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Maria
2 dec 2011, 15:35 , Respect-
Maria 12 aug 2010
Sephardi Chief Rabbi: Reform Jews are digging their claws into Israel
Sephardi chief rabbi Shlomo Amar
Amar wrote a letter to other Israeli rabbis in honor of the start of the Jewish month of Elul, saying, "We have reached our spiritual low point."
Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar Shlomo Amar on Thursday criticized Reform Jews whom he said are trying to impose a more liberal lifestyle on Israel.
Rabbi Amar wrote a letter to other Israeli rabbis in honor of the start of the Jewish month of Elul, saying, "We have reached our spiritual low point."
Amar added that he is shocked by the increasing violence, murders and lack of modesty. Above all, Amar said, the biggest problem threatening Israel is assimilation.
"Those who call themselves liberals and reformers and their friends and supporters" have brought us to a "spiritual low point," in which violence is rampant, modesty is lacking, and assimilation is at a high even in Israel, Amar wrote.
"They are digging their claws in the nation of Zion, and are trying to impose the lifestyle of other nations on us," Amar continued. "They established legions of warriors in Israel, whose purpose is to remove Torah from Israel."
Rabbi Amar added that Jews must try to influence Knesset members and ministers, and also to pray for these "lost sons" to return to the right path, because they are "our brothers, our flesh and blood, even if they are our rivals."
http://fwd4.me/0imL...Read more 2 dec 2011, 15:35 , Respect -
Maria 15 aug 2010
Shlomo Dichovsky chosen to head rabbinical courts, temporarily
Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger with Noam Shalit.
Two Ashkenazi members of the appointments committee walked out in protest as Dichovsky is seen as a moderate whose rulings often clashed with the worldview of Lithuanian Hasidism and Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv.
Rabbi Shlomo Dichovsky was unanimously chosen on Friday to be the temporary director of the rabbinical courts after two Ashkenazi members of the appointments committee walked out in protest.
The two were MK Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism ) and a rabbinical judge, Rabbi Haggai Izrir. Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, who also initially opposed Dichovsky's candidacy, voted in his favor, so approval would be unanimous.
Dichovsky served as a rabbinical judge and head of the rabbinical court in Ashdod, in Tel Aviv and in High Rabbinical Court before retiring. Dichovsky is seen as a moderate, whose rulings often clashed with the worldview of Lithuanian Hasidism and Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv.
"The Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox made a great to-do," one official present at the meeting told Haaretz. "They wouldn't agree to appoint anyone except their own candidates. But all their candidates represented extremist ultra-Orthodox attitudes. At the end of the day, this discussion tested whether the ultra-Orthodox will have a majority that allows them to dictate whatever they want, or whether their power has limits."
Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman, who chairs the appointments committee, decided to appoint a provisional director to the rabbinical courts to allow a further three for finding an agreed permanent director.
Neeman said the provisional head would not be able to compete for the permanent position, and so many prospective candidates decided not to run at this stage.
"For the first time in many years, the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox didn't get what they wanted," a source present at the meeting said.
http://fwd4.me/0jgX 2 dec 2011, 15:45 , Respect -
Maria 23 aug 2010
Those noisy barbarians
Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of Hebron, doesn't want Jews to take on boogie-woogie from the jungle.
Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba and Hebron, head of the rabbinical committee in the territories and a power broker in the halls of government, is this country's real prime minister, writer Sefi Rachlevsky said in an op-ed in Haaretz's Hebrew edition last week.
Some of Lior's doctrines, which made headlines in the wake of his refusal to be interrogated by police in an incitement case, were revealed in Rachlevsky's piece: permission to spill Arab blood, praise for the murderer Baruch Goldstein and spiritual support for extreme right-wing Jewish terrorists. In addition, Lior is suspected of involvement in the rabbinical condemnation of Yitzhak Rabin before the prime minister was assassinated in 1995.
A check of the Hebrew website Arutz Meir (www.meirtv.co.il ), which offers some 11,000 recorded lectures on Jewish topics, reveals that, somewhat surprisingly, the fundamentalist rabbi also has firm opinions on something else: music.
A year ago, Lior was the guest of an educational institution whose name is not stated on the recording, but which appears to have been a music school, to judge by the excited questions of the musicians who teach at the school: How should one view music composed by non-Jews? Is it permissible to set biblical verses to the melodies of non-Jewish songs?
If the questioners had turned to up-to-date studies in musicology, they would have been introduced to exactly these questions, at the core of which lies a dialogue from ancient times that relates to the very nature of music. Is music abstract, and can therefore express nothing but itself, as 19th-century thinkers would have it? Or, as the movement of new musicology sees it, does it demonstrate extra-musical content, even in works as seemingly neutral as a symphony by Brahms or Beethoven?
As Dov Lior asked: Do we go by the approach that music should be taken at face value, or do we look into who created it, who composed it? Does that matter?
Pop as paganism
In Jewish law, as in Islamic law, music can pose problems. The Hasidim, for example, place a high value on their melodies, when sung in the proper circumstances, but not on all music. Jewish men are prohibited from hearing women sing, according to halakha. On the other hand, the Levites in the Temple, and King David himself, used music for higher purposes. In one of the recordings, Lior encourages those present to learn how to play all the instruments, saying the Levites will need to know how when the Temple is rebuilt. "We need to nurture, train, raise God-fearing people who specialize in this field," he says.
