The Rebbe and the boys spreading light and love to the world around them.
It was hard for Satan alone to mislead the whole world, so he appointed prominent rabbis in different localities. ~ A Chasidic saying attributed to Nahman of Bratzlav, early 19th century
April 7, 2014
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If things
proceed normally, President Barak Obama will soon proclaim April 11, 2014 “Education and Sharing Day, U.S.A.” Despite
the innocuous name, this day honours the memory of a religious leader whose
lesser-known teachings help fuel some of the most violent attacks against
Palestinians by extremist Israeli settlers and soldiers.
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The leader
being honoured on this day is Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, charismatic
head of a mystical/fundamentalist version of Judaism. Every year since 1978, a
Presidential Proclamation, often accompanied by a Congressional Resolution (the 1990 one had 219 sponsors), has declared Schneerson’s birthday an official national day of
observance.
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Congress first
passed a Resolution honouring Schneerson in 1975. Three years later a Joint Congressional Resolution called on President Jimmy Carter to proclaim “Education Day, U.S.A.” on the anniversary
of Schneerson’s birth. The idea was to set aside a day to honour both education and the alleged educational work
of Schneerson and the religious sect he headed up.
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Carter, like
Congress, dutifully obeyed the Schneerson-initiated resolution, as has every president since. And some individual
states are now enacting their own observances of Schneerson’s birthday, with Minnesota and Alabama leading the way.
Schneerson
and his movement are an extremely mixed bag.
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Schneerson
has been praised widely for a public persona and organization that emphasized “deep compassion and insight,” worked to bring many secular Jews “back” into the fold, created
numerous schools around the world, and had offered, in the words of the Jewish Virtual Library, “social-service programs
and humanitarian aid to all people, regardless of religious affiliation or
background.”
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However,
there is also a less attractive underside often at odds with such public
perceptions. And some of the more extreme parts of Schneerson’s teachings ~
such as that Jews are a completely
different species than non-Jews, and that non-Jews exist only to serve Jews
~ have been largely hidden, it appears, even from many who consider themselves
his followers.
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As we will
see, such views profoundly impact the lives of Palestinians living ~ and dying ~
under Israeli occupation and military invasions.
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WHO WAS RABBI SCHNEERSON?
Schneerson
lived from 1902 to 1994 and oversaw the growth of what is now the largest Jewish organization in the world. The religious movement he led is known as “Chabad-Lubavitch,” (sometimes just called “Lubavitch” or “Chabad,” the name of its organizational arm). Schneerson was the seventh and
final Lubavitcher “Rebbe” (sacred leader). He is often simply called “the
Rebbe.”
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Founded in
the late 1700s and originally based in the Polish-Russian town of Lubavitch, it is the largest of about a dozen forms of “Hasidism,” a version of
Orthodox Judaism connected to mysticism, characterized by devotion to a
dynastic leader, and whose adherents often wear distinctive clothing.
(Spellings of these terms can vary; Hasid is also written as Hassid, Chasid,
etc.)
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There is an
extreme cult of personality focused on Schneerson himself. Some followers
consider him the Messiah, and Schneerson himself reportedly sometimes implied this was true. Some Lubavitch educators consider
him divine, making such claims as,
“the Rebbe is actually ‘the essence and being [of God] … he is without limits, capable of effecting anything, all-knowing and a proper object of worshipful prostration.”
While many
secular Jews and Jews from other denominations disagree with its actions and theology, Chabad-Lubavitch is
generally acknowledged to be a powerful force in Jewish life today. According to a 1994 New York Times report, it is “one of the most influential and controversial
forces in world Jewry.”
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There are
approximately 3,600 Chabad institutions in over 1,000 cities in 70 countries, and 200,000 adherents. Up to
a million people attend Chabad services at least once a year. Numerous campuses have such centers and the Chabad website states that hundreds of thousands of children attend
Chabad summer camps.
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According to
the Times, Schneerson “presided over a religious empire
that reached from the back streets of Brooklyn to the main streets of Israel and by 1990 was taking in an estimated $100
million a year in contributions.
