivors who are not on speaking terms with God.  I know many who are the opposite.  I have no right to go there — nor do I have either the ability or the desire to do so.  But irrespective of the theological questions surrounding the Holocaust, one clear thing occurred in its wake: Jewish history stopped being written in exile and started to be written in the Land of Israel.

Very soon, the Jewish people is going to become, for the first time since the First Temple period (!), a people the majority of which live in the Holy Land.  This fact constitutes a spiritual critical mass.  Jewish law changes in several realms following the demographic fact that “most of its sons are on [the land].”  The absolute number that we are talking about, the absolute number that we are approaching in the Land of Israel—is chilling.  Six million.

A lamb among 70 wolves may be devoured

In the days after Passover, I though to myself that we may have become enamored with the act of walking on dry land within the sea, with the water like a wall to the right and to the left of us.  I think Ephraim Kishon once wrote that with us, miracles are part of policy or something of the sort—I would be glad for someone to remind me of the exact wording.

The only difference between us and the Israelites of that time is that they saw the water standing next to them—and we choose to ignore it.  We apparently are very devout believers, because we are certain that the sea will never return to its natural state and wash over us.

So I hate to say it, but the natural state is that of the Holocaust, not the days before and after it.  What happened 65 years ago is that God, for a certain period, stopped holding back the sea to the right and the left of us.  What did we think—that a lamb among 70 wolves would never be devoured?

This God, who chose us to be his people to attest to his existence by the fact of our eternal existence, has made us a target for extermination by every evil in the world.  It is certainly understandable why parts of us constantly try to escape this fate.  As individuals, this may be possible—we may be able to assimilate and rid ourselves of this trouble.  But as a people, we cannot escape from our path and destiny.  We cannot exist without them.

When the time of national awakening comes, when the gates of the Land open before us but we insist on remaining merely the bearers of religion in exile, the ground burns under our feet.  And when we flee to the other extreme, create an alternative Israeli nationalism and shun Judaism and the Torah, then even if we have decided that we are no longer Jews, but only normal Israelis, even if we have established a modern state and hold 200 atom bombs in the arsenal — we are still six million Jews under the mounting danger of annihilation.

Our obsessive need to maintain international recognition of our normalcy, is causing us to pay in hard currency of homeland territories and security, in exchange for the peace process — meaning the process of our “acceptance” as a normal people among the nations.

We’ve returned to the days of the “Jewish Question”

There are two historical lessons that we should remember well from the Holocaust period:

One is that the armies of Czechoslovakia and France, which were much stronger before the war than the German army, went down before it like dominoes, because their leaderships failed to understand the nature of the conflict and based itself on peace processes.

The second lesson, which pertains directly to us as Jews, is that before physical destruction there is spiritual destruction.  Before we are murdered, our dignity is murdered, and we are rendered illegitimate.  Der Stuermer always precedes Auschwitz.  When you agree to be humiliated, you have not forestalled your end, you have brought it closer.  Jewish history is being written today in the State of Israel.  The desire to destroy the state is the same desire to destroy the Jews — to fight against the good.

When the state’s leadership lets Biden or Erdogan or any other diseased leper humiliate us, it sows the hope and uncontrollable desire of destroying us.  When Ahmadinejad started to talk about Israel’s destruction — it should have been clear that from Israel’s standpoint, he had lost his right to take a breath of air in this world.  Since we did not eliminate him, he has been gaining strength, he and his ministers roam freely around the world, whereas Israel has become a pirate ship that has lost the legitimacy for its existence and its ministers are wanted for arrest in European capitals.  We have returned to the days of the “Jewish question,” we are no longer in 2010, we are in nineteen thirty-something.

Whoever warns against a preemptive strike in Iran and prefers to let the world do its work, is behaving just like the Jewish community leaders who sharply attacked anyone who tried to go against the current of the German annihilation machine.  It is clear that resistance had a heavy price.  But the price of appeasement and cooperation was a thousand times more terrible.

Kahane

On February 14 2010, Israel Hayom published an article by Efrat Porsher suggesting that the Jewish Defense League (JDL) is reorganizing to defend Israeli speakers on campuses in the US and UK and to “prevent diplomats from enemy countries or from countries that are hostile toward Israel from speaking at university venues.”  Due to the violent history of this organization — such an endeavor should worry the US as it attempts to prevent domestic terrorist attacks.

