Ateret Cohanim sweatshirt calling for destruction of Dome of Rock: 'Sometimes you have to take off the kippah.'

Apparently, one of the hot fashion items this season in the far-right Israeli yeshiva culture is a sweatshirt sold by students at the Ateret Cohamin yeshiva which calls for the destruction of the Dome of the Rock.  The sweatshirt, a picture of which is displayed here, says in literal Hebrew:

Sometimes you have to take off the kippah.

Kippah can mean either yarmulke or “dome,” hence the double meaning.  This “wit” passes for political commentary in the Jewish terror crowd.  Ateret Cohanim is the settler extremist group which is fraudulently “buying” East Jerusalem Palestinian property, evicting residents, and installing kosher Jewish settlers in their place as part of the orchestrated campaign to rid the city of Arabs.  It also is training potential High Priests who can resume the sacrificial ritual of the Holy Temple once it is rebuilt, and presumably the Dome of the Rock destroyed.  The sweats have been sold since at least 2007 according to messages posted at far-right message boards.

Imagine if Fatah youth sported sweatshirts calling for blowing up the Western Wall.  How would that be received?  I haven’t heard a peep from Itamar Marcus and his boys at Palestine Media Watch about this latest form of religious incitement against Palestinian holy places.  I wonder why?

Former JDL leader and current New York Democratic powerhouse Dov Hikind is closely identified with Ateret Cohanim, as his wife is the paid fundraiser for the American affiliate.  Last year, they brought former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to endorse their efforts, where he also joined Irving Moskowitz at the recently stolen Shepherd Hotel property.

Rabbi Mordechai Elon, accused of sexual abuse

Yet another prominent Orthodox rabbi has been charged with sexual abuse. This time it is Rabbi Mordechai Elon, one of the foremost rabbinic leaders of the Israeli Orthodox movement and former rosh yeshiva at the flagship Yeshivat HaRav, where last year a Palestinian mounted an assault which left several students dead. The result was that students of the yeshiva and other far right Jews went on a rampage and tried to burn down the home of the family of the perpetrator of the attack. Elon’s brother is Benny, a former MK for a far-right pro-settler party.

At one time the rabbi was so renowned he’d hoped to be named chief rabbi. Alas, that hope is all but dashed as he was charged several years ago with abusing boys at his yeshiva:

Takana, a rabbinic forum established in 2003 to clamp down on sexual misconduct by Orthodox educators, went public February 15 with allegations that Mordechai “Moti” Elon had taken advantage of his influence over male students and performed “acts at odds with sacred and moral values.”

The panel later said that two people, whose complaints alleged acts from about 25 years ago, had been under 18 at the time. More recent alleged acts involved students of Elon who were 18 or older. Since its initial disclosure, the panel reports having received one more complaint of an alleged underage encounter…

What is unusual about this case is that a splinter group of the Orthodox community is taking the position that the entire prosecution is an attempt to destroy rabbinic authority and the Orthodox movement. It calls for refusal to cooperate with state authorities (or to deal with the charge through a beyt din).

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, leading Orthodox authority on child sex abuse, himself charged with offense

One of the leaders of this group is Rabbi Shalom Aviner, rosh yeshiva of Ateret Cohanim, one of the most extreme of Israeli yeshivot. It is preparing the religious and priestly rite for establishment of the Third Temple, a development which could cause a holy war if the point is pressed too intensely. Aviner is known as an enthusiastic supporter of extremist settler politics, having called Jewish terrorist Baruch Goldstein “a saint.” He declared that anti-Occupation Israelis who refuse army service should be executed.  He called settlement evacuation a ‘illegal crime.’  Ironically (when you read what I’m about to tell you), Aviner has also suggested that women would be justified in killing a man who is raping them.  No word though on how they would do so unless he plans to provide them a weapon during the assault.  This advice shows the rabbi’s complete ignorance of the circumstances of most rapes:

“In either word or deed, fight him off. Yell out loud so that everyone can hear you. If he touches you, slap him. If he attempts to do worse, and there is no other choice, you can kill him…yes, kill him,” Rabbi Aviner wrote.

