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Note: before playing the video, click on lower right-hand corner button and the “cc” (closed-caption) setting in order to see the English-language translation
An Israeli blogger, Ami Kaufman, has done a great service by uploading an Israeli TV talk-show interview with Rabbi Dov Wolpe, founder of the far-right settler group, SOS-Israel, who I’ve blogged about here along with his illegal U.S. fiscal conduit, Machanaim (about whom the Forward published an expose this week). Kaufman has translated and captioned the interview to give you a real taste for the loopy politics and religious stew that simmers inside these Jewish wingnuts.
Wolpe’s views are not only anti-democratic, but as the interviewer notes, they are insurrectionist in calling for IDF soldiers to refuse to obey lawful military orders. The TV show host also notes that the logic of Wolpe’s views would lead to civil war between the secular state and the religous zealots the rabbi represents.
Here, the interviewer asks for short replies to one-word questions:
Interviewer: The Palestinians.
Wolpe: I don’t recognize such a nation.
I: Democracy.
W: To a point.
I: Olmert, Livni, Barak.
W: Heretics of our generation.
I: Hilltop Youth.
W: Maccabbes of our generation.
I: Netanyahu.
W: He has been warned.
I: The left.
W: Emissaries of the enemy.
I: The messiah.
W: The only solution.
Later in the interview Wolpe strangely denies that his group pays soliders who refuse military orders to evacuate settlements and go to prison as has been reported in all Israel’s major newspapers. After the denial, he adds:
We said that every soldier who will sit in prison for the love of the Land of Israel, then we will give money to the family that raised such a child who is willing to suffer for it.
According to such sophistry, he isn’t paying the family a bounty for a specific act of insubordination, but rather is offering the funds as a gift for raising such a wonderful child–as if this severs the connection between the illegal act and payment. This may pass muster for Talmudic analysis, but it certainly won’t pass muster in a court of secular law. But I don’t suppose this interests Wolpe a whit since he’s preparing for the imminent arrival of the messiah, the deceased Chabad leader Rabbi Schneerson, who presumably will rule this settler Kingdom of God and strike mortal blows against heretics like yours truly and other trespassing Jews.
During the interview, Wolpe articulates his views with the utmost clarity when he says that Israeli soldiers swear an oath of allegiance to the State on a Tanach (Bible) to protect and defend the homeland. “How can a soldier obey an order to evacuate a settlement thus destroying the homeland?” There you have it in a nutshell: every inch of the Territories is not just sacred, God-given ground, but land the Israeli government must defend with its last ounce of blood. Can there be any starker elucidation of the chasm between radical settlers and the secular State than this?
According to Wolpe’s view, the democratic majority of Israelis has neither the right nor the ability to evacuate these settlements. We’ve heard of the concept of jury nullification, whereby jurors are urged to find minority defendants regardless of the merits of the case due to the suffering and discrimination inflicted on them by American society. Well, this is an example of national nullification. For Wolpe, the State of Israel is essentially null and void.
How else can he say he supports democracy “to a point?” For me, supporting democracy to a point is like saying you’re half-pregnant. It can’t be done. Democracy is an inviolate principle. There are no half-measures or conditions when it comes to democracy. To use a poker term, you’re either ‘all in’ or you’re all out. Clearly, Wolpe is neither a gambling man nor an advocate of liberal values when it comes to the State of Israel.
Later in the interview, Wolpe likens a military order to evacuate settlements to eating chametz (unleavened bread forbidden during Passover). I kid you not.
And when the interviewer attempts to remind his subject that the international community and Barack Obama are pressuring Israel for concessions, the latter responds with derision:
The nations [world community] are laughing at us, they mock us. We’re nothing but a laughingstock to them. Show me another country that would freeze building on their territory? Who’s ever heard of such a thing? We’re a bannana republic. You say we’re in charge. They’re in charge.
At another point, Wolpe calls the decision by the Netanyahu right-wing government to accept a temporary settlement freeze, “a dictatorship.” The rabbi, who doesn’t appear to have studied the principles of liberal democracy, claims that no democratic government can force a minority to accept the will of the majority when it comes to a decision like evicting 8,000 settlers from Gush Katif. Now, here I always thought that this was one of the principles of democracy–that the minority accepted the will of the majority even when former opposed it. Apparently, Rabbi Wolpe studied this subject at the feet of that other settler democrat, Meir Kahane. He certainly didn’t study in the yeshiva of John Locke or Thomas Jefferson.
H/t to Didi Remez.
