Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 1999, pages 78-81

Jews and Israel

Mirror-Image Jewish and Islamic Religious Extremists Threaten Israel’s Movement Toward Peace

By Allan C. Brownfeld

On Nov. 7, the radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in a crowded Jerusalem market and threatened more attacks to try to block the peace agreement reached in Wye, Maryland in October. Other militant Islamic groups such as Hamas have also pledged to destroy the peace process. These Palestinian opponents of a compromise settlement with Israel have received much publicity. Less widely discussed are the Jewish fundamentalists in Israel, and their allies in the U.S., who are equally committed to stand in the way of any progress toward peace.

Since Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu returned from Washington with the peace agreement, he has been the subject of protests and threats from Israel’s far right, particularly the radicals of the Jewish settler movement. The words used against Netanyahu are often the same ones that were used against the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin after he signed the Oslo interim peace accord in 1993.

Netanyahu has been called a traitor, a betrayer, a perpetrator not only of treason but of “a blunder unlike any in the history of Zionism.” Jewish West Bank settlers have called for “revenge.” Netanyahu’s relationship with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has been compared to former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s with German Chancellor Adolf Hitler in 1938, just as Rabin was greeted by Israeli right wingers holding black umbrellas over their heads, reminiscent of Chamberlain’s return from Munich after acceding to Hitler’s seizure of Czech territory.

Even before the Wye agreement, and less than three years after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s security chiefs were already confronting the specter of Jewish terrorism. A cover story in The Jerusalem Report (Sept. 28, 1998) noted that in West Bank settlements and elsewhere on “the radical fringes of the right, violent talk is more common than it’s been at any time since the murder of Yitzhak Rabin—whose assassin used...twisted citations from holy books to justify bloodshed...The growing sense that the government will soon agree to turn another 13 percent of the West Bank over to Palestinian rule is intensifying the feeling of abandonment that has set off extremist Jewish violence in the past. Recent weeks have provided numerous warning signs that desperation—and readiness for desperate action—are increasing: extremists accusing (Israeli) President Ezer Weizman of treason and Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai of murder; simmering violence against Arabs in the Hebron area; threats to shoot soldiers.”

Israeli security agencies “are worried not only about revenge attacks on Palestinians, but about the danger of assassination attempts against Israeli leaders, and of assaults on Islamic holy sites that could ignite the Middle East. ‘We have to take the extremist threats seriously,’ warns Assaf Hefetz, who retired last year as national police chief. ‘We know their potential.’”

Noting that many on Israel’s far right believe the situation is even more dire now than it was under Rabin, The Jerusalem Report continued: “Under Rabin, they could hope for a change in government that would end concessions to the Palestinians and put Israel back on track toward permanent rule of the territories. Now the right is in power and, to their horror, Oslo is still government policy. Netanyahu has already seen his features pasted up around Jerusalem in a keffiyeh, over the slogan, ‘The Liar.’”

According to The Report, “One thing that appears to have changed too little since the Rabin years is the influence of radical rabbis—and silence of many other religious leaders. Perhaps the most extreme is Yitzhak Ginsburgh, who heads the yeshiva at Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, a tiny Israeli enclave inside Palestinian-controlled territory. A U.S.-born Chabad hasid, Ginsburgh declared a decade ago, after a group of his students went on a rampage in the Palestinian village of Kifl Hatith, killing a young girl, that ‘there is a difference between Jewish blood and Arab blood.’ Ginsburgh co-authored a book extolling [Baruch] Goldstein after the Hebron massacre.”

Fertile Ground

Moshe Feignlin, whose right-wing Zo Artzeinu movement blocked major intersections in acts of civil disobedience during Rabin’s term, now says that, “The way Bibi’s acting creates fertile ground for Yigal Amirs.”

In The Report’ s view, “When it comes to fighting Jewish terror, the Shin Bet’s record is hardly glowing. It took the agency four years in the early ’80s to track down the Jewish terror underground, which sought both to retaliate for Arab terror attacks and to foil the withdrawal from Sinai. When Goldstein struck in Hebron, the army’s then chief-of-staff, Ehud Barak, likened the attack to ‘thunder on a clear day.’ And when Yigal Amir fired twice into Rabin’s back, it emerged that the Sin Bet had been looking out for an Arab assassin that night in Tel Aviv, not a Jewish one...Repeatedly, Jews convicted of violence or incitement have been released quickly, sending an encouraging signal to extremists.”