The rabbi sometimes seems open to non-Jewish music and willing to have Jews engage with it, but at other times talks about banning it. "Until 400 years ago there were composers among non-Jews, but they all focused on church music and pagan music," is his simplistic approach. "But since a rebellion occurred, they started creating humane music that expresses positive sentiments. There are some honorable people among the goyim. A few, but they exist. I think that even in Hebron there are a few who are human beings - which doesn't mean I'm saying they shouldn't all be sent to Saudi Arabia. They should all be sent to Saudi Arabia!"
According to the rabbi, this good period among non-Jews has ended: "There has been a downfall since World War II. ...
I call this boogie-woogie and they call it pop. It expresses people's animalistic and lower urges. This noisy, fast rhythm is unlike that of the Hasidim, who sang with devotion and could do so for hours. Its very basis is improper: urges without any elevating principle. It must absolutely be avoided. ... That kind of thing is in the jungle."
Lior says that music reflects the nature of a people, and gives the Arabs as an example. "Whoever is more barbaric is noisier," he says. "Have you noticed, for example, when [Arabs] have weddings, the [Israeli] left has taught them to shoot these fireworks in the air, and they blend in real gunshots, and sometimes shoot each other. It is part of the amusement at their weddings. They cannot live without noise. And pop as a whole... there are those who worship this kind of god. Clearly this does not belong at all to Judaism, and not to composers who know how to express good and tender feelings and aspire to values for all humanity."
May one take non-Jewish music and sing prayers to those tunes? Lior: "Music can get contaminated. Experts will investigate and see if the tune is 'kosher,' if it expresses an aspiration to goodness, or if it is taken from the jungle and stimulates negative emotions. With pop, you can see clearly that it's negative. Something that belongs to the rhythms of kushim [a derogatory term for black people] isn't part of our world. In America, Rabbi [Shlomo] Carlebach matched melodies to prayers, and what he made into something Jewish is all right. But not everyone can just take from this sewer of pop, from the world of lies."
Humanity and individualism
The hundreds of lessons that may be found on Arutz Meir include one by Orthodox composer Andre Hajdu, who was born in Hungary in 1932. "The concepts of 'ours' and 'not ours' are foreign to me, and limiting," Hajdu says at the beginning of his lecture, in which he attempts to explain his views on Jewish music and Judaism itself. "I was raised in the European tradition and I brought it with me; I live in two worlds, in the world of music and in Judaism. I have never seen this as a contradiction, and never thought that if I am in one place, I must leave the other. I'm not saying that this is a good thing or the way one has to be, but I am describing reality.
Jewish music does not belong to only one population: there are Hasidic melodies, the bakashot ["entreaties"] prayers, piyutim [liturgical poems] and Ladino, and I teach openness, the understanding that all of this is Jewish. It is difficult, because everyone thinks that the musical experience he was raised on is the authentic one. Most people love the music from their childhood and don't try to turn in a different direction. My job is to go against this and it is Sisyphean, the desire to change society."
"Many times I have heard profound discussions of music and high-flown ideas about music, but we don't hear the music itself," Hajdu continues. "For example, when talking about the Vilna Gaon and his deliberations on music. But which music? Did he mean Lithuanian Jewish music, or Mozart, because he played the violin? Music is discriminated against; the idea and symbol may be voiced but not the music itself, and so I sought to hear it too.
"I know the religious population in particular is not used to listening to music, because it is taught only to sing, alone or in public. It is true that singing with others strengthens the individual, but there is always the aspect of power. The meaning of listening is to create a space and time to concentrate, not offhandedly while reading the newspaper, but like meditation - emptying the self of everything else and allowing the music to fill one. Not everyone is used to this. When I lecture, people listen, but the moment I put on a recording and play music, they begin to talk to one another. It is hard to change habits."
[media id=10727320882wGH size=large]In this lesson, Hajdu played "King's Fanfare," which he composed in 1974, using elements of traditional Jewish music and dissonant modernism. He asks the audience to listen, hoping they will understand. "It is true that music expresses human spontaneity, but it also provokes thought, and it is well-known that the public does not think; only an individual can think," he tells those present. "For this reason I suggest a kind of alienation, and not unity. Not in order to distance the listener, but to arouse self-awareness, and a listening to the other, to that which is not me, and which I do not understand yet. It is not enough to be present, but to open the mind. Although there is something in music that does not stem from logic, people cannot stop thinking, so why not use one's mind when listening to music? And the opposite too: the Gemara says that when studying religious texts, doing so without a melody is meaningless."
Hajdu's musical equivalent of a Jewish text is played in a live performance by a member of the young music ensemble he established among his students, who are familiar with all musical styles, including contemporary ones. He tells about their performances at Hama'abada theater in Jerusalem, also known as The Lab: "Some with kippot and some without, average age 25-30, and the concept of 'ours' does not exist. A group sits on stage, divided - not uniform, but all at the height of enthusiasm. It is my attempt to go against habit and custom, to see the depth in Judaism, but not with the regular tools."
Hajdu also notes that "Judaism owes its music to the non-Jewish environment around it; there is a whole literature about this."
"And this is the meaning of life on several levels," he says. "Simplistic answers will not suffice. Music from a foreign source may be even more Jewish. The bakashot musical tradition comes from Arab and Andalusian music, and it is no less Jewish because of this. You must move from place to place and look into the distance, and not think that the truth always resides with us when it comes to music. Today the religious population is much more open from many angles, but when it comes to music, there is still a long way to go."
http://www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/those-noisy-barbarians-1.309629 2 dec 2011, 15:45 , Respect -
Maria 23 aug 2010
Jerusalem rail firm planning to segregate carriages along gender lines
Pressure from city's ultra-orthodox Jews has already led to some bus lines confining women to the rear of vehicles
The company building a light railway across Jerusalem is considering segregating some carriages along gender lines to serve the city's ultra-orthodox Jewish population.
