״איפה עלי? אין עלי . עלי נשרף . על האש . על הגריל עלי״ כל הטיחו בפנינו ובפני הסבא דוואבשה על נכדו עלי בן 18 חודשים ע׳י פרחחי תג מחיר.ממול עמדו שוטרים וקצינים ולא הנידו עפעף. אין מלים.. pic.twitter.com/a2GrHJe3Z7
— Ahmad Tibi (@Ahmad_tibi) June 19, 2018
On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed,
And on Yom Kippur it is sealed.
How many shall pass away and how many shall be born,
Who shall live and who shall die,
Who shall reach the end of his days and who shall not,
Who shall perish by water and who by fire,
Who by sword and who by wild beast…—U’Netaneh Tokef prayer
Israeli settlers are the crème de la crème, the élite of the nation. They are stormtroopers of Judean revival. Just as kibbutznikim once represented the finest of IDF officers sacrificing their lives on the altar of Zion to save the nation, so settlers have now assumed that mantle. While the romantic notion of the young Israeli paratroopers gazing longingly upward at the Temple Mount in the famous 1967 photograph hid the reality of Israeli crimes against the Palestinians, at least it was based in part on some liberal notions, flawed as they might have been.
But the vanguard of Israel’s youth are no longer on kibbutzim or even in Unit 8200 or in the vaunted high-tech sector. Instead, they are in the yeshivot of Yitzhar, they sit learning the Torah of genocide at the feet of “rabbis” like YItzhak Shapira, Yitzhak Ginsburg, Dov Wolpe, and Dov Lior. They and Judeo-scum like them participated in the pulsa di nura which passed a sentence of death on Yitzhak Rabin, weeks before his assassination. They appeal to a higher law than that of the secular state by organizing thousands of tag mechir attacks which burn down mosques and deface cemeteries. And just as Heine said that those who would burn books will end up burning people, so the settler youth have realized this dream. Back in 2015, they murdered almost an entire Palestinian family sleeping innocently in their beds. Only their tiny baby was spared, and he was rendered an orphan.
Though the Shabak had an informer in the midst of the terror cell, he betrayed his handlers and refused to divulge the evil plan. No one knows his identity outside the secret police precinct. But he was never charged with any crime.
Shabak and the Only Language it Knows
As is their wont, the Shabak thugs knew only one way to deal with terror suspects to obtain confessions: they beat the crap out of them. While such treatment is perfectly kosher for Palestinian suspects who are routinely tortured, the Supreme Court holds to more refined standards for Jews, even if they are terrorists. So the Court held last week that the confession of one of the murderers was thrown out because it was obtained under torture, while the confession of the alleged mastermind was upheld. There are five other members of the cell who we’ve barely heard from since the tragic event. Though named as suspects, they were never charged with a crime, let alone tried.
That’s because the Shabak treats Jewish terrorism like theater. It must be seen to be investigating it, without actually doing much of anything. It arrests the usual suspects and goes through the motions. One poor schlub is held up for public spectacle so the agency can pretend it’s rooting out a ‘scourge in the heart of Israeli democracy.’ He’s the sacrificial victim. Till the next tragedy, the next Palestinian massacre. Then a whole new set of terrorists show their ugly mugs to the nation and the process starts all over again.
I focus this post on the Dawabsheh terrorists because their followers really showed their true colors during the Court hearing I referred to above. As the grandfather, Hussein Dawabsheh, who has assumed responsibility for raising the orphan, Ahmed, strode into the courtroom to see whether justice would be done or perverted in his grandson’s case, he was met with the ‘cream of the Israeli crop.’ Settlers who screamed at him, as this video indicates:
Where’s Ali? No more Ali. He’s burnt. Ali’s on the grill.
Let’s remember that it was the good Rabbis Ginsburg and Shapira who wrote in Torat Ha-Melech that it was permissible to murder Palestinian babies because they would grow up to kill Jews. Duma is nothing but an extension of this execrable philosophy. In a democratic state they would be tried for inciting murder. In Israel they are officers of the state, employed by it to spew their hate.
To find a historical comparison to the human degradation of this incident, you’d have to go back to the Nazi death camps. There guards and commandants taunted the inmates and toyed with them, killing them on a whim or permitting them to live with the uplift of a thumb. There they gassed Jews and burned them, just like in Duma, the shame of it!
