By Khalid Amayreh

Religious Zionism promoting for the annihilation of Arabs and
non-Jews is rife, not only amongst Israelis, but also adopted by
Israel's government, (Reuters photo)

"The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way. Destroy their holy sites; kill their men, women, children, and even cattle. "These are not the words of a loony Jewish terrorist, marauding through the hills of the West Bank in search for an elderly Arab peasant or shepherd to kill.

In fact, these words were uttered last week by Manis Friedman, a prominent and highly-respected Chabad-lubavitch rabbi who is widely admired among many Orthodox Jews, especially in the United States.

Writing in response to a question posed by Moment Magazine for its "Ask the Rabbis" feature, the Minnesota-based rabbi argued that "if we followed this wisdom (killing innocent Arab men, women and children), there would be no civilian casualties, no children in the line of fire, no false sense of righteousness, in fact, no war."

He went on, "I do not believe in Western morality. Living by the Torah values will make us the light to the nations who suffer defeat because of a disastrous morality of human invention."

Friedman's views are not marginal or unrepresentative within the Chabad movement — a supremacist worldwide Jewish sect with huge financial and political influence in Israel and North America.

Moreover, Friedman himself is not a fringe rabbi within the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. For many years, he was the English translator for the Lubavitcher Rebb (M. M. Schneurssohn), and at his urging, he founded Beis Chana; a network of campus and schools for Jewish women.

Defending his views, Friedman argued that he was only quoting from the Torah. He further argued that he was not actually urging Israel to kill en mass Palestinian men, women, and children, saying that he only believed that Israel should publicly say that it is willing to "do these things in order to scare Palestinians".

However, a Jewish neighbor by the name of Shmarya Rosenberg, was quoted as saying that "the comment in Moment is not an aberration from his experiences with Friedman and many other Chabad rabbis."

"What he is saying is the standard normal view of Chabadniks. They just do not say it in public," Rosenberg continued.

Nazi-like Movement

Chabad's genocidal racism is not really confined to a small group of religious fanatics.
If a Jewish sect or movement can be described as "Nazi or Nazi-like", it is the Chabad (or Habad) group, which openly advocates the annihilation of non-Jews in Palestine according to the Biblical model of the Book of Joshua.

Chabad is not a marginal movement within Orthodox Judaism. In both Israel and North America, it has been able to amass tremendous wealth and acquire considerable political influence.

The movement, with which thousands of Israeli soldiers and high-ranking officers are affiliated, views non-Jews as sub-humans or animals in human shape whose lives have no sanctity.

According to the group's manifesto, known as ha’Tanya, as quoted by the late Israeli author and philosopher Yisrael Shahak in his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, all non-Jews are totally satanic creatures in whom there is absolutely nothing good.

"Even a non-Jewish embryo is qualitatively different from a Jewish one."

According to Rabbi Shneur Zalman, the founder of Chabad, the very existence of a non-Jew is inessential whereas all creation was made solely for the sake of Jews.

In ha’Tanya, he claims that "all Jews are good by nature; all non-Jews are evil by nature. The Jews are creation's crowning glory, the non-Jews are the scum of the earth,"(as quoted in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 3, 1994, page 14)

Chabad's genocidal racism is not really confined to a small group of religious fanatics as public relations-savvy Zionist spokesmen would claim, especially when talking to the Western media.

In Israel, the murderous hatred toward Palestinians found expression in Israel's recent blitz in Gaza, which killed and maimed thousands of Palestinian civilians, and utterly destroyed thousands of homes, schools, mosques, and other civilian buildings.

According to the Israeli press, some military rabbis regularly encouraged and instigated combat soldiers to "show no mercy to Palestinians".

Avi Rontzki, the Israeli army Chief Rabbi distributed a booklet to soldiers called Go Fight My Fight: A Daily Study of Table for the Soldiers and Commanders in a Time of War, prepared specifically for the Israeli onslaught on Gaza.

In the booklet, Rontzki urged the troops to show no mercy to Palestinians, including civilians.

"When you show mercy to cruelty, you are being cruel to the pure and honest soldiers. These are not games at the amusement park where sportsmanship teaches one to make concessions. This is a war on murderers," he said.

"There is a biblical ban on surrendering a single millimeter of it to gentiles, though all sorts of impure distortions and foolishness of autonomy, enclaves, and other national weakness. We will not abandon it to the hands of another nation, not a finger, not a nail of it," he continued.