The railway, which is due to be operational next spring, could have separate compartments for men and women, Yair Naveh, the chief executive of CityPass, said today.
"The train was built to serve everyone," he said. "It is not a problem to declare every third or fourth car a mehadrin [kosher] car."
The suggestion was swiftly condemned by Jerusalem city councillor Rachel Azariya, who said: "Naveh was appointed to run a project – that doesn't mean that he can tell people where to sit and where not to sit, nor does it mean that he knows anything about values and democracy."
Under pressure from the influential and growing ultra-orthodox community, some bus lines in Jerusalem have introduced segregation, with women confined to the rear of the vehicle.
The segregation proposal is the second point of tension between the CityPass consortium and the council within a week. The company earlier distributed a consumer survey asking Jerusalem residents if they were "bothered" that the light railway is to include stops in Arab neighbourhoods en route to connecting to Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem.
Another question asked: "All passengers, Jews and Arabs, can enter the train freely, without undergoing a security check. Does this bother you?"
Ofra Ben-Artzi, a sister-in-law of Sara Netanyahu, the prime minister's wife, was among those surveyed. "I told the pollster, 'Imagine this kind of question being asked in London or New York.'" The city council later wrote to CityPass accusing it of racism and "arousing strife and contention in the city".
Jerusalem's light railway has been mired in endless delays since work began eight years ago. Construction work has caused major disruption to traffic flow in the city centre, and CityPass has been accused of poor management of the project.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/23/jerusalem-segregated-train-carriages 2 dec 2011, 15:45 , Respect -
Maria 29 aug 2010
Israeli rabbi: Palestinians should die
Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef
The spiritual leader of Israel's ultra-orthodox Shas party has wished death for all Palestinians, including acting Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef made the controversial remark during his weekly sermon at a synagogue on Saturday, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported.
"Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] and all these evil people should perish from this world," said Ovadia.
"God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians," he went on to say.
During his speech, Rabbi Yosef also called the Palestinians "evil, bitter enemies of Israel" and denounced the upcoming peace talks with the Palestinians, which are set to start in Washington on September 2.
In April 2001, the Shas spiritual leader had made similar comments, calling for the annihilation of Arabs.
"It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable," he said.
As founder and spiritual leader of the Shas political party, Rabbi Yosef is one of the most powerful religious figures in Israel.
http://www.presstv.com/detail/140413.html
Rabbi Yosef: Abbas should perish from this world
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef wished death upon Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his people, and called them "enemies of Israel."
In his weekly class, Rabbi Yosef said "Abu Mazen and all these evil men – should perish from this world."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3945076,00.html
Press TV News Israeli Rabbi Ovaida Yosef miracula Rei Unius.flv
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MSXETVWD_Q
PLO slams party leader's call for 'Palestinian genocide'
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat commented on Rabbi Yosef's controversial remarks against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and said they were tantamount to calling for "genocide against Palestinians". The rabbi's remarks were "an insult to all our efforts to advance the negotiations process," he said.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3945394,00.html
Erekat: Rabbi Yosef's remarks – like calling for genocide against Palestinians
BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- The chief PLO negotiator on Sunday called on the Israeli government to denounce recent remarks by Israel's former chief rabbi and to take action against outbursts of racism from other elected officials.
Saeb Erekat said Shas party spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's Saturday sermon, in which Yosef said Palestinians should "perish," had largely passed without condemnation.
Yosef said President Mahmoud Abbas, who is scheduled to meet Netanyahu on 2 September in Washington to relaunch talks, "and all these evil people should perish from this world ... God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians," he said. In 2001, Yosef called for annihilating all Arabs.
"The spiritual leader of Shas is literally calling for a genocide against Palestinians and there seems to be no response from the Israeli government," Erekat said Sunday in a statement noting that Yosef's party is one of the main coalition members in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.
"While the PLO is ready to resume negotiations in seriousness and good faith, a member of the Israeli government is calling for our destruction" and the assassination of the Palestinian president, Erekat said. "It is an insult to all our efforts to advance the negotiations process."
Erekat called on Israel "do more about peace and stop spreading hatred" and said Yosef's comments could be placed within the larger context of Israel's "policy against a Palestinian state" such as settlement expansion, home demolitions and isolating Jerusalem from the West Bank, among other measures.
Shas officials moved swiftly to downplay the significance of Yosef's remarks.
"His intention was, may God end the hostility of the evil ones against us. It's convenient to view us as if we don't want peace, but this isn't correct," Knesset member Nissim Ze'ev told the Israeli news site Walla.
"The rabbi supports negotiations for peace and peace. The Jewish people have many enemies and the rabbi didn't mean to say they’ll all be destroyed, just that their hatred toward us will end," Ze'ev said.
Earlier, the Palestinian Authority described the former chief rabbi's sermon as "racial incitement."
PA spokesman Ghassan Khatib called on Netanyahu and leader of the Shas party and Interior Minister Elli Yishay to "make clear their own condemnation of the rabbi's sermon."
"The way to peace is to end incitement and the culture of hatred in Israel toward Palestinians. We demand that Israel take serious measures to end incitement," Khatib said in a statement.