The JDL was founded in 1968 by Rabbi Meir Kahane, who then immigrated to Israel and established the Kach political party with similar ideological roots.  In 1988, Kach was outlawed under the revised Knesset Elections Law for inciting racism, having advocated for the cleansing of Arabs from Biblical Israel.  Kach and its offshoot, Kahane Chai (“Kahane Lives”) are listed by the State Department as foreign terrorist organizations.  In recent months, Knesset Member Michael Ben-Ari has asked to hold a discussion in the Knesset in commemoration of Kahane, which Israel Radio commentator Moshe Negbi compared to a memorial session for a Hamas terrorist.  In 1989, in response to the murder of Ziva Goldovsky “for nationalist reasons” by an Arab man during the First Intifada, Kahane wrote:

Let every Jewish parent remember the tragedy of this 18 year old Jewish child and look to their own. Those who love their children- know what the Arabs would do to them! See what the Arabs did to Ziva Goldovsky and know that this is what awaits our own. And look what the Jewish Left did to an 18 year old child, and make an oath never to let it happen to our own. Mapam Youth, Hashomer HaTzair, Ratz Youth, Habonim, Dror. These are the youth groups of the Left that destroy the Jewish soul on their way to murdering the Jewish body.

Ben Ari

With such roots, it is not surprising that although — explicitly — the JDL renounces terrorism and felonious acts (along with racism), numerous arrests of their leaders and members strongly suggest otherwise.One such arrest clearly indicates their status as a terrorist organization: In December 2001, JDL Chairman Irv Rubin, 56, and member Earl Krugel, 59 were arrested for planning the bombing of the King Fahd Mosque in Los Angeles and the San Clemente office of freshman Congressional Representative Darrell Issa, R-California. The two plotters met repeatedly during October of that year to plan the attacks, and during one secretly audiotaped meeting, Krugel allegedly said that Arabs “need a wakeup call” and the JDL needed to do something to one of their “filthy” mosques.  In 2002, Rubin – who had served as Chairman of the JDL since 1985 and had been arrested 40 times by his own count – committed suicide while in custody and in 2005, Krugel was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment.

JDL Logo

With such a track record, US counterterrorism authorities should be on high alert for an attempt by the JDL to become active on campuses and other public venues where their enemies may express unacceptable views.  It would be extremely irresponsible and reckless for the US to ignore the possibility that JDL members will use violence or terror, as they have in the past.  In Israel, Yigal Amir was publicly applauded by Kahane supporters for assassinating Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.  Israel has paid a high price for allowing these elements to grow in influence and numbers.  Hopefully, official US silence on this issue is not a sign of complacency. If it is, Americans may soon pay its price.

Ben Ari

Throughout the scandal over Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon’s “boycott” of the J Street sponsored congressional delegation to Israel (a good wrap here,) not one Israeli official, politician or public opinion maker came out in public support of Ayalon. Except that is, MK Michael Ben Ari, a self-proclaimed Kahanist with connections to the JDL, who was recently denied entry into the US. This short interview with the settler news service Arutz 7, is worth reading in full for an understanding of some of the forces supporting Israel’s current foreign policy.

“The guests are part of an anti-Semitic lobby”

MK Dr. Michael Ben Ari praises the deputy foreign minister’s treatment of the US congressmen from the left wing J Street

Benny Tucker, inn, February 18

MK Michael Ben Ari (National Union) tells Arutz 7 that Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon did well to refuse to meet the American Congress people who came here on behalf of the left-wing organization J Street. “Those people do not represent the US administration. They came here on behalf of a hostile organization, J Street, an organization connected to the anti-Zionist left. Yossi Beilin is one of the moderate members of that group. These are people who are connected to the Goldstone report.”

He rejects the Congress people’s claim that they supported Israeli governments through the ages. “They are liars and frauds, as opposed to the AIPAC lobby that really does support all Israeli governments. J Street only supports Israel when it capitulates. The rest of the time they incite against us and it is good that Ayalon showed them we will not be their punching bags and we will know how to defend our honor.”