Discussing those religious fundamentalists who have embraced Rabin assassin Yigal Amir, Professor Ehud Sprinzak of Hebrew University, a leading Israeli expert on the radical right, said: “These are true believers. They believe it was God, not so much the Israeli army, but the hand of God that gave them back these lands in 1967. It was God sending a message that he was ready to redeem them. They have built a world of Torah, with Yeshivas, schol, a religious lifestyle. Now this is committing a huge religious sin against God...”

Professor Sprinzak recalled in the Fall of 1995, after speaking on the radio, he got a call from a student at the tomb of Joseph yeshiva in Nablus who said “the situation is worse than you thought.” Rabbis at his yeshiva were saying that Prime Minister Rabin must be killed, the student said.

Yigal Amir’s motives, Police Minister Moshe Shal said, “drew on Halachic rulings made by rabbis who decreed that the ‘pursuer’s decree’ has effect on Rabin.” Halachic rulings are oral interpretations of religious law. And Rabbi Yoel Ben Nun, a founder of the settlers movement, charged that other rabbis had sanctioned the killings. He warned that “there are people still calling certain people pursuers, invoking the law of the pursuer about Shimon Peres.”

Professor Sprinzak also suggested the use of another religious concept, that of a “moiser,” meaning a Jew who surrenders other Jews to Gentiles. The Halachic rule there, he said, “is that the person who commits this crime should be killed.”

In the days before Rabin’s assassination, opponents of the peace process portrayed Prime Minister Rabin as a “traitor.” Posters were displayed at rallies showing him dressed as a Nazi SS trooper. In July, 1995, 15 fundamentalist rabbis called on Israeli soldiers to refuse to obey orders connected with the evacuation of West Bank military installations as part of Stage 2 of the peace process.

Shortly before Rabin’s assassination, acts of violence by religious zealots had been increasing. In September, 1995 Jewish settlers stormed a Palestinian girls school in Hebron, beat its headmistress, and injured at least four pupils. A municipal spokesman said: “The school is about 20 yards from a Jewish settlement. Some settlers attacked the headmistress, and even the little girls there, with bottles and pipes.”

In another incident in September, five armed men in Israeli army uniforms, some of them masked, terrorized Halhoul, an Arab village on the West Bank, forcing their way into private houses and interrogating the Palestinians they met. They shot one young man to death as his father watched, bound at the hands and helpless to intercede. Responsibility for the killing was claimed by Eyal, a spinoff of the late Meir Kahane’s Kach movement.

Among the most traumatic acts of violence was the February 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinians at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Baruch Goldstein, a physician and ultra-right Israeli settler, gunned them down as they worshipped.

“When it comes to fighting Jewish terror, the Shin Bet’s record is hardly glowing.”

Goldstein, a militant Zionist from New York, had been a member of the Jewish Defense League, founded by the late Meir Kahane, who urged his followers to emigrate to Israel and called for the removal of all Arabs from the West Bank. After the violent mass murder at Hebron, Goldstein was viewed as a hero by many of the Israeli settlers. At his funeral, Rabbi Yaacov Perrin declared that “one million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” Samuel Hacohen, a teacher in a Jerusalem college, said: “Baruch Goldstein was the greatest Jew alive, not in one way but in every way...There are no innocent Arabs here...He was not crazy...Killing isn’t nice, but sometimes it is necessary.”

Ehud Sprinzak says that, “These are the people who saw Rabin as a traitor to the land of Israel, to its people and to God. His perceived crime dates back to the covenant made between Abraham and God to create a greater Israel, which in turn will pave the way for the Messiah and the redemption of mankind.” This view is shared by some Christian fundamentalists who have embraced the settler movement, leading to such unlikely alliances as that of Menachem Begin and Binyamin Netanyahu with the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

In the eyes of these religious fundamentalists, Rabin committed the ultimate act of betrayal when he signed an agreement ceding control of much of the West Bank—what the Bible calls the lands of Judea and Samaria—to the Palestinians, and thus also ceding any imminent prospect of creating greater Israel. The ultra-right believes that Israel’s conquest of the West Bank and Jerusalem during the 1967 war was a sign of God. all of the current movements grow out of this belief. The assassin, Yigal Amir, told authorities that God had ordered him to kill Rabin.

The intolerance of Israel’s religious fundamentalists has been growing for many years. Both the Israeli government and leaders in the American Jewish community have repeatedly downplayed the dangers of such movements.

Recalling a visit to Israel in 1980, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen writes: “Back in 1980, Rabbi Moshe Levenger, a major force in the Israeli settlements movement, led me through the market at Hebron, wading through Arabs with a contempt and disdain that I found both repulsive and downright scary. Levenger acted as if God has ensured his safety. I, however, had not gotten the message.