"These hateful remarks cannot be dismissed as politically insignificant, as they come from a religious leader whose words are intended to be taken seriously," he added. "Unless Israeli leaders say these words are immoral and indefensible, we have to conclude that they condone incitement to hatred."
Khatib warned that the Netanyahu's association with the Shas leader could jeopardize peace talks and urged the government to make clear "it is a genuine partner for peace, not a coalition that associates itself with incitement against the Palestinians."
Shas has 11 members in Israel's parliament, with four ministers including Yishai, the deputy prime minister. Earlier in the week, Yishai said his party would oppose an extension to the West Bank settlement building moratorium, due to expire shortly after talks renew.
The PLO and PA have warned that continued settlement building could derail talks.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=311623
PA condemns Israel party leader over 'racial incitement'
BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- The Palestinian Authority responded Sunday to the spiritual leader of the far-right Israeli party Shas on Sunday, describing a sermon as "racial incitement."
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef said Saturday that "Abu Mazen [President Mahmoud Abbas] and all these evil people should perish from this world," the Israeli daily Haaretz reported. "God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians," the rabbi was quoted as saying.
PA spokesman Ghassan Khatib called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and leader of the Shas party Interior Minister Elli Yishay to "make clear their own condemnation of the rabbi's sermon."
"The way to peace is to end incitement and the culture of hatred in Israel toward Palestinians. We demand that Israel take serious measures to end incitement," Khatib said in a statement.
"These hateful remarks cannot be dismissed as politically insignificant, as they come from a religious leader whose words are intended to be taken seriously by members of a party which is part of Israel’s governing coalition. Unless Israeli leaders say these words are immoral and indefensible, we have to conclude that they condone incitement to hatred," he added.
Khatib warned that the Israeli government's association with the Shas leader could jeopardize peace talks and urged it to make clear "it is a genuine partner for peace, not a coalition that associates itself with incitement against the Palestinians."
Shas has 11 members in Israel's parliament, with four ministers including Yishai, the deputy prime minister. Earlier in the week, Yishai said his party would oppose an extension to the West Bank settlement building moratorium, due to expire shortly after talks renew.
The PLO and PA have warned that continued settlement building could derail talks and urged the US to pressure Israel toward an extension. The US State Department said it would be brought up during negotiations, which begin in Washington on 2 September.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=311565
Shas veteran: Rabbi Ovadia wants peace
Shas veteran Yehuda Avidan said on Sunday that anyone who knows Rabbi Ovadia Yosef knows that there is no one who wants and seeks peace more than him.
His comments came in response to reporting of Rabbi Yosef's weekly sermon in which he called Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinians "evil haters of Israel" and prayed that, "the Lord strike them down."
Avidan explained that Rabbi Yosef sees the Palestinians as Israel's enemies but wants there to be peace.
http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=186327
PA source: Even Israel stopped paying attention to Rabbi Yosef
Following Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's comments against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a senior PA source told Ynet that "even in Israel they have already stopped paying attention to this fool."
Shas' spiritual leader said Saturday night that "Abu Mazen (Abbas) and all those evil men should perish from this world. May God Almighty strike them down, then and these Palestinians."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3945106,00.html 2 dec 2011, 15:45 , Respect -
Maria 26 sept 2010
SHOCKING!! Orthodox rabbi tortured Jewish children
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuuDHaBCLAA
Orthodox rabbi Elior Chen Noam only followed the rules talmudic Judaism taught by the great halachic authority - the Vilna Gaon in his famous "Even Shleima" 6:1-2.
in 0:39 the reporter says "..They were made to eat feces and were kept locked in a suitcase for days at a time..."
Here again, Rabbi Chen seems to have applied talmudic dictum upon those Jewish kids, as we read in Tractate Eruvin 21b: (translation): "Anyone who mocks at the words of the sages (the rabbis, of course), his punishment is in boiling feces."
Based on this criteria, this rabbi simply followed the instructions of his superiors, the great rabbinic "sages" who would not compromise. My heart goes after the poor little victims of Jewish religious abuse.
2 dec 2011, 15:46 , Respect -
Maria 1 sept 2010
JUSTIFICATION FOR KILLING NON JEWS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1kpchmAD7Q
There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.
How to Kill Goyim and Influence People: Israeli Rabbis Defend Book's Shocking Religious Defense of Killing Non-Jews (with Video)
A rabbinical guidebook for killing non-Jews has sparked an uproar in Israel and exposed the power a bunch of genocidal theocrats wield over the government.
By Max Blumenthal
When I went into the Jewish religious book emporium, Pomeranz, in central Jerusalem to inquire about the availability of a book called Torat Ha'Melech, or the King's Torah, a commotion immediately ensued. Are you sure you want it? the owner, M. Pomeranz, asked me half-jokingly. The Shabak [Israel's internal security service] is going to want a word with you if you do. As customers stopped browsing and began to stare in my direction, Pomeranz pointed to a security camera affixed to a wall. See that? he told me. It goes straight to the Shabak!
As soon as it was published late last year,Torat Ha'Melech sparked a national uproar. The controversy began when an Israeli tabloid panned the book's contents as 230 pages on the laws concerning the killing of non-Jews, a kind of guidebook for anyone who ponders the question of if and when it is permissible to take the life of a non-Jew. According to the book's author, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, Non-Jews are uncompassionate by nature and should be killed in order to curb their evil inclinations.If we kill a gentile who has has violated one of the seven commandments there is nothing wrong with the murder, Shapira insisted. Citing Jewish law as his source (or at least a very selective interpretation of it) he declared: There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.
