by Mobius [➚] · Monday, January 16th, 2006
They have
donned yellow stars and given soldiers
the Nazi salute. They have declared the State of Israel
an illegal entity in the back pocket of the U.S. government. They have
assaulted soldiers and
attacked neighboring ethnic groups. They have most recently been
placed under military curfew. Their gripe is
their entitlement to the complete and total land of Palestine, from the river to the sea, as they have determined it in their fundamentalist interpretations of religious scripture.
These are not Palestinians, no. These are Jews. Jews resisting their eviction from Palestinian shops on formerly Jewish land which they have been occupying illegally.
Can you smell the Kumah rising?
In related news, “Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox block road in town of Beit Shemesh, hurl stones at police officers in protest of new residents who are ‘not religious enough’; five protestors arrested.”
by Mobius [➚] · Tuesday, January 10th, 2006
The Jerusalem Post reports,
Jerusalem police on Sunday shut down a city internet cafe where the illicit far-right Jewish Legion group allegedly carried out some of its activity, police said.
The cafe, located near the city’s central bus station, was raided and subsequently closed for 15 days by order of the chief of police.
Four people operating the shop were detained for questioning.
The police also carried out a search of a city apartment where the far-right activists allegedly live.
Police confiscated four computers and various documents during the late morning raids.
A similar raid was held on the group’s headquarters in Kfar Tapuach. More »
by John Brown [➚] · Friday, November 4th, 2005
Exactly 10 years ago today – November 4, 1995 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by Yigal Amir, after attending a rally promoting the Oslo process at Tel Aviv’s Kings of Israel Square (which is now the Yitzhak Rabin Square). Fatally wounded by three gun shots, he died of massive blood loss and a punctured lung on the operating table at the nearby Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv.
Yigal Amir was born to a national-religious (Religious Zionist) Orthodox Jewish family in the Israeli town of Herzliya; his parents emigrated to Israel from Yemen. He attended Haredi elementary school and yeshiva for his formal education. He served in the Golani Brigade during service in the Israel Defense Force as part of a combined yeshiva-study and army-training program known as hesder. A law student at Bar-Ilan University, he was involved in organizing demonstrations against the Oslo Accords. Amir perceived the Oslo Accords as national treason, and a threat to the existence of the state of Israel, which led to his decision to assassinate Rabin.
Text adapted from Wikipedia.
See also Conspiracy buffs buoyed by Rabin assassination and A Decade After Rabin’s Killing, Israeli Democracy Is Thriving.
by John Brown [➚] · Wednesday, August 31st, 2005
BBC News reports:
“Families of Israeli Arabs shot dead on a bus in Galilee are not considered terrorism victims because their killer was Jewish, the defence ministry says.
Under Israeli law, only attacks by “enemies of Israel” are considered terrorism, the ministry said.
The ruling means families of the four victims will not be entitled to the lifelong monthly payments given to Israeli victims of Palestinian attacks. “
Further coverage: JPost, Ha’aretz, AP
by John Brown [➚] · Saturday, August 13th, 2005
“A contingent of over 50 Rabbis and other Orthodox Jews, representing Orthodox Jews from throughout New York State, assembled Thursday, August 11, 2005, on the steps of the City Hall of New York, to bring to the attention of the public that they are in opposition to [former Kahane henchman] Assemblyman Hikind’s views supporting the use of Racial Profiling against people of Middle-Eastern descent by the New York City Police Department.”
by John Brown [➚] · Monday, August 1st, 2005
A New York assemblyman who started his political career as a lieutenant of extremist Meir Kahane called on the NYPD to use racial profiling to target “people of Middle Eastern descent” when searching bags on mass transit. The bag searches began more than a week ago.
UPI newswire quoted Assemblyman Dov Hikind as saying, “They all look a certain way … It’s all very nice to be politically correct here, but we’re talking about terrorism.” Ironically, Hikind’s profile on the NY State Democratic Committee website describes him as “A spokesman against discrimination of any kind, Assemblyman Hikind chaired the Assembly’s Subcommittee on Human Rights”
The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution and Article I, Section 12 of the New York State Constitution protect individuals against unreasonable searches of their person or possessions. Further, it is illegal for police to target people for a search based on personal characteristics like race, ethnicity, or religion.
