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Racist rabbi dead, advocated genocide against Palestinians
From Khalid Amayreh
Mordechai Elyahu, one of Israel’s most racist and fascist-minded rabbis, died Monday, at the age of 81, Israeli sources reported.
A former Chief Rabbi of Israel, Elyahu was a chief mentor for the Gush Emunim settler movement.
However, Elyahu was especially notorious for advocating ethnic cleansing and murdering non-combatants including children if the crimes are politically expedient for Israel.
In 2007, he urged the Israeli army to employ “Nazi methods” against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.
“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And if they don’t stop after we kill 1000, then we must kill 10,000. If they don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop,” Shumel Elyhau, the rabbi’s son, quoted his father as saying.
He petitioned the Israeli government to carry out a series of carpet bombing of Palestinian population centers in the Gaza Strip, arguing that a ground invasion of the heavily populated enclave would endanger the lives of Israeli soldiers.
Widely viewed as one of the most knowledgeable Talmudic sages in Israel, Elyahu ruled that it was forbidden to risk the lives of Jews for fear of killing or injuring non-Jews whom he viewed as “of lesser value in comparison to Jews.”
Elyahu was closely affiliated with Merkaz H’arav, a Talmudic college in West Jerusalem, widely considered to be the theological nerve center of religious messianic Zionism.
The College teaches and promotes the teachings of Abraham Kook, the ideological godfather of religious Zionism.
According to Israeli writer Yair Sheleg, Kook taught 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.”
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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.
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