Just when I think that the IDF and Israel’s far-right religious leadership cannot get any weirder, they surprise me yet again. The IDF distributed to its soldiers a pamphlet endorsed by a far-right pro-settler rabbi and written by the American Orthodox movement. It contained this little bit of Jewish conspiracy theory paranoia:
The Pope and the cardinals of the Vatican help organize tours of Auschwitz for Hezbollah members to teach them how to wipe out Jews, according to a booklet being distributed to Israel Defense Forces soldiers.
Officials encouraging the booklet’s distribution include senior officers, such as Lt. Col. Tamir Shalom, the commander of the Nahshon Battalion of the Kfir Brigade. The booklet was published by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, in cooperation with the chief rabbi of Safed, Rabbi Shmuel Eliahu, and has been distributed for the past few months.
The booklet, titled “On Either Side of the Border,” purports to be the testimony of “a Hezbollah officer who spied for Israel…The story is narrated by a man named Avi, who says he changed his name from Ibrahim after he left Hezbollah and converted to Judaism. Avi says he was once close to Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, and describes Hezbollah’s purported close relationships with the Vatican and European leaders.
The IDF Spokesman’s Office said in a statement: “The book was received as a donation and distributed in good faith to the soldiers. After we were alerted to the sensitivity of its content, distribution was immediately halted.”
“Distributed in good faith???” What narischkeit. It was distributed in bad faith. It is a racist piece of utter nonsense. Anyone with half a brain in their head could see that. Don’t IDF officers have half a brain? Or do they just not give a good goddamn what is conveyed to its soldiers (in the IDF’s name) about Arabs?
Lest we wonder how the IDF can prosecute a war in Gaza killing 1,400 of whom 1,100 were civilians, this story conveys how such a horror can happen. You tell gullible 18 year olds such fantasies and they will believe anything you like about Muslims. The result is unrestrained mayhem. In fact, the Breaking the Silence testimonies reveal that soldiers were told that there are no civilians in Gaza; that everyone is Hamas. This gave the troops license to consider anyone with whom it came into contact as a dangerous enemy. The way you create such notions is with delusional propaganda like this booklet.
And what is even more depressing is that I know that most Israelis and certainly the IDF itself will see little or nothing wrong with this. The officer will probably not even receive a reprimand. The only regret will be that the incident saw the light of day in a newspaper. This is how Israel has become coarsened by Occupation. Most no longer care about anything having to do with the Palestinians (or in this case, the Lebanese). They’re prepared to believe the worst and need very little urging to get them to do so. Their brains (not to mention their hearts) stopped working long ago when it comes to this subject.
Here is more of this Protocol of the Elders of Hezbollah:
According to the book, Nasrallah was invited to join a delegation to tour France, Poland and Italy, including the Vatican. Nasrallah could not refuse an invitation from the Vatican, Avi explained: “We knew [the Pope] identified with Hezbollah’s struggle.”
The book describes the alleged visit of Hezbollah officials to Auschwitz, led by the Vatican: “We came to the camps. We saw the trains, the platforms, the piles of eyeglasses and clothes … We came to learn … Our escort spoke as he was taught. We quickly explained to him: Every real Arab, deep inside, is kind of a fan of the Nazis.”
The following passage confirms that there are religious frauds in other places than the Bible Belt and with names other than Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Ted Haggard:
The younger Eliahu was also behind an online video in which he described the “miracle of our matriarch Rachel,” whom he claims appeared before Israeli soldiers in Gaza to warn them of booby-trapped buildings during Operation Cast Lead.
“In some of the places we went in Gaza there was a woman who warned them … ‘Did they tell you who I am,’ she said, ‘I am the matriarch Rachel,” Eliahu says in the video. “I told her: Rachel, there’s a war… Go to God, Blessed Be He, pray over the soldiers who sacrifice themselves for the People of Israel, so that they will strike and not be struck.”
David Menahemov, an aide to Eliahu, claims the book is not fiction. “Avi is a real person and everything in the book is absolutely true,” insists Menahemov. “It’s a totally true story, I know the guy personaly [sic]. He’s an Arab, who even though he converted still acts like an Arab. We helped him to write and to translate it. We changed a few details to protect him and his family.”
What does “acting like an Arab mean?” Does he still steal? Lie? Cheat? I’ll let you know if Rabbi Eliahu ever produces any further evidence of the existence of the mysterious Avi/Ibrahim.
H/t to Amir Terkel.
“In fact, the Breaking the Silence testimonies reveal that soldiers were told that there are no civilians in Gaza; that everyone is Hamas.”
If you add the word “some” then that would be an accurate and informative statement. “some” soldiers were told.
Otherwise its a misleading and malevolently judgemental misrepresentation.
I get your anger. I don’t get your willingness to drop the prohibition from “bearing false witness against thy neighbor’.
The phrase “soldiers were told” in English is not synonymous with “all soldiers were told.” Your nitpicking has gone beyond the bounds of making any sense.
What does this “all” matter? Is told to 90 % of soldiers worse than to 60 or 40 percent? Or does it only “matter” if to ALL was told the propaganda or if ALL committed war crimes. Well then WW2 German soldiers can’t be blamed. Not ALL did know.
