A Kosher-Stamp on Murder
by Uri Avnery

Two shocking manifestos were published this week. Both call for comment. [...] The second manifesto declares that the Halakha (Jewish religious law) commands the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians if this helps to save Jews. It is signed by the heads of the "Arrangement Yeshivot," the West Bank settlement rabbis and other religious leaders. They were later joined by one of the two chief rabbis (the Sephardic one). [...] The second manifesto is far more dangerous. A religious doctrine that calls for the killing of civilians in the name of God is very serious. Such a decree signed by the rabbis of the "Arrangement Yeshivot" is tenfold worse. In order to understand this, one has to know that these Yeshivot are in fact military units. They constitute a unique phenomenon in the Israeli army: whole units formed on an ideological-political basis, obeying their own leaders. [...] The only religious voice raised against this appalling document was that of a small and courageous group called Rabbis for Human Rights, which opposes the dirty messianic current that has submerged almost the whole religious camp in Israel. Their statement discloses that the Yeshiva heads have intentionally falsified the Talmud passages "quoted" by them. The actual text forbids a Jew to kill innocents even to save his own life. After all, God created all human beings "in his own image" (Genesis 1:27). Unfortunately, this statement will have no impact whatsoever on the IDF's religious militias, and even less on the settlers, who now set the tone in the army. Many of the most heinous crimes in human history were committed in the name of religion. The Book of Joshua says that God commanded the Children of Israel to commit a general ethnic cleansing in the land of Canaan. The crusaders carried out horrible massacres in this country (and against the Jews on the way here) while shouting "Deus le volt!" (God wills it). Three years ago today, Osama bin Laden sent his people to kill thousands in the New York Twin Towers in the name of Allah. May God protect us from those who would speak in His name.

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Sharon Repudiates the Road Map
by Juan Cole

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in remarks on Wednesday repudiated the American-sponsored "road map" to a peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Sharon insists on acting unilaterally, intends to occupy the Palestinian population indefinitely, and intends to permanently incorporate much of the West Bank, conquered in 1967, into Israel, while leaving the Palestinian population stateless. They lack so much as a passport or a country, many of their children are hungry, unemployment is astronomical, and their lives are ruined by a dense network of Israeli roads and checkpoints that make it difficult even just to go to the hospital. I am sure that most Americans are not even aware that Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation and that every day Palestinian territory shrinks as it is stolen by fanatical Israeli colonists. These fanatics do not differ in any obvious way from the French colonists in Algeria, which the French also proclaimed "French soil." But colonialism is just another word for grand larceny. (Most Americans would be appalled if the United States suddenly chased all the Iraqis out of Baghdad and brought in Americans to permanently take over their apartments and other property, instead. But that is an exact analogy for how the Israelis are behaving.)

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This Laura Rozen post has some good links on the fears of a civil war in Israel.

Must-read:

Wieseltier's piece echoes the alarm raised by the Israeli press the past few weeks, warning of "the coming civil war." I was at an Erev Rosh Hashana dinner the other night with a law student -- a Democrat who plans to vote for Bush because he supports the White House approach to the war on terror -- who was saying violence between Israeli troops and the settlers they will be ordered to evacuate would never happen, as many Israeli papers are warning. But it was only nine years ago that Rabin was assassinated by a right wing Jewish fanatic. One does wonder, how did so many people in American Jewry get so out of touch with what's happening in Israel? Why do so many seem to harbor so many illusions? As one Israeli reader recently wrote me, "the contradictions in Israeli society are about to explode in a violent way." But this topic of the very real potential for 'us vs. us' violence in Israel is treated either as a remote possibility or almost a taboo topic among American Jewry, despite the recent history and warnings.

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