You can read all this at: http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/israeli-vengeance-runs-wild-violating-torah-law-and-international-law. In this case, our editor is commenting on articles that appear in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz (with deep appreciation to Ha'aretz for the fine forum it has become on Israeli policy).
Israeli Vengeance Runs Wild–Violating Torah law and International Law
Editor’s Note: “Thou Shall NOT Take Vengeance” is a key law of Torah, but it is being ignored in Israel today both by the government and by significant parts of the people of the State of Israel (read Chemi Shalev's article below and Gideon Levi's article).
We at Tikkun (who condemned the kidnapping of three Israeli teens several weeks ago, and rejected the suggestion by some on the Left and some in the Palestinian world that this act had to be contextualized to the Occupation–and insisted that acts of kidnapping and then subsequently of murder of teenagers was ethically wrong and should not be minimized or morally excused on the grounds that just before those kidnappings Israeli occupying forces had killed several Palestinians in nearby Hebron) now watch in horror as Israelis march through the streets of Jerusalem and many other cities calling for vengeance, some Israelis kidnap and murder a Palestinian teen in East Jerusalem, the Israeli Army blows up dozens of homes of “suspected terrorists” without the slightest attempt to give them an opportunity to defend themselves against this charge, and IDF engages in bombings of Gaza though there is no evidence that the Israeli teens were killed by order of anyone in Hamas.
This, of course, is not fundamentally different from what the U.S. did after 9/11, or what China did after the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square or what many other countries do. But it is particularly vexing to ethically conscious Jews for the following reason: Israel claims to be “the Jewish state,” and yet its Occupation policies and the violence that flows from those policies have a devastating impact on the ethical claims of the Jewish people, defame God’s name, and leave a historical memory that for thousands of years will plague our people in the eyes of others and in the relationship that ethical Jews will have to our traditions. Please read all the articles below, including the one about racism in Israeli schools--it's so very painful to those of us who still care about Judaism, the Jewish people, and the future survival of Israel!
We Jews have to save Judaism from its identification with the policies of the State of Israel toward Palestinians and from the deep anti-Arab racism that has grown deeper and deeper among many Israelis in order to justify the Occupation to themselves. A first step toward reclaiming the moral highground of Jewish ethics is taken in the articles below reprinted from Ha’aretz newspaper, particularly that by Rabbi Daniel Landes, the director of Pardes (a widely respected Jewish studies center in Jerusalem). His references to Price Tag refer to a group of settlers who have taken acts of violence against Israeli and West Bank Palestinians and even fellow Jews who wish to end the Occupation. His reference to Israeli rabbis is to those who have publicly called for acts of discrimlnation against Palestinians and/or acts of vengeance. Rabbi Landes is one of those who will be remembered by history as a rare voice of religious sanity and Jewish ethics at a time when the best of Judaism is being violated in Israel today. His article is a true Kedushat Hashem (sanctification of God's name). His article is also a living refutation of the claim that ALL orthodox Jews are right-wing fanatics (though it is certainly disappointing to me that most rabbis in the Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal and Orthodox Jewish worlds have not yet uttered strong words of rebuke (tochecha) about what is going on in Israel today, or joining Rabbi Landes in his courageous statement).
–Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor Tikkun and chair of the (interfaith religious and secular-humanist) Network of Spiritual Progressives. If you want to help Tikkun's voice survive in the face of tremendous "rally-round-the-flag" pressures inside the Jewish world, and the outrage that many Jewish leaders and otherwise liberal American rabbis feel when we call them to account for failing to speak up in the way that Rabbi Landes did in the article below, help us out: please join the Network of Spiritual Progressives as a dues-paying member at www.spiritualprogressives.org OR make a tax-deductible contribution to Tikkun atwww.tikkun.org or by sending a check or your credit card info to Tikkun, 2342 Shattuck Ave, Box 1200, Berkeley, Ca. 94708.WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT. RabbiLerner.tikkun@gmail.com
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Berlin, 1933 and Jerusalem, 2014: When racist thugs are on the prowl
The gangs of Jewish ruffians man-hunting for Arabs are a manifestation of the dangerous evil that will surely triumph if good men continue to do nothing.
