Real world tramples on human rights delegation

Foetus lives in brain-dead mom

Tel Aviv - A brain-dead Palestinian woman in her sixth month of pregnancy is being kept on life support in an Israeli hospital until doctors can deliver her unborn baby, a hospital spokesperson said on Thursday. The baby may have to spend the full three months in the womb of his brain-dead mother, said Leah Malul, the spokesperson of Barzilia hospital. The hospital is located in the southern Israeli coastal city of Ashekelon, about 12 km from the Gaza Strip. It treats some 30 to 35 Palestinians from the impoverished strip daily, she said. The mother, in her 30s, was with her husband in a Gaza café when she suddenly felt unwell. She suffered a stroke and was transferred to Israel when the Gaza hospital she had been brought to was unable to treat her. The Israeli doctors were keeping the woman on life support at her husband's request, she told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa).

Yip, this always used to happen during the "worst periods of apartheid in South Africa"...you know...when Blacks and Whites could share the same rooms and beds in hospitals.

Comments

[BLACKLISTED DICTATOR]

Steve,
You don't understand human rights. Mondli does. It is just one of those things.
You can come up with your Israeli hospital story. Who knows whether it is even true. I don't.
If Mondli says apartheid was better than the places that he was shlepped to in the occupied territories, then who are you to argue?

[BLACKLISTED DICTATOR]

Steve,

You don't understand apartheid. Mondli does.It is just one of those things.

You can come up with a story about Mandela spending 27 yrs in jail. Or a story about the Soweto massacre in 1976. Or a story about Biko being murdered. Or stories about separate development and the pass book. Who knows whether it was as bad as they say it was? I don't.

If Mondli says that apartheid was better then who are you to argue? You weren't a black person during apartheid. He was. And although he only spent 5 days in Israel etc, he saw everything that he needed to see. He is a journalist. He can get the gist of things very quickly.

Rabbis who bring shame to Judaism

Religious extremism is very dangerous. It means that every thinkable vice under the sun can be committed, “sanctioned” and “justified” in the name of the Almighty.

In Israel, rabbis with hundreds of thousands of followers, many of whom serve in the Gestapo-like Israeli occupation army, openly teach that non-Jews are only human in form but animals in essence.

These racist teachings can’t be dismissed as “innocuous” or “esoteric.” Very often, they constitute “a manual for action” for many Jewish settlers roaming the hills of the West Bank, fetching for an Arab prey to kill, or attack or tie up to a power pole.

The teachings also serve as a direct inspiration to numerous Israeli soldiers operating in the West Bank who, thanks to the racist indoctrination they receive from their rabbis, have come to view the estimated 3.7 million Palestinians living under Israel’s military rule, not as real human beings, but rather as animals walking on two feet. The often barbaric treatment meted out to the Palestinians in the occupied territories testifies to the rampantly racist indoctrination soldiers and settlers receive at the hands of religious Zionist rabbis.

Last year, a Jewish immigrant from France, who murdered an Arab taxi driver after luring him to his home north of Tel Aviv, told police interrogators that he didn’t kill a human being; he only killed an animal.

“Merkaz Harav”

Merkaz Harav (the Rabbi’s Center) is the ideological and theological central nervous system of religious Zionism in Israel. Established in honor of Rabbi Abraham Kook, Israel’s first Chief Rabbi, the center, which is actually a religious college, teaches students that God Almighty created the entire universe for the sake of “the Jew,” and that all non-Jews ought to be slaves laboring for the “chosen people.”

As to the Palestinians, Merkaz Harav teaches that “non-Jews living under Jewish law in Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel) must either be enslaved as water carriers and wood hewers, or banished, or exterminated.”

Some rabbinic authorities associated with Merkaz Harav have been preaching the view that Palestinians are descendants of the Amalek, or Amalekites, whom the Bible says must be totally exterminated.

Such hateful views are actually espoused by hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers in the West Bank. This is the religious doctrine of religious Zionism. This is the theology taught in hundreds of Yeshivot (religious schools) throughout Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Settlers as well as the increasingly Settler-dominated Israeli army may very well act on these doctrines in a more wanton manner if the world goes into a slumber. They are only awaiting the opportune time to do it.

According to Rabbi Kook, “The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews-all of them in all different levels-is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the soul of cattle.”