In January, Shapira was briefly detained by the Israeli police, while two leading rabbis who endorsed the book, Dov Lior and Yaakov Yosef, were summoned to interrogations by the Shabak. However, the rabbis refused to appear at the interrogations, essentially thumbing their noses at the state and its laws. And the government did nothing. The episode raised grave questions about the willingness of the Israeli government to confront the ferociously racist swathe of the country's rabbinate. Something like this has never happened before, even though it seems as if everything possible has already happened, Israeli commentator Yossi Sarid remarked with astonishment. Two rabbis [were] summoned to a police investigation, and announc[ed] that they will not go. Even settlers are kind enough to turn up.
In response to the rabbis public rebuke of the state's legal system, the Israeli Attorney General and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kept silent. Indeed, since the publication of Torat Ha'Melech, Netanyahu has strenuously avoided criticizing its contents or the author's leading supporters. Like so many prime ministers before him, he has been cowed into submission by Israel's religious nationalist community. But Netanyahu appears to be particularly impotent. His weakness stems from the fact that the religious nationalist right figures prominently in his governing coalition and comprises a substantial portion of his political base. For Netanyahu, a confrontation with the rabid rabbis could amount to political suicide, or could force him into an alliance with centrist forces who do not share his commitment to the settlement enterprise in the West Bank.
On August 18, a pantheon of Israel's top fundamentalist rabbis flaunted their political power during an ad hoc congress they convened at Jerusalem's Ramada Renaissance hotel. Before an audience of 250 supporters including the far-right Israeli Knesset member Michael Ben-Ari, the rabbis declared in the name of the Holy Torah that would not submit to any attempt by the government to regulate their political activities even and especially if those activities included inciting terrorist attacks against non-Jews. As one wizened rabbi after another rose up to inveigh against the government's investigation of Torat Ha'Melech until his voice grew hoarse, the gathering degenerated into calls for murdering not just non-Jews, but secular Jews as well.
Watch the video (article continues below):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t_LxpCY2G8
The obligation to sacrifice your life is above all others when fighting those who wish to destroy the authority of the Torah, bellowed Rabbi Yehoshua Shapira, head of the yeshiva in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan. It is not only true against non-Jews who are trying to destroy it but against Jewish people from any side.
The government-funded terror academy
The disturbing philosophy expressed in Torat Ha'Melech emerged from the fevered atmosphere of a settlement called Yitzhar located in the northern West Bank near the Palestinian city of Nablus. Shapira leads the settlement's Od Yosef Chai yeshiva, holding sway over a small army of fanatics who are eager to lash out at the Palestinians tending to their crops and livestock in the valleys below them. One of Shapira's followers, an American immigrant named Jack Teitel, has confessed to murdering two innocent Palestinians and attempting to the kill the liberal Israeli historian Ze'ev Sternhell with a mail bomb. Teitel is suspected of many more murders, including an attack on a Tel Aviv gay community center.
Despite its apparent role as a terror training institute, Od Yosef Chai has raked in nearly fifty thousand dollars from the Israeli Ministry of Social Affairs since 2007, while the Ministry of Education has pumped over 250 thousand dollars into the yeshiva's coffers between 2006 and 2007. The yeshiva has also benefited handsomely from donations from a tax-exempt American non-profit called the Central Fund of Israel. Located inside the Marcus Brothers Textiles store in midtown Manhattan, the Central Fund transferred at least thirty thousand to Od Yosef Chai between 2007 and 2008.
Though he does not name the enemy in the pages of his book, Shapira's longstanding connection to terrorist attacks against Palestinian civilians exposes the true identity of his targets. In 2006, Shapira was briefly held by Israeli police for urging his supporters to murder all Palestinians over the age of 13. Two years later, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz, he signed a rabbinical letter in support of Israeli Jews who had brutally assaulted two Arab youths on the country's Holocaust Remembrance Day. That same year, Shapira was arrested under suspicion that he helped orchestrate a rocket attack against a Palestinian village near Nablus. Though he was released, Shapira's name arose in connection with another act of terror, when in January, the Israeli police raided his settlement seeking the vandals who set fire to a nearby mosque. After arresting ten settlers, the Shabak held five of Shapira's confederates under suspicion of arson.
Friends in high places
Despite his longstanding involvement in terrorism, or perhaps because of it, Shapira counts Israel's leading fundamentalist rabbis among his supporters. His most well-known backer is Dov Lior the leader of the Shavei-Hevron yeshiva at Kiryat Arba, a radical Jewish settlement near the occupied Palestinian city of Hebron and a hotbed of Jewish terrorism. Lior has vigorously endorsed Torat Ha'Melech, calling it very relevant, especially in this time.
Lior's enthusiasm for Shapira's tract stems from his own eliminationist attitude toward non-Jews. For example, while Lior served as the IDF's top rabbi, he instructed soldiers: There is no such thing as civilians in wartime A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail! Indeed, there are only a few non-Jews whose lives Lior would demand to be spared. They are captured Palestinian militants who, as he once suggested, could be used as subjects for live human medical experiments.
Otherwise, Lior appears content to watch Palestinians perish as they did at the muzzle of Dr. Baruch Goldstein's machine gun in 1994. Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinians and wounded 150 in a shooting spree while they prayed in Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs mosque, was a compatriot and neighbor of Lior in the settlement of Kiryat Arba. At Goldstein's funeral, Lior celebrated the massacre as an act carried out to sanctify the holy name of God. He then extolled Goldstein as a righteous man. Thanks to Lior's efforts, a shrine to Goldstein was constructed in center of Kiryat Arba so that locals could celebrate the killer's deeds and pass his legacy down to future generations.