By Chemi Shalev | Jul. 2, 2014
Police evacuate an Arab man from a Jewish mob. Jerusalem, July 1, 2014. Photo by Olivier Fitoussi
Photo of IDF solider, uploaded to Facebook page calling for avenge of teenagers’ deaths. Caption reads ‘Let us simply spray [bullets].’ (Screenshot)
By Asher Schechter | Jul. 3, 2014 | 3:05 PM | 
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On March 9, 1933, brown-shirted Sturmabteilung went on a rampage. “In several parts of Berlin a large number of people, most of whom appeared to be Jews, were openly attacked in the streets and knocked down. Some of them were seriously wounded. The police could do no more than pick up the injured and take them off to hospital,” the Guardian reported. “Jews were beaten by the brown shirts until blood ran down their heads and faces” the Manchester Guardian noted. “Before my eyes, storm troopers, drooling like hysterical beasts, chase a man in broad daylight while whipping him,” Walter Gyssling wrote in his diary.
I know: you were outraged before you even finished the paragraph above. “How dare he compare isolated incidents here and there to Nazi Germany,” you are thinking to yourself. “This is an outrageous trivialization of the Holocaust.”
You are right, of course. My intention is not to draw any parallel whatsoever. Both my parents lost their families during World War II, and I need no convincing that the Holocaust is a crime so unique in its evil totality that it stands by itself even in the annals of other premeditated genocides.
But I am a Jew, and there are scenes of the Holocaust that are indelibly etched in my mind, even though I was not alive at the time. And when I saw the videos and pictures of gangs of right-wing Jewish racists running through the streets of Jerusalem, chanting “Death to the Arabs,” hunting for random Arabs, picking them out by their appearance or by their accents, chasing them in broad daylight, “drooling like hysterical beasts” and then beating them up before the police could arrive – the historical association was automatic. It was the first thing that jumped into my mind. It should have been, I think, the first thing that jumped into any Jew’s mind.
Israel in 2014, it goes without saying, is not “The Garden of Beasts” that Erik Larson wrote about in his book on 1933 Germany. The Israeli government does not condone vigilantism or thuggery, as the Nazis did for a while, before Germans started complaining about the disorder on their streets and the damage to Berlin’s international reputation. I have no doubt that the police will also do their utmost to apprehend the murderers of the Palestinian boy whose burnt body was found in a Jerusalem forest. I am even praying that they find that the killing wasn’t a hate crime at all.
But make no mistake: the gangs of Jewish ruffians man-hunting for Arabs are no aberration. Theirs was not a one-time outpouring of uncontrollable rage following the discovery of the bodies of the three kidnapped students. Their inflamed hatred does not exist in a vacuum: it is an ongoing presence, growing by the day, encompassing ever larger segments of Israeli society, nurtured in a public environment of resentment, insularity and victimhood, fostered and fed by politicians and pundits – some cynical, some sincere – who have grown weary of democracy and its foibles and who long for an Israel, not to put too fine a point on it, of one state, one nation and, somewhere down the line, one leader.
In the past 24 hours alone, a Facebook Page calling for “revenge” for the killings of the three kidnapped teens has received tens of thousands of “likes,” replete with hundreds of explicit calls to kill Arabs, wherever they are. The one demanding the execution of “extreme leftists” reached almost ten thousand likes within two days. These, and countless other articles on the web and on social media are inundated, today as in most other days, with readers comments spewing out the worst kind of racist bile and calling for death, destruction and genocide.
These calls have been echoed in recent days, albeit in slightly more veiled terms, by members of the Knesset, who cite Torah verses on the God of Revenge and his command on the fate of the Amalekites. David Rubin, who describes himself as a former mayor of Shiloh, was more explicit: in an article published in Israel National News he wrote “An enemy is an enemy and the only way to win this war is to destroy the enemy, without excessive regard for who is a soldier and who is a civilian. We Jews will always aim our bombs primarily at military targets, but there is absolutely no need to feel guilty about ‘disrupting the lives of, and killing or wounding enemy civilians who are almost entirely Hamas and Fatah supporters.”