From Duma to Jedwabneh: Jewish and Palestinian Martyrs Sanctify God’s Name
Compare that to Jewish history, which is full of martyrs like the Dawabshehs, who endured immolation for the sanctification of God’s name, Kiddush hashem. There was Rabbi Akiva, who defied the Roman effect to cease teaching Torah. For his troubles, he was wrapped in a Torah scroll which was soaked in water around his heart so that he would endure longer, more excruciating pain as he burned to death. There were those Jews of the Inquisition burned at the stake and German Jews during the Crusades whose homes were burned to the ground with them entombed inside, or the Polish village of Jedwabneh, where hundreds of Jewish residents were herded into a barn by their Polish neighbors and set alight.
You see, we Jews have our own shahids, our own martyrs. All the more reason for shock and horror (that never comes) when so-called Jews do this to Palestinians. We have a Jewish name for this defilement of human life, hillul hashem, the desecration of God’s Name. It is perhaps the worst sin anyone could commit. Yet these Jews do it with joy and relish in their hearts.
These murderers should not be called Jews. They are brutish beasts. It’s difficult for me to even call them human. And what did the Israeli police do who gazed on as this matter unfolded? Nothing. They maintained their hands on their hips and their indifferent stares. It was all in a day’s work for them. A day’s work watching as the settler’s burned down the house that is the Israeli state, figuratively and literally.
Israel is a wholly owned subsidiary of these thugs. They own the governing coalition. They own most of the ministers. They run the show. As for the other Israelis who aren’t settlers? They’re onlookers. They’re the ones who slow down and gawk on the freeway as they pass a fatal crash. They’re glad it’s not them.
But it is them. The settlers are them. They are responsible for them. And they do nothing. It’s worth asking a troubling question: is this what the desperate eastern European Jews of the first Zionist Congress envisioned for their dream of a Jewish homeland as they sought to escape Russian pogroms? If they knew that their political descendants would boast about burning other human beings alive as part of the necessity of maintaining their Jewish state, would they have approved? Or would they have turned their backs in disgust?
And don’t get me started on American Jews. What do they do when they read these headlines? Nothing. They wring their hands. They say these youth are aberrations. They don’t represent Israel. Israel is revolted by them and renounces their crimes. Well, not exactly. Israel actually embraces their crimes. It just won’t come out publicly and say it quite that way. But it does.
Oh and while we’re at it, let’s not forget that wonderful simcha celebrated at Yitzhar shortly after the Dawabsheh murders. The finest of the youth and their families danced and sang as two of their number were joined in matrimony at their chusuneh (“marriage”). Hundreds of joyful guests joined in the festivities. What were they dancing to? They held up pictures of the murder victims, including the baby boy, and held up guns pretending to shoot them, as if they weren’t already dead enough. Whose guns were they? The IDF’s of course. Using Israeli army weapons to celebrate genocide. They danced and pretended to stab the victims photographs. It was ritual blood-letting. If we could ever witness a lynching (God forbid) this is what the blood-lust looked like. This is some specimen of humanity. The apogee of the Zionist dream.
If you were raised Jewish you’ll recall your parents and grandparents shepping nachas at the glorious achievements of Jews: the doctors, the inventions, the Nobel Prizes. We were the People of the Book. We were in the vanguard of humanity. Now what are we? Or more precisely, what are they? Can we even call them ‘Jews’ any longer? Is it not a shame to our religion to do so?
If I remember correctly, the baby was burned to death and the little boy was the one who survived. (And initially one of the parents.)
@ Elisabeth: The youngest Ahmed, was 18 months at the time. The other child, Ali, was 4 years old. I think I called Ali a baby. But I didn’t mean to confuse the two children.
No, it’s the other way around: baby Ali was 18 month old when he died, his brother Ahmed who spent a long time in an Israeli hospital was 4 at the time.
@Deir Yassin: I stand corrected.
Apropos, interview in Haaretz weekend magazine in Hebrew, June 29, 2018. Interview of Ayelet Shani with Shai Gal on the Jewish Underground terrorist organization, who blew off the legs of Arab mayors, attacked a bus killing and maiming passengers and to this day are plotting to blow up the Dome of the Rock and who are now highly influential in the Netanyahu regime:
https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/ayelet-shani/.premium-1.6220506
I don’t know what to say. The whole situation is depressing and infuriating at the same time, as is conveyed in this article.
