Rabbi Elitzur, Author of the "Handbook for the Killing of Gentiles"

A group of petitioners on Sunday called on the High Court of Justice to indict two Yitzhar settlement rabbis for writing and marketing a book in which they say Jewish religious law permits the murder of Palestinian babies and that at times it is preferable to deliberately kill innocent people.

“There are reasons for killing babies even though they have not violated the seven sins, because of the danger that will be caused if they are allowed to live and grow up to be as evil as their parents,” the petitioners quoted from the book, “The Torah of the King.”

Attempts to criminalize expression in Israel never succeed. The Attorney General interprets the incitement law very narrowly in accordance with a landmark HCJ ruling from 2000. In the few cases that an investigation is opened, it rarely results in an indictment. The courts are also reluctant to convict and when they do, usually years after the event, the sentences are so light that they have no deterrence value.

Liberal Israelis should be happy that this is the legal state of affairs. It’s no accident that the petition on which the HCJ ruled was submitted by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. Strict limits on freedom of expression undermine democracy and provide a handy tool for government to suppress political opposition — already an emerging problem in Israel.

The petitioners are undoubtedly well intentioned, but they have chosen an ineffective, and ultimately dangerous, mode of action. Their cause would have been better served if they focused their energies on blocking government funding of the yeshiva in question or rescinding federal tax exemptions for its US supporters.

Ben Shohat spoke to the Jewish Voice, a weekly ‘Price Tag‘ organization leaflet. The publication has turned these monologues into a regular feature. Here is this Friday’s edition (December 18 2009; Hebrew original here) toying with GSS agents trying to recruit an informant.

Several weeks ago, the Jewish Voice revealed the story of Shimshon Schlissel, a resident of the settlement of Maale Levona.  The Shin Bet contacted Shimshon trying to arrange a meeting with him, over a cup of coffee, of course…  Shimshon realized exactly what their intentions were and used the Jewish Voice platform to let them know he was not interested.  They, however, did not despair and kept trying.

Shimshon told us later:

I went shopping and suddenly the phone rang.  “Hello, this is Amram, Golan’s partner.  Remember?  Golan talked to you some two weeks ago and we agreed to meet, so I wanted to arrange the meeting.  What would be a good time for you?”

“Listen, I do not want to meet with you at all,” I told him.

There was silence on the other end of the line.  He must have been completely shocked.

Amram regained his senses: “Are you sure?  But we had an agreement?”

“Yes, I am sure!  I do not want to meet you.”

Amram sounded totally stunned.  Another sentence or two and he hung up.

Naturally, the Jewish Voice editorial board can only congratulate Shimshon for having learned the lesson of the (too) many stories and cut off this link.  Strong and blessed [is he].

A word from the editor: Seriously, you there in the Jewish Department [of the Shin Bet]: What is going on?  Do you not relay information from the readers of Jewish Voice to those who draft activists?  He has already said he does not want to go on.

Most startling, however, is an op-ed by Ben Dror Yemini, a senior editor at Maariv, known as a leading crusader against anti-Israeli propaganda and ‘Islamofascism.’ Enraged at the damage done to his efforts by Friday’s (December 11 2009) torching of a mosque in the West Bank village of Yasuf, he penned a full frontal assault on the attackers, the rabbis sanctioning them and the government’s of Israel lack of action on the issue (full text after the jump.)

Israel-haters worldwide were quick to celebrate the pictures of the burned mosque in the village of Yasuf…The hooligans who desecrated a mosque are the enemy because they contributed the most to the delegitimization campaign of the international radical left, led by Ahmadinezhad and Hugo Chavez.  In their acts, they actually helped bolstering those who want to turn Israel into an illegitimate, leper state.  Healthy states know how to curb such phenomena, but here, it seems, we refuse to get the point.  We exercise forgiveness instead.  Sure, the prime minister and the defense minister condemned the act, but where are their acts?  What happened to the basic understanding that the arsonists who torched the mosque are terrorists, and that the harm they inflict on Israel is as grave as terror attacks by Hamas members?  Why do we fail to realize that this is a Jewish mutation of Neo-Nazism?  Why do we not see that they are the enemy, dangerous warriors in the battle against the legitimacy of the State of Israel?…We must not refer to them as a small and marginal minority.  These people are supported by the highest echelons.  Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, the spiritual leader of the religious-Zionists, issued an edict that practically allows Jews to pick olives in plantations that belong to Arabs.