And hovering above all of this are Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, who persist in portraying our conflict with the Palestinians in stark terms of black and white, good versus evil; who describe Israel’s adversaries as incorrigible and irredeemable; who have never shown the slightest sign of empathy or understanding for the plight of the people who have lived under Israeli occupation for nearly half a century; whose pronouncements serve to dehumanize the Palestinians in the eyes of the Israeli public; who perpetuate the public’s sense of isolation and injustice; and who thus can be said to be paving the way for the waves of homicidal hatred that are now coming to light.
Some people will draw a parallel between the ugly right wing violence that swept Israel after the Oslo Accords and today’s rising tide of dangerous racism, implicating Netanyahu in both: from his fiery anti-government speeches in Zion Square to Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination and from his harsh anti-Palestinian rhetoric to the outburst of horrid racism today. But that is an easy out. It is not Netanyahu who is to blame, it is the rest of us, Jews in Israel as well as those in the Diaspora, those who turn a blind eye and those who choose to look the other way, those who portray the Palestinians as inhuman monsters and those who view any self-criticism as an act of Jewish betrayal.
This comparison is surely valid: Edmund Burke’s maxim ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing’ was true in Berlin in the early 1930s and it will hold true in Israel as well. If nothing is done to reverse the tide, evil will surely triumph, and it won’t take too long.
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Bulldoze the Jewish terrorists’ homes
The tragedy of the innocent boys murdered by terrorists will haunt us for a long time, but it will not destroy us. Jewish revenge killings will.
From Jerusalem By Rabbi Daniel Landes | Jul. 4, 2014
There is only one sane and truly halakhic way to tackle our current situation: Take the well-known members of the Orthodox Price Tag gang and lock ‘em up, for a long time and in an inaccessible prison. Don’t let them go home for chagim and deny them visitors. Do the best to break and separate them. Freeze monies that go to their families. And when and if we have proven guilty perpetrators, bulldoze their parents’ homes. The last will stop them.
Am I overreaching? Might not Mohammed Abu Khdeir, the Arab teen murdered and his body desecrated, have been the victim of a different Jewish group or of some criminal group, perhaps Arab? Maybe, although I doubt it. But what is not doubtful is that the PTG – the Price Tag Gang – is headed in the direction of creating real havoc with us and with our Arab citizens and with neighboring populations. Since the PTG could care less about Western values, let us refer them to Jewish Law and values and utilize some rules from that body of wisdom.
The PTG is an imminent sakanat nefashot, a danger to life. They are a fire burning on the Sabbath that will destroy not only property, but the lives of soldiers, police and civilians. Indeed, the PTG seemingly wants to cause tension and havoc, leading possibly to war. In their apocalyptic vision, they are confident that Israel will finally “do what it has always needed to do” and act with outstanding force to destroy not only Hamas but the PA and probably all other Muslims.
This is a fiery threat that needs a cold water cannon to extinguish it. When we don’t counter the PTG we destroy a fundamental principle of Torah equality – “One Torah and one Justice should be for you and for the stranger that resides in your midst,” (Numbers 15:16.)
We incarcerate suspected Hamas members and we deal harshly with their infrastructure, because they are a danger to us. The PTG are an equal danger. If you don’t think so ask the twenty soldiers and police outside my house guarding our Abu Tor neighborhood, who have spent the day dodging ricks delivered by slingshot and worrying about worse, courtesy of our cowardly ‘boys’.
There is a great danger that copycat revenge activities, including murder, can spew forth from such an event. The Halakhic principle to be invoked is lifnei evar lo teetain michshol, “before the blind do not put a stumbling block,” (Leviticus 19:14.) Rabbinically, the verse is interpreted to refer to someone who is blind to the consequences of his or her act – a perfect definition of the members of the PTG. Harsh prison time, punishment to parents who have not exerted responsibility in reigning in their children and isolation from their peers should convince Jewish terrorists and wannabes from their disastrous road.