Related posts:
- Settler Rabbi Who Endorses Goyicide Receives $300,000 in State Funding
- Settler Rabbi Stonewalls on Sex Abuse Charge
- Pro-Settler Rabbi Tells IDF Troops Vatican and Hezbollah Conspire to Exterminate Jews
- Pro-Settler Chabad Non-Profit Supports IDF Insubordination While Violating IRS Tax Rules
- Palestinian Canon Naim Ateek: “Worse than Hamas”
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Tags: hilltop youth, idf, insurrection, israeli civil war, machanaim, rabbi dov wolpe, s.o.s. israel, settler rabbi, volpo
It looks as if the chickens are coming home to roost in Israel (and they are not settlers in the West Bank). Those famous words, “if only,” come to mind. If only Israel had paid attention to this settler problem at the beginning instead of allowing its goal of stealing Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to blind its eyes to the political problems it was bound to cause.
You reap what you sow, I guess. It’s not inconceivable that if not a civil war, then major unrest will occur within Israel.
This Rabbi was so painful to listen to; he even has the speech cadence and facial expressions of a fanatic. But what amazed me was the applause from the audience when he made some of his more outrageous remarks. I felt like I was watching a Tea Party or a Sarah Palin rally.
RE: “I felt like I was watching a Tea Party or a Sarah Palin rally.”
ME: Elliot Abrams on steroids!
SEE: “Elliott Abrams and ‘Neocon-ing’ Obama”, By Robert Parry, Consortiumnews.com, 12/18/09
LINK – http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/121709.html
B”H
“I: Olmert, Livni, Barak.
W: Heretics of our generation.”
He actually says “mityavnim” which means specifically Hellenists not “heretics”
Richard said:
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Now, here I always thought that this was one of the principles of democracy–that the minority accepted the will of the majority even when former opposed it
—————————————————
Come on Richard, you don’t really mean that, do you? What you mean is that decisions by the majority THAT YOU LIKE should be honored, while those you don’t like should be ignored. You don’t really mean that all orders have to be carried out by soldiers have to be carried out all the time without question. You do support soldiers who refuse to carry out orders you don’t like such as those that “oppress the Palestinians”.
Don’t forget that the laws discriminating against the blacks in the pre-Civil-Rights-era South were supported by a majority. Please don’t make up principles that you really don’t believe in.
I said all “lawful” orders & decisions by a democratic majority should be honored by the minority. In the case of the Occupation, the settlements are illegal & no gov’t in the world except Israel recognizes them as legitimate. That gives refusers a very solid ground on which to refuse to serve in a capacity that would maintain the Occupation. The pro settler refusers have only the so called halachic interpretations of radical rabbis to defend their refusal. No Israeli or international court has ever said that such pro settlement refusal has any validity. Even Orthodox rabbis vehemently disagree w. this form of refusal. That means it hasn’t even attained consensus within the Orthodox, let alone secular Israeli community.
Your understanding of democracy as a concept is woefully inadequate. The civil rights era south disenfranchised Blacks & prevented their participation in vital aspects of southern society including voting, property ownership, education, etc. Violating Jim Crow laws had an entirely sound basis that was eventually upheld by subsequent U.S. civil rights law.
If Israel ever gets to the point where its jurisprudence validates the stances of Dov Wolpe & his IDF pro settler mercenaries then the country won’t be worth fighting for by anyone who honors true democracy.
Thank you for an entertaining break down of the rabbi’s “arguments”. I also read your article on Al-Jazeera on the prisoner swap and enjoyed it. I look forward to more of your work.
Thanks for visiting. That Al Jazeera piece was a long time coming. I’m glad it’s finally available. This is the first time I’ve written for Al Jazeera.
“According to such sophistry, he isn’t paying the family a bounty for a specific act of insubordination, but rather is offering the funds as a gift…..”
This weird view wasn’t worth a donkey’s ass when Saddam Hussein used it to explain Iraq’s survivors benefits payments to the families of deceased Palestinian “suicide bombers”.
So why should it be worth a donkey’s ass now?
RE: EVACUATING SETTLEMENTS WORSE SIN THAN EATING CHAMETZ
FROM YNET – ” Likud MK: Annex West Bank, consider citizenship for Palestinians”, By Attila Somfalvi, 12/20/09
(EXCERPT) …Knesset Member Tzipi Hotovely, one of the leading dissenting voices in the Likud faction opposing the policy adopted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Sunday that the territories should be annexed to Israel.
“Israeli law should be applied on the Judea and Samaria region,” Hotovely said during a conference in the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and stated she did not rule out granting citizenship to Palestinians…
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3822759,00.html
If you look further into Tzipi Hotovely’s ideas, you will find her to be quite the little fan of Avigdor Lieberman. She actually believes that there should be no Palestinian land at all, and that the Palestinians should take “loyalty oaths”, which is outrageously silly and quite racist. Many of her ideas reflect the fact that she is only 31 years old and that the occupation is older than she is. Like most Israelis, she has no knowledge of either the history or the culture.
http://warincontext.org/2009/12/21/likud-mk-annex-west-bank-consider-citizenship-for-palestinians/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email