Topics in this digest: Yom Kippur 5765
The Danger of Fundamentalists
By Rabbi Barry Leff
“The border security fence is comprised of many sections totaling scores
of miles. Some sections are concrete, others sheet metal. The barrier is
three layers deep in parts, fifteen feet high and surrounded by razor
wire. The area around it is lit by spotlights, monitored by cameras,
motion detectors and magnetic sensors, and patrolled by armed guards with
attack dogs.
But enough about our border with Mexico, let's talk about Israel.”
As James Robbins of the National Review pointed out, Israel isn’t the only
country to have an impressive fence protecting its territory. And the US
is mainly concerned about people smuggling drugs and sneaking in to work.
Imagine what the border would look like if there were Mexican terrorists
still mad that we annexed Texas in 1845, and beat them in the US-Mexican
war of 1846-48!
Palestinians make the most odious comparisons between the security fence
and other notorious fences, calling it an “apartheid fence,” or the
“Berlin Wall.” They ignore the fact that Israel never would have built it
if it wasn’t for the mass murders committed by Hamas, by Fatah, and by
Islamic Jihad.
The International Court of Justice in the Hague said that in building the
fence Israel had violated international humanitarian law by infringing on
Palestinians' freedom of movement and freedom to seek employment,
education and health.
Israel would love for Palestinians to have freedom of movement. Israel
imports workers from Thailand and the Philippines when there are hundreds
of thousands of people living right next door who would love to have the
jobs. It’s mind-boggling that the Palestinians don’t seem to get it – if
they want the freedom to work in Israel, they have to stop killing
Israelis! It’s like they’re lining up at the border crossings with a work
permit in one hand and a grenade in the other, and are ticked off that the
Israelis have a problem with this!
And I certainly don’t mean to suggest that every Palestinian worker’s a
potential terrorist. But then again, perhaps most of them are. A recent
poll showed that 59% of Palestinians—a significant majority—favor
continued suicide bombings in Israel. And as long as their politicians,
media, religious leaders, and education system--down to the level of
pre-schools and summer camps--continue to glorify the murder of Israelis,
and as long as the majority of Palestinians refuse to speak up against
this incitement and overthrow their corrupt leaders, the virus of Intifada
– even more lethal for Palestinians than for Israelis! -- will continue to
infect Palestinian society.
It’s true that the fence has created many hardships for innocent
Palestinians, and it’s a great credit to Israel that its High Court
ordered the re-routing of sections of the fence to minimize financial harm
and inconvenience to Palestinians. This was absolutely the right thing for
the Israeli High Court to do. But there is no avoiding the fact that the
fence will inconvenience many blameless people—some of them, by the way,
Israeli.
And why? Because of extremists and fundamentalists. The greatest danger
that Israel faces comes from extremists and fundamentalists.
It’s hard for us to fathom the depth of their hatred and commitment to a
life-denying philosophy. Umm Nidal, mother of a Hamas suicide bomber said
in an interview “I prayed from the depths of my heart that Allah would
cause the success of his operation. I asked Allah to give me ten Israelis
for Muhammad, and Allah granted my request and Muhammad made his dream
come
true, killing ten Israeli settlers and soldiers. Our God honored him even
more, in that there were many Israelis wounded.”
What kind of mother could possibly pray that her son should be a
successful suicide bomber?
One of the scariest things about suicide bombers is that there are so many
willing to kill themselves in this barbaric fashion. According to Mahmoud
Al-Zahhar of Hamas, a call for suicide bombers at the University of
Alexandria in Egypt brought 2,000 students signing up to “die a martyr’s
death.” Last year there were 436 would-be suicide bombers in
Israel—thanks to God and Israel’s tight security, only 16 of them
succeeded.
Why are there so many young people in Islamic countries willing to blow
themselves up as long as they can take a few Jews (or Americans or other
“unbelievers”) with them?
As Robert Spencer points out in his book “Onward Muslim Soldiers,” many
Western analysts like to say that suicide bombers are a byproduct of
poverty and desperation. But research scientist Scott Atran has shown
that suicide bombers most often come from educated and relatively affluent
backgrounds—not ignorant and impoverished ones. Suicide bombing isn’t an
act of hopelessness and despair, it’s considered macho -- part of a jihad
mentality which has Islam pitted in a battle against the West—a battle
which will not be over when the Palestinians have a state of their own, or
when all US troops have left Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
The word jihad is much misunderstood. It’s often translated as “holy
war,” but that’s inaccurate. A better translation would be “striving” or
“struggle.” The Islamic sources speak of two forms of jihad, the greater
jihad and the lesser jihad. The greater jihad is an internal battle,
basically the battle against what we would call the yetzer hara, the evil
inclination. The lesser jihad is physical battle to bring more of the
world under Muslim domination.
In general, suicide violates Islamic law. But the imams who encourage the
suicide bombers quote a hadith about Mohammed. A hadith is a teaching, not
in the Koran, but based on oral tradition, sort of like a quote from the
Talmud, and this one goes: “A man asked the Prophet: What is Jihad? He
replied: "To fight against the disbelievers when you meet them (on the
battlefield)." The man asked: "What kind of Jihad is the highest?" He
replied: "The person who is killed while spilling the last of his blood."
