Genocide announced
By Saleh Al-Naami
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 10 - 16 April 2008, Issue No. 892
Bombs would fall under other circumstances, but when influential rabbis call
for the total annihilation of the Palestinians the world watches without
blinking, writes Saleh Al-Naami
"All of the Palestinians must be killed; men, women, infants, and even their
beasts." This was the religious opinion issued one week ago by Rabbi Yisrael
Rosen, director of the Tsomet Institute, a long-established religious institute
attended by students and soldiers in the Israeli settlements of the West Bank.
In an article published by numerous religious Israeli newspapers two weeks ago
and run by the liberal Haaretz on 26 March, Rosen asserted that there is
evidence in the Torah to justify this stand. Rosen, an authority able to issue
religious opinions for Jews, wrote that Palestinians are like the nation of
Amalekites that attacked the Israelite tribes on their way to Jerusalem after
they had fled from Egypt under the leadership of Moses. He wrote that the Lord
sent down in the Torah a ruling that allowed the Jews to kill the Amalekites,
and that this ruling is known in Jewish jurisprudence.
Rosen's article, which created a lot of noise in Israel, included the text of
the ruling in the Torah: "Annihilate the Amalekites from the beginning to the
end. Kill them and wrest them from their possessions. Show them no mercy. Kill
continuously, one after the other. Leave no child, plant, or tree. Kill their
beasts, from camels to donkeys." Rosen adds that the Amalekites are not a
particular race or religion, but rather all those who hate the Jews for
religious or national motives. Rosen goes as far as saying that the "Amalekites
will remain as long as there are Jews. In every age Amalekites will surface from
other races to attack the Jews, and thus the war against them must be global."
He urges application of the "Amalekites ruling" and says that the Jews must
undertake to implement it in all eras because it is a "divine commandment".
Rosen does not hesitate to define the "Amalekites of this age" as the
Palestinians. He writes, "those who kill students as they recite the Torah, and
fire missiles on the city of Siderot, spread terror in the hearts of men and
women. Those who dance over blood are the Amalekites, and we must respond with
counter-hatred. We must uproot any trace of humanitarianism in dealing with them
so that we emerge victorious."
The true outrage is that most of those authorised to issue Jewish religious
opinions support the view of Rabbi Rosen, as confirmed by Haaretz
newspaper. At the head of those supporting his opinion is Rabbi Mordechai
Eliyahu, the leading religious authority in Israel's religious national current,
and former chief Eastern rabbi for Israel. Rosen's opinion also has the support
of Rabbi Dov Lior, president of the Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria (the
West Bank), and Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Safed and a candidate
for the post of chief rabbi of Israel. A number of political leaders in Israel
have also shown enthusiasm for the opinion, including Ori Lubiansky, head of the
Jerusalem municipality.
There is no dispute among observers in Israel that the shooting in Jerusalem
three weeks ago that killed eight Jewish students in a religious school was
pivotal for Jewish authorities issuing religious opinions of a racist, hateful
nature. The day following the Jerusalem incident, a number of rabbis led by
Daniel Satobsky issued a religious opinion calling on Jewish youth and "all
those who believe in the Torah" to take revenge on the Palestinians as hastily
as possible. A week following the operation, a group of leading rabbis issued an
unprecedented religious opinion permitting the Israeli army to bomb Palestinian
civilian areas. The opinion is issued by the "Association of Rabbis of the Land
of Israel" and states that Jewish religious law permits the bombing of
Palestinian civilian residential areas if they are a source of attacks on Jewish
residential areas. It reads, "when the residents of cities bordering settlements
and Jewish centres fire shells at Jewish settlements with the aim of death and
destruction, the Torah permits for shells to be fired on the sources of firing
even if civilian residents are present there."
The opinion adds that sometimes it is necessary to respond with shelling to
sources of fire immediately, without granting the Palestinian public prior
warning. A week ago, Rabbi Eliyahu Kinvinsky, the second most senior authority
in the Orthodox religious current, issued a religious opinion prohibiting the
employment of Arabs, particularly in religious schools. This religious opinion
followed another that had been issued by Rabbi Lior prohibiting the employment
of Arabs and the renting of residential apartments to them in Jewish
neighbourhoods. In order to provide a climate that allows Jewish extremist
organisations to continue attacking Palestinian citizens, Rabbi Israel Ariel,
one of the most prominent rabbis in the West Bank settlement complex, recently
issued a religious opinion prohibiting religious Jews involved in attacks
against Palestinians to appear before Israeli civil courts. According to this
opinion, they must instead demand to appear before Torah courts that rule by
Jewish religious law.
