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Every so often a reader publishes a comment here that is so hateful I feature it in my Hall of Shame. My coverage of Jeff Halper’s travails with the Israeli justice system has brought out of the miasma just such a “human being.” He calls himself Yoni Brukirer and this is what this fine specimen of a Jew (ultra-Orthodox natch) and militant Zionist has to say for himself:
Jeff Halper is an evil man for wanting to help Islamist terrorists who seek Israel’s destruction. This has nothing to do with “occupation”, the Arabs themselves controlled those lands before 1967 (Jordan and Egypt), and as Benny Morris himself writes in “1948″, if the Jews had lost that war the surrounding Arab countries would have taken what is now Israel for themselves. The whole idea of “the Occupation” was invented by the Arabs to destroy Israel. Only demented leftists obsessed with “open-mindedness” accept Arab propaganda in the name of “understanding” and “alternate narratives”. Jeff Halper and others like him should be tried and executed for treason.
Yoni’s IP reveals him to be in New York. I have half a mind to report his incitement either to the FBI or New York City police department. These people think their thoughts and ideas are mere rhetorical ranting. The problem is that words can kill and maim even if indirectly. This is the type of hate that led to Yitzchak Rabin’s assassination. I feature it here because I believe we have to look it in the eye unblinkingly in order to disarm it.
As Yoni posts at a Yeshiva University affiliated discussion forum, it’s likely he’s a graduate of that august institution, which has the distinction of having a rabbinical school dean who also called for Ehud Olmert to be hung if he conceded any of Jerusalem in a future peace deal with the Palestinians. Dare I wonder whether Yoni earned smicha and is a rabbi? After all, why should rabbis be immune from ideological diseases that afflict other Jews? I think the Jewish community has a right to know where hate lives when it lives among them. It appears to thrive at YU.
I was also tickled by this praise from a fellow forum member about Reb Yoni:
Yoni Brukirer’s response is a great example of a civil response that gets his point across without being rude or condescending.
Apparently, Yoni knows how to be kind to his fellow Orthodox Jews, while the rest of us can go hang ourselves–literally–for all he cares. And he’ll lend us the rope.
I decided to register for the YU forum and publish Brukirer’s comment there. This is what I wrote there:
I write a Jewish blog devoted to Israeli-Palestinian peace. I am not a YU grad, though I am a JTS grad. I am writing here because I was shocked to read this comment a member of this forum attempted to publish on my blog. A word of background: an Israeli-American, Jeff Halper, was arrested yesterday by Israeli police for running the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Now, most of you will certainly disagree with Halper’s actions. I don’t have a problem with this.
But I would like you to read what one of yr own has written about a fellow Jew:
[comment follows]
I have several reasons for posting this. First, I want Mr. Brukirer to know that when he writes such comments that he does not do so in a vacuum or privately. Second, I’d encourage you–members of this community–to debate the repercussions of such expressions of hatred for one’s fellow Jews.
Again, I understand that this community may have entirely diff. ideas about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than I or Jeff Halper. But must it come to this? Do we have to wish death on our fellow Jewish “enemies?”
I also realize that many of you like & respect this person & so I have linked the full comment to a post I published at my blog. I also have the original comment sent to me in my Inbox. I wish I was making this up.
Tags: orthodox judaism, university
@Nachum Lamm: Threatening ANYONE’s life, not just the president’s, is a crime.
Would you like me to call the FBI & ask them if they’re interested in Yoni’s comment & visiting him? We could let them be the judge since neither you nor I are experts in this field.
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Richard,
Consider these my final comments:
What you said about the Kotel is not correct. The Kotel is holy BECAUSE it is near the Temple Mount, which is called the Temple Mount because the two Jewish Temples were built on it! It is the holiest site in Judaism. Some Jewish authorities prohibit walking on the Temple Mount because of itsextreme holiness, and thus the practice of praying at the Western Wall developed, since it is one of the closest areas to the Temple Mount. In fact the Arab name, al-Quds, which derives from the pre-Islamic period, actually preserves a reference to the Temples.
Regarding Hamas: I wasn’t clear. What I meant to say was that the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in the 1920′s, and the Palestinan branch of that Egyptian movement was founded in the 1980′s. Every Arab country has a Hamas in it, dedicated to the overthrow of the secular Arab regimes.
Hamas is simply the Palestinian branch of this movement, which seeks to make a pan-Islamic caliphate.
-Yoni
Richard, “outrageous violence perpetrated by the Orthodox & extremist settler community against innocent Palestinian civilians murdered & maimed for no other reason than that they are Palestinian” ?? huh??
Sorry but this and most of your comments make no sense. How about the community of self-hating Jews?
Yoni’s right about the Temple Mount. The Kotel is revered by Jews only because it is the closest one can get to the Temple Mount. Otherwise, the Kotel is just a retaining wall with no other real spiritual value in and of itself.
