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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.
