The Raelian Movement
for those who are not afraid of the future : http://www.rael.org
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How to Kill Goyim and Influence People: Israeli Rabbis Defend Book's
Shocking Religious Defense of Killing Non-Jews (with Video)
http://www.alternet.org/world/148016/how_to_kill_goyim_and_influence_people:_israeli_rabbis_defend_book%27s_shocking_religious_defense_of_killing_non-jews_%28with_video%29/?page=entire
A rabbinical guidebook for killing non-Jews has sparked an uproar in
Israel and exposed the power a bunch of genocidal theocrats wield over
the government.
August 30, 2010
When I went into the Jewish religious book emporium, Pomeranz, in
central Jerusalem to inquire about the availability of a book called
Torat Ha'Melech, or the King's Torah, a commotion immediately ensued.
"Are you sure you want it?" the owner, M. Pomeranz, asked me
half-jokingly. "The Shabak [Israel's internal security service] is
going to want a word with you if you do." As customers stopped
browsing and began to stare in my direction, Pomeranz pointed to a
security camera affixed to a wall. "See that?" he told me. "It goes
straight to the Shabak!"
As soon as it was published late last year,Torat Ha'Melech sparked a
national uproar. The controversy began when an Israeli tabloid panned
the book's contents as "230 pages on the laws concerning the killing
of non-Jews, a kind of guidebook for anyone who ponders the question
of if and when it is permissible to take the life of a non-Jew."
According to the book's author, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, "Non-Jews are
"uncompassionate by nature" and should be killed in order to "curb
their evil inclinations." "If we kill a gentile who has has violated
one of the seven commandments… there is nothing wrong with the
murder," Shapira insisted. Citing Jewish law as his source (or at
least a very selective interpretation of it) he declared: "There is
justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up
to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately,
and not only during combat with adults."
In January, Shapira was briefly detained by the Israeli police, while
two leading rabbis who endorsed the book, Dov Lior and Yaakov Yosef,
were summoned to interrogations by the Shabak. However, the rabbis
refused to appear at the interrogations, essentially thumbing their
noses at the state and its laws. And the government did nothing. The
episode raised grave questions about the willingness of the Israeli
government to confront the ferociously racist swathe of the country's
rabbinate. "Something like this has never happened before, even though
it seems as if everything possible has already happened," Israeli
commentator Yossi Sarid remarked with astonishment. "Two rabbis [were]
summoned to a police investigation, and announc[ed] that they will not
go. Even settlers are kind enough to turn up."
In response to the rabbis' public rebuke of the state's legal system,
the Israeli Attorney General and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
kept silent. Indeed, since the publication of Torat Ha'Melech,
Netanyahu has strenuously avoided criticizing its contents or the
author's leading supporters. Like so many prime ministers before him,
he has been cowed into submission by Israel's religious nationalist
community. But Netanyahu appears to be particularly impotent. His
weakness stems from the fact that the religious nationalist right
figures prominently in his governing coalition and comprises a
substantial portion of his political base. For Netanyahu, a
confrontation with the rabid rabbis could amount to political suicide,
or could force him into an alliance with centrist forces who do not
share his commitment to the settlement enterprise in the West Bank.
On August 18, a pantheon of Israel's top fundamentalist rabbis
flaunted their political power during an ad hoc congress they convened
at Jerusalem's Ramada Renaissance hotel. Before an audience of 250
supporters including the far-right Israeli Knesset member Michael
Ben-Ari, the rabbis declared in the name of the Holy Torah that would
not submit to any attempt by the government to regulate their
political activities -- even and especially if those activities
included inciting terrorist attacks against non-Jews. As one wizened
rabbi after another rose up to inveigh against the government's
investigation of Torat Ha'Melech until his voice grew hoarse, the
gathering degenerated into calls for murdering not just non-Jews, but
secular Jews as well.
Watch the video (article continues below):
"The obligation to sacrifice your life is above all others when
fighting those who wish to destroy the authority of the Torah,"
bellowed Rabbi Yehoshua Shapira, head of the yeshiva in the Tel Aviv
suburb of Ramat Gan. "It is not only true against non-Jews who are
trying to destroy it but against Jewish people from any side."