Two years ago, Israel's former Chief Rabbi, Mordechai Elyahu, urged the Israeli army and government to employ the Nazi choice against the Palestinians.

He petitioned the Israeli government to carry out a series of carpet bombing of Palestinian population centers in Gaza, arguing that a ground invasion of the world's most crowded spot would endanger the safety of Israeli soldiers.

"If they do not stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And, if they do not stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still do not stop we must kill 100,000, even a million; whatever it takes to make them stop."

This was not the first time Elyahu, who is considered one of the most knowledgeable Talmudic sages in Israel, had issued a religious edict urging the Israeli army not to refrain from killing Palestinian children and civilians if that meant saving Jewish lives.

On several occasions, he had urged the army to indiscriminately bomb Palestinian population centers, and pay no attention to possible objections by international public opinion.

Elyahu was a student of Rabbi Abraham Kook who is widely considered the main mentor of modern religious Zionism as well as the settlement movement known as Gush Emunim (the Bloc of Faithful).

Yair Sheleg, a noted Israeli writer, quoted Kook as writing that "the difference between the Jewish soul and the souls of all non-Jews, no matter what their rank and level of understanding, is bigger and deeper than the difference between the human soul and the animal soul."

Again, these venomous teachings are often translated into ugly acts of murder of innocent Palestinians both by Israeli soldiers and fanatical Jewish settlers.

More than two years ago, a Jewish immigrant from France murdered in cold blood an Arab taxi driver from East Jerusalem after beguiling the unsuspecting victim to take him to Netanya.

The murderer, named Julian Soufir, had apparently been subjected to heavy doses of religious indoctrination at a synagogue near his home. He told police interrogators that "I just wanted to kill an Arab. There is no difference between killing an Arab and killing an animal. When I killed him, I felt I was slaughtering a sheep." Soufir has been transferred to a mental hospital and his lawyer is demanding that he be let free!!

Dishonest Approach

National Union leader Aryeh Eldad on several occasions urged the Israeli army not to "treat 'real human beings' (the settlers) as it did Arabs."
Indeed, apart from a minority of courageous Israeli writers and intellectuals, people such as Shahak and the vast majority of the Israeli intelligentsia — religious and secular alike — have carefully refrained from dealing seriously with this issue of Jewish racism toward non-Jews.

The classical reaction of Jewish leaders to virulent remarks by rabbis such as Manis Friedman usually takes the form of claiming that these views only represent a small minority, and in no way reflect or represent the teachings of Judaism.

Of course, this is true — in a certain sense. After all, God never taught Moses, May peace be upon him, that "to kill the best of gentiles…Kill them all," as Shimon Hatsodek taught, nor did the Almighty taught that Jews or even Israelites were biologically superior to other human beings.

But this does not mean that racist Jewish ideas, including Chabad's Nazi-like genocidal system of thinking, are not rife among hundreds of thousands of Jews in Israel and abroad.

Today, the Israeli coalition government headed by Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu includes religious parties such as ha'Bayt ha'Yahudi (the Jewish House), which openly calls for the expulsion, enslavement, or extermination of Palestinians.

Leaders of another party represented in the Israeli Knesset, ha'Ichud ha Leumi (the National Union) declare openly that non-Jews are not real human beings.

For example, National Union leader Aryeh Eldad on several occasions urged the Israeli army not to "treat 'real human beings' (the settlers) as it did Arabs."

Finally, one cannot leave this important subject without making an earnest call upon all honest and well-meaning Jews to openly and sincerely condemn the manifestly criminal discourse of Chabad.

Jews cannot really raise their voices aloud against anti-Semitism while keeping silent — or even finding excuses for — virulent racism coming from Jews themselves.

In the final analysis, racism does not become kosher when practiced by Jews.

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Khalid Amayreh is a journalist living in Palestine. He obtained his MA in journalism from the University of Southern Illinois in 1983. Since the 1990s, Mr. Amayreh has been working and writing for several news outlets among which is Aljazeera.net, Al-Ahram Weekly, Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), and Middle East International. He can be reached through politics.indepth@iolteam.com. | http://www.islamonline.net:80/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1245159078412&pagename=Zone-English-Muslim_Affairs%2FMAELayout