MK Ben Ari claims that J Street makes cynical use of the Congressmen to restore its status and image. “They want international legitimacy, but everybody knows they are an anti-Semitic lobby that acts against Israel. They are dangerous people and they use the Congress people in order to try to receive legitimacy.”

He doesn’t understand why they are surprised that the deputy foreign minister wouldn’t meet them. “The deputy foreign minister is supposed to meet somebody at his level, like the deputy of Hillary Clinton. Why do they have to meet Congressmen? Can I, MK Michael Ben Ari, meet Hillary Clinton? Of course not, so I don’t understand why they are so surprised. I suggest that people like MK Shlomo Mula, or MK Meir Shetreet and MK Orit Zuaretz go meet them because they support them.”

He says to this day the US refuses to give him an entrance visa and he is not sorry about that. “I received a message from Congressmen that Mitchell told them they do not want people like me to enter the US. Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin does not want to send me to the US either. He prefers to send people like Barake and Tibi to represent Israel there.”

Netanyahu

From a Jerusalem Post report on Sunday’s (January 10 2010) Israeli cabinet meeting:

Basing himself on information provided by the Palestinian Media Watch, Netanyahu said that “incitement continues in the Palestinian media and education system; in its official media outlets and in the schools under its supervision. These serious actions represent a harsh violation of the Palestinians’ international obligation to prevent incitement. I say to the chairman of the Palestinian Authority [Mahmoud Abbas]: Stop the incitement. This is not how peace is made.”

From a report in the January 7 2010 edition of Haaretz:

The Prime Minister’s Office issued a complaint to the White House several days ago lamenting ongoing incitement against Israel by Palestinian leaders.

In the complaint, senior officials in the Prime Minister’s Office urged their American counterparts to demand that Palestinians President Mahmoud Abbas cease to glorify the memory of terrorists who murdered Israelis. The complaint went on to insist that the Palestinians live alongside Israelis peacefully and spread peace. [...]

This complaint is the first of its kind — against Palestinian incitement — to gain media attention in Israel, after many years during which Israel largely refrained from making official complaints, or delivered these complaints discreetly to the Palestinian president.

Rabbi Yisrael Rosen

Haaretz’s Akiva Eldar demonstrates this morning (January 12 2010; full annotated text after the cut) that on this issue Netanyahu is throwing stones from within a glass house:

“Shabbat Beshabato,” [is] a weekly pamphlet on the Torah portion distributed in thousands of copies to synagogues all over Israel. Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, the founder of the Conversion Authority and head of the Tsomet Institute of Halacha and Technology [Hebrew], wrote in the most recent edition that “the time has come ‘to declare war’ on the Israeli Arabs, and of course on the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria, who are not loyal to the state, using clear tests to determine this, and to designate them as ‘enemies.’” [...]

What kind of enlightened democracy finances a body that is behind the publication of unacceptable remarks against its citizens? The Tsomet Institute, like quite a few “rogue elements” (such as the Od Yosef Hai Shechem yeshiva, whose rabbi, Yitzhak Shapira, permits the killing of gentile babies) receives thousands of shekels annually from the state. In 2007-2008, Tsomet received from the Science and Technology Ministry over NIS 580,000, and another NIS 100,000 or so from the Ministry of Education, as well as NIS 200,000 from the Gush Etzion Regional Council.

Yisrael Rosen and his institute are known in the US for their Kosher technological solutions the problems posed by a modern observant life. In Israel, the Rabbi serves as an official consultant to a range [Hebrew] of government bodies, including the Police and the IDF. Incitement, however, is also a regular Rosen product: In 2006 and 2008 he published Halacha interpretations equating Palestinians with Amalek and calling for their destruction.

We have no incitement here

Column, Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, January 12 2010

The prime minister complains, and rightly so, that the Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas took part in a ceremony naming a square after a female terrorist. Really the time has come to change the name of all the squares named after suicide bombers and members of the pre-state undergrounds, murderers and freedom fighters. Benjamin Netanyahu protests, and rightly so, the incitement-filled publications against Israel distributed by the Palestinians.

Indeed, as he said two days ago to American senators, “this is not how you make peace.” This is not the time to encourage religious fanatics and fund extremist organizations that incite against their Jewish neighbors.