Note that Yemini neglects to address the fact that the some of the Rabbis inciting these actions are recipients of generous government funding. This is not surprising, however, because a frequent source of his, Israel’s premier expert on NGO funding, Prof. Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor, contends that the practice is just a fact of life in Israel, as normal as the funding of youth movements, and does not warrant any extraordinary action. Responding to a direct question on Od Yosef Hai, he tells the Jerusalem Post’s Shmuel Rosner that

the state is used to funnel large sums of money to various sectors and institutions related to political parties  – from kibbuzim to youth movements and yeshivot —  with numerous stops in between.

Here is the Rabbi Eliyahu ruling referenced in the op-ed (quoted by Haaretz on October 25 2002)

Since the land is the inheritance of the People of Israel, planting on this land  by gentiles is planting on land that does not belong to them. If someone plants a tree on my land, both the tree and the fruit it yields belong to me.

Neo-Nazis among us

The mosque desecraters are dangerous enemies who defeat Israel in its struggle for legitimacy.  They are not alone.  Their ideology comes from the top.  Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu allowed Jews to pick the Olives of Arabs.  Those who authorize olive thefts may be comfortable when mosques are desecrated

Op-ed, Ben-Dror Yemini, Maariv, December 15 2009

They are “our boys.”  They are pioneers, salt of the earth, our own flesh and blood.  They sacrificed a life of convenience just to be out there, first in the field.  Yes, they are sometimes naughty and step out line here and there, but this no reason to make a fuss.  After all, they are on our side.

Too many among us maintain this view.  We may find it hard to conceive of the threat they post, but we are looking at a cancer.  People who act like Skinheads, Neo-Nazis, or Jihadists are just that, regardless of their faith.  There are such Christians, there are such Muslims and, in case we have not yet realized – and we should – there are such Jews too.

People like that exist in every nation.  In Hungary, France, and Ukraine we witnessed sickening phenomena where swastikas were painted on walls, synagogues were torched, and cemeteries desecrated.  These acts were perpetrated by racists, and there are such racists among us too.  Are they a small and marginal minority?  Possibly, but it does not take more than a small minority to start a fire.  They are not “ours” and they are no pioneers.  They are our enemies.  Israel-haters worldwide were quick to celebrate the pictures of the burned mosque in the village of Yasuf.  We have no idea how these pictures are viewed worldwide.  Anti-Semites, left and right, had a field day.  In case we did not yet realize that, the war for the State of Israel is not waged just against Qassam and Katyusha rockets.  The most important ring is where we fight for our legitimacy.

The hooligans who desecrated a mosque are the enemy because they contributed the most to the delegitimization campaign of the international radical left, led by Ahmadinezhad and Hugo Chavez.  In their acts, they actually helped bolstering those who want to turn Israel into an illegitimate, leper state.  Healthy states know how to curb such phenomena, but here, it seems, we refuse to get the point.  We exercise forgiveness instead.  Sure, the prime minister and the defense minister condemned the act, but where are their acts?  What happened to the basic understanding that the arsonists who torched the mosque are terrorists, and that the harm they inflict on Israel is as grave as terror attacks by Hamas members?  Why do we fail to realize that this is a Jewish mutation of Neo-Nazism?  Why do we not see that they are the enemy, dangerous warriors in the battle against the legitimacy of the State of Israel?

We must not refer to them as a small and marginal minority.  These people are supported by the highest echelons.  Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, the spiritual leader of the religious-Zionists, issued an edict that practically allows Jews to pick olives in plantations that belong to Arabs.  Though many among us deny that Jews cause damage to Palestinian plantations, claiming that this is leftist provocation, the religious ruling sets the tone.  Rabbi Eliahu did not say a word about mosques, but those who authorize olive thefts may be comfortable when mosques are desecrated.

Rabbi Eliyahu is not yet another rabbi.  He is the spiritual leader and guide of the religious-Zionist movement.  In the 1950′s, Eliahu was a member of the Pact of the Zealots, an underground movement that wanted to violently impose the rules of the Bible on the State of Israel.  I fail to see how such a person could ever be appointed a chief rabbi, but it happened.  His ruling, which approves of theft, shows that this spiritual leader did not really change much.

