XPost: soc.culture.palestine, soc.culture.israel, talk.politics.mideast   
   From: jeffreykrantztwo@verizon.net   
      
   "al92653"  wrote in message   
   news:jKOmk.4782$i15.2383@newsfe01.iad...   
   > Rabbis Who Bring Shame to Judaism   
   > by Khaled Amayreh / August 6th, 2008   
   >   
   > Religious extremism is very dangerous. It means that every thinkable vice   
   > under the sun can be committed, "sanctioned" and "justified" in the name   
   > of the Almighty. In Israel, rabbis with hundreds of thousands of   
   > followers, many of whom serve in the Gestapo-like Israeli occupation army,   
   > openly teach that non-Jews are only human in form but animals in   
   > substance. These racist teachings can't be dismissed as "innocuous" or   
   > "esoteric." Very often, they constitute "a manual for action" for many   
   > Jewish settlers roaming the hills of the West Bank, searching for an Arab   
   > prey to kill, or attack or tie up to a power pole.   
   >   
   > The teachings also serve as a direct inspiration to numerous Israeli   
   > soldiers operating in the West Bank who, thanks to the racist   
   > indoctrination they receive from their rabbis, have come to view the   
   > estimated 3.7 million Palestinians living under Israel's military rule,   
   > not as real human beings, but rather as animals walking on two feet. The   
   > often barbaric treatment meted out to the Palestinians in the occupied   
   > territories testifies to the rampantly racist indoctrination soldiers and   
   > settlers receive at the hands of religious Zionist rabbis. Last year, a   
   > Jewish immigrant from France, who murdered an Arab taxi driver after   
   > luring him to his home north of Tel Aviv, told police interrogators that   
   > he didn't kill a human being; he only killed an animal.   
   >   
   > "Merkaz Harav"   
   > Merkaz Harav (the Rabbi's Center) is the ideological and theological   
   > central nervous system of religious Zionism in Israel. Established in   
   > honor of Rabbi Abraham Kook, Israel's first Chief Rabbi, the center, which   
   > is actually a religious college, teaches students that God Almighty   
   > created the entire universe for the sake of "the Jew," and that all   
   > non-Jews ought to be slaves laboring for the "chosen people." As to the   
   > Palestinians, Merkaz Harav teaches that "non-Jews living under Jewish law   
   > in Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel) must either be enslaved as water   
   > carriers and wood hewers, or banished, or exterminated."   
   >   
   > Some rabbinic authorities associated with Merkaz Harav have been preaching   
   > the view that Palestinians are descendants of the Amalek, or Amalekites,   
   > whom the Bible says must be totally exterminated. Such hateful views are   
   > actually espoused by hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers in the West   
   > Bank. This is the religious doctrine of religious Zionism. This is the   
   > theology taught in hundreds of Yeshivot (religious schools) throughout   
   > Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Settlers as well as the   
   > increasingly Settler-dominated Israeli army may very well act on these   
   > doctrines in a more wanton manner if the world goes into a slumber. They   
   > are only awaiting the opportune time to do it.   
   >   
   > According to Rabbi Kook, "The difference between a Jewish soul and souls   
   > of non-Jews-all of them in all different levels-is greater and deeper than   
   > the difference between a human soul and the soul of cattle." The late   
   > Israeli philosopher, Yisrael Shahak, pointed out that the teachings of   
   > Kook were based on the Lurianic Cabala, one of whose basic tenets is the   
   > absolute superiority of the Jewish soul and body over the non-Jewish soul   
   > and body "so much so that the world was created solely for the sake of   
   > Jews."   
   >   
   > In 2003, Rabbi Saadya Grama, an alumnus of Beth Medrash Govoha, the   
   > renowned Yeshiva in Lakewood, N.J., wrote a book titled Romemut Yisrael   
   > Ufarashat Hagalut, which can be translated as "the Majesty of Israel and   
   > the Question of the Diaspora," in which he argued that non-Jews were   
   > "completely evil" and that Jews constituted a separate, genetically   
   > superior species. The book was condemned by many reform and conservative   
   > rabbis in the US as manifestly racist and incompatible with normative   
   > Jewish religious thinking. However, major Jewish organizations in Israel   
   > and North America, such as Agudat Yisrael, refused to condemn the book.   
   >   
   > In Israel, numerous Orthodox Zionist rabbis, many of them graduates of and   
   > lecturers at Merkaz Harav, continue to teach the theologically dubious   
   > concept that the ten commandments don't apply to non-Jews and that,   
   > therefore, the Biblical commandments against committing murder, theft, and   
   > lying don't cover non-Jews. For example, Rabbi Dov Lior, Chairman of the   
   > Jewish Rabbinic Council, teaches that "there is no such thing as enemy   
   > civilians in war time" "The law of our Torah is to have mercy on our   
   > soldiers and to save them. This is the real moral behind Israel's Torah   
   > and we must not feel guilty due to foreign morals," he was quoted as   
   > saying by the Hebrew newspaper Ma'ariv in 2004.   
   >   
   > "A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail."   
   > Lior is not a marginal figure in the Zionist religious establishment. I   
   > asked Rabbi Menachem Froman, who himself has taught at Merkaz Harav, about   
   > Lior's religious credentials and he told me that the man "is considered   
   > among the most learned sages of the Torah." Earlier this year, Rabbi David   
   > Batsri told followers that "it is impossible to mix the pure with the   
   > impure. They (the Arabs) are a blight, a devil, a disaster. The Arabs are   
   > donkeys, and we have to ask ourselves why God didn't create them to walk   
   > on all four. Well, the answer is that they are needed to build and clean.   
   > They don't have any place in our school."   
   >   
   > In May, 2007, Mordechai Elyahu, a former Chief Rabbi of Israel, issued an   
   > edict that would permit the Israeli army to murder hundreds of thousands   
   > of Palestinians . "If they don't stop after we kill 100, then we must kill   
   > a thousand. And if they don't stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000.   
   > If they still don't stop we must kill 100,000. Even a million. Whatever it   
   > takes to make them stop."   
   >   
   > I don't believe that this repulsive extremism represents true Judaism, the   
   > Judaism that is based on the Ten Commandments. Jewish traditions relate   
   > the story of a heathen who came to Shammai with the request to be accepted   
   > as a convert on condition that he was taught the whole Torah while he   
   > stood on one foot. Shammai drove him away with the yard-stick he was   
   > holding. Then the man went to Hillel with the same request. Hillel told   
   > the man "what is hateful to yourself don't do to your fellow human being.   
   > That is the whole of the Torah and the rest is commentary."   
   >   
   > Unfortunately, the rabbis of religious Zionism, including the so-called   
   > Chabadim who have effectively replaced the Torah with a notoriously racist   
      
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