If we use constantly the term militant Islam it also nowadays justified to speak about militant Judaism, so much evidence there is of the growing usage of religious propaganda among IDF troops.
just use the “some”you got to treat my people with kid gloves “they” is another word “some” jews look for to auto call u an anti-semite.I now kow for sure all germans did not know what was going on with the jews during the holocaust why u ask? Well most jews have no clue what the idf are doing to the people of Palestine.
From where do you know that ALL Germans during WW2 knew what happened in Auschwitz etc? Surely ALL did not know. Some knew, most not, but that is not essential. What happened happened and the whole nation was and is demanded to feel guilty. Why should it be different with Israel’s ethnic cleansing operations? Nabka as an historical fact doesn’t disappear even if it by a law is “criminalized” in Israel.
That is simply stupid to use constantly this SOME – ALL argument. It is perfectly clear that when Israel as a state and the self declared “representative” of Jews does something or tolerates something others see as criminal not all of the 5 million Israeli Jews nor the rest 7 million Jews around the world are informed of the events and those who are do have numerous different opinions and attitudes. Surely some Israeli Jews did support what happened just in Gaza, some opposed it fiercely, some did not care and some demanded even more “determined” actions. Does it make the events on the field more “pretty” or less significant because not ALL approved them?
This story also sheds an unflattering light on the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.
This is so disturbing it’s hard to know where to begin. This spew was published by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (?); I wonder what the vast majority of Americans would think of the intense demonization of Catholics and other non-Jews amidst its paranoid rantings, if they became acquainted with this tract. Americans as a whole ought to & need to know about this stuff. This vilification is being done (at least partly) by our fellow Americans, after all.
The media does a good job of ignoring and/or covering up blood-curdling material like this from the far-right-wing of the Israeli and American Jewish community, at least the generalized hatred-of-Gentiles aspect of it. Our media just distills and filters the very large Islamophobic, anti-Arab portion of it for broader American consumption. When you cut down to the quick, this pamphlet appears to hold at its core a blistering, unadulterated hostility and hatred toward the very large non-Jewish portion of the human family. Pure tribalism, denial and destruction of the Other. Disgusting stuff. The other religious leaders I can think of in the American context who can match the level of vitriol and hate evinced by the likes of Rav Shmuel Eliahu, are some of the leaders of the Christian Right. I don’t believe even the Christian Right goes as far as openly advocating slaughter of civilians, though, like at least one rightwing Rabbi (that I heard of) did during the war on Gaza.
As an American growing up in the Lutheran tradition (on and off) and currently attending a church of the United Methodist denomination, I haven’t come into contact with this level of war-mongering bloodlust in the realm of American mainline Protestantism (I’ve spent time in the Lutheran, Presbyterian and Methodist churches). Granted, I currently go to a very liberal progressive church, but the very idea of a religious leader invoking military aggression and actually condoning & encouraging the slaughter of civilians because among the ‘enemy’ there are no innocents, no civilians, is so bizzare & foreign to my religious frame of reference and understanding. It doesn’t compute. Religion has to encompass and offer good-will and blessings to the whole, the universal, to make sense and truly be meaningful. I just don’t get tribalist religion. Right-wing Judaism appears to embody a very scary warlike form of tribalism.
Just as moderate, liberal Christians like myself (and there are a lot of us out there) tend to get drowned out by the white noise and national spotlight of the Religious Right nutters, the Falwells and Hagees, so perhaps do moderate Jewish voices get drowned out in the national policy debate by the right-wing nationalist settler movement. The sane voices in both groups (including myself) ought to speak out against the extremist haters that inhabit our larger communities.
The Eliahus out there seem to be driving Israeli and, to a substantial degree, American policy. This is what’s so scary. Obama has put up a somewhat half-assed road-block. But he needs to draw a much more definitive line in the sand against this madness. For most of my life I’ve held the image of the benevolent, gentle, loving rabbi. Soulful and Wise, a dynamic balance of intellect and ethical rigor. The Eliahu version is horrifying and incredibly disillusioning.
Religious extremism seems to be an increasing influence in the military of both Israel and the US. One reads of retired IDF personnel who are equally horrified to read of material like this, while there has been sufficient concern about Christian proselytizing encountered by US military personnel to lead to official investigations and at least one legal complaint.
Moreover, efforts to develop good relations seen as essential for progress in Afghanistan are reportedly being impeded by evangelical activity of military personnel in-country. As Kamran Pasha commented in Huffington Post, regarding this issue, “…faith proffered at the end of a gun is not the same as spirited discourse between equals.”
Even worse is a report in Harper’s of Special Forces staff taunting the Iraqi opposition with shouts of “Jesus killed Mohammed.” As Warren says, a line needs to be drawn against such activity.
Somehow it’s not surprising to find that the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, who advised on interrogation techniques until August 2007, is reported by Harper’s to hold the belief that Christianity is worship of God, while Islam is worship of Satan.
Mikey Weinstein, founder of Military Religious Freedom Foundation, calls the former deputy undersecretary a “traitor to the oath he swore, which was to the United States Constitution.” (Harper’s 5-09, The Crusade for a Christian Military)
Along these lines, Margaret, definitely check out Chris Hedges’ “America’s Holy Warriors” article at:
http://www.truthout.org/article/chris-hedges-americas-holy-warriors
Still waiting to hear how you figure 1100 of the 1400 dead Gazans to be civilians.
I don’t figure anything (related to this issue). This is the figure that all credible news media are using. If you want to accept the lies of the IDF based on nothing more than wishful thinking , be my guest.