When will the State of Israel wake up and realize that it is facing a real threat from an enemy within?  When will the national Zionist camp rise from its slumber and see that lethal cancer nests in our midst?  When will we all see that these Jihadist- and Neo-Nazi-compatible hooligans must be stopped while they are still small?  Let us pray this happens before it is too late.

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.

How can President Barack Obama object to furthering education in a settlement like Yitzhar, located in the heart of the West Bank? After all, his own tax revenues contribute to the flourishing of the Od Yosef Chai Shechem yeshiva, the settlement’s crowning glory.

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!).

On November 17, this column reported that the Education Ministry’s division for Torah institutions transferred more than NIS 1 million to this yeshiva in 2006 and 2007. The Welfare Ministry made do with a mere NIS 150,000.

A report on donations submitted by the yeshiva to the registrar of nonprofit organizations revealed that the American public also participates in financing the message coming out of Yitzhar. It states that in 2007 and 2008, the yeshiva received NIS 102,547 from an American foundation known as the Central Fund of Israel.

The American investigative reporter Philip Weiss says on his web site (mondoweiss.net) that money given to this fund is considered a tax-deductible donation. That means the thousands of shekels the fund sent to the settlement of Yitzhar were deducted from the donors’ annual tax payments to the American treasury.

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.”

The fund’s headquarters are located on the third floor of the Marcus Brothers Textiles store on Third Avenue in Manhattan. Its director is Jay Marcus, a resident of the settlement of Efrat.

His mother, Hadassah, is the fund’s president and his father, Arthur, is vice president. Both parents live in New York.

The Washington Post’s David Ignatius recently reported that according to statements filed with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, funds like that of the Marcus family sent some $33.4 million, tax free, to organizations affiliated with the settlements in 2004-07.

‘Large forces, extensive damage’

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).

At the same time, U.S. officials could consider how a tax exemption for donors to Friends of Ateret Cohanim and The City of David jibes with official American policy regarding the presence of right-wing Jewish organizations in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem’s Holy Basin.

Human rights organizations and Jewish peace activists in the United States have started giving information to the authorities about foundations that support dubious right-wing organizations in Israel. They are asking why the administration only shuts down funds that send charitable donations to associations affiliated with Hamas.

Haaretz has learned that over the past three months five right-wing activists were summoned to warning talks [sic], where they were told by GSS men that they saw them as responsible for the ‘Price Tag‘ events.

Hopefully the GSS sees this a long-term law enforcement technique because, judging by this weekend’s pyrotechnics, it has yet bear fruit. The perpetrators themselves do not appear fazed. This Friday’s Jewish Voice, a weekly ‘Price Tag‘ organization leaflet (Hebrew original here,) has a monologue by one Efraim Ben Shohat describing his GSS interrogation. It ends with the following passage

But it turns out that even the General Security Service of the State of Israel, comprised of expert psychologists and the best and smartest professionals in the country cannot overcome a simple Jew who believes in blessed G-d!

In its report “A Semblance of Law,” Yesh Din describes in detail the systematic lack of law enforcement on violent settlers. One of its major recommendations is that the West Bank Police actually investigate attacks and that minimal resources be allocated for this purpose. Until that happens, “warning talks” and  hand-wringing will have to fill the gap.

Even at this juncture, it’s hard to demand diversion of law enforcement resources to the West Bank when they are stretched so thin in Jerusalem, for example. Just this Friday, dozens of officers were busy arresting 25 Israelis protesting against the Shiekh Jarah evictions who refused to disperse when ordered to.  Some of them were even forced to squirt pepper spray into the eyes of the dangerous Dr. Eyal Nir at point-blank range (video here.) Holding cells are also in short supply, full of menaces to society such as Vadim Antonevich, a documentary film-maker slapped with 25 days for walking his dog without a leash in the German Colony.

“This is a religious terror attack,” said a senior officer in the Central Command. “The people who tossed the firebombs knew exactly what they were doing…Furthermore, the security establishment is voicing harsh criticism of the incitement being heard in Judea and Samaria synagogues. “Anyone allowing the distribution of leaflets that call to harm Civil Administration officials and their vehicles, should not be surprised when a mosque is set on fire,” said the source. “It is interesting to wonder what the reactions would be if it were the opposite.”