In many cases, such resistance might lead to the victim’s death or severe beating.  One shudders to think what the rabbi would think of a woman who did not resist out of such fear.

Rabbi Aviner also calls for all Orthodox Jews to report any sexual abuse, which at first glance is quite an advance over the traditional approach, which has been to hush such charges up and avoid them like the plague.  But in light of what I’m about to tell you you’ll find it odd that he suggests one enormous loophole:

“If the beater or the abuser is aware of his problem and is willing to receive the proper therapy, and in addition meets his commitment and goes to therapy, and is supervised by responsible elements, only in such a case there is no need to report…

So, all the abuser must do to avoid civil punishment is go to therapy.  You’ll note there is no mention by Rabbi Aviner of the necessity of the abuser refraining from abusing once he is in therapy.  The reason why this distinction is important is that Aviner has become the leading defender of the non-cooperation movement regarding the Elon case:

“I am telling everybody — keep silent,” the head of Jerusalem’s Ateret Cohanim Yeshiva, Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, told the Forward. He said that the affair must not be allowed to undermine the rabbis’ authority.

No word on how Aviner squares this approach with his earlier pronouncement urging reporting abuse to civil authorities.  Apparently, Elon’s agreement to pursue counseling convinced Aviner that reporting him was a sin.  But the Takanah rabbis disagreed strongly:

The[y] were very clear about why they chose to make the sexual-abuse allegations public now, several years after they themselves were made aware of them. When they were first informed about the charges, the rabbis said, they tried unsuccessfully to persuade the complainants to go to the police. In 2006, they also approached the attorney general at the time, Menachem Mazuz, who felt unable to probe the matter without the complainants’ cooperation. The current attorney general, Yehuda Weinstein, has now told police to look into the allegations.

Stymied on the law-enforcement front, Takana rabbis said they demanded in 2006 that Elon cease face-to-face teaching, counseling and other rabbinic activities; he agreed. That year, he retired from his post at Yeshivat HaKotel and moved to the Galilee. But the forum rabbis say that Elon failed to honor his commitment, leaving them, according to a statement they released, with “no other way to protect the public from possible future harm” than by going public. The final straw was that the forum believed he had resumed counseling young men on sexual matters.

This points out the weakness of the Takana Forum.  It is entirely voluntary with the only threat or sanction the rabbis can use being public exposure.  Rabbi Elon has exposed this weakness and Rabbi Aviner is further undermining it.  What he doesn’t realize is that he is harming Israeli Orthodox Judaism far more by endorsing impunity than a civil prosecution of Elon would.

Why might Aviner take such a position?  Well, it turns out he’s likely to have his own sexual skeletons rattling in his closet.  Several websites whose goal is to track and report Jewish sexual abuse report Aviner himself has been accused of improprities with women he has counseled:

Back in 2002, serious allegations were made against Rabbi Shlomo Aviner of sexually harassing women both verbally and physically.

…In 2005, two women accused the Aviner of creating emotionally intimate relationships with them. These relationships included his expressions of his love for them during regular late-night phone conversations, extracting details from them of their sexuality and promoting an unhealthy emotional dependence on him.

…Like in many other cases, those who tried to speak out where shunned and made to look as if they were crazy.

One wonders what the good rabbi would say if he sexually abused the women, would they have the right to kill him?  You can see how insane the situation is.

What’s “crazy” is a religious community that bestows any respect on one of its leaders accused of the very crimes about which he makes moral pronouncements.  Only in such an insular environment can such a person not be viewed as hopelessly self-interested and suffering from an insurmountable conflict.

Not to mention that Aviner should be an embarrassment to his allies in the settler extremist movement.  Yes, the man is innocent till proven guilty.  But does that mean he needs to placed on a pedestal and his views about Baruch Goldstein or sexual abuse need to be honored as if they were halacha l’Moshe mi’Sinai (“the law according to Moses on Sinai”)?