Levenger is an important figure for a number of reasons. In the first place, the settlement he and his wife, Miriam, established in Hebron was clearly illegal. The government moved to protect it anyway, and ultimately provided it with utilities. Second, Levenger was later convicted of killing an unarmed Arab in a burst of anger—and served no more than 10 weeks in jail. In other words, Levenger has been the personification of the Israeli government’s refusal to come to grips with its extremists. Some politicians admire them; others merely want their votes.”

Amos Oz, perhaps Israel’s most celebrated writer, refers to his country’s extremists as “Hezbollah in a skullcap.” He says that Rabin’s death made him realize that “the real battle in the Middle East is no longer between Arabs and Jews but between fanatics of both faiths and the rest of the people in the Middle East who want to find some reasonable compromise.” He states that, “Compromise is synonymous with life itself” and that “the opposite of compromise is not integrity but suicide and death.”

Some of the most violent and extreme Jewish figures in Israel emigrated from the U.S. Among these, of course, are Meir Kahane and Baruch Goldstein. And in the U.S. there are many who welcomed Mr. Rabin’s murder. In Brooklyn, more than a hundred followers of Meir Kahane gathered together. “I consider his assassination to be divine justice and divine retribution,” said Nekamah Cohen, who described himself as a “religious-militant Zionist.” Cohen declared: “There is a law that if a fellow Jew hands over or is about to hand over a Jewish community to a non-Jewish enemy or a non-Jewish government, such as under the Roman Empire, then that Jew is considered a traitor who should be handed over unto death.”

Or consider Rabbi Avraham Hecht, chief rabbi of Congregation Sh’are Zion in Brooklyn and at the same time president of the Rabbinical Alliance of America, a national organization of 540 Orthodox rabbis. Rabbi Hecht, on June 19, 1995, said that, “According to Jewish law, any one person—you can apply it to who you want—any one person who willfully, consciously, intentionally hands over human bodies or human property or the human wealth of the Jewish people to an alien people is guilty of the sin for which the penalty is death. And, according to Maimonides—you can quote me—it says very clearly, if a man kills him, he has done a good deed.”

For some time, Prime Minister Rabin had been concerned by the vocal enemies of the peace process in the American Jewish community, as well as with the hesitation of the majority of American Jews who supported the peace process to speak out.

In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Davar in July, 1995, Rabin criticized a “very limited group of rabbis” from the U.S. He declared: “I hear strange appeals by a small group of rabbis from the U.S. for whom perhaps the name ayatollahs is more fitting than rabbis.”

The fact that so many on Israel’s radical and violence-prone fringe have origins in the U.S.—and receive continued support from the U.S.—should be of concern to all Americans. After Baruch Goldstein’s murder of 29 Palestinians, Prime Minister Rabin referred to the American-born Goldstein and many of his allies as “a foreign implant.” While Americans account for only a tiny fraction of Israel’s population, barely one percent, The New York Times reports that, “On the right, American accents are unmistakable, not only at the Kahane-inspired fringes, but also among more moderate settlers in the territories. According to some estimates, 15 percent of the roughly 130,000 settlers are originally from the U.S., many of them people who went straight from New York to the West Bank and who have at best a tenuous connection to mainstream Israel.”

Many of those involved in the most brutal acts of violence in Israel have received an Orthodox religious education and have acted out of religious motives. Rabbi Shlomo Sternberg of Cambridge, Massachusetts noted that, “...these atrocities...were not committed by nonreligious national extremists...Baruch Goldstein received his education from within the ‘modern Orthodox’ community as did many of his associates...Dr. Goldstein was a model student at the Yeshiva of Flatbush, Yeshiva University and Einstein Medical School. I have yet to hear public statements of contrition from the leaders of these educational institutions.”

Establishment Jewish leaders and organizations have failed to make clear their opposition to bigotry and racism on the fringes of the Jewish community. After Meir Kahane’s death, a number of American Jewish establishment figures saw fit to attend his funeral. Among them was Seymour Reich, then president of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League. The rabbi who conducted the service, Moses Tendler, a prominent figure in the Orthodox world, referred to Kahane as “a tsaddik” or saint, and “a giant.” Rabbi Tendler declared that God “spoke to Rabbi Kahane clearly.”

In his biography of Kahane, False Prophet, Robert Friedman showed that Kahane had called for “liquidation” not only of Arabs, but also of Jews with whom he disagreed. He pointed out that Kahane raised as much as $500,000 a year from American supporters. In his book, he reports that “Parlor meetings arranged by Emanuel Rackman, the rabbi of the prestigious Fifth Avenue Synagogue and now dean of Bar Ilan University in Israel, earned Kahane up to $50,000 for an afternoon talk.” Robert Friedman lamented that Meir Kahane was not as “marginal” a figure as many Jewish leaders said he was.