I’m told it is anti-semitic to equate actions within Isreal to that of Germany in WWII, but one cannot ignore, at times, that there are parallels. But deep hatred of “others” has existed for so very long that highlighting a few occurances is only momentary. The perpetrators of the hate need to see thier actions in the context of history and that it leads only to tragedy.
Mr. Silverstein. I must disagree with you on a few points. But first, the one or two settlers who yelled at the grandfather should have been arrested at the scene and charged with aggravated harassment. Shame.
Conflating the deaths of the Dawabshehs with the death of Rabbi Akiba and the deaths of the townsmen of Jedwabneh is wrong. A jew who is martyred for remaining true to the religion does sanctify the Name, but a jew who is murdered just for being a jew is no martyr, and the Dawabsheh family weren’t martyrs either.
Secondly, there is no getting around the fact that the ‘wedding of hate’ is ugly bloodlust.
That said, the weapons displayed were not all ‘the IDF’s’.
The automatic rifles held up by the groom and his friends were never aimed at the picture of the Dawabsheh infant. Knives and a maybe a pistol (hard to say), were aimed at the picture of the infant, but knives and pistols aren’t given to settlers by the IDF.
@ Peg: Nonsense. A Jew who is murdered for being a Jew certainly is a martyr. For example, you are claiming that a Jew who dies say of typhus or cholera in the Warsaw ghetto or even for stealing bread, is not a martyr? But the Jew who dies from a Nazi bullet as he recites the Shma is? Pardon me but that argument is ridiculous disgusting.
And the Dawabshehs certainly were shahids because they were martyrs in the struggle for Palestinian freedom. Not to mention that Palestinians consider them martyrs, which means you have no right to define on their behalf who is and isn’t a martyr.
You’re making a point without a distinction. Not “all” the weapons were IDF? Which means that some were. So are you splitting hairs in saying that the state is less culpable for permitting its weapons to be brandished at such a disgusting bout of hatred because only some of them were IDF property? C’mon. Be serious.
Kiddush haShem is nothing new, having been long codified in the Mishnah.
At the famous rabbinical council in *Lydda (second century), the laws of martyrdom were formulated. Kiddush ha-Shem was declared obligatory in the case of three commandments and a person had to suffer death rather than violate them: idolatry, unchastity (gillui arayot: including incest, adultery, and, under certain circumstances, any infraction of the code of sexual morality), and murder (Sanh. 74a). One should violate all other commandments rather than suffer death. Should a Jew, however, in the presence of ten other Jews, be coerced into transgressing these other laws in order to demonstrate his apostasy, he must sanctify God’s Name and choose death. If ten Jews are not present, he should transgress rather than be killed. These rules hold for “normal” times. In times of religious persecution of the entire community, however, one must choose to die for kiddush ha-Shem even if no other Israelites are present, and one must not violate any commandment, including minor customs which are distinctively Jewish (Maim. Yad, Yesodei ha-Torah, 5:3).
If some people give meaning to the Holocaust by calling the victims ‘martyrs’, that’s fine. I just don’t see how that designation comports with the Halakha.
“Not “all” the weapons were IDF? Which means that some were. So are you splitting hairs in saying that the state is less culpable for permitting its weapons to be brandished at such a disgusting bout of hatred because only some of them were IDF property?”
I don’t see how a teenaged settler (and probable draft dodger) poking a kitchen knife at a photo of the infant has anything to do with the IDF.
I’m not splitting hairs, you are painting with too broad a brush.
@ Peg: The comment threads are not a forum for Talmudic or halachic discourse. No one is in need of lessons on the laws of Kiddush HaShem. So please don’t do that again.
So generous of you, who is not a survivor or child of survivors, to deign to permit Jews who actually died during the Holocaust to be called martyrs. And as for halacha, most Jews don’t live their lives by halacha. It is a touch point of their identity. But not a determinative factor. So let’s not pretend that everything that happens in Jewish life is governed or should be governed by it.
Which means, I presume, that you do see settlers waving IDF-issue guns at the same wedding as Israeli media reported, as having something to do with the IDF. At any rate, the State is fully responsible for settler brutalism. They act and speak in the name of the State. As long as the State doesn’t renounce them, throw them all in prison, and break up their terror cells as intensely as they break up similar Palestinian activities, then the State is fully responsible for them and their crimes.
“At any rate, the State is fully responsible for settler brutalism”
But Hamas isn’t responsible for Palestinians trying to break the fense around Gaza or send fire and explosive kites into Israel.
