Combatting Religious Blasphemy in Israel

On Sunday of this week, I went with about 100 Jews associated with the Tag Meir Forum, to pay a condolence call to the family in the village in Duma in the West Bank.
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Last week was a week of religious blasphemy in Israel. It began with the stabbing of 6 innocent Jewish civilians (one of whom, a 16-year-old girl, has now died) on Thursday, July 30 at the Gay Pride parade in downtown Jerusalem by a deranged ultra-Orthodox Jew, who is now undergoing psychiatric examinations before his trial; and it continued the next day, Friday, July 31, with the horrific burning of a Palestinian family in their sleep in the Palestinian village of Duma in the West Bank on Friday morning, apparently by Jewish extremists -- I began to realize that we have reached an emergency situation. As a result, I posted the following message last Friday on my Facebook page:

It is high time for the government of Israel to root out these dangerous Jewish terrorists and arrests their rabbis for incitement. A weird and very sick form of xenophobic Judaism is being taught in certain yeshivas in the West Bank and in Israel. Just as Meir Kahane's group called Kach was banned from running for Israel's parliament, so these yeshivas and there rabbis should be arrested and jailed for incitement and rebellion. The crazy extremist young people who are committing vandalism every day and have now burned a Palestinian boy to death (again!) are getting these ideas from their rabbis and their sinister writings. Our Security Services should arrest them now on administrative detention --as they do to Palestinians--now as an emergency measure before it is too late! They know who they are and how to find them. These fanatical seek people are bringing doom upon us! They must be stopped now!

While I thought that every word that I wrote was true, I knew that it was somewhat emotional.

And then, I attended an anti-racism demonstration last Saturday night in Zion Square in the heart of Jerusalem, at which I heard many speakers address this issue in similar emotional terms, including Rabbi Beni Lau and Rabbi Rafi Feuerstein, two of the leading lights of enlightened modern orthodox Judaism in Israel, who made it very clear that this acts of Jewish extremists are way beyond the pale of what is acceptable in Judaism. Rabbi Lau explicitly said that we are now in a "high risk" situation, and Rabbi Feuerstein stressed that Judaism does not countenance these kinds of actions.

And then I woke up on Sunday morning and read a serious and substantive article by Amos Harel, the well-regarded Defense correspondent of Israel's most important daily newspaper, Haaretz, who explained authoritatively the nature of the emergency situation in which we find ourselves in Israel at this historical juncture. While his analysis is required reading for anyone concerned with the situation, I quote a few paragraphs for emphasis in this post.

The forgiveness the state has shown over many long years toward the violence of the extreme right ...is also what makes possible the murderous hate crimes like Friday's in the village of Douma. There is a price for the gentle hand.

It appears the murderers who set fire to the homes in Douma will ultimately be apprehended. The police unit that investigates nationalist crimes was established very late in the day, but has learned its job quickly -- as proven most recently by the apprehension of the alleged church arsonists -- after a long series of previous failures. The Jewish unit in the Shin Bet security service is also now devoting more resources to dealing with Jewish terror than it had until a few years ago.

However, the war on the Jewish terrorists cannot be confined to security-services measures. This is a long chain, which should begin by shaking off those rabbis and politicians on the far right, and culminate in a strong hand at the courts, which tend to show disproportionate consideration to the personal circumstances of Jewish fanatics.

Due to the authorities' softness, those who used to be dismissively called "price-tag offenders" have developed into a real terror organization... These people want to ignite a religious war, which is not much different from what the jihadists on the Palestinian side have in mind. If the authorities don't take action against them in a coordinated and comprehensive manner, and if the security coordination with the Palestinians that the IDF praises so highly isn't maintained, they're liable to achieve their aim.

Amos Harel, HaAretz, August 2, 2015, "Meekness in the face of Jewish extremism carries a heavy price."

What Amos Harel and many others are saying today is what we in the Tag Meir "Light Tag" Forum --which has been publicly opposing these hate crimes of Jewish terrorists who call themselves "price tag"-- have been saying for the past 3 1/2 years, but no one was taking us seriously enough. Now, finally everyone is saying it! But will words lead to deeds? I hope so, since we are now clearly in an emergency situation!

On Sunday of this week, I went with about 100 Jews associated with the Tag Meir Forum, to pay a condolence call to the family in the village in Duma in the West Bank. We witnessed the two burnt houses, one which was empty and one which housed the four members of one Palestinian family, one of whom is dead and the other three are fighting for their lives in Israeli hospitals, where they are getting the best medical care that Israel can offer.

We were shocked to the core. Many people who saw this with their own eyes wept. We could not believe that some Jews actually did such a disastrous deed in the name of Judaism. We were there to offer empathy, solidarity and sympathy with the people in the village, and we made it very clear that this is not the Jewish way, that what these extremists did does not represent Judaism. On the contrary, what they did is a hilul hashem, a desecration of the name of God.

In our synagogues in Israel and all over the Jewish world during the past few weeks, before and after Tisha B'Av -- the day on which we Jews commemorate the destruction of the first and second Jewish states -- we have been reading from the Biblical prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah who have warned us about the dangers of going astray morally and have reminded us of what we were meant to be. In particular, Isaiah offered us a vision of a better future when he said at the end of the first chapter: "Zion shall be redeemed in Justice, Her repentant ones with Righteousness." Now is the time to head Isaiah's words and return to his vision, before it is too late.

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