Yediot’s Zvi Zinger reports directly from the horses mouth

“The idea of a ‘price tag’ is to operate like the terror organizations,” explained one of the activists from the settlement outposts. “The activists realized that the GSS doesn’t have the capacity to prevent lone activists from executing those operations, and that is why a decision was made to take sophisticated action, without orderly leaders and without any prior organization.”

Puts the outrage over the New York Times use of “Jewish nationalists” to describe settlers into proportion, doesn’t it?

This morning (December 13 2009,) he takes on the defense establishment’s pathetic attempt to bring into line Rabbi’s of affiliated yeshivas who order soldiers to refuse to move against settlements. Shelah all but says outright that these Rabbis own the IDF. Senior officers are afraid of them because of the power they hold over their future political careers. More importantly, their disciples have become so integral to the IDF’s combat forces, that taking them on might spark major disintegration. Here’s a key excerpt (full text after the jump)

In Gush Katif soldiers were spat at, but for the senior staff it was far more important to say that not only was this in fact rain, but welcome rain.

It’s fairly clear why, and its not merely that in each Israeli general’s backpack can be found the scepter of the future politician. The army’s combat units, and particularly the infantry brigades, are full of religious soldiers and officers, in numbers that far outnumber their part in the general population. Some of the hesder yeshivas today are what the kibbutzim and the military boarding schools were in the past. The military knows well that indeed only a minority among the rabbis speak in the fashion of Levanon and Melamed (an internal document following disengagement mentioned the names of two other yeshivas), but harming them could cause others to align with them, and could thus jeopardize the entire soil in which young officers are cultivated, and so it prefers to ingratiate itself to them, with the enthusiastic encouragement of the political echelon.

Who’s afraid of the Hesder Yeshivas?

Ofer Shelah, Maariv, December 13 2009

The history of the security establishment and the hesder yeshivas over the past decades is one of hypocrisy, deception, and tossing of a hot potato from one hand to another. It’s no wonder that Defense Minister Barak sent his deputy, Matan Vilnai, to a meeting with Rabbi Eliezer Melamed of Har Bracha: Barak knows when to avoid a meeting out of which no good will come. Vilnai is the last innocent who is still willing to hold the potato in his hand, while all the others just roll their eyes.

The last straw came in two incidents, related — how surprising — to disengagement, which itself produced a new high in the cynical use of the IDF and its prestige. In the first event the IDF refrained from responding to the damage to the dignity of its officers and uniform at Rabbi Tal’s Torat Hehaim yeshiva in Gush Katif. Brig. Gen. Gershon Hacohen and other officers were assaulted by yeshiva students, their uniforms were torn and their rank insignia ripped off. Rather than insisting that the rioters be arrested, either immediately or within a short while, a humiliating pact was made with them, as part of which the security establishment was to pretend as though nothing had occurred. Etz Hehaim was indeed not a hesder yeshiva, but its students come from the same places, and the message was clearly received.

Then came chief-of-staff Dan Halutz’s statement that the arrangement with Rabbi Elyakim Levanon’s yeshiva in Alon Moreh should be annulled. Nothing happened, of course, and to this day many in the establishment wonder who really frittered away what was, at the time, depicted as an unequivocal demand. The truth is that everyone frittered it away. It’s convenient to draw a picture as though the feeble politicians in the Defense Ministry are willing to have the army humiliated, just as long as they don’t have to quarrel with the settlers. This is a true description of the cowardice of the responsible echelon — from Mofaz, by way of Peretz and Barak, they all fled from the matter like fire and forsook the army’s prestige and status — but it is undeservingly generous to those in uniform, who did not display any less spinelessness.

When the army wishes to make a demand, it knows quite well how to do so, as any official in the Finance Ministry who ever argued with the generals about the budget, can attest. But in the defense ministers’ bureaus no one can recall even one event in which the public threats actually materialized into an unequivocal demand that the arrangement with the Alon Moreh or Har Bracha yeshiva indeed be annulled. It is convenient for the officers to appear as those whose righteous demands were rejected due to political considerations; the politicians swallow the small amount of damage for the sake of continued good relations with the religious right.