The government-funded terror academy
The disturbing philosophy expressed in Torat Ha'Melech emerged from
the fevered atmosphere of a settlement called Yitzhar located in the
northern West Bank near the Palestinian city of Nablus. Shapira leads
the settlement's Od Yosef Chai yeshiva, holding sway over a small army
of fanatics who are eager to lash out at the Palestinians tending to
their crops and livestock in the valleys below them. One of Shapira's
followers, an American immigrant named Jack Teitel, has confessed to
murdering two innocent Palestinians and attempting to the kill the
liberal Israeli historian Ze'ev Sternhell with a mail bomb. Teitel is
suspected of many more murders, including an attack on a Tel Aviv gay
community center.
Despite its apparent role as a terror training institute, Od Yosef
Chai has raked in nearly fifty thousand dollars from the Israeli
Ministry of Social Affairs since 2007, while the Ministry of Education
has pumped over 250 thousand dollars into the yeshiva's coffers
between 2006 and 2007. The yeshiva has also benefited handsomely from
donations from a tax-exempt American non-profit called the Central
Fund of Israel. Located inside the Marcus Brothers Textiles store in
midtown Manhattan, the Central Fund transferred at least thirty
thousand to Od Yosef Chai between 2007 and 2008.
Though he does not name "the enemy" in the pages of his book,
Shapira's longstanding connection to terrorist attacks against
Palestinian civilians exposes the true identity of his targets. In
2006, Shapira was briefly held by Israeli police for urging his
supporters to murder all Palestinians over the age of 13. Two years
later, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz, he signed a rabbinical
letter in support of Israeli Jews who had brutally assaulted two Arab
youths on the country's Holocaust Remembrance Day. That same year,
Shapira was arrested under suspicion that he helped orchestrate a
rocket attack against a Palestinian village near Nablus. Though he was
released, Shapira's name arose in connection with another act of
terror, when in January, the Israeli police raided his settlement
seeking the vandals who set fire to a nearby mosque. After arresting
ten settlers, the Shabak held five of Shapira's confederates under
suspicion of arson.
Friends in high places
Despite his longstanding involvement in terrorism, or perhaps because
of it, Shapira counts Israel's leading fundamentalist rabbis among his
supporters. His most well-known backer is Dov Lior the leader of the
Shavei-Hevron yeshiva at Kiryat Arba, a radical Jewish settlement near
the occupied Palestinian city of Hebron and a hotbed of Jewish
terrorism. Lior has vigorously endorsed Torat Ha'Melech, calling it
"very relevant, especially in this time."
Lior's enthusiasm for Shapira's tract stems from his own
eliminationist attitude toward non-Jews. For example, while Lior
served as the IDF's top rabbi, he instructed soldiers: "There is no
such thing as civilians in wartime… A thousand non-Jewish lives are
not worth a Jew's fingernail!" Indeed, there are only a few non-Jews
whose lives Lior would demand to be spared. They are captured
Palestinian militants who, as he once suggested, could be used as
subjects for live human medical experiments.
Otherwise, Lior appears content to watch Palestinians perish as they
did at the muzzle of Dr. Baruch Goldstein's machine gun in 1994.
Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinians and wounded 150 in a shooting
spree while they prayed in Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs mosque, was
a compatriot and neighbor of Lior in the settlement of Kiryat Arba. At
Goldstein's funeral, Lior celebrated the massacre as an act carried
out "to sanctify the holy name of God." He then extolled Goldstein as
"a righteous man." Thanks to Lior's efforts, a shrine to Goldstein was
constructed in center of Kiryat Arba so that locals could celebrate
the killer's deeds and pass his legacy down to future generations.
Though Lior's inflammatory statements resulted in his being barred
from running for election to the Supreme Rabbinical Council, according
to journalist Daniel Estrin, the rabbi remains "a respected figure
among many mainstream ZIonists." By extension, he maintains
considerable influence among religious elements in the IDF. In 2008,
when the IDF's chief rabbi, Brigadier General Avichai Ronski, brought
a group of military intelligence officers to Hebron for a special
tour, he concluded the day with a private meeting with Lior, who was
allowed to revel the officers with his views on modern warfare -- "no
such thing as civilians in wartime."
