A rabbinate gone wild

[DogPoundPup]

By Haaretz Editorial
Tags: Israel news, rabbinate, IDF

The booklets distributed by the Israel Defense Forces rabbinate during the combat in Gaza, which Amos Harel wrote about in Haaretz yesterday ("IDF rabbi told troops fighting in Gaza: We must not cede a single inch of Israel), and the "Jewish Awareness" publications distributed by IDF Chief Rabbi Avichai Rontzki, prove once again that the rabbi is giving his position a new and alarming interpretation.

From the start it was a mistake to appoint Rontzki, an extremist hozer b'tshuva (newly religious person), who often made harsh comments about secular people, particularly those in the IDF. Like every newly religious person, who has to prove that he is more devout than the Pope, he constantly flatters his mentors, the most extremist rabbis in the settlement community.

The result is an uncontrollable escalation. Rontzki has preached cliched nonsense, permeated with disgust and disdain for anyone who is not religious and does not believe in Greater Israel for the most racist Hardal (ultra-Orthodox religious Zionist) reasons. He has interfered in education officers' work and ordered them to disseminate extremist views. Now he has breached what remained of his position's boundaries and has really begun to go wild.

snip~
In such an atmosphere, it is no wonder that extreme right-wing organizations are also smuggling into IDF bases sermons by Yitzhak Ginsburg, the rabbi of the yeshiva at Joseph's Tomb. Ginsburg wrote the book "Baruch Hagever," which praises the massacre by Baruch Goldstein against Arabs in the Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994, and he is considered the spiritual mentor of the most violent and extremist settlers. Thus, under the aegis of the army's chief rabbi, IDF soldiers are being exposed to chauvinist and racist incitement, which is illegal.

entire article: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1059124.html

[IndianaGreen]

1. K&R

A good article that should have been paid close attention.

[Sezu]

3. Even better if it had mentioned the extremists on the other side.

But I guess he and you couldn't give a rat's ass about THOSE extremists when Israel's makes better sales.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

4. Right on Sezu. Palestinian/Muslim/Arab extremists are never written about.

[Douglas Carpenter]

6. EXACTLY!! Have you EVER once heard any mainstream media even

mention Arab, Muslim or Palestinian extremist? Even once?

Have you EVER heard ANY mainstream American politician EVER dare to publicly criticize ANY Arab, Muslim or Palestinian extremist group? Even once?

Have you EVER seen even one mainstream Hollywood movie deal with the subject or Arab, Muslim or Palestinian terrorist groups? Even one single such movie?

Just imagine the uproar that would happen if someone broke that silence!

[ProgressiveMuslim]

7. Isn't it crazy the way the media protects Muslims and Arabs? Imagine if the silence were broken! nt

[laststeamtrain]

2. An Army of Extremists

An Army of Extremists
How some military rabbis are trying to radicalize Israeli soldiers.
By Christopher Hitchens

Recent reports of atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers in the course of the intervention in Gaza have described the incitement of conscripts and reservists by military rabbis who characterized the battle as a holy war for the expulsion of non-Jews from Jewish land. The secular Israeli academic Dany Zamir, who first brought the testimony of shocked Israeli soldiers to light, has been quoted as if the influence of such extremist clerical teachings was something new. This is not the case.

I remember being in Israel in 1986 when the chief army "chaplain" in the occupied territories, Rabbi Shmuel Derlich, issued his troops a 1,000-word pastoral letter enjoining them to apply the biblical commandment to exterminate the Amalekites as "the enemies of Israel." Nobody has recently encountered any Amalekites, so the chief educational officer of the Israeli Defense Forces asked Rabbi Derlich whether he would care to define his terms and say whom he meant. Rather evasively—if rather alarmingly—the man of God replied, "Germans." There are no Germans in Judaea and Samaria or, indeed, in the Old Testament, so the rabbi's exhortation to slay all Germans as well as quite probably all Palestinians was referred to the Judge Advocate General's Office. Forty military rabbis publicly came to Derlich's support, and the rather spineless conclusion of the JAG was that he had committed no legal offense but should perhaps refrain in the future from making political statements on the army's behalf.

The problem here is precisely that the rabbi was not making a "political" statement. Rather, he was doing his religious duty in reminding his readers what the Torah actually says. It's not at all uncommon in Israel to read discussions, featuring military rabbis, of quite how to interpret the following holy order from Moses, in the Book of Numbers, Chapter 31, Verses 13-18, as quoted from my 1985 translation by the Jewish Publication Society. The Israelites have just done a fairly pitiless job on the Midianites, slaughtering all of the adult males. But, says their stern commander-in-chief, they have still failed him:

<more>

http://www.slate.com/id/2214440/

[bemildred]

5. I keep thinking of Monty Python's Killer Bunny. nt