Though Lior's inflammatory statements resulted in his being barred from running for election to the Supreme Rabbinical Council, according to journalist Daniel Estrin, the rabbi remains a respected figure among many mainstream ZIonists. By extension, he maintains considerable influence among religious elements in the IDF. In 2008, when the IDF's chief rabbi, Brigadier General Avichai Ronski, brought a group of military intelligence officers to Hebron for a special tour, he concluded the day with a private meeting with Lior, who was allowed to revel the officers with his views on modern warfare no such thing as civilians in wartime.
Besides Lior, Torat Ha'Melech has earned support from another nationally prominent fundamentalist rabbi: Yaakov Yosef. Yosef is the leader of the Hazon Yaakov Yeshiva in Jerusalem and a former member of Knesset. Perhaps more significantly, he is the son of Ovadiah Yosef, the former chief rabbi of Israel and spiritual leader of the Shas Party that forms a key segment of Netanyahu's governing coalition.
Yaakov Yosef has brought his influence to bear in defense of Torat Ha'Melech, insisting at the August 18 convention in Jerusalem that the book was no different than the Hagadah that all Jews read from on the holiday of Passover. The Hagadah contains passages about killing non-Jews and so does the Bible, Yosef reminded his audience. Does anyone want to change the Bible? he asked.
Bibi buckles
Only days before direct negotiations in Washington between Israel and the Palestinian Authority planned for early September, Yaakov Yosef's 89-year-old father, Ovadiah delivered his weekly sermon. With characteristic vitriol, he declared: All these evil people should perish from this world God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians.
The remarks have sparked an international furor and earned a stern rebuke from Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. While the PLO is ready to resume negotiations in seriousness and good faith, Erekat remarked, a member of the Israeli government is calling for our destruction.
Palestinian Israeli member of Knesset Jamal Zehalka subsequently demanded that the Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein put Yosef on trial for incitement. If, heaven forbid, a Muslim spiritual leader were to make anti-Jewish comments of this sort, Zehalka said, he would be arrested immediately.
Here was a perfect opportunity for Netanyahu to demonstrate sincerity about negotiations by shedding an extremist ally in the name of securing peace. All he had to do was forcefully reject Yosef's genocidal comments a feat made all the easier by the White House's condemnation of the rabbi. But the Israeli Prime Minister ducked for political cover instead, issuing a canned statement instead of a condemnation. Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef's remarks do not reflect Netanyahu's views, the statement read, nor do they reflect the position of the Israeli government.
By refusing to cut Yosef loose, his party remains a central actor in the Israeli government. Thus the statement by Netanyahu was not only weak. It was false.
http://fwd4.me/0gG3 2 dec 2011, 15:46 , Respect -
Maria Jewish terrorist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKB0IAP4AR8 -
2 sept 2010
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef: Palestinians should be Annihilated
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu
Who says there is no Jewish Nazism?
Ovadia Yosef is the spiritual leader of hundreds of thousands of haredi orthodox Jews who give him automatic and nearly absolute allegiance. This week, he lashed out at the Palestinians, saying that they should all be annihilated. May God destroy them with a plague, said the elderly rabbi.
Yosef's remarks should be taken seriously as they seem to reflect a deepening grave phenomenon in the Israeli Jewish society. It is Jewish fascism, pure and simple. It is racist, virulent and violent.
Unfortunately, with the exception of a few sporadic voices, which criticized the rabbi for saying what he said, the Israeli society generally ignored the manifestly racist remarks, either out of apathy, or because they concurred with him.
Even Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu refused to directly and explicitly denounce the racist tirade, even though it was politically correct to do so in a certain sense. Instead he babbled a few words, saying that what Yosef said didn't represent the policy of the Israeli government. Shas, the political party whose ultimate political maker is Yosef, is an important coalition partner in the Netanyahu coalition.
Interestingly, Yosef was not talking merely about Arab extremists, or terrorists, or other demonized groups. He was rather talking about all Palestinians who he said should perish.
Yosef is considered a Torah sage. Hence, it is unlikely that he was mincing words or making a slip of a tongue as some hasbara propagandists would claim to limit the damage generated by the racist utterance.
I strongly believe the world, especially Jews, ought to treat such calls, which haven't been made for the first time, with utmost seriousness and gravity, because wishing Palestinians a speedy annihilation is effectively a call for genocide.
Jews can't keep talking about the holocaust while fascism is taking root in their midst. They should realize, in case they don't that Nazism was sinful and evil, not because it was partly directed against Jews, but rather because it was inherently diabolical and nefarious.
In the final analysis, Jewish fascism is no less evil than German fascism or any other fascism. There is no such a thing as a kosher genocide or a kosher holocaust, the kind of which this ignorant, hateful old man, who calls himself a Torah sage, is calling for. Didn't he learn when he was young the cardinal Biblical commandment, thou shall not murder?
Yosef is by no means thunder on a clear day. He represents a widespread phenomenon in Israel and amongst Jews who increasingly harbor genocidal views toward the Palestinian people. This genocidal ideology, dubbed by much of the international media as merely Jewish extremism, can be called Jewish Nazism, at least from the perspective of ideology.
Several months ago, another rabbi, Mordechai Elyahu, who died recently, was quoted by his own son as saying that hundreds of thousands, even millions, of Palestinian civilians ought to be killed if largely innocuous projectiles from Gaza didn't cease.