Had anyone really wanted to take on the provoking hesder yeshivas, nothing could have been easier. The hesder arrangement not only provides for a significant reduction in service, but for a rather lucrative business: today there are more than fifty such yeshivas, because the government financing assists them in maintaining many students. This could be cut within one split second; the arrangement could be cut off with anyone taking an illegitimate stance. But, as has already been stated, the officers do not really want this, and the politicians do not even pretend to care.

Nobody has any genuine intentions, except for a few officers who for some reason fail to comprehend the rules of the game. The most significant among these, in recent years, has been Director of Human Resources Branch Maj. Gen. Elazar Stern, who demanded that the hesder yeshiva arrangement be annulled for other reasons entirely: his principled opposition to any individual service arrangement, such as the Nahal, which is detrimental to the principle of equal service for all.

The chiefs-of-staff commanding him did not even dream of doing anything. Their efforts were far more noticeable when it came placating the national religious sector following disengagement, which was then assigned to Maj. Gen. Tal Russo. In Gush Katif soldiers were spat at, but for the senior staff it was far more important to say that not only was this in fact rain, but welcome rain.

It’s fairly clear why, and its not merely that in each Israeli general’s backpack can be found the scepter of the future politician. The army’s combat units, and particularly the infantry brigades, are full of religious soldiers and officers, in numbers that far outnumber their part in the general population. Some of the hesder yeshivas today are what the kibbutzim and the military boarding schools were in the past. The military knows well that indeed only a minority among the rabbis speak in the fashion of Levanon and Melamed (an internal document following disengagement mentioned the names of two other yeshivas), but harming them could cause others to align with them, and could thus jeopardize the entire soil in which young officers are cultivated, and so it prefers to ingratiate itself to them, with the enthusiastic encouragement of the political echelon.

As part of the agreed upon game, the army every so often raises the demand that its dignity be safeguarded, and sits aside quietly as this becomes a pilgrimage by the deputy defense minister to the rabbi, who just so recently referred to the IDF leadership as corrupt. Deep inside, the generals also know how right he is.

Reading some of the sanctimonious condemnations of Friday’s torching of a mosque in the West Bank village of Yasuf, one could easily be led to believe that the “price tag” terror tactic was invented last week. A close observer of current events in the West bank would also note that no mention is made of the spiritual leadership publicly sanctioning  and encouraging these attacks.

Take Rabbi Yosef Elitzur of the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in Yitzhar, for example. In early November he published the “Handbook for the Killing of Gentiles.” Just last week, ahead of a revival meeting with the notorious Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg (author of Baruch Hagever, an ode to Cave of Patriarchs murderer Baruch Goldstein) he published an article with specific instructions on this type of action in response to the “settlement freeze.”

This morning’s (December 13 2009) Yediot made the connection. In a news item entitled “The people who want to set things ablaze,” Zvi Singer et al report that

A number of the settler rabbis voiced their support for that mode of action and, by so doing, increased awareness about the issue and created a type of internal buzz among the activists. For example, Rabbi Yosef Elitzur of the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in Yitzhar published an article in the extremist right wing newsletter called Hakol Heyhudi [The Jewish Voice] in which he explicitly called for operations like the arson at the Yasouf mosque. “Operations of reciprocal responsibility,” is how Rabbi Elitzur chose to define them. “We too have strength and we too shall use it at a time and place of our choosing,” he wrote. “If the Jews don’t have quiet—the Arabs won’t have quiet either; If the Arabs win because of violence against Jews—the Jews too will win because of violence against Arabs.”

This Friday’s (December 11 2009) edition of the Jewish Voice, entitled “Fighting the Freeze,” reiterates the importance of such attacks (full Hebrew document here)

Another important “tip” in this context: Whoever wants to win does not limit himself to protest, nor does he let the other side determine the boundaries of the battle. We need to choose for ourselves the sector of the struggle. Why, for example, wait  in the settlements for the violent-frost-forces [sic], and not send a small delegation of our own to the nearby Arab village, to check out the freeze situation there? Believe me that all the [IDF] forces will immediately retreat to the Arab village…

Yediot fails to mention that the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva is the recipient of generous government funding, perhaps because Haaretz was the one to expose this fact. According to Israel’s premier expert on NGO funding, Prof. Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor, however, this is just a fact of life in Israel, as normal as funding of youth movements, and does not warrant any extraordinary action. Responding to a direct question on Od Yosef Hai, he tells the Jerusalem Post’s Shmuel Rosner that

the state is used to funnel large sums of money to various sectors and institutions related to political parties  – from kibbuzim to youth movements and yeshivot —  with numerous stops in between.

