Comments on: Rabbi Wolpe, Insurrectionist Settler Rabbi: Evacuating Settlements Worse Sin Than Eating Chametz

By: Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 05:08:19 +0000

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.

By: Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 04:24:38 +0000

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.

By: Mary

Mary — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:10:04 +0000

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

By: DICKERSON3870

DICKERSON3870 — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:04:56 +0000

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

By: DICKERSON3870

DICKERSON3870 — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:58:55 +0000

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

By: HomoSapiens

HomoSapiens — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 03:23:43 +0000

“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?

By: Shawn

Shawn — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:51:42 +0000

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.

By: bar_kochba132

bar_kochba132 — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:56:23 +0000

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
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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.