Among us, those who incite against the Arab neighbors are always “rogue elements.” So why do Israeli governments irrigate them with public water? Take for example, “Shabbat Beshabato,” a weekly pamphlet on the Torah portion distributed in thousands of copies to synagogues all over Israel. Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, the founder of the Conversion Authority and head of the Tsomet Institute of Halacha and Technology [Hebrew], wrote in the most recent edition that “the time has come ‘to declare war’ on the Israeli Arabs, and of course on the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria, who are not loyal to the state, using clear tests to determine this, and to designate them as ‘enemies.’”

In an article [Hebrew] featured prominently on Tsomet’s Web site, Rosen suggests the ammunition to be used against the Arab citizens: “Taking away rights, also collectively (such as traveling on major arteries), as long as they do not meet the test of loyalty to the state. Also the right to vote for the Knesset, and certainly the right to be elected, are not ‘God-given rights’ and may be encroached on due to disloyalty, and certainly for security reasons, and to protect ourselves from those who would harm us.”

The spiritual leader states that “whoever ‘everyone is against’ runs amok and goes wild.”

An enlightened democracy must not take such remarks to heart. But what kind of enlightened democracy finances a body that is behind the publication of unacceptable remarks against its citizens? The Tsomet Institute, like quite a few “rogue elements” (such as the Od Yosef Hai Shechem yeshiva, whose rabbi, Yitzhak Shapira, permits the killing of gentile babies) receives thousands of shekels annually from the state. In 2007-2008, Tsomet received from the Science and Technology Ministry over NIS 580,000, and another NIS 100,000 or so from the Ministry of Education, as well as NIS 200,000 from the Gush Etzion Regional Council.

“The reason for our inability to implement this ‘war’,” wrote Rabbi Rosen, “lies with our ‘internal enemy.’” And who is this terrible enemy? “Our brethren, the Jews of the left, head by some of the High Court justices who prefer human rights and humanism for our enemies to the security of the state and its citizens (see Route 443).” The halacha teacher warns of a battle against those he refers to as “brothers-enemies,” a cleaner definition than “traitors” or “betrayers.”

Machsom Watch member Edna Kanti, one of the residents of the house on Channel Two’s “Big Brother” show, certainly fits this description. She dared to suggest to the Palestinians that they should refuse to show their documents and cross through the checkpoints en masse. The rabbi suggests dealing with Kanti and others like her “through persuasion alone, and primarily with sharp explanations and even mobilized (sic), perhaps we will be able to dissipate ‘their hostility’ or at least marginalize them.”

Kanti can relate to what this handling is like; alongside the Facebook pages calling [Hebrew] for her to be kicked out of the “house” and thousands of talkbacks denouncing [Hebrew] her, her family is receiving death threats, suggestions to trade her for Gilad Shalit and so on. Her friends, who want to maintain the Palestinians’ dignity at the checkpoints, report that the persuasion methods the settlers use with them include pouring water, curses and violent actions. Rogue elements, as we already noted.

On a more serious note, this type of behavior probably contributed to the State Department’s damning report on religious freedom in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Rabbinate versus Santa Claus

Itamar Eichner, Yediot, December 22 2009 [Hebrew original here]

A recommendation issued by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate to hotels and restaurants has generated new tension between Israel and the Vatican [see this for another recently reported source of tension].

While hotels, restaurants and clubs put up fir trees, Santa Claus dolls and red hats for the Christmas celebration and New Year parties that will take place in the next two weeks, the chief rabbinate  recommends not displaying symbols of the Christian holidays. Moreover, the rabbinical “Lobby for Jewish Values” recently began to take action against restaurants and hotels that intend to put up Christian symbols. “We are considering making public those business establishments that put up Christian symbols for the Christian holidays and will call to boycott them,” said the lobby’s chairman, Ofer Cohen.

Every year, the Jerusalem Rabbinate also acts to ensure that fir trees not adorn places of entertainment. A source in the Kashrut Department said that this is done every year in consent, and that businesses that don’t comply can find their kashrut certificate revoked.