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In the U.S.,
the Times reports, Schneerson’s “‘mitzvah tanks’ ~ converted
campers that are rolling recruiting stations whose purpose is to draw Jews to
the Lubavitch way ~ roamed streets from midtown Manhattan to Crown Heights. And
the Lubavitchers’ Brooklyn-based publishing house claimed to be the world’s
largest distributor of Jewish books.”
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NON-JEWISH SOULS ‘SATANIC’
While Chabad
sometimes openly teaches that “the soul of the Jew is different than the soul of the
non-Jew,” Schneerson’s specific teachings on this subject are largely unknown.
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Quite likely
very few Americans, both Jews and non-Jews, are aware of Schneerson’s teachings
about the alleged deep differences between them ~ and about how these teachings
are applied in the West Bank and Gaza.
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Let us look
at Schneerson’s words, as quoted by two respected Jewish professors, Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, in their book Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (text available online here. This book, praised by Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, and many others is
essential reading for anyone who truly wishes to understand modern day Israel-Palestine. (Brackets in the quotes below are in the translations by Shahak and
Mezvinsky.)
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SOME OF SCHNEERSON’S RARELY REPORTED TEACHINGS
“The difference between a Jewish and a non-Jewish person stems from the common expression: “Let us differentiate.” Thus, we do not have a case of profound change in which a person is merely on a superior level. Rather, we have a case of “let us differentiate” between totally different species.”
.“This is what needs to be said about the body: the body of a Jewish person is of a totally different quality from the body of [members] of all nations of the world … The difference in the inner quality between Jews and non-Jews is “so great that the bodies should be considered as completely different species.”
.“An even greater difference exists in regard to the soul. Two contrary types of soul exist; a non-Jewish soul comes from three satanic spheres, while the Jewish soul stems from holiness.”
.“As has been explained, an embryo is called a human being, because it has both body and soul. Thus, the difference between a Jewish and a non-Jewish embryo can be understood.”
.“…the general difference between Jews and non-Jews: A Jew was not created as a means for some [other] purpose; he himself is the purpose, since the substance of all [divine] emanations was created only to serve the Jews.”
.“The important things are the Jews, because they do not exist for any [other] aim; they themselves are [the divine] aim.”
.“The entire creation [of a non-Jew] exists only for the sake of the Jews.”
Most people
don’t know about this aspect of Schneerson’s teaching because, according to
Shahak and Mezvinsky, such teachings are intentionally minimized, mistranslated,
or hidden entirely.
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For example,
the quotes above were translated by the authors from a book of Schneerson’s recorded messages to
followers that was published in Israel in 1965. Despite Schneerson’s global importance and the fact that his
world headquarters is in the U.S., there has never been an English translation of this volume.
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Shahak, an
Israeli professor who was a survivor of the Nazi holocaust, writes that this
lack of translation of an important work is not unusual, explaining that much
critical information about Israel and some forms of Judaism is available only in Hebrew.
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He and
co-author Mezvinsky, who was a Connecticut Distinguished University Professor
who taught at Central Connecticut State University, write,
falsify their subject matter.”
According to
Shahak and Mezvinsky, “Almost every moderately sophisticated Israeli Jew knows the
facts about Israeli Jewish society that are described in this book. These
facts, however, are unknown to most interested Jews and non-Jews outside Israel who do not know Hebrew and thus cannot read most of
what Israeli Jews write about themselves in Hebrew.”
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In Shahak’s
earlier book, Jewish Religion, Jewish History, he
provides a number of examples. In one, he describes a 1962 book published in Israel in a bilingual edition. The Hebrew text was on one
page, with the English translation
on the facing page.
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Shahak describes one set of facing pages in
which the Hebrew text of a major Jewish code of laws contained a command to
exterminate Jewish infidels: “It is a duty to exterminate them with one’s own
hands.” The English version on the facing page softened it to “It is a
duty to take active measures to destroy them.’”
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The Hebrew
page then went on to name which “infidels” must be exterminated, adding “may
the name of the wicked rot.” Among them was Jesus of Nazareth. The facing page
with the English translation failed to tell any of this.
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“Even more
significant,” Shahak reports, “in spite of the wide circulation of this book
among scholars in the English-speaking countries, not one of them has, as far as
I know, protested against this glaring deception.”