Finally, rabbis who have been inculcating and preaching the virus of racist revenge need to spend their Daf Yomi [daily Talmud study] time in jail. Ah, but do we not actually owe them our cherished respect? My teacher, the great moral leader Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, often quoted the Talmudic phrase, bimkom hillul HaShem ein mechalkin kavod lerav, “in the place of profanation of God’s name, we do not give honor to a Rav.”
There is no greater Hillul HaShem than a charred corpse of an innocent, murdered by Torah inspiration. The tragedy of the innocent boys murdered by terrorists will haunt us for a long time. But it will not destroy us. Jewish revenge killings will.
Rabbi Landes is Director of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, where he teaches the Senior Kollel Talmud class and Theology. The views expressed here are his own.
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Editor’s note: Zeev Sternehell is a world famous Israeli historian who wrote about the rise of Nazism in France. His article appeared in Ha’aretz newspaper in Israel
A country paralyzed by fear of the unknown
The young Labor and Yesh Atid legislators who ostensibly are leftists – or were leftists during their media careers – keep silent.
By Zeev Sternhell | Jul. 4, 2014
In light of the new terrorist entity that might arise in parts of Iraq and Syria, and the concomitant threats to Jordan, the latest fashion in the Israeli center-left is to line up with the right in the name of “national unity.” The murder of the three teenagers in the West Bank, whom we are all mourning, has bolstered this trend.
The tragedy is now an excuse to make attacks on the internal front: To rally once again to destroy Israel as a state of law that tries to guarantee equality — at least formally — for all its citizens.
But basically we’re returning to the same old method: Whatever does not work by force will work by even more force — more construction in the territories, more annexation, more Jews in East Jerusalem, more degradation of the local people, more privileges for the settlers. And all this happens even though logic dictates the opposite.
So as the conflict in the territories continues, the national interest dictates the establishment of a Palestinian state, not out of surrender to external pressure, but out of the realization that this is good for the Jews. The new dangers actually require us to get closer to the Palestinians; maybe this is the chance to treat them as equals, to recognize the legitimacy of their rights and their aspirations for freedom.
Then we could see how they respond to this recognition. Maybe they too want to live quietly — but with honor. After all, one can have quiet in prison, too.
What reasonable person still believes that in our time it’s possible to keep a national group under colonial occupation and buy it off with economic favors, on the assumption that these inferior people will willfully sell their rights and aspirations in return for an easier life?
Such a belief reflects the psychology of an agent in the Shin Bet security service: Tell me what happens in your village and you’ll receive a permit to work in Israel. It’s no surprise that this is the approach of the settlement thugs and their spokespeople. But when the remnants of the old Revisionists, followers of Ze’ev Jabotinsky such as Moshe Arens respectful of the rights of man, adopt such abysmal contempt for the other, it’s a sign they’ve run out of ammunition.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls for the international community to establish a Kurdish state, but why don’t the Palestinians deserve what the Kurds deserve? Is it only because Kurdish independence serves our interests while Palestinian independence negates the settlement of the West Bank?
In any case, to try out a new policy we need a different political elite. Why are there no forces in the middle of the political map capable of thinking about a change in the status quo?
This question has no unequivocal answer, but the facts aren’t controversial — this is the reality that paralyzes Israeli politics, which is built on conformism and a fear of the unknown. The current situation is preferable in the eyes of everyone crowded into the center and worried about the danger of changing direction. No matter how bad the current situation is, a sharp turn creates a fear of the unknown.
Everyone has gotten used to the occupation. Many in the center are disgusted by the daily violence, the cruelty to civilians, the children who are shot for the “self-defense” of soldiers wearing bulletproof vests and armed head to toe. But no one speaks up and draws conclusions.
All the young Labor and Yesh Atid MKs who ostensibly are leftists — or were leftists in their previous careers in the media — keep silent. If only we could say they’ve been bought off with money and favors. But they’re not corrupt or greedy, they’re just helpless. The disaster of Israeli society is that this is the human material that goes into politics.
