Khalid Amayreh

When the Israeli High Court recently ordered Jewish squatters to leave an Arab house they had illegally seized in al-Khalil ( Hebron) a few years ago, settlers and their supporters converged at the contentious site, vowing to put up a showdown with the Israeli army and police.

Among the settler leaders arriving at the site, apparently to incite the squatters to resist evacuation, was Daniela Weise, a charismatic settler leader who preaches blood and fire against the Palestinian community in Israel-Palestine, demanding that they either be enslaved, expelled or outright exterminated.

Weise didn’t content herself with invoking the usual mantras, such as “God gave us this land,” and “We are only reclaiming our country.” She actually quoted heavily from the Old Testament, telling hundreds of Jewish fanatics that it was a Mitzvah (good religious deed) to attack Arabs, even murder them, and damage their property, because “their lives have no sanctity and their property belongs to us.” “The Bible shows us the way as to how we should be dealing with the Arabs. The Bible can’t be wrong.”

Weise didn’t use the word “genocide,” but everyone that listened to her understood that this was exactly what she meant.

Soon after Weise gave her vitriolic homily, dozens of settlers went on the rampage through Palestinian neighbourhoods, smashing windows, care windshields, and beating and stoning defenseless Palestinians.

In one particularly gruesome case, an Arab home was set on fire by the rampaging settlers. The police and eyewitnesses said a family of eight miraculously escaped the inferno.

Many Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the rampage a “pogrom.”

“There is no other word to describe what happened,” said Olmert during a government session.

Some liberal Israelis might be tempted to think that Weise and her ilk represent only a small minority of fanatical settlers and that the vast majority of settlers are rational and law-abiding citizens.

However, this is simply not true.

In truth, Weise’s messianic views are shared by tens of thousands of religious Zionist settlers in the West Bank who are inculcated in the belief that the Jewish people won’t obtain redemption and that the Mashia (Jewish Messiah) or Redeemer, won’t appear unless the “Land of Israel” is redeemed and cleansed of non-Jews.

Hence, it is the religious duty of every Jew to indulge in violence and bloodshed against the Palestinians in order to expedite and accelerate the process of redemption.

Indeed, when a number of settlers were arrested for planning to blow up Islamic holy places in East Jerusalem a few decades ago, the terrorists told police interrogators rather innocently that their aim was to spark a huge war in which many people would die, all in order to effect the appearance of the redeemer.

Virulent ideology

The bulk of Jewish settlers in the West Bank follow the teachings of Abraham Kook, a cabalistic rabbi who immigrated to Palestine from the United States in the early 20th century.

Kook taught that redemption was imminent and that the State of Israel (he was the first rabbi of the Jewish State) was the apple of God’s eye.

Hence, the State and its symbols are viewed as “holy” by most settlers since it is the means through which God’s plan is to be realized. (The sanctity of the State in the settlers’ eyes was shaken considerably after Israel dismantled Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip in 2005.)

Most religious Zionists don’t view non-Jews as full or equal human beings. In 2006, when Israeli troops vacated Jewish settlers from a West Bank settler outpost, known as Amonna, Aryeh Eldad, a religious Zionist leader and Knesset member representing the National Union Party (NUP), lambasted the army for treating “real human beings” the same way they were treating Arabs. The implication here is very clear, namely that Arabs, and non-Jews in general, are not real human beings. Eldad’s remarks aroused no reactions whatsoever in Israel.

On 13 April 1999, Sharon Kalimi, a Hassidic Jew, told the Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munich) that “Arabs are beasts, not human beings. Their flesh is flesh from mules and therefore they should be treated as such.”

In 1994, when an American Jewish immigrant named Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Arab worshipers as they were praying at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, settler leader Rabbi Moshe Levinger declared, “I am sorry not only about dead Arabs but also about dead flies.”

A few days later, Goldstein was eulogized by the Rabbi of Kiryat Arba'a, Dov Lior, who praised the killer as “full of love for fellow human beings.”

Goldstein’s grave in the colony of Kiryat Arba’a near Hebron eventually became a pilgrimage site visited by extremist Jews from all over the world.

According to Israel Shahak, author of Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand years, the term “human beings,” according to Halacha, or Jewish religious law, refers only to Jews.

Hence, when settlers speak, for example, about human rights, what they have in mind is human rights for Jews only.

Annihilation

According to Shahak, the Talmud, upon which Orthodox or Rabbinic Judaism is based, doesn’t really distinguish between combatants and non-combatants during the time of war. In fact, rabbinic authorities teach that killing non-combatants, including children of the enemy, is a mitzvah, or good deed.

A few years ago, a leading settler rabbi urged the Israeli occupation army in the Gaza Strip not to refrain from killing enemy children in order to save the lives of Israeli soldiers. When this writer consulted with a number of rabbis and Jewish scholars on whether the rabbi was a nutcase, I was told that he represented the mainstream within Orthodox Judaism.

Most religious Zionist rabbis consider the international conventions incriminating the deliberate killing of civilians and the destruction of civilian homes and property, such as the Fourth Geneva Convention, as representing Christian morality that is not binding on Jews.

For example, on 12 July, the right-wing Israeli newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, had this caption on its internet site: "Yesha Rabbis call for extermination of the enemy."

The report quoted the Rabbinic council of Jewish settlements in the West Bank as calling on the Israeli army to “ignore Christian morals and exterminate the enemy in the north and south (Hizbullah and Hamas).

Water carriers and wood hewers

Most orthodox rabbinic figures within religious Zionism (the settler movement) believe that three alternatives are awaiting the Palestinians if they don’t voluntarily leave the “land of Israel.”

The first alternative is outright enslavement, or, using the Biblical language, water carriers and wood hewers. This doctrine is being propagated openly by many Israeli politicians, especially those affiliated with religious parties such as Shas, National Union, and the National Religious Party (the party of the settlers). Moshe Feiglin, who was elected recently to the Likud’s list for the upcoming Israeli elections, slated to take place on 10 February, told reporters that non-Jews living in Israel may stay if they so wish provided they understand that this a Jewish country where Jews are masters. In other words, non-Jews have to come to terms with their status as slaves and servants for the master race.

Secondly, if servitude is difficult to implement, e.g. given the un-conducive international atmosphere, then the “goyem” would have to be banished from the land, “lest they remain a thorn in your side.” In Israeli secular phraseology, this is referred to as “transfer.”

In fact, transfer is not an innocent term, since it can’t be carried out without at least a partial genocide, which leads us to the ultimate alternative, which is genocide.

Actually, one doesn’t exaggerate much by saying that genocide of non-Jews in Israel and Palestine is the ideology of Jewish settlers, and religious Zionism in general.

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Source:
http://www.ptimes.org/Main/default.aspx?xyz=BOgLkxlDHteZpYqykRlUuI1kx%2fVDUOFolgAufZmUp4Mj6nir5gP%2b0YeEoKr97ymRiqvv%2bvKeQhgjkMwtlo97YjlmqV7tGpw9SQFublQGRulm4S8JEzfLxofe%2bF60Q3iTwL%2bYUv6zY9c%3d