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PRAISED BY SAID, CHOMSKY, ETC., SHAHAK IS ALMOST
UNKNOWN TODAY
This pattern
of selective omission, it seems, applies to Shahak himself, whose work is
largely unknown to Palestine activists today, even though he
was considered a major figure in the struggle against Israeli oppression of
Palestinians, and his work was praised by diverse writers.
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While Shahak
was alive, Noam Chomsky called him “an outstanding scholar,” and said he had
“remarkable insight and depth of knowledge. His work is informed and
penetrating, a contribution of great value.”
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Edward Said
wrote, “Shahak is a very brave man who should be honoured for his services to
humanity … One of the most remarkable individuals in the contemporary Middle
East.” Said wrote a forward for Shahak’sJewish History, Jewish Religion.
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Catholic New
Times said: ‘This is a remarkable book …[It]
deserves a wide readership, not only among Jews, but among Christians who seek
a fuller understanding both of historical Judaism and of modern-day Israel.”
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Jewish
Socialist stated: “Anyone who wants to change the
Jewish community so that it stops siding with the forces of reaction should
read this book.”
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The London
Review of Books called Shahak’s book “remarkable, powerful, and
provocative.”
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Yet, very
few Americans today know of Shahak’s work and the information it contains.
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AMERICAN TAX MONEY & JEWISH EXTREMISM IN PALESTINE
If they did,
it’s hard to believe that Americans would allow $8.5 million per day of
their tax money to be given to Israel, where such teachings underlie a powerful minority that is
disproportionately influential in governmental actions.
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Nor is it
likely that a fully informed American public would allow donations to religious
institutions in Israel that teach supremacist, sometimes violent
doctrines to be tax-deductible in the U.S.
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One
organization raised over $10 million tax-deductible dollars in the U.S. in 2011 alone ~ removing money from the U.S. economy
and enabling illegal, aggressive Israeli settlements in Palestine. And some of this money went to
benefit individuals convicted of murder ~ including the murderer of Israeli
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
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The New
York Times obituary on Schneerson reported that Schneerson was “a major political force in Israel, both in the Knesset and among the electorate,”
but failed to describe the nature of his impact.
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One of a
sprinkling of writers willing to publicly discuss Shahak and Mezvinsky’s
findings is Allan Brownfeld, who is less reticent. Brownfeld is editor of the
American Council for Judaism’s periodical Issues and
contributor to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
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“Rabbi Schneerson always supported Israeli wars and opposed any retreat. In 1974 he strongly opposed the Israeli withdrawal from the Suez area. He promised Israel divine favours if it persisted in occupying the land.”
Brownfeld
reports that after Schneerson’s death,
“[T]housands of his Israeli followers played an important role in the election victory of Binyamin Netanyahu. Among the religious settlers in the occupied territories, the Chabad Hassids constitute one of the most extreme groups. Baruch Goldstein, the mass murderer of Palestinians, was one of them.”
Another such
Chabad Hassid is Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg (also sometimes written as “Ginzburg”
and “Ginsburgh”), who studied under Schneerson in Crown Heights and who heads
up a major Chabad institution in the West Bank.
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Ginsburg
praised Goldstein, the murderer of 29 Palestinians while they were praying, and
considers all non-Jews subhuman.
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According to
author Motti Inbari, Ginsburg
“gives prominence to Halachic and Kabbalistic approaches that emphasize the distinction between Jew and non-Jew (Gentile), imposing a clear separation and hierarchy in this respect.”
In his
book Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple
Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple? Inbari states,
“[Ginsburg] claims that while the Jews are the Chosen People and were created in God’s image, the Gentiles do not have this status and are effectively considered subhuman.”
Professor Inbari, an Israeli academic who now teaches in the U.S.,
writes that Ginsburg’s theological approach continues “certain perceptions that
were popular in medieval times.”
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“For
example,” Inbari writes, “the commandment
‘You shall not murder’ does not apply to the killing of a Gentile, since ‘you shall not murder’ relates to the murder of a human, while for him the Gentiles do not constitute humans.”
Inbari
reports,
“Similarly, Ginzburg stated that, on the theoretical level, if a Jew requires a liver transplant to survive, it would be permissible to seize a Gentile and take their liver forcefully.”
