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Rabbi Faces Assault Charges Against Jewish Nationalist

Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, director of UCLA’s Hillel, may be charged with assault after confronting a Jewish nationalist journalist at a recent on-campus talk given by Alan Dershowitz, author of The Case for Israel.

Addressing the concerns of a group of demonstrators outside Royce Hall, where the engagement took place, Seidler-Feller began to discuss an upcoming event at which Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al Quds University and Palestinian Authority Commissioner for Jerusalem, would be speaking. Rachel Neuwirth, a reporter for Arutz Sheva & Frontpage Magazine, approached Rabbi Seidler-Feller and proceeded to leap down his throat “alleging that Nusseibeh helped direct missile attacks into Israel during the first Persian Gulf War.”

It is then alleged by Neuwirth that Seidler-Feller physically assaulted her, grabbing her wrist and kicking her, to which she responded by calling him a “capo”—inferring that he would help Nazis to kill his own people.

Welp, I don’t think Rabbi Seidler-Feller shoulda laid a hand on her, if he did, in fact. But after arguing back and forth with hardcore Jewish nationalists and being accused by them of being a Nazi and/or terrorist sympathizer for merely humanizing Palestinians, if not lending some small degree of credibility to their concerns, I can certainly understand why he’d be angry and want to knock the bitch out. Everytime my Orthodox Jewish Legionairre sister tells me I’m a disgrace to my grandparents for not wanting to murder every Arab in the Middle East, you can be sure I’ve wanted to kick her teeth in. But I try to focus on the fact that resorting to violence will not improve matters, rather only worsen them, and therefore refrain from such a response. Thus if Seidler-Feller learns anything from this experience, I hope it’s the acknowledgement that violence serves no purpose but to further emolden your opponents, and to make you look bad, even if you were standing up for something that is right.

Diplomacy and creative intellect are together the only way to solve this conflict. Violence will never be the answer.

[Update] Seidler-Feller will not be charged.

4 thoughts on “Rabbi Faces Assault Charges Against Jewish Nationalist

  1. Everytime my Orthodox Jewish Legionairre sister tells me I’m a disgrace to my grandparents for not wanting to murder every Arab in the Middle East, you can be sure I’ve wanted to kick her teeth in.
    I have to give you props for opening up like that.
    Believe me – I sympathize with this whole issue of Jewish nationalist politics and family.
    I grew up as a child in NYC visiting my grandparents apartment in the co-ops on Grand Street which had a prominent large framed photo of Theodor Herzl on the wall which was larger than the photos of any of our family members.
    For many years when I was young, I never really thought about the photo. I assumed he was an ancestor.
    Members of my parent’s generation were active in the JDL, and members of my grandparents generation
    were active in smuggling arms for the 1948 war
    Not that it would necessarily change her mind but you could show her this:
    Holocaust survivors protest IDF treatment of Palestinians
    Ha’aretz reports that a group of Holocaust survivors, calling itself the “Forum of Holocaust survivors and descendants to halt the deterioration of Israeli humanism” has begun a petition to protest the way Israeli defense forces are treating Palestinians. The petition reads “Israeli society is descending into a quagmire of violence, brutality, disrespect for human rights, and contempt for human life” and that “domination of another people against its will contradicts the lessons of the Holocaust, morally, humanely, and politically.”
    The petition organizers asked in the past for a meeting with then-chief of staff Shaul Mofaz, to explain their views. They never received an answer.

  2. Yikes! What a Je… uh, what a bitch! For sheer pushy, in your face, obnoxious aggressiveness, she ranks right up there with Friedan, Firestone, Abzug and Steinem. I know, I know, they are polare opposites politically, but they do share certain … uh … other characteristics.

  3. I know Chaim Seidler Feller personally from the days when I was a grad student at UCLA. He is a very impressive rabbi, though not without flaws. I admire him for his religious & political views. But I certainly don’t advocate assaulting (if that’s what he did) female journalists, no matter how obnoxious.
    That being said, I too have suffered at the hands of such people. When I used to work for New Jeiwsh Agenda in LA, we took an ad in the Jewish paper when Palestinian-American activist Alex Odeh was assassinated by a bomb (though I don’t know if charges were ever filed, I have no doubt that Irv Rubin (may his memory be nothing) & his minions were behind it). IN the next days we received numerous calls from the Krugel brothers saying we should watch out & that Odeh was “nothing but a dead sand nigger.” I kid you not. You don’t forget statements like that once you hear them.
    These people like Rubin, Krugel & Neuwirth are the scum of the Jewish earth. They only have hate & bile in their hearts where most of us have blood.
    Anyway, anyone seeking a good Jewish progressive blog read, pls. visit my site.

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