Your tax dollars and mine support the hate spewed by this Od Yosef Chai yeshiva rabbi (Flash 90)

Yesterday, Akiva Eldar published another installment in his powerful expose of the most extreme of the settler yeshivas and their funding sources both from the government and American Jewish donors.  He focussed on the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva, based in the viper nest settlement of Yitzhar, located near Tapuach, from which the pogromists who torched the Yasuf mosque came.  The yeshiva has several claims to fame.  One, a student once launched a homemade Katyusha rocket at a nearby Palestinian village.  Two, the yeshiva is a hesder, or educational institution that trains future IDF soldiers.  Its rabbis have consistently advocated mutiny and insubordination by telling students to refuse legal military orders to evacuate settlements.  Three, one of the yeshiva rabbis published a book last month which advocated the killing of non-Jews (read, Palestinians) who threatened Jews, including children because they would grow up to harm Jews:

The rabbi said it is permissible to kill gentile babies because of “the future danger that will arise if they are allowed to grow into evil people like their parents.”

Four, the yeshiva receives $300,000 in state funding for its role as a hesder institution.  Five, it receives large charitable gifts from Diapora Jewish communities in the UK and U.S.  Those gifts are tax-deductible despite the fact that the yeshiva not only encourage violation of the Israeli military code, hatred of Muslims and Palestinians, but also flies in the face of U.S. policy regarding the settlements:

…The American public also participates in financing the message coming out of Yitzhar. It [the Israeli government charity filing] states that in 2007 and 2008, the yeshiva received NIS 102,547 ($25,000) from an American foundation known as the Central Fund of Israel (CFI).

My own review of IRS 990 reports shows that CFI gave $22,000 to “Friends of Yitzhar” (page 28, see link below) in the 2005 reporting year.  In that same year, the Fund broke out its giving by category (pdf) noting nearly $400,000 for “security programs” (page 30), which would fund the militias and other violent hooligans running rampant in settlements like Yitzhar, Tapuach and elsewhere.

Jewish charities in the UK have even deeper pockets.  The Charitable Commission report for 2006 (pdf) reports (page 8) the Od Yosef Hai Yeshiva College for Rabbinic Studies donated approximately $600,000 to the Yitzhar yeshiva.  The fund’s total tangible assets are listed at approximately $5-million.  Didi Remez tells me that the 2007 Israeli charity report lists one of Britain’s wealthiest and most distinguished Jewish charitable funds, the Wolfson Foundation, as a $20,000 donor.

We may not have much leverage with a U.S. government frightened of its own shadow to take on pro-settler charities, but Britain seems more sensitive on these issues.  I urge our British peace activist counterparts to inquire into this matter with the relevant British authorities.  The government backed out of a Tel Aviv real estate deal with settler-builder Lev Leviev.  It also just acceded to a request to distinguish Israeli food exports from the Territories from Israeli products from within the Green Line.  We might have more luck exploring this from Britain than from Washington DC.

I hope to God someone in the Obama administration is reading these wise words and taking them to heart:

…The next time the White House spokesman condemns the torching of a mosque near Nablus, some reporter ought to ask him why respectable American citizens contribute to the Od Yosef Chai Shechem yeshiva, one of whose leading rabbis wrote the following incendiary words of incitement: “[Civil] Administration inspectors have not dared to enter Yitzhar since the freeze edict. Their experience with Yitzhar, and its heat, are responsible for the fact that every entry into the settlement by hostile elements requires large forces and ends with extensive damage to army and police equipment, even greater damage to Arab persons and property, and a region that continues to burn in every direction for several days” (Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, Hakol Hayehudi, December 4, 2009).

At the same time, U.S. officials could consider how a tax exemption for donors to Friends of Ateret Cohanim and The City of David jibes with official American policy regarding the presence of right-wing Jewish organizations in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem’s Holy Basin.

Human rights organizations and Jewish peace activists in the United States…are asking why the administration only shuts down funds that send charitable donations to associations affiliated with Hamas.

The Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee has started the ball rolling with this wide-ranging IRS/Treasury Department complaint.