While the
mainstream American press almost never reports this kind of information, an
April 26, 1996 article in Jewish Week by Lawrence Cohler reported on Ginsburg’s
teachings, including their problematic roots in Jewish texts.
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Cohler
reported that a professor of Bible at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Rabbi
Moshe Greenberg,
“called for radically revising Jewish thinking about some Jewish texts on the grounds that scholars such as Rabbi Ginsburgh are far from aberrant in their use of them.”
Cohler
quoted Greenberg’s concerns:
“‘There’ll be a statement in Talmud… made in circumstances where it’s purely theoretical, because Jews then never had the power to do it,’ he explained. And now, he said, ‘It’s carried over into circumstances where Jews have a state and are empowered.’”
A rabbi
associated with Ginsburg coauthored a notorious Israeli book, The King’s Torah, which claims that Jewish law at times permits the killing of non-Jewish infants. American donations to the Chabad School Ginsburg heads up, and that
published the above book, are tax-deductible in the U.S. Ginsburg, who endorses the book, teaches classes
throughout Israel, the U.S. and France.
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Such
extremism is opposed by the majority of Israelis, and major Jewish religious
authorities condemn it, a Chief Rabbi, for example, stating: “’According to the Torah, every man is created in God’s image.”
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ISRAELI MILITARY MANUALS ECHO EXTREMIST TEACHINGS:
“KILL EVEN GOOD CIVILIANS”
Israeli
military manuals sometimes replicate extremist teachings. For example, a
booklet authored by a Chief Chaplain stated,
“In war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians…”
Such
teachings by the IDF rabbinate were prominent during Israel’s 2008-9 attack on Gaza that killed 1,400 Gazans, approximately half of them civilians. (The Palestinian resistance
killed nine Israelis during this “war.”)
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ED
Noor: Several of the Israelis killed were done so by “friendly fire.”
Lendman
writes, “In 2007, Israel’s former chief rabbi, Mordechai Elyahu, called for
the Israeli army to mass-murder Palestinians:
“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill 1000. And if they don’t stop after 1000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000. Even a million.”
Lendman
reports that some extremist Israeli rabbis teach that “the ten commandments
don’t apply to non-Jews. So killing them in defending the homeland is
acceptable, and according to the chairman of the Jewish Rabbinic Council:
“‘There is no such thing as enemy civilians in war time. The law of our Torah is to have mercy on our soldiers and to save them…. A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.’”
Lendman
writes,
“Rabbi David Batsri called Arabs ‘a blight, a devil, a disaster…. donkeys, and we have to ask ourselves why God didn’t create them to walk on all fours. Well, the answer is that they are needed to build and clean.’”
Another such
rabbi is Manis Friedman, a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi inspired by Schneerson who
served as the simultaneous translator for a series of
Schneerson’s talks. (Friedman is currently dean of a Jewish Studies institute in Minnesota.)
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A 2009
article in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reports, “Like the
best Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis, Manis Friedman has won the hearts of many
unaffiliated Jews with his charismatic talks about love and God; it was
Friedman who helped lead Bob Dylan into a relationship with Chabad.
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“But
Friedman, who today travels the country as a Chabad speaker, showed a less warm
and cuddly side when he was asked how he thinks Jews should treat their Arab
neighbors.”
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In Moment magazine’s
article, “Ask the Rabbis // How Should Jews Treat
Their Arab Neighbors?” Friedman
answered:
“I don’t believe in western morality, i.e. don’t kill civilians or children, don’t destroy holy sites, don’t fight during holiday seasons, don’t bomb cemeteries, don’t shoot until they shoot first because it is immoral.
.“The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle).”
Lendman
reports,
“Views like these aren’t exceptions. Though a minority, they proliferate throughout Israeli society…”
Shahak and
Mezvinsky note that when the book containing Schneerson’s statements quoted
above about Jews and non-Jews was published in Israel, he was allied to the Labor Party and his movement had been provided
“many important benefits” from the Israeli government.
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In the
mid-1970s Schneerson decided that the Labor Party was too moderate and shifted
his support to the more right-wing parties in power today. The authors report,
“Ariel
Sharon was the Rebbe’s favorite Israeli senior politician. Sharon in turn
praised the Rebbe publicly and delivered a moving speech about him in the
Knesset after the Rebbe’s death.”
