Orthodox American Oleh Shoots Up Mosque, Commits Suicide
In yet another tragedy which should give us all pause, JPost reports:
Military Police are investigating the apparent suicide of, Yisrael Reinman, an American immigrant soldier who was found dead Tuesday in a mosque in a Palestinian village near his West Bank base. The 28-year-old soldier grew up in a haredi family in New York.
[…] Reinman immigrated to Israel two months ago and enlisted two weeks ago in the Nahal Haredi Battalion, an infantry unit that integrates combat service with ultra-Orthodox observance.
The soldier, the army said, left his basic training base late Monday night near Tubas in Samaria. Fearing he had been kidnapped by terrorists, Nahal Haredi commanders initiated a search. Soldiers approaching Khirbat Baka heard gunshots coming from a nearby mosque. The battalion commander entered the mosque and found the dead soldier.
Reinman, the army said, had emptied a rifle magazine and caused extensive damage to the mosque before apparently shooting himself in the head.
Cannot. Muster. The Words. It’s like Baruch Goldstein, lite.
While obviously I condemn this, nevertheless (A) it appears no one was in the mosque so no one got hurt and Israel repaired the mosque (B) this guy was clearly mentally ill
So, while it’s tragic, your comparison doesn’t fly
This is a completely different case. First of all, I’m just glad that he didn’t kill anyone else. But it is very tragic because it seems like he just went nuts, taking some of his anger out on the mosque. I don’t know if he was targeting worshipers, and I don’t really want to know. I feel bad about the damage, but this is really just a sad story.
What does this tell us about religious americans who wield weapons? Stay out of the military, OK?
“It’s like Baruch Goldstein”? Are you NUTS? Baruch Goldstein shot up a bunch of unarmed men who were praying. This guy COMMITTED SUICIDE! OK, he did it in a mosque, but he was obviously mentally unbalanced, and would have committed suicide wherever he landed. WHY do you feel the need to make it seem like the country is full of homicidal maniacs?
As for the genius who decided that this “proves” that religious Americans are all one card short of a full deck and therefore shouldn’t be given weapons….please relate to the THOUSANDS of American olim who come to Israel and serve honorably in the IDF.
Maybe you can tell us your age, sex, weight, religious preferences, etc., and based on some other criminal who has the same profile, we can assume that you have the same inclination to rape, muder, vandalize, or whatever? Doesn’t that sound fair?
uh, amit– most american religious olim DON’T pull a Baruch Goldstein (the guy who shot the people on the bus last august wasn’t american).
and this guy was clearly insane– I mean, shooting at a building, then killing himself?
“Mentally ill”, “insane” “a sad story” – the only one of the usual downplaying apologetics missing here is the customary “rotten apple”. The point, of course, is that a disturbed mental condition can have many outlets – and that among a segment of Orthodox Jews, it takes the form of racist violence and murder against Arabs, Muslims, and Jewish peace advocates. Even more obviously, this is due to the predominance in the Orthodox world of
the quasi-fascist ideology of the settlers and the nationalist, religious Israeli and American Jewish right (including, at this point, many haredim). Kahane, Goldstein, and Amir did not come from nowhere.
While this nutjob didn’t hurt anyone, the Goldstein comparison flies. Not for nothing did he go to a Mosque with a firearm and not a Synagogue or a Church. He was probably hoping to find some Muslims in there. It’s an inchoate hate crime, but a hate crime nonetheless. The fact that it occurred is indicative of some element of tacit approval in the community. The ultra-religious are not known for ther individuality. The bad-apple theory falls flat here. The fact that this particular guy took it one step further does note vitiate the general sentiment of superiority and entitlement in the settler community.
Oleh Yashan, a former commander in this guy’s unit, has some alternative information that is worth checking out:http://israelrules.blogspot.com/2006/06/israeli-soldier-commits-suicide-and.html
http://israelrules.blogspot.com/2006/06/israeli-soldier-commits-suicide-and.html
“The fact that it occurred is indicative of some element of tacit approval in the community. The ultra-religious are not known for ther individuality. The bad-apple theory falls flat here.”