The late Israeli philosopher, Yisrael Shahak, pointed out that the teachings of Kook were based on the Lurianic Cabala, one of whose basic tenets is the absolute superiority of the Jewish soul and body over the non-Jewish soul and body “so much so that the world was created solely for the sake of Jews.”

In 2003, Rabbi Saadya Grama, an alumnus of Beth Medrash Govoha, the renowned Yeshiva in Lakewood, N.J., wrote a book titled “Romemut Yisrael Ufarashat Hagalut,” which can be translated as “the Majesty of Israel and the Question of the Diaspora,” in which he argued that non-Jews were “completely evil” and that Jews constituted a separate, genetically superior species.

The book was condemned by many reform and conservative rabbis in the US as manifestly racist and incompatible with normative Jewish religious thinking. However, major Jewish organizations in Israel and North America, such as Agudat Yisrael, refused to condemn the book.

In Israel, numerous Orthodox Zionist rabbis, many of them graduates of and lecturers at Merkaz Harav, continue to teach the theologically dubious concept that the ten commandments don’t apply to non-Jews and that, therefore, the Biblical commandments against committing murder, theft, and lying don’t cover non-Jews.

For example, Rabbi Dov Lior, Chairman of the Jewish Rabbinic Council, teaches that “there is no such thing as enemy civilians in war time”

“The law of our Torah is to have mercy on our soldiers and to save them. This is the real moral behind Israel’s Torah and we must not feel guilty due to foreign morals,” he was quoted as saying by the Hebrew newspaper Ma’ariv in 2004.

“A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.”

Lior is not a marginal figure in the Zionist religious establishment.

I asked Rabbi Menachem Froman, who himself has taught at Merkaz Harav, about Lior’s religious credentials and he told me that the man “is considered among the most learned sages of the Torah.”

Earlier this year, Rabbi David Batsri told followers that “it is impossible to mix the pure with the impure. They (the Arabs) are a blight, a devil, a disaster. The Arabs are donkeys, and we have to ask ourselves why God didn’t create them to walk on all four. Well, the answer is that they are needed to build and clean. They don’t have any place in our school.”

In May, 2007, Mordechai Elyahu, a former Chief Rabbi of Israel, issued an edict that would permit the Israeli army to murder hundreds of thousands of Palestinians .

“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And if they don’t stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000. Even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop.”

I don’t believe that this repulsive extremism represents true Judaism, the Judaism that is based on the Ten Commandments.

Jewish traditions relate the story of a heathen who came to Shammai with the request to be accepted as a convert on condition that he was taught the whole Torah while he stood on one foot. Shammai drove him away with the yard-stick he was holding. Then the man went to Hillel with the same request. Hillel told the man “what is hateful to yourself don’t do to your fellow human being. That is the whole of the Torah and the rest is commentary.”

Unfortunately, the rabbis of religious Zionism, including the so-called Chabadim who have effectively replaced the Torah with a notoriously racist manual called “Hatanya,” pay no attention to such traditions. And when they are reminded of them, they arrogantly claim that words such as “man” or “human being” refer solely and exclusively to the “Jew.”

Besides, it is obvious that these fanatics only select the most racist and most hateful texts from a huge body of scriptures, Biblical and Talmudic, while utterly ignoring and shunning authentic texts, including biblical texts, that urge Jews to treat kindly and justly non-Jews who live in their midst.

In addition, one wonders if these so-called religious leaders and “holy men” understand what it means to rule that in wartime all holds are barred and there is no such a thing as enemy civilians.

Well, Adolph Hitler could have made the same argument to justify his genocidal onslaught against Jews and non-Jews in Europe?

Finally, I hope that moderate Jewish religious authorities will move to challenge these extremist rabbis who I am convinced misrepresent Judaism by presenting it as a religion of fire and blood and hate. God-fearing rabbis should make it abundantly clear to Jews in Israel-Palestine that harming innocent people is wrong.

This is a paramount issue because if the ideology and theology of Merkaz Harav are allowed to prevail, then Judaism itself will suffer immensely.

-###-

August 5, 2008

[TC]

The writer of the previous comment should know that Shahak's work has been long exposed as sheer fantasy and invention. No Rabbi claims that laws against murder etc don't cover non-Jews, and the claim that according to the Jewish religion all non-Jews are wicked and should be enslaved is nonsense.