NYPD deputy commissioner Paul Brown has responded, stating: “Racial profiling is illegal, of doubtful effectiveness, and against department policy.”
by John Brown [➚] · Friday, February 11th, 2005
Netanyahu was surrounded at a wedding party by people crying “Jewish blood is not cheap!” and “Murderer, your day will come,” and had objects – possibly including plates – thrown at him.
The senior minister’s bodyguards immediately closed in around him and began making their way to his waiting vehicle to take him from the area. When they arrived at vehicle they realized all the tires had been punctured. Netanyahu was not hurt.
Earlier in the week, Education Minister Limor Livnat was assaulted by a group of Kachniks while (ironically) attending the annual public memorial for Avraham Stern, commander of the Zionist underground terrorist group Lehi a.k.a. “Stern Gang”.
MK Ruhama Avraham said she has been subject to a steamroller of threats after expressing support for disengagement and the prime minister. “I’ve become accustomed to it,” she said. “The threats increase with every vote. And it’s not only on the phone. Before votes, they mill around outside the offices in the Knesset and the message is clear. But it doesn’t bother me.”
BBC News / Arutz Sheva / Reuters
[UPDATE] Hizbollah ‘is plotting to assassinate’ Abbas.
[UPDATE 2] Sharon Orders Jewish Extremist Crackdown
[UPDATE 3] Conflicting reports suggest “the wedding incident” did not transpire.
by John Brown [➚] · Saturday, July 24th, 2004
Shin Bet Director Avi Dichter told the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense committees this week that clandestine right wing settler terror cells and Ayatollah-like right wing Rabbis are are on their old fundamentalist Fatwah trip again, and are reportedly targetting both the Prime Minister and the Al Aqsa mosque.
According to Ha’aretz, Israeli army radio reported that Rabbi Avigdor Neventzal – chief rabbi of Jerusalem’s old city – has said in a speech to High School students (!) that anyone who wants to cede the land of Israel falls under the Halachic category of “din rodef” who can be killed according to Jewish law. Ha’aretz quotes Neventzal as saying:
“It should be known that anyone who wants to give away Israeli land is like a rodef, and certainly land should not be given to idol worshipers”
The Jerusalem Post reports that MK Yuli Tamir (Labor) gave a radio interview, in which she criticized Neventzal for inciting to violence against Israeli leaders. “The next murder is on the way,” Tamir said according to the Cleveland Jewish News. Moments after her interview she received a call on her cell-phone from an unidentified individual who threatened to kill her.
Readers may recall that Yigal Amir, who murdered PM Yitzhak Rabin at a peace rally in 1995, testified at his trial that Halacha mandated the assassination.
“I know Jewish law and ‘Din Rodef’ means that if you’ve tried everything else and nothing works, then you have to kill him.”
The Toronto Star quotes Yossi Klein Halevi, an associate fellow at the Shalem Centre, a Jerusalem think tank as saying:
“I have no doubt the threat is very real. Anyone who has sat with the farther fringes of the settler movement knows this is not contrived”
[Editor's Note] John’s perspective somewhat neglects to recognize that, it is not because religious people are evil, nor even right wingers, that this is such a troubling issue, but rather because these sorts of actions seem to be very inconsistent with the values of peace and justice which seem to be much more fundamental to Judaism. It is a question of theological interpretation more than of politics and madness, and I hope one which we can approach more rationally and delicately than we as a people seem to be doing at the moment.
by John Brown [➚] · Thursday, November 13th, 2003
Rabbi Ascherman describes the settlers at Mitzpeh Yitzar as ”fanatical and violent”. [He] found it disturbing that the children of the original wave of settlers were more violent and hard-line than their parent’s generation.
”It’s very sad, the fist wave of settlers have brought their children up to hate. They have nothing but contempt for Palestinians and for Jews like me.”
Courtney Kealy of ABC News writes of a clash between fundamentalist settlers and Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) over the Palestinian olive harvest in which the rabbis claim they were violently attacked by settlers. The San Francisco Chronicle also covers the destruction of entire groves. The violent physical clash between RHR and the settlers has been written about recently at Al Jazeera.
RHR describes itself as “the only organization in Israel today concerned specifically with giving voice to the Jewish tradition of human rights.”
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