As for the survey in question, it was run by the Steinmetz Center for Peace Research and you can see the details here. I assume you are intimately familiar with the surveys that suggest strong Israeli support for direct talks with Hamas.
@Gloria: They make “no sense” to you because you don’t follow or acknowledge the violence perpetrated by violent extremist settlers & other Orthodox Jews against Palestinians & sometimes even against their fellow Jews. I can’t believe you don’t know about all who have been killed or maimed in such attacks.
Would you pls. list for me the actual physical “violence” that has been perpetrated by alleged “self-hating Jews” on anyone?
@mia: I would say that the Temple Mount is revered by Orthodox Jews (who even Yoni confirms mostly refuse to set foot on it for their own religious reasons). I don’t know many Conservative or Reform Jews who would be willing to die on behalf of allowing Ariel Sharon to traipse through this sacred Muslim site which actually contains two functioning mosques.
Judaism as a rule doesn’t worship specific places, buildings, etc. like some religions do. Our religion & values are within us & not as much infused into physical objects.
Interesting that Sharon had never chosen to visit the Mount before & never did afterward. You’d think if it was that central to Sharon’s Jewish identity that he would’ve done it more often.
Richard why do you think it’s called the Temple Mount?! It’s called that because the Jewish TEMPLES were built on it. It has nothing to do with being orthodox, all jews agree with this. The Dome of the Rock was built where the Second Temple stood. The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism, and though we don’t worship physical objects, physical objects certainly can have holiness and sanctity. Ever heard of a Torah scroll, or tefillin (phylacteries), or the Ark of the Covenant, which was the whole reason for building the Temple (and the Tabernacle before it)??!! The Ark, built in the days of Moses to house the Ten Commandments (and other objects) as well as the area where God would communicate with Moses, was located somewhere on the rock inside the mosque that now sits on the Temple Mount.
Regarding the article by Zvika Fogel, I read it through. He certainly provides a different interpretation about the run-up to the Intifada, but nowhere does he say that Israel “provoked” it, but that the preparations for conflict eleminated what he considered to have been alternative options in dealing with a real rise in Palestinian violence planned, in advance, by Palestinian leaders. However he seems to have a very naive understanding of the aims of Palestinian nationalism and to possess total ignorance of the intentions of Hamas. In light of everything else I’ve read concerning this subject, as well as the fact that other IDF personnel disagree with him (as is mentioned in the article), Fogel is simply wrong.
@Yoni: All Jews agree the Temples existed on that spot. But not all Jews agree that the spot deserves the kind of obsessive fetichizing that extremist nationalists use in charactaerizing it. Few Jews want to build a Third Temple there. Very few Jews would agree that Ariel Sharon had an absolute need to traipse through the Temple Mount to foment the Intifada. Few Jews would’ve said that’s a wise or advisable thing to do.
You can talk till you’re blue in the face about the history of the Temple Mount. I appreciate it’s historic & spiritual significance. But in a contemporary political context, it’s simply not going to move me or most Jews as it would you, your fellow Orthodox and nationalist extremists. Jews want peace much more than they want Ariel Sharon stalking the Temple Mount.
Not just a “different interpretation.” One that entirely contradicts yr fictional narrative which isn’t based on anything other than Israeli rightist propaganada.
Not true. Read it again. He says explicitly that actions by the IDF were deliberate & knowing provocations which the army had to know would bring a violent response by the Palestinians. He says the IDF was willing to take that risk because of its own frustrations.
I do so love it when observers like Yoni call experienced Israeli generals “naïve” and “ignorant.” Uh, Yoni, wake up fella. It’s the height of chutzpah. Or do you really wish to place your credentials next to Fogel’s & ask us to judge who has greater credibility?
Now, you’ve gone too far. What rank did you leave the IDF with? What degrees do you have in the study of Arab nationalism or the I-P conflict? Fogel is damn sight more credible than you any day of the week. You really embarrass yrself & yr cause.
Richard,
The point is you have not admitted once to being wrong (or perhaps just misguided) so many times, such as Judaism’s holiest site being the Temple Mount and not the Kotel. Such a major error calls into question all of your “facts” and underscores that you are not qualified to host a site like this.
By the way, although many Israeli generals have proven to be geniuses on the battlefield, that does not make them capable of governing, as history has repeatedly shown. I for one would rather entrust this responsibility to an obviously brilliant, well-informed and grounded person such as Yoni, who according to my calculations in half your age.
@Gloria:
That’s not what Yoni was talking about. He was claiming that he knew better than Zvika Fogel about the nature of Palestinian nationalism. I wasn’t nominating Fogel to run the country. But he has a damn sight more experience dealing with Palestinians than good ol’ Yoni does.
You want Yoni to run Israel???!!! Surely you jest? He’s not even a citizen as far as I know. And what does him being half my age have to do w. the price of pita? Isn’t that a bit of ageism creeping into such an otherwise erudite analysis on yr part?