Dov Hikind, Jewish racist and agent provocateur for Jewish-Muslim holy war (Jim Hollander/European Pressphoto Agency)

American Jewish pro-settler extremists are playing an increasing role not just in supporting their radical brethren in the Territories, but in obstructing a potential peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.  The Israeli government certainly does a good enough job of this on its own and doesn’t need such support in its obstructionism, but with this added support the obstacles are insurmountable:

Dov Hikind, a member of the New York State Assembly, was in this disputed city on Wednesday looking for property to buy. He said he was most excited about a new apartment complex overlooking the Old City called Nof Zion.

At noon, Mr. Hikind led a group of about 50 American Jews in laying a cornerstone for the next phase of Nof Zion…“I want to buy here,” Mr. Hikind said. “I might make a deal while I am here this time.”

More than a real estate deal, though, it would be a statement: Nof Zion, a private Jewish project, is in Jebel Mukaber, a Palestinian Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem, in territory Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war. Israel claims sovereignty over all Jerusalem; the Palestinians demand the eastern part as the capital of a future state.

Even within Israel, the idea of Jews moving into predominantly Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem stirs heated debate.

One of the worst aspects of Hikind’s enterprise is its goal of eradicating a Palestinian presence from historically Arab East Jerusalem neighborhoods. But what he does is couch his efforts in the veneer of civil rights as in this statement by him:

Not allowing Jews to live in certain neighborhoods of the city “is segregation”…

Aish Hatorah's Third Temple model, awaiting an Arabrein Jerusalem

Actually, Jerusalem is currently an entirely segregated, divided city (contrary to the Israeli fiction that Jerusalem “is one”).  There are virtually no Arabs living in west Jerusalem.  There are 200,000 Jews living in historically Arab East Jerusalem.  Arabs cannot live in west Jerusalem.  So saying Jews should be allowed to forcibly evict Arab owners from their homes in East Jerusalem in order to supplant them with interloper Jews is the height of cynicism.  It is a puerile justification for immorality and theft.

I repeat here something I’ve said too many times, but which can’t be restated enough: Dov Hikind and his thuggish friends are a pernicious obstacle to peace.  His wife runs Ateret Cohanim, one of the chief Jewish groups forcibly Judaizing East Jerusalem.  One of the main goals of her group is to build and dedicate a Third Temple, a foolhardy enterprise that would surely ignite a religious war the likes of which even the Holy Land hasn’t seen in decades, if not centuries.  They are buying and stealing Palestinian homes using tax-exempt funds donated by American Jews, thus putting the U.S. government and taxpayer on record indirectly supporting this evil enterprise.  In addition, Hikind and his ‘minyans’ stand blatantly opposed to U.S. policy which opposes settlements and supports a freeze.  How can the U.S. government countenance an elected N.Y. state official serving as a major irritant in a critical international conflict??  When will the president get wise that the only way to handle such matters is with utmost firmness?

The following sorts of statements by Barack Obama are not only patently obvious, they’re far too little and too late:

“Additional settlement-building does not contribute to Israel’s security” and would make peace efforts harder.

“I think it embitters the Palestinians in a way that could end up being very dangerous,” he said.

It “could” be dangerous??

In the following passage about Israeli demolition of private Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, the N.Y. Times correspondent reveals her unfamiliarity with the real situation for Palestinians in East Jerusalem:

When it comes to demolitions, Jerusalem’s City Hall says it applies the law equally in all parts of the city, regardless of religion or race. But officials acknowledge that the process of obtaining a building permit is costly and complicated. Most Palestinian residents do not qualify.

First, the Jerusalem municipality does NOT tear down Jewish homes, period.  It doesn’t really have to since Jews easily qualify and obtain construction permits.  Kershner errs when she says “most” Palestinians do not qualify.  NO Palestinians qualify.  As far as I know, if there has been a single approval of a Palestinian permit in decades I’d be shocked.  This is Jewish racism.  This is apartheid, Israel-style.  Yes, I said it–apartheid, and I stand by it.  If the shoe fits, wear it.