Now, in the aftermath of the Wye Memorandum, these extremist groups in both Israel and the U.S. are once again engaged in an effort to bring the peace process to an end.

In a letter published as an advertisement in The New York Post (Nov. 1, 1998), Rabbis Aaron Soloveitchik, Moses Tendler and Herschel Reichman declared: “We are stunned and astonished by the agreement made by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel at the Wye Plantation. The agreement presents a real danger to many Jewish settlements that would be surrounded by an enemy authority. The agreement is a life-threatening danger to all of the residents of Israel. Therefore, we have determined that it is prohibited by Jewish law to participate in this tragic and terrible agreement. It is prohibited by Jewish law for it to be ratified by the Israeli Government. If, God forbid, it is ratified, then we call for early elections as soon as possible in order to choose a new leadership for Israel which will be loyal to the Jewish people, to the land of Israel, and to the Torah of Israel.”

During his speech to the Zionist Organization of America, whose leaders oppose the peace process, Israel’s permanent ambassador to the U.N., Dore Gold, was heckled and an honoree at the dinner, Harvey Friedman, said in his own speech that the Wye agreement was “disastrous.” Mr. Friedman declared that rather than “land for peace,” the Israelis and Palestinians have engaged in a trade of “land for terror,” “land for threats,” and “land for anti-Semitism.” When Ambassador Gold spoke, he was interrupted by ZOA board member Carl Freyer who later said that, “Bibi Netanyahu should pack his bags and leave the country. He doesn’t belong in Israel...He’s lying to his own people.”

In Israel, the attacks on the peace agreement are eerily reminiscent of those which preceded Prime Minister Rabin’s assassination. “Signing the agreement will endanger the lives of many people in Israel,” said Mordechai Eliahu, a former chief rabbi and a spiritual force in the National Religious Party (NRP), whose reaction typifies the view of the religious right. “Rabbis, whose rulings are guided by Jewish ritual law and morality, cannot cooperate with those who put lives in jeopardy and endanger the peace and security of the country.”

Rehavam Zeevi, a lawmaker from the NRP, stated: “Netanyahu uses the inflated rhetoric about the land of Israel, while at the same time he hands back territory to the enemy.”

Aharon Domb, a spokesman for Jewish settlers on the West Bank, who fear that the agreed upon troop pullback would leave as many as 20 of their communities stranded in areas under Palestinian control, called the Wye accord “treason” and warned Netanyahu of “the gravest consequences.” “Treason” was the word the Israeli right used to describe the Oslo peace accords in the months before the Rabin assassination.

Needless to say, Palestinian extremists sounded much the same note. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, said the group’s armed wing would “cause more Israeli blood to flow no matter what obstacles were thrown up by the CIA.”

When she served as Israel’s Consul General in New York, Colette Avital said that the murder of Yitzhak Rabin should serve as a “wake up call to American Jews, especially those in New York. “Some of the extreme elements come from New York,” she continued. “Many people tend to think those are nuts and crazies. They say, ‘Let’s not pay too much attention to them; it increases their importance.’ But I feel that unless you recognize and deal with a problem, it can grow to larger proportions.”

The similarities between Jewish extremists who oppose the peace process and Islamic fundamentalists who share their goal are striking. Just as Muslim militants murdered Egyptian President Anwar Sadat for making peace, and just as Islamic terrorists are now trying through violence to end the peace process, so Jewish extremists are doing exactly the same thing. They are mirror images of one another.

From prison, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted for leading a fundamentalist Islamic plot to destroy landmarks in New York City, hailed the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. He said: “The Muslims were not able to get him killed for what he did, due to strict security. Well. Allah had sent a Jew to do that.”

Discussing those rabbis who called for Rabin’s murder, Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, professor of humanities at New York University, declares that, “What you are dealing with is the Jewish version of Khomeinism. The overwhelming majority of American Jews support the peace process. But these maniacs are crazy. They are inquisitors. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Spanish Inquisition burned the bodies of Jews and heretics in order to save their souls, and they did it in good conscience. This kind of fanaticism can permit the greatest swinishness in good conscience.”

Jewish organizations in the U.S. fight bigotry in all sectors of society—but not within their own ranks. Rhetorical violence and religious extremism are a deadly combination. It is time that Israelis, Palestinians, and those in the U.S. who support them, isolate the extremists in their ranks and permit the majority who seek peace to proceed along that path.