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ROOTS IN SOME EARLY TEXTS
Brownfeld
decries the fact that few Americans are properly informed about the
fundamentalist movement in Israel “and the theology upon which it is based.”
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He notes
that Jewish Americans, in particular, are often unaware of the
“narrow ethnocentrism which is promoted by the movement’s leading rabbis, or of the traditional Jewish sources they are able to call upon in drawing clear distinctions between the moral obligations owed to Jews and non-Jews.”
Teachings
that Jews are superior and gentiles inferior were contained in some of the
earliest Hassidic texts, including its classic text, “Tanya,” still taught today.
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Brownfeld
quotes statements by “the revered father of the messianic tendency of Jewish
fundamentalism,” Rabbi Kook the Elder, and states that these were derived from
earlier texts. [Kook, incidentally, was also an early Zionist, who helped push for the Balfour Declaration in England before moving to Palestine. He was the uncle of Hillel
Kook, an agent who went by the name “Peter Bergson” and created front groups in
the U.S. for a violent Zionist guerrilla group that operated in 1930s and '40s Palestine.]
Brownfeld
quotes Kook:
“The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews ~ all of them in all different levels ~ is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.”
Brownfeld
explains that Kook’s teaching, which he says is followed by leaders of the
settler movement in the occupied West Bank, “is based upon the Lurianic
Cabbala, the school of Jewish mysticism that dominated Judaism from the late
16th to the early 19th century.”
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“One of the basic tenets of the Lurianic Cabbala is the absolute superiority of the Jewish soul and body over the non-Jewish soul and body. According to the Lurianic Cabbala, the world was created solely for the sake of Jews; the existence of non-Jews was subsidiary.”
Again,
Shahak and Mezvinsky report that this aspect is often covered up in English-language discussions. Scholarly authors of books
about Jewish mysticism and the Lurianic Cabbala, they write, have frequently “wilfully omitted reference to such ideas.”
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Shahak and
Mezvinsky write that it is essential to understand these beliefs in order to
understand the current situation in the West Bank, where many of the most
militant West Bank settlers are motivated by religious ideologies in which
every non-Jew is seen as “the earthly embodiment” of Satan, and according to the Halacha
(Jewish law), the term ‘human beings’ refers solely to Jews.”
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Israeli
author and former chief of Israeli military intelligence Yehoshafat Harkabi
touches on this in his 1988 book Israel’s Fateful Hour.
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Harkabi
writes that while such extremist beliefs are not “widely dominant,” the reality
is that “nationalistic religious extremists are by no means a lunatic fringe;
many are respected men whose words are widely heeded.”
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He reports
that the campus rabbi of a major Israeli university published an article in the
student newspaper entitled “The Commandment of Genocide in the Torah,” in which
he implied that those who have a quarrel with Jews “ought to be destroyed,
children and all.” Harkabi writes that a book by another rabbi “explained that
the killing of a non-Jew is not considered murder.”
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Brownfeld
writes,
“Although messianic fundamentalists constitute a relatively small portion of the Israeli population [most Israeli settlers are motivated by the subsidized lifestyle US tax money to Israel provides], their political influence has been growing. If they have contempt for non-Jews, their hatred for Jews who oppose their views is even greater.”
Brownfeld
cites the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had started to
make peace with the Palestinians, writing that it was just one “in a long line
of murders of Jews who followed a path different from that ordained by rabbinic
authorities.” Brownfeld reports that Shahak and Mezvinsky “cite case after
case, from the Middle Ages until the 19th century.”
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The authors
report,
“It was usual in some Hasidic circles until the last quarter of the nineteenth century to attack and often to murder Jews who had reform religious tendencies…”
They quote a long article by Israeli writer Rami Rosen,
“History of a Denial,” published by Ha’aretz Magazine in 1996.
This article, which cannot be found online, at least in English, is also cited in the book Brother Against Brother: Violence and Extremism in Israeli Politics
from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination, by Israeli professor Ehud Sprinzak.