Some time ago, Phil Weiss noted that one of the more successful settler fundraising vehicles was the Central Fund of Israel, which raised $12-million in 2007 on behalf of some of the most extreme of West Bank settlements.  The Fund breaks out its support in various categories, one of which I found extremely interesting: security.  The Fund’s 207 IRS 990 form lists over $500,000 spent to support settlement security.  If you think about what would fall under this rubric, it would be guns, ammunition, K-9 attack dogs, night vision equipment, communications equipment: all the paraphernalia that reinforce the reign of terror that settlements impose in their Palestinian neighbors.  In fact, it’s legitimate to ask whether some of these settlements might not have used donations raised through the Central Fund for guns and other weapons used to attack, maim and even kill Palestinians, though I should be clear that I haven’t yet seen any documentary evidence to support this.  But it seems only reasonable to assume that this is a highly possible, and even likely scenario.

Clearly, Jack Teitel, accused killer of Israeli police, Palestinian farmers, and bomber of a Hebrew University professor, along with other colorful crimes, is a product of the U.S. ultra-Orthodox movement which funnels these millions to settler Judea.  But we must ask even more particularly, after he made aliyah to Shvut Rachel, did some of those donations, directly or indirectly, support his terror “lifestyle?”  Did he or his family receive any financial support whatsoever from these charities (which often fund needs of specific settler families).  Have any of these funds supported that other settler terrorist living at Shvut Rachel, Asher Weissgan?  Have they supported Yigal Amir or efforts to free him from prison?

This is not so far-fetched a question since there is a pro-settler group, Honenu, which advocates for the liberation of convicted Israeli terrorists like Amir from prison.  The group has received Central Fund donations.

In addition, Susan Wexner gave $600,000 to support the work of  YadKatif, which opposes the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza under the guise of supporting the living expenses of allegedly indigent evacuated settlers.  Should not the IRS legitimiately question why U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing a huge donation to an organization opposed to the policy of a democratically elected Israeli government?

U.S. law forbids tax-exempt organizations from funding terror.  In fact, this was one of the arguments used to shut down Islamic charities in this country.  I’m set to argue what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.  Let’s insist that the IRS use the same rigor in scrutinizing some of the leading non-profit settler funding vehicles.  Beside the Central Fund, they include the Hebron Fund (supports one of the most extreme settler enclaves), Ateret Cohanim (“buys” Palestinian property  to further the Judaization of East Jerusalem), Shuva Israel (supports illegal outposts), PEP Endowment for Israel, and others listed in Jonathan Cook’s fine overview in The National.

Americans for a Safe Israel and Chabad have sponsored U.S. fundraising tours for Israeli Kahanists like David Ha-Ivri, who was a close friend of another settler mass murderer, Eden Natan Zada.  AFSI also sponsored a Manhattan synagogue talk by Nadia Matar, leader of Women in Green in which she called for Mahmoud Abbas’ assassination.  When will we put a stop to this insanity?  Our government claims it wants to play a constructive role in seeking an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, yet we allow U.S. funds to support the vilest and most violent Judean opponents of that very policy.

We should also note the irony that the Israeli foreign ministry bellowed about the Breaking the Silence NGO which received EU funding on behalf of its project documenting IDF human rights abuses during the Gaza war.  Avigdor Lieberman kvetched that foreign governments had no right interfering in domestic Israeli politics.  Apparently, the flagrant intervention in Israeli domestic politics represented by the tens of millions poured down the throats of extremist settlers like shnapps after Shabbat davening, exists in some different, and kosher category.

Huckabee to broadcast his FoxNews show live from 'liberated' Jerusalem's Shepherd Hotel

If Mike Huckabee ever becomes president of the United States (heaven forfend!) we may have the first ever alumnus of the Hilltop Youth as U.S. ambassador to Israel.  Or better yet, as U.S. secretary of state!  All this by way of saying that a friendly journalist has graciously shared with me the travel schedule for the former Republican presidential candidate’s upcoming visit to Israel:

Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee will visit Israel next week (August 17-19) to underscore his support for a united Jerusalem and for the right of Jews to live and build in Judea and Samaria.