Other religious figures, who routinely invoke the issue of terror, readily quote from the Old Testament, justifying war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated callously by the Israeli occupation army against innocent civilians in occupied Palestine and Lebanon .
One religious Zionist leader, a lady, didn't hesitate to call on the Israeli government and army to adopt Biblical-style genocide in dealing with the Palestinian issue. Needless to say, a Biblical-style solution means annihilating men, women, and children and not leaving a breathing thing.
It is highly hypocritical and morally duplicitous for Israel and its supporters to urge Muslims to rein in their extremists while giving a near carte blanche to the likes of Ovadia Yosef to spew their hateful venom.
When an Israeli soldier hears Yosef spew this Nazi-like venom, it is predictable how this soldier will internalize what he heard, especially in dealing with Palestinians.
Then the innocent blood shed will not be the sole responsibility of the young brainwashed soldier, but also the responsibility of the rabbis who keep fostering hate and racism among their followers.
When an Israeli murderer, a French Jewish immigrant, was asked by police a few years ago why he murdered an Arab taxi driver who had given him a ride to his home, the murderer said he thought non-Jewish lives were worthless and had no sanctity. He apparently had learned this during a homily at his neighborhood's synagogue.
Yes, there are extremists everywhere. But in Israel, extremism is the mainstream, as successive elections have repeatedly shown. Today, in Israel humanists, human rights activists, academics who oppose racism and equality advocates are hounded and demonized. The gangs of fascism, who function under a variety of rubrics, don't sleep the night trying to vilify university professors and others who dare call the spade a spade. In short, terror and McCarthyism are in the air every where in a state that mendaciously calls itself democratic.
True, Muslims have extremist organizations such as al-Qaeda and other organizations which commit acts of mostly politically-motivated violence and terror. However, while the bulk of Muslims are decidedly against these groups, it is sad that we find most Jews are decidedly and enthusiastically supportive of Jewish racist and terror groups, especially the settler movement whose venomous ideology advocates genocide as the ultimate solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Ovadia Yosef will get away with impunity as he did numerous times before. In the final analysis, Yosef is the product of Israeli fascism which he epitomizes.
However, Israel should also look back at similar experiences where fascism took its course and reached its evil potentials. We all know the rest of the story.
Khalid Amayreh is a Journalist living in Dura, Hebron District, West Bank, occupied Palestine . He has BA in journalism: University of Oklahoma , 1981 MA in journalism, University of Southern Illinois , 1983
http://bit.ly/a9NJ4X
2 dec 2011, 15:47 , Respect -
Maria 2 sept 2010
Dr. Lawrence Davidson: Israeli Rabbi Outdoes Amadinejad
Last year Rabbi Ovadia Yosef publicly insulted the president of the United States and the US Zionist controlled media has of course kept a lid on the story . He described the President as "a slave" who rules the world and who wants to control Israeli policy when it comes to building in occupied Jerusalem
Back in October of 2005 the Western media, starting with the New York Times, mistranslated a speech by Amadinejad. The Iranian President had called for regime change in Israel, a practice American Presidents indulge in repeatedly in terms of countries like Cuba, Sudan, and Iran itself. In this case, Amadinejad's statement that the occupying regime over Jerusalem will one day vanish from the pages of time somehow became a desire that Israel should be wiped off the the map. Almost immediately all hell broke loose in the United States as every devout Zionist and their supporters in and out of the government decided that Iran (allegedly seeking nuclear weapons) had now revealed itself as an existential threat to Israel. It was quickly pointed out that the NYT had made a mistake, that in any case Iran did not have the power to actually wipe Israel off the map, that the Iranian nuclear program was, according to all objective intelligence reports, not aiming to produce such weapons, etc. but it made no difference at all. To this day, not only the Zionists and their supporters in Congress, but a good many American citizens (to say nothing of the Israeli public) believe that Iran wants to commit genocide against Israel.
Now let us fast forward to August 29, 2010. On that day the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on a speech made by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader the Israeli political party, Shas. Shas is a major political movement in Israel. It represents the religiously observant Sephardi Jewish population of that country. It has eleven seats in the Knesset, is a key part of Prime Minister Netanyahu's coalition government, and one of its members (Eli Yishai) is the current Minister of Internal Affairs. He is the one leading the effort to ethnically cleanse in East Jerusalem. Shas power means Rabbi Yosef is an influential political player in today's Israel. That is why Haaretz paid attention to his speech of the 29th. So, what did he say?
Rabbi Yosef said that the Palestinians and their leaders are evil and damnable. That God should strike them with a plague. And just in case God doesn't get them all, Israel must send missiles to them and annihilate them. He finished up with Abu Mazen (aka Mahmoud Abbas) and all these evil people should perish from this world. One is tempted to ask if the spiritual leader of Shas was trying to mimic the New York Times distorted image of Amadinejad?
The U.S. State Department was quick to condemn Yosef's inflammatory remarks and note that they hurt the cause of peace. Coming just days before Prime Minister Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas are to begin face to face peace talks that is probably Yosef's intent. Rather than see Israel achieve a compromise peace, the Rabbi would prefer to see the Palestinians wiped off the map, so to speak. It is no surprise then that Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator for the Palestine Authority, concluded that Rabbi Yosef's speech was incitement to genocide.