OK, I give up. There is no way you will ever see the light, so this is my last posting here. I have better things to do with my time than waste it. To respond to every one of your inaccuracies and mistaken assumptions would be way too time-consuming so here’s just a select few.
You sure are talented at looking for loopholes and attacking them instead of ceding that a person has a good point. The downside is that you suck at reading between the lines. That’s one reason this thread is so long and convoluted.
“As an occupying power Israel is responsible not just w. providing law & order but w. providing all the necessities of life in the occupied territory.”
Uh, Gaza is not “occupied”. We pulled out three years ago, thousands of Israelis lost their homes and we’ve been bombarded with missiles ever since. Where have you been?
“I wasn’t nominating Fogel to run the country. But he has a damn sight more experience dealing with Palestinians than good ol’ Yoni does.”
I’ll spell it out this time. Experience is no panacea. Fogel does not necessarily trump good ol’ Yoni when it comes to understanding the Palestinians. Again, terrible political decisions have been made by retired generals (read: like Fogel). That’s because they just don’t get the enemy’s agenda. There was nothing wrong with Yoni calling Fogel’s understanding of Palestinian nationalism “naïve”. It’s a charitable description.
“You want Yoni to run Israel???!!! Surely you jest?”
I meant, and you know it, we need someone LIKE Yoni, i.e. with a head on their shoulders, first and foremost, at the helm of this country. Again, experience is secondary.
“He’s not even a citizen as far as I know.”
Wrong again. Yoni is an Israeli citizen and has done his stint with the IDF, contrary to an earlier comment of yours which he didn’t bother to refute. You’ve made “assumptions” like these too many times to count.
“And what does him being half my age have to do w. the price of pita? ”
A lot. You’ve been on this planet twice as long so you should know better. If that makes me guilty of ageism, so be it.
“I do not want a single commenter to hijack a comment thread.”
Hijack? That’s very funny. Have you forgotten that you DEDICATED this post to Yoni, and have consistently and viciously attacked his character?? I see he has wisely stepped out and given up trying to deal with you as if you were a rational person. I’m doing the same.
One last comment. People like you should be tried and executed for ignorance. We’re on different continents, so I wouldn’t bother with the FBI or NYPD. You could try Interpol though.
Gloria, when you write to Richard “People like you should be tried and executed for ignorance”, I assume you’re making some lame grasp at humor, but it is rather interesting how racist right-wing nutjobs like you and Yoni just seem to have ‘execution’ on the brain. I think what maybe separates Richard and other liberal progressives from apologists of the Israeli occupation like you and Yoni is that we see the Palestinians as human beings deserving of basic human dignity (we share this little historical/cultural legacy in the Western World called the ‘Enlightenment’). Cutting off supplies and food to a large civilian population is incredibly cruel and malicious, and it also is a war crime. If you’re going to try and defend or rationalize this brutal behavior (the seige of Gaza), then you have abnegated any belief in universal human rights. In this respect, your mode of thinking is much closer in structure to fascism than it is to any grounded, coherent understanding of liberal democracy.
@Gloria:
You are a perfect foil for me. Any reasonable person who reads my blog will, if they don’t already, understand how absolutely certifiably nuts the Israel-Firsters are. Not to mention that you express your hibat Zion by calling for the death of yr fellow Jews. You should be ashamed–but of course you have none. You’re a shande fahr di Yiden.
And if we were executing people for ignorance you’d be the first to go. But I don’t believe in executing anyone for anything, so you’d be spared in my world. Only rightists like you want yr opponents executed. That’s what bugged me so much about Yoni’s lunatic comment.
As for Occupation, you’re completely at sea on how this is defined under international law, which is what governs Israel’s behavior. Occupation is not just having troops control territory by being physically in it. Occupation also can be when a foreign force controls territory merely by preventing access into or outside the territory. Since Israel controls all access pts. it is essentially controlling Gazan territory, hence under international law it occupies Gaza. Period.
I repeat Zvika Fogel is a decorated IDF officer. He was promoted to his rank by other IDF officers. Neither you nor Yoni approach his level of rank, experience or knowledge. Thank God, no one in Israel has chosen either of you to be a general. You’d f(&k things up even worse than they are now.
We need Yoni to stay as far away fr. politics as possible & you too. The two of you will only bring increased bloodshed for both sides.
Indeed, that’s what the Republicans are trying to peddle regaridng Sarah Palin. The argument won’t fly.
Regarding Yoni, he seems to have logorrhea & has a keyboard obsession so after asking him politely to stop commenting in this thread, I had to restrict his privileges to comment here. So he hasn’t been here but not fr. lack of trying. This post was about his hatred of Arabs. But the comment thread has long since stopped being about his hatred. Yet he kept commenting endlessly so I had to invoke one of my comment rules dealing with rightists who suffer from logorrhea.
Oh, but I do. I do. Far better than the likes of you & Yoni.