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Israel’s High Court of Justice is a collaborator of the occupation
These are days of darkness, exactly the kind of days in which Israel needs a High Court of Justice, but the High Court is nowhere to be found.
By Gideon Levy in Ha'aretz | Jul. 3, 2014 | 2:44 AM
Residents of the village of Idna inspecting Ziad Awad’s home after it was demolished by the IDF.
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Haaretz Editorial | Jul. 6, 2014 | 6:00 AM
The High Court of Justice deserves a pat on the shoulder for a job well done. Once again it has proved it is unequaled in preserving glorious judicial traditions. Court presidents have come and gone, justices have changed, the glittering, lofty team of Meir Shamgar, Aharon Barak, Mishael Cheshin and Dorit Beinisch has been replaced by Asher Grunis’ group of gray clerks. But the court hasn’t stopped the music. The golden tribunal has proved yet again that it is no more than a wimpy rubber stamp. The beacon of justice has long flickered out. In fact it has never been one when it comes to the occupation. There, of all places, where it is so needed, the beacon became a blackened, humbled matchstick.
The judicial activism stopped at the Green Line, leaving anarchy beyond it. Remember that paragon among Israeli documentaries, “The Law in These Parts”? Well, we may as well produce “The Law in These Parts, Part II.” In time, when history judges events, it will remember where the High Court was when all this took place. It will record: The High Court was a collaborator.
For the umpteenth time, the High Court on Tuesday denied another petition against demolishing a terrorist’s house. This time the court overlooked such trivia as the fact that Ziad Awad has not been convicted of murdering police officer Baruch Mizrahi. But his family’s house has already been torn down. The Supreme Court does not believe the authorities should wait for a conviction, even if only for appearances’ sake. The IDF and Shin Bet have already judged the man, and to hell with the law and the separation of powers.
To hell with international law, too, which forbids destroying houses as a punitive measure (article 53 in the Fourth Geneva Convention) as well as penalizing individuals for an offense they had not personally committed (article 33 in the convention and article 50 of the Hague Regulations). Forget about the Hague and Geneva, don’t bother the High Court of Justice with those irrelevant institutions. In the Israeli-occupied territories there’s only one sovereign and it is allowed to commit any evil. The proof is the High Court’s stamp of approval.
The High Court approves almost every whim of the defense establishment. For years its judges have evaded a decision on the issue of torture, they have never dared form an opinion on the settlements’ legality, they’ve almost always approved deportations, administrative detentions and destroying houses.
They will always pull the appropriate excuse out of their sleeve. They’ll say destroying houses is not a punitive step but a “deterring” one (even if a military panel, appointed by Moshe Ya’alon when he was chief of staff, ruled in 2005 that demolition hardly deters at all and does more harm than good). Nor do the champions of Israeli justice see demolition as collective punishment — it’s no more collective punishment than is arrest, for which the family suffers, too, they ruled in the past. International law in the territories is subject to something more sublime in their eyes – amendment 119 to the Defense (Emergency) Regulations promulgated by the British authorities in mandatory Palestine.
The justices sitting in the High Court are supposed to assist petitioners and administer justice even when it’s not in keeping with the dry letter of the law. But in matters concerning the occupation, the court sees no need to provide either assistance or justice. It makes do with the services provided by the benevolent occupation’s authorities. As far as the High Court is concerned, Awad’s brother’s house is the same as Awad’s own house, his wife and children are guilty and their houses will be destroyed as well. Whether in Cheshin’s poetic tongue or in the bureaucratic words of Miriam Naor, Yoram Danziger and Uri Shoham, it’s the same depressing, frightening message: Keep occupying, punishing, evicting, dispossessing and abusing – the High Court is behind you.
These are days of darkness. Days of pain, hatred, incitement and revenge. Exactly the kind of days in which Israel needs a High Court of Justice, but the High Court isn’t there. This court has won praises in Israel and the world, and the Israeli right even brazenly described it as leftist, as it cynically branded the Israeli media, which is now recording another shameful chapter in its own chronicles.