Double standards?
@ Lior Azar: The settlers have murdered and maimed hundreds of Palestinians. No protester in the Great March of Return has mussed a single hair on the head of a single Israeli. So your comparison is inapt I’m afraid. Further, Hamas didn’t give any of the protesters any weapons used to kill or threaten anyone (unlike what the IDF did). In fact, the vast majority of protesters were unarmed when murdered or maimed by IDF killers.
So who exactly are the terrorists???
Settlers murder Palestinians and you compare such bestiality to setting kites loose inside Israel? You’re a f***ing hypocrite.
Settlers???
Why when people generalize against Muslims people call it islamophobia but generalizing against settlers is ok?
You can hate their politics but harshly demonizing 100,000’s of people brings hate and does not solve anything.
@Lior azar: settlers are thieves. And those are the peaceful ones. The violent ones and those abetting their violence are brutes. No mercy or pity here. They are engaged in a brutal illegal enterprise.
They have caused the hate and are fully and solely to blame for it..
Thieves of what? Sovereignty? That a big stretch of the definition.
And even if somehow your invented definition holds, does that mean they support the burning of the Dawabshas???
Most settlers are normative people. Anyone who says anything else misrepresents reality.
@ Lior: Don’t be dense. You know exactly what settlers have stolen. They’ve stolen Palestine.
The entire settler enterprise is based on theft and use of violence to enforce theft. The theft is illegal under international law. The violence only confirms Israel is a state based on mass violence. No one who participates in this enterprise is innocent. I don’t care whether all settlers are nice old bubbehs and zaydehs drinking tea from their samovars. Their lives are based on a lie and a crime. THey are accessories to murder and mayhem.
This is the old Shahak debate. If we’re going over Talmudic exegesis, it should be noted that there isn’t a single Torah or Talmud in existence older than 800 years (the Dead Sea Scrolls are Essene, about Jesus, and do not count per se). The Torah is understood since it is oral (for those who did not know), but the Talmud is not. It should exist in prior iterations.
This means one or more of several things: 1- The texts are outdated; 2- the texts are not reliable as studies of morality versus contemporary philosophies; and/or 3- there were previous iterations of the Talmud and Torah, but non-Jews found it so repulsive that they persecuted Jews for them and had them destroyed.
As a secular, but spiritual, Jew, religion to me is simple: don’t do things to others as you wouldn’t want them done unto you; i.e., if your religious beliefs increase any human suffering, then they are invalid.
So, I agree with Richard. And also, that a martyr is in the eye of the beholder. If you don’t deem them martyrs, it doesn’t make it so.
Personally, I do. There is a profound example in those who are innocently hurt. It is one we either take to heart or become a people who people want to stake through our heart by force. Peace & love is the answer; we have the wisdom of the ages to guide us from hazards otherwise. BH.
@Elizabeth Cohen
“…there isn’t a single Torah or Talmud in existence older than 800 years.”
Incorrect.
http://tzvee.blogspot.com/2009/12/was-talmud-hullin-scroll-oldest-talmud.html
@ Elizabeth Cohen: There’s a reason I didn’t want to get into this sort of thing. Please don’t give us any lectures on the Talmud. If you haven’t studied it with Talmud scholars and don’t have direct expertise in the subject, please lay off.
And the beat goes on:
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-a-tango-of-violence-building-outposts-on-palestinian-land-1.6224853
In Israel’s domestic scene, there is no room allowed anymore for: Jews who are religious and believe political/nationalistic actions violate the Torah/Jews who are too religious (Haredim)/Jews who believe in universal human rights for all humans/Jews associated to that notorious “terrorist”, Medea Benjamin/Jews who even dare to mention a single fact of inconvenience to the State’s interests, especially during trips meant to help young Jews co-discover an identity/Gentiles/Egalitarian worshippers who actually follow the doctrines of their crafts.
There is room, however, for: terrorists who rapaciously murder humans and even taunt the victims barbarically (Kahanists, a designated FTO by the US State Dept.), corruption, Atheists who idolize the State, Evangelicals who want to use Jews as a spark plug for Armageddon, “Russian” and other mobsters, organ/drug/human/arms traffickers, fake news media that lies to its own, and endless hatred.
Out of the frying pan of the Shoah and into the fire of a project that has long been hijacked by a right-wing horde that has all but eliminated the left and center, and will continue to do so until their chickens come home to roost and harm us all worldwide.