Just switch the words “ultra-religious” to “Leftist” or “Progressive” and you get what I’ve been saying for years. From bomb-throwing anarchists to Lenin and Stalin to Mao to the Weathermen and the Baader-Meinhof Gang to today’s violent and anti-Semitic protesters, it’s a load of bad apples from a rotten orchard. Of course, not all ‘Progressives’ were as bad, but there must have been “tacit approval”.
Reinman immigrated to Israel two months ago and enlisted two weeks…
Why does that simply seem impossible? You can’t register to the army unless you have an id number after aliyah. Running through the battery of physical and psychological tests takes at least 6-9 months. Bad reporting. But that’s what happens when reporters get information from the IDF spokesman, and rely on other reporters to fill in the blanks rather than actually practice journalism.
And Mobius, the Goldstein comparision is pure loshon hara and violates your own ‘loshon hara free zone’. Even cmparing Natan Zada to Goldstein is slander because in both cases, we simply do not know their motives, but instead you’ve decided that Reinman is a Jewish terrorist. What a rush that must have given you.
a man walks into a mosque, opens fire, and winds up dead.
it’s reminiscent of the baruch goldstein incident.
so i said it’s like baruch golstein, lite. like a lite beer.
and that’s lashon harah? give me a break. jpost reported today that the army, for various reasons, suspects his intention was to kill arabs.
This is an outrage; a vile assimilationist slander against Orthodox Jews, and an absolute fucking OUTRAGE. Of course, Jewschool focuses only on the negative, just like the defeatist appeasers of the liberal media in Iraq. Why doesn’t Jewschool write a story about the millions of mosques all over the world that weren’t desecrated by messianic American Jews today?
The comparison of Reinman to Goldstein is pure loshon hara; Natan-Zada to Goldstein, loshon hara; Yigal Amir to Goldstein, loshon hara; in fact – given the fact that every cell in the human body is replaced once a year – the comparison of GOLDSTEIN to Goldstein is pure loshon hara. And even if all four fanatics DO have something in common, how dare you suggest it was the insularity, the seething hatred of everything secular, the messianism, paranoia, and relentless indoctrination against apostates and heathens; I’ve heard that all of them had Irritable Bowel Syndrome, yet Jewschool just conveniently omitted THAT pertinent fact from its analysis of this incident.
Finally, do you really think we’re gullible enough to believe the man committed suicide? Sure he did, just like Vince Foster committed suicide. Oh, and speaking of Foster, how come I haven’t seen ONE SINGLE story mentioning where Hillary Clinton was when Reinman’s body was found? Coincidence? Oh, sure it was.
Way overblown, Smith. The problem here is that a relatively small handful of incidents by right-wing Orthodox Jews gets spun into an indictment of the entire group, while people like Susan Rosenberg (http://www.aaup.org/statements/SpchState/Letters/2005/Travisletter.htm) go uncommented upon. And Rosenberg doesn’t just “happen” to be Jewish and Leftist; she comes from a well-known leftist (though not murderous) family. So let’s get the conversation started. What’s wrong with you “Progressive” Jews?
Um…okay J, no problem. I think Susan Rosenberg is seriously f’ckd up, and I do not think she should be given the opportunity to teach at John Jay College. And she has absolutely nothing do to with what i stand for and what I believe, and i condemn her past actions with complete sincerity. Cool?
And no one–absolutely no one–on the well-known leftist side of my family has anything but horror, condemnation, and rage at this insane, horrible, anti-American terrorist. She has nothing to do with anything “progressive.” Nothing!
how dare you people who have no idea who he was impugn his memory?