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In his Ha’aretz article
Rosen reported:
“A check of main facts of the [Jewish] historiography of the last 1500 years shows that the picture is different from the one previously shown to us. It includes massacres of Christians; mock repetitions of the crucifixion of Jesus that usually took place on Purim; cruel murders within the family; liquidation of informers, often done for religious reasons by secret rabbinical courts, which issued a sentence of ‘pursuer’ and appointed secret executioners; assassinations of adulterous women in synagogues and/or the cutting of their noses by command of the rabbis.”
While
Rosen’s article may seem shocking, in reality, it simply shows that members of
the Jewish population, like members of Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and diverse
other populations, have at times committed atrocities, sometimes allegedly in
the name of their religion. The difference, as Shahak and Mezvinsky point out,
is that such information is largely covered up in the U.S. Such cover-ups,
however, don’t make facts go away. They merely bury them, where they smoulder
and at times eventually lead to exaggerated perceptions.
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U.S. media
rarely report that some extremist Israeli settlers are intensely hostile to
Christians, and in one instance threatened peace activists who came to
the West Bank to participate in nonviolent demonstrations,
“We killed Jesus and we’ll kill you, too.”
There is
also a record of official hostility. For example, a few years ago an Israeli
mayor ordered all New Testaments to be rounded up and burned.
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SCHNEERSON’S “SCHOOLS”
While
Schneerson is honoured on national “Education” days, the reality is that the elementary schools he created often
failed to teach children “basic reading, writing, spelling, math, science and history,” according to a graduate.
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In his
article “National Education Day and the Education
I Never Had,” Chaim Levin reports on his experience at the Chabad
school “Oholei Torah” (Educational Institute Oholei Menachem) in Crown Heights,
New York ~ the site of Chabad’s world headquarters:
“I have profound respect for the late Rebbe and his legacy. However, I remember very clearly those talks that [Schneerson] gave ~ the ones we studied every year in elementary school about the unimportance of ‘secular’ (non-religious, formal) education, and the great importance of only studying limmudei kodesh (holy studies). As a result of this attitude, thousands of students were not taught anything other than the Bible throughout our years attending Chabad institutions.”
The goal of such schools, Levin writes, was to
produce “schluchim,” missionaries who would promote Chabad all over the world.
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Meanwhile, he notes,
Meanwhile, he notes,
“Failure to provide basic formal education cripples children within Chabad communities. We cannot ignore the harm done…” Levin writes, “Until this day, Oholei Torah and many other Chabad schools ~ particularly schools for boys and a few for girls in Crown Heights and in some other places ~ do not provide basic formal education.”
EDUCATION AND SHARING DAY 2014
In his 2000
article, Brownfeld writes that Shahak and Mezvinsky’s book should be “a wake-up
call “to Americans, particularly Jewish supporters of Israel.”
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Fourteen
years later, however, very few people are aware of these books and their
powerful information, and U.S. tax money continues to flow to Israel. The main author, Israel Shahak, is now dead, as is Edward Said; Noam Chomsky rarely, if ever,
mentions him; and Shahak’s co-author, Norton Mezvinsky (uncle of Chelsea
Clinton’s husband), is a member of a Lubavitch congregation in New York.
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In many
ways, little seems to have changed since 1994, when Congressmen Charles
Schumer, Newt Gingrich, and others introduced legislation to bestow on
Schneerson the Congressional Gold Medal. The bill passed both Houses by
unanimous consent, honouring Schneerson for his “outstanding and lasting
contributions toward improvements in world education, morality, and acts of charity.”
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And in two
weeks, Americans will be officially called on to observe a day that honours
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson and the Lubavitcher movement.
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That is,
unless masses of people contact their Congressional representatives to demand a whole new
direction: a “National Education and Sharing Day” that honours an
individual who values education, and who believes that all
people ~ in the words of the Declaration of Independence ~ are created equal.
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Alison Weir is executive
director of If Americans Knew and
president of the Council for
the National Interest. Her book, Against Our
Better Judgment: How the U.S. was used to create Israel, contains additional
information on Rabbi Kook’s family connection to American front groups for
Israeli terrorists. (Kook was unusual in his support for political Zionism; most Jewish religious
leaders at the time considered the movement heretical). Weir is NOT the
British historian.)
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