Settlement construction spree that preceded freeze

Zvi Singer, Danny Adino Ababa and Itamar Eichner, Yediot, December 8 2009

The security cabinet decision to stop construction in the territories did not come as a complete surprise to the settlers of the Etzion and Talmon-Dolev blocs. In a race against time, the settlers managed to obtain construction permits and to lay the foundations for hundreds of new housing units immediately before the settlement construction freeze went into effect.

A high-ranking official who is knowledgeable about the issue of construction in Judea and Samaria confirmed to Yedioth Ahronoth that the settlers had laid foundations for some 450 new housing units in the four months preceding the freeze. Most of those new housing units are in the settlements Har Gilo, Tekoa, Keidar, Rosh Tzurim, Alon Shvut and Dolev. Sources on the Settlers Council cited a higher number than that and claimed to have laid the foundations to close to 1,000 new housing units. Since the construction freeze does not apply to buildings whose foundations were laid before the construction freeze went into effect, the settlers will now be permitted to complete the construction of the new housing units in question.

How did the settlers know in advance about the planned settlement construction freeze? “We anticipated,” said Settlers Council Director General Pinhas Wallerstein. “In the atmosphere that existed it wasn’t delusional to anticipate a decision to freeze.” Etzion Bloc Council Chairman Shaul Goldstein spoke in similar terms and said, “we were not given any advance warning. Everything was in the newspapers. Two months ago I convened a meeting with all of the builders in the Etzion Bloc and I told them that I could smell that this was about to happen. I asked everyone who had a legal construction permit in hand to build—and to do so quickly. Everything was done by the book. The people who managed to lay their foundations before the freeze don’t regret that today.”

As the date of the construction freeze drew nearer, the pace of construction was expedited. “Everyone went full steam ahead,” said one of the people involved in the process in a conversation with Yedioth Ahronoth. “We enlisted every last architect and surveyor in Judea and Samaria. We worked at that pace down to the last day.”

Meanwhile, the prime minister and the opposition chairwoman clashed yesterday over the settlement construction freeze. “You speak very militantly, but you’ve hurt the settlement blocs,” Tzippi Livni lambasted Netanyahu during a meeting of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “When the government places in the same [category of] speech the Etzion Bloc and Migron, both the blocs and the isolated settlements, the significance is a blow to the Israeli interest to retain the blocs in a final status arrangement. You haven’t told the settlers the truth and you’re deceiving them when you tell them that they’re going to be able to resume building in another ten months. When the prime minister says that everything is temporary and that afterwards everything will go back to usual, what that means is that the decision that needs to be made is absent.”

Netanyahu could not resist the temptation and fired back at Livni: “I’m glad that I’ve managed to crystallize a broad national agreement surrounding the fact that the blocs are [going to be] a part of the State of Israel in any future arrangement. I would suggest to the members of the opposition to visit the settlement blocs this coming Tu Bishvat, just as I intend to do.”

Since the announcement last week of the “settlement freeze,” Israel has witnessed an escalating settler rebellion. Most of the action has been civil disobedience, which I will not condemn as a matter of principle, despite the fact that its organizers’ salaries are largely paid from my taxes. But past experience and IDF warnings indicate that we can expect a surge in “price tag” attacks against Palestinians.

A news item in this morning’s (December 6 2009) Yediot surveys the mood among West bank settlers and ends with the following passage

“We’ll expel the soldiers from the settlements”

Zvi Zinger,Yediot, December 6 2009 [page 4]

[...]

The radical right is also adding oil to the fire. An article in its internet-distributed pamphlet “The Jewish Voice” includes a call to “execute targeted operations against the evildoers, invade Civil Administration offices and ransack them, as well as operate violently [sic] against the Palestinians, deepen the refusal to serve in the army and not recognize Israeli courts.”

The article was written by Rabbi Yosef Elitzur of the “Od Yosef Hai” yeshiva in Yitzhar.