The High Court is Israel’s lovely, enlightened face, but with such a face Israel has no need of the ugly one, now seen in Jerusalem’s streets. The thugs are rampaging in the streets and the “Al Yahud Gang” already has thousands of Facebook friends. Who’s to say which is worse — the rabble thirsty for revenge, or the instruments of revenge in the hall of justice?
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An Israeli classroom Photo by Moti Milrod
It may be difficult to accuse Education Minister Shay Piron of direct responsibility for the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir from Shoafat at the hands of Jews, be they youths or adults. But his responsibility is much clearer in ignoring the racist cancer infecting tens of thousands of young people who learned in schools that it is possible — and maybe even necessary — to wipe out the other.
This is malignant apathy, different only in its style from the nationalist indoctrination of Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar. The fruits whose seeds were planted by education ministers such as Zevulun Hammer, Limor Livnat and Sa’ar are now being harvested. An entire generation is demanding a victim, but Piron excels in turning his gaze in other directions.
Last Thursday, after long days of calls for revenge and the inflaming of dark instincts, the Education Ministry published an announcement calling on young people to “demonstrate responsibility, restraint, tolerance and faith in government institutions.” The announcement also said that now, in these difficult days, “We all have the responsibility to avoid any expression of violence and calls for incitement.”
Piron’s name was missing from the announcement. Piron, the devoted fan of press releases and the favorite of television breakfast shows, went missing from the announcement, as did the name of the director-general of his ministry, Michal Cohen.
This “brave call” for restraint and tolerance was attributed to anonymous sources in the Education Ministry, as if it was a dangerous leak, one that someone might still be punished for. It was an act of cowardice, far from any hint of an educational backbone, for the “exemplary society” Piron so loves to talk about.
Piron and his ministry’s ignoring of their responsibility for the racism afflicting Israeli youth is nothing new. In November last year, a group of Jewish youths was charged in Jerusalem District Court with attacking Arabs. Then a month ago, in honor of Jerusalem Day, dozens of students banged on doors in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City while crying out, “Destroy the seed of Amalek,” “The Temple will be rebuilt, the mosque burned,” “Mohammed is dead,” and “Death to Arabs.”
In both cases the Education Ministry chose to shut its eyes and not respond. Willed blindness has turned into a policy, which trickles down to the schools. It is lucky that the summer vacation started a few days ago. Otherwise, someone might have expected the Education Ministry to do something, for Piron to say something.
Many teachers are afraid to confront their students. During the Sa’ar years — which included trips to Hebron, army officers’ visits to schools, the firing of the liberal-minded person in charge of civics education, Adar Cohen, and more — are still etched in our memories. The Adam Verete affair at the ORT high school in Kiryat Tivon (and Piron’s silence for days during the politicized ordeal) likewise did not add to the sense of security felt by teachers, who are asking — despite the spirit of the times and despite the difficulties — to deal with issues such as human rights, freedom of expression and even — in exceptional cases — different historical narratives and the situation surrounding us. As for support or system-wide backing for such teachers, there is nothing to talk about. At most they will receive quiet and modest encouragement from their school superiors, but that remains under the radar of the Education Ministry authorities.
A year ago, with another wave of hate crimes in the background, I visited a high school in Jerusalem. There were students there who declared they hated all the Arabs, that they did not want to see Arabs anywhere — “Not in the street, not in the mall, not on the light rail” — alongside others who offered a more complex message. Research and surveys in the last 20 years show that the strength of the first group has grown steadily, while the second group is shrinking and going silent. Hatred has become a major component in the personal and group identity of our youth. It is present all the time, and sometimes, in some places and depending on the events, it also rears its head toward immigrants and leftists.
The problem of racism will not be solved by the Education Ministry’s “The Other is Me” program, an updated version of “Love your neighbor as yourself” seasoned with a pinch of warm, embracing New Ageism. Instead of silencing the conflicts and covering them with a thick layer of makeup, the Education Ministry would do better to deal with the fear that blunts its various educational programs for Jews and Arabs. Based on Piron’s actions so far, it may be too late to entertain such a hope.
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