Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Being ashamed is not enough - Haaretz, February 2, 2007

If a peace agreement is ever signed with the Palestinians, the Hebron settlers will have to end their illegal holiday at the Park Hotel, which has been going on 38 years too long, because no border will be able to include this outrageous enclave inside a large Arab city. Following the 1994 massacre by Baruch Goldstein of Muslims praying in the Tomb of the Patriarchs, Yitzhak Rabin should have seized the opportunity to remove the Jewish settlement, but he was deterred. And since then, no leader has even dared think about doing so.

Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times

Mahmoud Ibrahim, 10, center, and other Palestinian boys survive by selling goods salvaged at a West Bank dump, near Hebron.

West Bank Boys Dig a Living From Settlers’ Trash - New York Times, September 2, 2007

What is Zion if not the Temple Mount? - Haaretz - Israel News
And what is Zion if not the Temple Mount, the Mount of Olives and the Old City?” Conceding Jerusalem and its holy places, many fine people already understood then, is neither legitimate nor moral. Such a decision cannot be binding on the State of Israel or the Jewish people.

Persuade the people - Haaretz

…so long as Israel keeps raising the separation wall and the Palestinians keep getting poorer - all the debates about principles for a peace agreement are pretty worthless

Sale is a legal fiction that allows the land to be farmed and the produce sold to Jews during the sabbatical year
The beginning of the Jewish sabbatical year is just two weeks away, but the kashrut certification bureaucrats are breaking new records for the absurd: Kashrut supervisors from the Chief Rabbinate are forcing Israeli Arabs to sign a document that gives the Israel Lands Administration and the Chief Rabbinate the right to sell the land to a non-Jew as a condition for continued kosher certification for their produce. If they refuse to sign, they were told that the wholesalers to whom they sell their goods will also lose their kashrut certification.

The police, security services and army are under the constant threat of active resistance on the settlers’ part, and they submit to that threat. The necessary monopoly over this power no longer exists. There are two states; one committed to a Western democratic government, and the other committed to extremist, messianic religious rule.

Outrage after Yosef links troops dying, religosity, Jerusalem Post, August 27, 2007
Officials from across the political and military spectrums slammed Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef Monday for a sermon in which Yosef said troops killed in the Second Lebanon War lost their lives because of their lack of religious observance.

Eli Ben-Shem, chairman of the Yad Labanim organization, which represents families of fallen soldiers, called Yosef’s remarks “shameful” and said that the comments had provoked angry phone calls to the organization, specifically from religious parents who “were hurt very badly.”

Ben-Shem emphasized that a large proportion of the 112 families who lost children in the war were religious and learned in yeshivot. “It is specifically those religious people that have been hurt by the comments. Secular people don’t pay much attention to him anyway,” said Ben-Shem.

Liberaland and Haredistan - Haaretz - Israel News
The burning of the Alei Shalechet crematorium probably doesn’t surprise anyone who has been following Israel’s ongoing culture war. However, Shas Minister Yitzhak Cohen’s statements have raised the stakes. He said he would push a bill criminalizing cremation, a bill that would “put an end to those who are implementing a Final Solution once again.”

Rabbi Yosef: No wonder secular IDF soldiers are killed in war - Haaretz - Israel News
Shas party spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a former Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel, told followers in remarks broadcast on Monday that Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed in combat because they did not observe Jewish religious laws.

Bar-Ilan again forced to deal with the extremists in its midst | Jerusalem Post, August 16, 2007

Akiva Eldar, The “College of Judea and Samaria in Ariel” is now called “Ariel University Center of Samaria, Haaretz, August, 2007

Burg, Those who say that “God’s law is first” are no different from one another, whether they wear a rabbi’s skullcap, Hezbollah’s turban or the cloak of a North American spiritual leader, Ha’aretz, August 15, 2007

The New York Times > World > Slide Show > Hebron Settlers Evicted > Slide 1 of 9

Police Fight to Remove West Bank Settlers NYT 88.07

Laor, In Hebron, LRB 2004