Rabbi Yosef Elitzur and the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva have recently emerged from obscurity with the publication of the “Handbook for the killing of Gentiles” in early November. A few days later, Haaretz reported that the Yeshiva was generously funded by the Government of Israel.

Rabbi Elitzur

The excerpt looks like an editorial hatchet job. The style indicates a paraphrased summary, despite the double quotation marks. I want to read the original.

A colleague, always on top of everything going on in the right-wing blogosphere, sends it by e-mail. Nine pages of pep-talk, incitement to violence and organizational instructions.

Below is a translated excerpt from the Rabbi’s article (original document is here.) It’s a must read. Note the announcement of a revival meeting tonight at the Yeshiva with the notorious Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, and the pride expressed at their success in maintaining a de facto autonomy in Yitzhar. Probably not coincidentally, Police reported this morning that settlers had torched a house and two vehicles in the nearby village of Ain Abous. At this rate, that will be remembered as a very minor incident.

[Excerpt from "The Mutual Guarantee [Arvut Hadadit] Strategy”, by Rabbi Yosef Elitzur]

[...]

Liberation of the mind leads to liberation of action, and the more liberated the mind the greater reverberation small acts have and the greater their results (at a relatively low price). We offer a few possible courses of action:

“Mutual guarantee” [Arvut Hadadit] — acts of mutual guarantee coordinated between members of all the settlements take the air out of the government’s dreams. First of all we are all together and there is no “divide and conquer.” Second of all, we decide on the timing and don’t wait for a large police force and inspectors to bash us in the head and arrest and beat us. We have power too and we will use it at the time and place of our choice. Thirdly, we remember that the war is over Judaism, and the main enemies are the Gentiles in our country who are trying to conquer it and confusing the minds of crooked Jews who are far from the Torah. We do not discriminate: if the Jews don’t have quiet, the Arabs won’t have quiet. If the Arabs win because of violence against Jews, the Jews will win by violence against Arabs [emphasis mine]. Of course all of that leads to graceful activities with lots of joy: we can use the power of the women, children and older people to block a certain access road, and at the same time take firmer action against hostile elements further down the same road; we can carry out quiet and deep operations simultaneously with widespread acts of disorder in the sector, and so on.

Don’t forget that a multitude of such operations and warming up the public will put us in a state of high readiness. To this day administration inspectors have not managed to enter Yitzhar since the freeze decree. That is because the experience and the heat at Yitzhar make every entrance by hostile elements require large forces and end with much damage to IDF and police property, even more damage to Arab property and persons, and a sector burning on all sides for a few days [emphasis mine]. When in every settlement a police patrol car becomes an unwanted presence, and administration inspectors understand they have 10 minutes to run away before their tires are punctured, the government’s ability to enforce its decrees will drop sharply.

[...]

On the 19th day of Kislev [December 6], the day of redemption of the Old Master who withstood the denouncement and persecution of Jewish brothers, we will meet at the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva for a conference with our teacher Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg. Those who wish to be warmed and to meet many Jews from all walks of the Jewish public who are partners in strengthening Jews in the holy land are joyously welcome! [emphasis in original]

UPDATE: December 7 2009 – A day late, Yediot puts two and two together

Right wing activists suspected of torching Palestinian house

Zvi Singer and Yuval Karni, Yediot, December 7 2009 [page 4]

The police suspect that extreme right wing activists set fire early yesterday morning to a house and two cars belonging to Palestinians in the Einabus village near Nablus.

The homeowner told activists of the Yesh Din human rights organization that the incident took place at 3:00 AM.  He said that settlers torched his cars, his home and his tractor—and fled.  The Samaria and Judea District Police have launched an investigation.  The main possibility being examined, at the present stage, is that the arson was perpetrated as part of the “price tag” policy of right wing activists against the backdrop of the construction freeze orders.  Just this past weekend, Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, one of the rabbis of the Od Yosef Hai Yeshiva in Yitzhar, declared in an article that he wrote in the Jewish Voice, an extreme right wing publication: “If there is no quiet for the Jews—there will be no quiet for the Arabs; if the Arabs are winning because of violence towards Jews—the Jews will also win by violence towards Arabs.”

Yesh Din accused the army and police of “not preparing for reprisals, though it was clear that they would arrive, and enabling terror cells to roam freely.”

[...]