Yussi reinman was like a brother to me. He was a sweet , goodhearted young man who suffered severely every day of his tagic life. He will be sorely missed
I’ve created a blog in his memory. myfriendyossi.blogspot.com
J,
Oh Good God, it’s PERFECT! In fact, it’s really not fair, readers will simply assume you’re a paid shill made to demonstrate precisely the points I tried to make in my comments.
The fact that Susan Rosenberg goes “uncommented upon?†See, that’s the Hillary Clinton part of my comments, in which I satirize the laughable Rightwing strategy of smearing political opponents by trying to associate them with figures or causes that couldn’t possibly be more irrelevant. Perhaps the reason Progressives haven’t ‘commented upon†Rosenberg is the same reason we haven’t commented upon Jeffrey Dahmer, O.J. Simpson, Kenneth Lay, and Jack Abramoff; we have nothing whatever to do with those avatars of moral leprosy. No Progressive has ever advocated armed robbery, murder, or the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.
So, a “handful of incidents by right-wing Orthodox Jews gets spun into an indictment of the entire group?†That’s the Irritable Bowel part of my comment, ridiculing the claim that these mass murders and assassinations were the random acts of deranged schizophrenics, having nothing to do with their immersion in the sewer of Rightwing messianism. This position was hardly tenable given, for example, the widespread denunciations of Rabin as a “rodef†among the Rabbis from whom Amir soaked up his ideological hatred before murdering Rabin. And yet, there wasn’t a single word of denunciation among the Orthodox of this ideology, only a seething indignation at the suggestion that the association of Rabin’s rodef status with his assassination was anything other than pure coincidence.
What’s wrong with us Progressive Jews? Well, perhaps it’s simply disgust at the realization that the filth that comes out of the mouths of the “rabbis†that inspired these men isn’t Judaism, but the superstitious incantations of grunting savages.
As to Reinman himself: Frankly, I haven’t seen so much denunciation of the man himself, as recognition that he was likely a sad, deluded, and very sick human being. What I have denounced vigorously, however, is the fact that there are Jewish sects entirely ready to exploit such people for their own political purposes, and who indoctrinate their followers with such rabid hatred of their enemies that they become willing and even eager to kill – themselves, others, or both – for the cause.
DK:
OK, OK, I believe you. Either because of your past record or because of that last exclamation point on your second comment. (Note that I only referenced the John Jay article so people could identify Susan Rosenberg.)
I think d. smith needs to get out more.
“Perhaps the reason Progressives haven’t ‘commented upon†Rosenberg is the same reason we haven’t commented upon Jeffrey Dahmer, O.J. Simpson, Kenneth Lay, and Jack Abramoff; we have nothing whatever to do with those avatars of moral leprosy.”
Progressives haven’t commented upon Kenneth Lay and Jack Abramoff? (Or OJ for that matter?) Which world are we in? And obviously I didn’t mean that Susan Rosenberg hasn’t been commented upon ANYWHERE; I meant that I saw little or no comment in leftist venues (except to defend her, that is).
“No Progressive has ever advocated armed robbery, murder, or the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. ”
You either have a highly novel definition of “Progressive”, or you’ve pulled a Rip Van Winkle since 1780.
“This position was hardly tenable given, for example, the widespread denunciations of Rabin as a “rodef†among the Rabbis from whom Amir soaked up his ideological hatred before murdering Rabin. And yet, there wasn’t a single word of denunciation among the Orthodox of this ideology, only a seething indignation at the suggestion that the association of Rabin’s rodef status with his assassination was anything other than pure coincidence. ”
No denunciation among the Orthodox? Flat out wrong. There are many factions in Orthodoxy. Most did not approve of the “rodef” talk, let alone the murder of Rabin.
“Well, perhaps it’s simply disgust at the realization that the filth that comes out of the mouths of the “rabbis†that inspired these men isn’t Judaism, but the superstitious incantations of grunting savages. ”
Don’t be shy. Tell us what you really think. 🙂 But seriously, the existence of deranged extremists cloaking their insanity in Judaism doesn’t excuse your advocating ideas with a proven track record of failure and tragedy.