Besides Lior, Torat Ha'Melech has earned support from another
nationally prominent fundamentalist rabbi: Yaakov Yosef. Yosef is the
leader of the Hazon Yaakov Yeshiva in Jerusalem and a former member of
Knesset. Perhaps more significantly, he is the son of Ovadiah Yosef,
the former chief rabbi of Israel and spiritual leader of the Shas
Party that forms a key segment of Netanyahu's governing coalition.
Yaakov Yosef has brought his influence to bear in defense of Torat
Ha'Melech, insisting at the August 18 convention in Jerusalem that the
book was no different than the Hagadah that all Jews read from on the
holiday of Passover. The Hagadah contains passages about killing
non-Jews and so does the Bible, Yosef reminded his audience. "Does
anyone want to change the Bible?" he asked.
Bibi buckles
Only days before direct negotiations in Washington between Israel and
the Palestinian Authority planned for early September, Yaakov Yosef's
89-year-old father, Ovadiah delivered his weekly sermon. With
characteristic vitriol, he declared: "All these evil people should
perish from this world… God should strike them with a plague, them and
these Palestinians."
The remarks have sparked an international furor and earned a stern
rebuke from Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. "While the PLO is
ready to resume negotiations in seriousness and good faith," Erekat
remarked, "a member of the Israeli government is calling for our
destruction."
Palestinian Israeli member of Knesset Jamal Zehalka subsequently
demanded that the Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein put Yosef
on trial for incitement. "If, heaven forbid, a Muslim spiritual leader
were to make anti-Jewish comments of this sort," Zehalka said, "he
would be arrested immediately."
Here was a perfect opportunity for Netanyahu to demonstrate sincerity
about negotiations by shedding an extremist ally in the name of
securing peace. All he had to do was forcefully reject Yosef's
genocidal comments -- a feat made all the easier by the White House's
condemnation of the rabbi. But the Israeli Prime Minister ducked for
political cover instead, issuing a canned statement instead of a
condemnation. "Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef's remarks do not reflect
Netanyahu's views," the statement read, "nor do they reflect the
position of the Israeli government."
By refusing to cut Yosef loose, his party remains a central actor in
the Israeli government. Thus the statement by Netanyahu was not only
weak. It was false.
Max Blumenthal is the author of Republican Gomorrah (Basic/Nation
Books, 2009) has just been released.
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WARNING FROM RAEL: For those who don't use their intelligence at its full
capacity, the label "selected by RAEL" on some articles does not mean that I
agree with their content or support it. "Selected by RAEL" means that I believe
it is important for the people of this planet to know about what people think or
do, even when what they think or do is completely stupid and against our
philosophy. When I selected articles in the past about stupid Christian
fundamentalists in America praying for rain, I am sure no Rael-Science reader
was stupid enough to believe that I was supporting praying to change the
weather. So, when I select articles which are in favor of drugs, anti-semitic,
anti-Jewish, racist, revisionist, or inciting hatred against any group or
religion, or any other stupid article, it does not mean that I support them. It
just means that it is important for all human beings to know about them. Common
sense, which is usually very good among our readers, is good enough to
understand that. When, like in the recent articles on drug decriminalization, it
is necessary to make it clearer, I add a comment, which in this case was very
clear: I support decriminalizing all drugs, as it is stupid to throw depressed
and sad people (as only depressed and sad people use drugs) in prison and ruin
their life with a criminal record. That does not mean that there is any change
to the Message which says clearly that we must not use any drug except for
medical purposes. The same applies to the freedom of expression which must be
absolute. That does not mean again of course that I agree with anti-Jews,
antisemites, racists of any kind or anti-Raelians. But by knowing your enemies
or the enemies of your values, you are better equipped to fight them. With love
and respect of course, and with the wonderful sentence of the French philosopher
Voltaire in mind: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death
your right to say it".
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"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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