Haaretz newspaper noted that what Rabbi Ariel was trying to achieve
through this religious opinion has in fact already taken place. The first
instance of such a court in Kfar Saba ordered the release of a young Jewish
woman called Tsevia Teshrael who attacked a Palestinian farmer in the middle of
the West Bank. And there are Jewish religious authorities that glorify killing
and praise terrorists, such as Rabbi Yitzhaq Ginsburg, a top rabbi in Israel who
published a book entitled Baruch the Hero in memoriam of Baruch
Goldstein, who committed the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre in 1994 when he opened
fire and killed 29 Palestinians as they were performing the dawn prayer in
Hebron in the southern West Bank. Ginsburg considers his act "honourable and
glorious".
The danger of these religious opinions lies in the fact that the religious
authorities issuing them have wide respect among religious Jewish youth. And
while only 28 per cent of Israel's population is religious, more than 50 per
cent of Israelis define themselves as conservative and grant major significance
to opinions issued by Jewish religious authorities. According to a study
conducted by the Social Sciences Department of Bar Elon University, more than 90
per cent of those who identify as religious believe that if state laws and
government orders are incongruous with the content of religious opinions issued
by rabbis, they must overlook the former and act in accordance with the latter.
What grants the racist religious opinions a deeper and far-reaching impact is
the fact that for the last decade followers of the Zionist religious current,
who form nearly 10 per cent of the population, have been seeking to take control
of the army and security institutions. They are doing so through volunteering
for service in special combat units. The spokesperson's office in the Israeli
army says that although the percentage of followers of this current is low in
the state's demographic makeup, they form more than 50 per cent of the officers
in the Israeli army and more than 60 per cent of its special unit commanders.
According to an opinion poll of religious officers and soldiers supervised by
the Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya and published last year, more than 95 per
cent of religious soldiers and officers say that they will execute orders from
the elected government and their leaders in the army only if they are in harmony
with the religious opinions issued by leading rabbis and religious authorities.
Wasil Taha, Arab Knesset member from the Tajammu Party led by Azmi Bishara,
says that these religious opinions lead to the committal of crimes. He mentions
religious opinions issued by a number of rabbis in mid-1995 that led to the
assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at that time. "If
that's what happens when religious opinions urge attacks against Jewish leaders
such as Rabin, what will the situation be like when they urge attacks against
Palestinian leaders and the Palestinian public?" he asks. "We, as Arab leaders,
have begun to feel a lack of security following this flood of religious
opinions, and we realise that the matter requires a great deal of caution in our
movements as we are certain that there are those who seek to implement these
opinions," he told Al-Ahram Weekly.
Taha dismisses those who ask about the role of the government and Israeli
political cadre in confronting these extremist religious opinions. "The
ministers in the Israeli government and the Knesset members compete to incite
against the Palestinian public and don't hesitate to threaten expulsion of the
Palestinians who live on their land in Israel and carry Israeli citizenship
outside of Israel's borders, just as former deputy premier Avigdor Lieberman and
representative Evi Etam did," Taha said. He notes that Palestinian citizens
within Israel have begun to take extreme precautionary measures since the issue
of these religious opinions, including security measures around mosques and
public institutions and informing officials of public demonstrations so that
members of Jewish terrorist organisations can be prevented from attacking
participants. Taha holds that the sectors of the Palestinian population most
likely to be harmed by these religious opinions are those living in the various
cities populated by both Jews and Palestinians, such as Haifa, Jaffa, Lod,
Ramleh and Jerusalem.
Palestinian writer and researcher Abdul-Hakim Mufid, from the city Um Fahem,
holds that the religious opinions of rabbis have gained major significance due
to the harmony between official rhetoric and that of the rabbis. Mufid notes
that official Israeli establishments have not tried to confront the "fascist"
rhetoric expressed in these religious opinions even though they are capable of
doing so. "Most of the rabbis who issue tyrannical religious opinions are
official employees in state institutions and receive salaries from them. And the
state has not held these rabbis accountable or sought to prohibit the issue of
such opinions," he told the Weekly.
Mufid points out that when the official political institution is in a crisis,
the Zionist consensus behind these religious opinions grows more intense, and
offers as an example the religious opinions relied upon by Rabbi Meir Kahane in
the early 1980s to justify his call to forcefully expel the Palestinians. Mufid
adds that Israel in practice encourages all those who kill Palestinians, and
points to the way that the Israeli government dealt with the recommendations of
the Orr Commission that investigated the Israeli police's killing of 13
Palestinians with Israeli citizenship in October of 2000. The government closed
the file even though the commission confirmed that the police had acted
aggressively towards the Palestinian citizens. Mufid suggests that what makes
the racist rhetoric the rabbis insist upon influential is the silence of leftist
and liberal voices, and the lack of any direct mobilisation against it.