In the wake of reports on the ban, a number of complaints were made to the Foreign Ministry from Christian figures protesting the decision. Among others, the Israeli ambassador to the Vatican received calls from Vatican officials and from Christian media outlets, and US Christian Congress members called the Israeli embassy in Washington. As a result of the protest, the Foreign Ministry called the director general of the Chief Rabbinate, Oded Weiner, and heard from him that this was not a compulsory ban but rather a recommendation relating to the public areas of the hotels and restaurants.

“Our examination of Chief Rabbinate documents show that in a public area it is indeed proper to refrain from displaying Christian symbols as a non-binding suggestion,” said Weiner last night. “Hotels can hold New Year events without this affecting the kashrut of closed halls. But in public areas, symbols that are liable to offend members of other faiths should be avoided.”

The Foreign Ministry, as it does every year, made sure to provide the diplomatic corps in Israel with fir trees. There are about 8,000 foreign diplomats serving in Israel who receive free fir trees from the Foreign Ministry and the JNF.

The land or the state

Op-ed, Gadi Taub, Yediot, December 21 2009

Judging by the reports, it appears that the IDF is preparing to enforce the construction freeze in Judea and Samaria as if this were an attack on nuclear facilities in Iran.  On the face of it, this would seem to be a serious exaggeration.  The security establishment regards the inflammatory rhetoric of the settlers as if this were truly an enemy army numbering 300,000 people.  But the rhetoric is far from the reality.  The settlers will not try to subdue us by arms.  They are used to having the state pamper them, and they believe that the “price tag” policy will deter us.

Although this is not an enemy army, we are talking about a fundamental clash between two kinds of Zionism, which are incompatible, and therefore we should not make light of the magnitude of the shock that we will undergo before we succeed in dividing the land.  The Zionism of the settlers is a Zionism of the land, while the Zionism that most of us hold is a Zionism of the state.  It is easy to confuse them: The Zionism of Herzl, Ben-Gurion, Weizmann and Jabotinsky is also closely tied to the Land of Israel, whereas the Zionism of the settlers also holds the State of Israel in high regard and is willing to sacrifice a great deal for it.  It is not by chance that the religious settlers volunteer en masse for combat units, and that the spirit of sacrifice on behalf of the collective is a central part of their education.

Despite this, the difference is central and important, and the rift has only been growing since the 1970s.  As Aviezer Ravitzky observed years ago, in his important book Messianism, Zionism and Jewish Religious Radicalism [originally entitled “The Revealed End and the Jewish State” in Hebrew], the disciples of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Hacohen heap praises upon the ideal state, while withholding them from the actual government.

The ideal state is the one that sanctifies settlements, and when the actual government restricts settlements—it loses its legitimacy.  This is what stands behind the freedom that the settlers have taken to block the path of those enforcing the construction ban, to demonstrate at an IDF swearing-in ceremony, to teach the students of hesder yeshivas that they are subject to an authority higher than their commanders.  The state is holy only inasmuch as it promotes settlement activity.

Hanan Porat clarified well the difference between the two types of Zionism—Zionism of the land versus Zionism of the state—when he said in the past that “the commandment of settling the land has several aspects, including Jewish sovereignty over the entire Land of Israel.”  In the eyes of the mainstream, the opposite is true: Jewish sovereignty has several aspects, one of which is settling the land.

This refers, then, to the difference between the end and the means.  In the eyes of the settlers, the state is a means to the end of fulfilling “our duty to the Land of Israel, in immigration and settlement” (as stated by the founding document of Gush Emunim).  In the view of mainstream Zionism, settlement is a means of establishing the sovereignty of the state.

As time passes, it becomes apparent that the difference is a chasm.  The two views can be expected to face each other in a head-on collision: After all, it is clear to any sensible person that Israel stands before the choice between a large state with an Arab majority and a less large state with a Jewish majority.  Loyalty to the Land of Israel has become the most tangible danger to the basic principle of political Zionism: A Jewish and democratic state.

There is no need for panic.  Disengagement demonstrated that at the end of the day, the Zionism of the land will bend to the Zionism of the state, if the state is determined enough.  The settlers have neither the means nor sufficient ideological confidence to part from the state, not to mention declaring war on it.  And although the thorough deployment of the security establishment may look excessive, it is in fact good that it is preparing for the future with great seriousness: Israel has to make it clear to the settlers that Zionism will not tolerate any attempt to place the land above the state that we have established on it.