The Israeli Prime Minister's office released a statement (see State Department link above) emphasizing that Yosef's remarks, as influential as they must be on the Shas party and its minister in the cabinet, do not reflect Netanyahu's views, nor the stance of the Israeli government. Nonetheless, it is interesting that Haaretz felt it necessary to add that Netanyahu's comments stopped short of a condemnation. Back here in the U.S. The Jewish Week noted that the American Jewish community's response had been rather anemic. J Street's Hadar Susskind said that Israeli leaders as well as Palestinian leaders should refrain from incitement, and Abe Foxman (who on this side of the water is an inciter par excellence) released a statement saying that the ADL was outraged by Yosef's remarks, coming as they do on the eve of the Jewish New Year. From all those in Congress who regularly label Amadinejad as a racist and a madman, there has been silence.
It appears that we live in a world permeated with double standards. Indeed, it may very well be that we are born with a genetic predisposition for them. Even while claiming adherence to universal sets of ethical teaching (such as the Ten Commandments), we regularly accept and/or excuse behavior by blood relatives that we would condemn when practiced by those to whom we are unrelated. We extend this to our cultural relatives by holding one set of standards for our community and another set for those that are alien. What is terrorism? It is something the other does, not us. Where is mass murder committed? It is in Rwanda, in Darfur, in Bosnia, but not in Iraq or Vietnam or Nicaragua. Who are the torturers? Not us. President Bush told us that waterboarding does not count, and those that wrote the memos saying intensive interrogation was legal while international law was obsolete, now teach at our most prestigious universities. We are good. They are bad. We deserve to live. They deserve to die. This practice of double standards is old and very persistent.
Now Rabbi Ovadia Yosef shows us that Israeli Jews, and Zionists in general, are just ordinary hypocrites like the rest of us. Has the light unto the nations gone out? Well not completely. There is still a tiny little flame that is kept alight by the Jewish minority who understands that Zionism has been very bad for the Jews and Jewish values. There have always been such ethical Jews around, but they have been shouted down by the majority who insist that immorality somehow turns moral when practiced by Israel. But now, thanks to the spiritual icon of Shas, the minority has been proven right. As a consequence, it is now clearif the world is looking for a madman and a racist with influence over people who possess nuclear weapons, Iran's Amadinejad (who has no such weapons) cannot logically be high on the list. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, however, seems a most suitable candidate.
Lawrence Davidson
Department of History
West Chester University
West Chester, Pa 19383
USA
Dr. Lawrence Davidson has done extensive research and published in the areas of American perceptions of the Middle East, and Islamic Fundamentalism. His two latest publications are Islamic Fundamentalism (Greenwood Press, 1998) and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood (University Press of Florida, 2001). He has published thirteen articles on various aspects of American perceptions of the Middle East. Dr. Davidson holds a BA from Rutgers, an MA from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Alberta.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/26/world/africa/26iht-iran.html
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13641.htm
http://fwd4.me/07FD
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2010/08/146414.htm
http://www.thejewishweek.com/print/11153
http://bit.ly/9hlz4b
In swipe at Shas' Ovadia Yosef, Degel Hatorah mouthpiece slams 'extreme nationalism
Leader of Lithuanian ultra-Orthodoxy, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, and spiritual leader of the Shas Sephardi ultra-Orthodox movement, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.
The newspaper of the Lithuanian stream of ultra-Orthodoxy in Israel disassociated itself from the nationalism of the settlement movement in an editorial over the weekend, against the backdrop of the start of direct negotiations with the Palestinians and the attacks on settlers last week in the West Bank.
The newspaper of the Lithuanian stream of ultra-Orthodoxy in Israel disassociated itself from the nationalism of the settlement movement in an editorial over the weekend, against the backdrop of the start of direct negotiations with the Palestinians and the attacks on settlers last week in the West Bank. The editorial in Yated Ne'eman, written at the initiative of the leader of Lithuanian ultra-Orthodoxy, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, is seen as a veiled reference to the spiritual leader of the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox movement, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.
In a sermon about a week ago, Rabbi Yosef express a death wish for Palestinians, particularly Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The Yated Ne'eman editorial stated that "marginal figures" in the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, community had been swept up in what the paper called "extreme nationalism." The paper disassociated itself from acts and statements that might be construed as "goading the nations," in the words of the editorial, a reference to the international community.
The appearance of the editorial followed the start of the Arab-Israeli summit in Washington and the fatal attack on settlers near Hebron, which the article referred to in the context of the growing involvement of Haredim in demonstrations and events the editorial said reflected "signs of clear nationalism."
The editorial continued: "It is not acceptable that due to marginal figures who are swept up in extreme nationalism, the impression could be created that the entire Haredi public is a party to goading the nations, inasmuch as every act involving goading the nations of the world, both vis-a-vis the American administration and Arab elements, is utterly contrary to the teachings of our holy Torah as received through our sages."
A source in the Degel Hatorah political faction of the United Torah Judaism party said the editorial was initiated by Rabbi Elyashiv and approved by him before it was published. The source said Rabbi Yosef's remarks were the primary reason for the article, even though he was not explicitly mentioned in the piece, and that the condemnation of Yosef's remarks by the U.S. administration buttressed Rabbi Elyashiv's position that the comments constituted "goading the nations."
The editorial, which opened with a condemnation of last week's shooting attack near Hebron, said: "There is only one practical matter at hand at this time: caution over any involvement whatsoever, certainly over any act that could cause tension with the American administration and the nations of the world. As has been written in the past, Haredi Jews should be especially cautious of this inasmuch as [these] acts are contrary to the outlook of the Torah."