Judaism has been markedly more liberal in it's attitudes towards those of other religions than Christianity and Islam have been: e.g. Judaism doesn't require that everyone has to be Jewish in order to be righteous. But I guess if you look hard enough you could find some crazies who'll say or write anything in the name of any religion.

Hamas and Hezbullah indoctrinate their children with the most hateful and genocidal propaganda throughout their media. There is nothing like this in Israel, even if the above allegations were all true, which they are not.

We should also not forget that the Arabs launched genocidal wars against Israel in 1948 (boasting that the genocide would be worse than the Mongol massacres) and instigated the war of 1967 (by kicking the UN out of Sinai, promising Israel's immanent destruction, closing the straits of Tiran, mobilizing the Egyptian army against Israel, etc), and are thus responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians.

[Brett]

Wow, where to start.

Lets begin with the absence of a name. Somewhat cowardly. But nevermind, your statements and comments give enough material without having to harp on about that.

"Gestapo-like". If it wasn't for this phrase your piece would have come across as well meaning but ignorant of Jewish ideology in general and religious zionism in particular, as well as a thorough lack of knowledge of the situation in Judea and Samaria. But this comment shows an agenda and so everything else you say must be seen in this light. For completeness sake, please could you provide a factual basis for this comparison.

Instead of addressing your misunderstandinhs one by one I'll try to clarify the ideology. Jews do not believe that non Jews are animals. All the laws of murder etc apply to both Jews and non Jews. Jews do not believe that they are physically or genetically superior to anyone. Jews do not believe that anyone should be enslaved to us. No Rabbi, including all the ones you quoted teaches any different. You have misquoted them in certain areas that I will try to explain.

Jews do believe in being chosen. But chosen in order to perform a spiritual task. We do not believe in enslaving anyone to server us as we are all here only to serve G-d. This special task may raise our spiritual level but has no bearing on a physical one. We are not exclusive in this, if someone feels so hard done by that he cannot partake in this task let him convert. Importantly, as TC pointed out, in stark contrast to but Christianity and Islam, Judaism believes that you do not have to be Jewish to be righteous.

"Jewish settlers roaming......" Clearly you have never been to the Yishuvim. The Jewish settlements are surrounded by fences and have security teams to protect themselves from Arab terrorists. The arab towns have no fences. If the Jews were the aggressors surely this would be reversed. Furthermore, and more importantly, the Jews do not search for arabs, you cannot name name me a single case. Arabs however have a history, from beating 13 year old boys beyond recognition, to kidnapping soldiers and civilians alike, to murdering young men on a hike. You, are a brazen faced liar.

Rav Eliyahu's quote. Anyone with half a brain cell, held together by a spirochete can see in the statement who the aggressor is. The Rav said, we will kill them until they stop killing us. In context this was said about Hizbullah soldiers whilst we were in a war with them. A war which they started. Since when is killing the enemy not allowed in war, or is it that its only not allowed for Jews.

regarding civilians. As has been pointed out on this blog before, no-one criticizes the allied forces of WWII for their bombings of Berlin, Dresden etc. Deliberate targeting of civilians. and collateral damage are not the same thing. And here you see the difference between jews and Arabs. Israel has never, not once, deliberately targeted civilians. And when there have been civilians casualties Israel has expressed regret and apologised. The Arabs on the other almost exclusively target civilians. Snipers shooting 3 years old girls in the head, teenage boys beaten beyond recognition and countless bombings of public areas. If there are those who claim that the Palestinians are not human it is not because of the teachings of Judaism, it is because the Palestinians have worked hard to earn the title.
In addition, Hamas was democratically and overwhelmingly elected on the promise that they would continue to attack Israel. Given this it is difficult for the Palestinian "civilians" to claim innocence.

[the pil]

I always enjoy when people with absolutely no knowledge of Judaism give lectures on the topic- it is clear from your post that you have no comprehension of Judaism or its meaning.Millions of People spend their whole lives trying to understand the meaning of being Jewish without achieving that ambition. These people spend their entire days and nights meditating about the topic, researching the issue using the various works,or if you prefer books, by Rabonim, going back thousands of years, and still the question remains. And you say that this is what Judaism represents, who are you to say such things.

[Steve]

I reckon thats a post that he/she just copies and pastes onto all jewish sites where comments are available. The author will never read any responses. I would have just deleted it had I saw it in time.