His trip is sponsored by a settler wingnut outfit called the Jewish Reclamation Project, which is a front group for Ateret Hacohanim,** a U.S. registered non-profit which raises an average of $2 million each year used to displace Arab residents of Jerusalem and replace them with pro-settler Jewish fanatics:

His visit to Israel is hosted by The Jerusalem Reclamation Project and its Chairman, Dr. Joseph Frager.  NY State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, will join also join the popular columnist and Fox News host.

Ateret is also handsomely supported by U.S. bingo king and settler financier, Irving Moskowitz.  Hikind is a former leader of the Jewish Defense League, who now represents some of the most rabidly pro-settler ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in Brooklyn.  His wife, Shoshana happens to also be Ateret Cohanim’s U.S. fundraiser (surprise, surprise).

What I find extraordinary is that Huckabee is spending almost all his time visiting settlements.  And not just any settlements, he’s going into the heart of the most extreme of the settler extremists meeting with the Gush Katif dissidents and Hebron settlers (who produced Baruch Goldstein, among other Jewish gifts to humanity).  Keep in mind, these Gush Katifniks were diametrically opposed not to the policy of the U.S. government, but to policy of their own democratically elected ISRAELI government.  And they didn’t express their opposition by petitioning or demonstrating, they expressed it through acts of violence and mayhem.  This is who Mike Huckabee chooses to spend time with when he visits the Holy Land.  Read it and weep:

MONDAY, Aug. 17:

• Visit to City of David
• Maaleh HaZeitim
• Kidmat Zion (Abu Dis) – site of a future Jewish neighborhood:

TUESDAY, Aug. 18:

• Atarot and the Security Fence around Jerusalem
• Maaleh Adumim and the controversial E1 area
• Visit to Givat HaYovel, a neighborhood designated as an “illegal outpost” and slated for dismantling by the Israeli government…

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 19:

• Visit and briefing by Gush Katif evacuees
• Hebron

Huckabee (in highway patrol shades) and Hikind with minor Muslim curiousity (Al Aqsa Mosque) in background (Menachem Kahane/AFP)

This schedule neglects to mention Huckabee’s attendance at a Sunday evening gala fundraising event at Irving Moskowitz’s Shepherd Hotel.  During his visit to the disputed site, he will broadcast his FOXNews show live from the heart of “liberated” Arab-rein East Jerusalem.  Moskowitz and the city of Jerusalem plan to begin the process of removing Arab residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood by turning the historic Palestinian landmark into a major new settler residential project.

The Obama administration has specifically warned the Netanyahu government that this project is an incendiary one that it vehemently opposes.  Is this the image Huckabee really wants to project?  That he supports those who wish to see a race war between Israelis and Palestinians to the death?  That he so detests the current president and his policy that he’s willing to sink up to his ankles in the swamp muck that these extremists live and breath?

If I were Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager I’d be chortling with glee at the opportunity to run against this guy.

Huckabee could become the leader of our country (I know it’s highly unlikely but still remotely possible).  He might be interested in visiting the economic hub of Israel, Tel Aviv.  He might be interested in visiting with the U.S. ambassador while he’s here or Israeli government leaders.  There is absolutely no indication he or his handlers are interested in any of this from his schedule.  It’s all settlers all the time.

It’s one thing to be an Eric Cantor and make vague murmurings about Obama’s Israel policy being insufficiently supportive of Israel.  That at least presents a vaguely legitimate political argument.  But Huckabee is off in wingnut land.  He’ll probably be holding hands with Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein and John Hagee and praying for the End Times over the fields of Armageddon.  Scary stuff folks.  Republicans, if there are any of you out there, do something to avoid making your Party the laughingstock of the democratic world.

Frankly, I don’t know which is worse Huckabee or Palin.  If one of them is nominated Obama will easily win a second term.  Contrary to what some might believe, I actually believe it’s a good idea to have a two party system in this country (though I never have voted for a Republican).  To think that this Party is sentencing itself to years if not decades in the political wilderness through the embrace of such lunatics is sad in the extreme.

**Today’s Haaretz offers a riveting financial expose of Ateret Hacohanim by Uri Blau.