The definition of jihad as the battle to bring the world under Muslim
domination is what led to the Muslim conquest of North Africa and Southern
Europe in the 8th century. We haven’t heard much of jihad since the
Muslims were kicked out of Spain in 1492 not because Islamic theology
evolved away from belief in the concept, but rather because they didn’t
have the power to do anything about it.
But now they do, because the jihadists have learned to replace brute
strength with technological leverage. Once it took an army to attack a
city. Once it took siege engines and battering rams to bring down the
walls and towers. Now all it takes is 19 men armed with box-cutters and
airplane tickets.
But as much as the Islamic extremists and fundamentalists hate the
Jews—and they love to quote verses from the Koran which compare Jews to
pigs and monkeys—they are NOT the greatest threat that Israel faces.
Because Israel knows how to fight them. Israel is the toughest country on
the face of this planet. In the last four years over 1,000 Israelis have
been killed and 6,000 wounded in terrorist attacks. There are only 6
million people living in Israel. With nearly 300 million living in the
United States, as a percent of the population it is as if 50,000 Americans
were killed and 300,000 were wounded. Everyone in Israel knows someone who
was killed or injured in a terrorist attack. If America went through what
Israel has gone though, no one would ride buses, no one would go to
restaurants and no one would let their children hang out in malls. The
fence—and it is a fence, not a wall, for over 95% of its length—is
effective. The policy of targeted assassinations against Hamas and other
terrorist leaders, as controversial and even morally-troubling as it might
be, is effective. The number of terrorist attacks and casualties in Israel
this year is down 90% from what it was in the first few years of the
current Intifada. In 2002, before the fence, there were 46 suicide
attacks in Israel. In the first six months of this year there were only
four. The security fence and the decimation of the terrorist leadership
will not be 100% effective—until the Palestinian terrorists give up on
their wish to push all the Jews into the sea, there will always be a few
that get through—but the security measures are effective enough to allow
life in Israel to continue relatively normally.
No, the greatest threat to Israel doesn’t come from Muslim fundamentalists
and extremists. It comes from Jewish fundamentalists and extremists.
Fundamentalists of any flavor—Jewish, Christian, or Muslim—share a lot
more with each other than they do with any of the rest of us. As
described by Karen Armstrong in her book “The Battle for God,”
fundamentalists oppose many of the most positive values of modern society.
She says, “Fundamentalists have no time for democracy, pluralism,
religious
toleration, peacekeeping, free speech, or separation of church and
state.”
Fundamentalists—and again, this is true for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim
fundamentalists—view themselves as fighting for their faith and God in a
world that is inherently hostile to religion. They don’t regard
themselves as engaged in a political struggle, but in a cosmic struggle
against the forces of evil. After 9/11, American Christian
fundamentalists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson almost immediately
proclaimed that the tragedy had been a judgment of God for the sins of the
secular humanists in the United States—which is pretty much the same thing
the Muslim hijackers said.
Jewish fundamentalists also adhere to this view. After the suicide
bombing of the Dolphinarium disco in Tel Aviv on a Friday night, there
were Jewish fundamentalists who said “what do they expect, violating the
Sabbath like that?” I’m not sure what those same fundamentalists said
when a suicide bomber blew up a bus-full of ultra-Orthodox Jews returning
to Mea Sharim from prayers at the Western Wall.
We like to downplay the existence of Jewish extremists. We like to think
Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Muslims at prayer in Hebron 1994, was an
isolated nut case. We like to think that Yigal Amir, an extremist who
assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, was another isolated
nut case.
But they are not so isolated, and they cannot be dismissed as mere nut
cases. Baruch Goldstein’s grave has become a shrine for Jewish
fundamentalists who consider this mass murderer a hero. His followers
were greatly offended when the Israeli government ordered references to
Goldstein as a “hero” at his gravesite removed.
The most radical Jewish extremist plot was in the 1980s, when a group of
Jewish fundamentalists were arrested for plotting to blow up the Dome of
the Rock. They believe that the Third Temple must be built, even if it
means starting a global war. In fact, many of them welcome a huge war,
because they believe that the Messiah will only come after such an
apocalyptic war. Right now there’s a battle between 5 million Israeli
Jews and 3 million Palestinians. The extremists would turn it into a
worldwide battle between 13 million Jews and 1 billion Muslims. Do the
math yourself. Israel may have the bomb, but so does Pakistan.
And this plot isn’t just ancient history. Just two months ago, an article
in Ha’aretz, a leading Israeli newspaper, said that the Shin Bet, Israel’s
security service, was increasingly concerned that right wing extremists
were again plotting to destroy the mosques on the Temple Mount, possibly
using a light plane filled with explosives.
But I believe the real danger from Jewish fundamentalists comes not from
the reaction they may provoke from the Arabs with terrorist acts—but
rather from the impact they are having on Israeli society.
Jewish fundamentalists are responsible for increasing tensions between the
secular and the religious in Israel, for turning a younger generation of
Israelis away from Judaism, and for eroding Zionism among the younger
generation of Israelis and for some Jews in the Diaspora.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the commitment to Israel and the support for
Zionism reached a real peak. Every Israeli accepted the need for the
military, and supported the Israeli Defense Forces virtually 100% because
there was a real purity of mission: defend the borders and people of the
land of Israel from some very hostile neighbors. The support for Israel
and the IDF was equally strong in the Diaspora: one night in 1973 right
after the Yom Kippur war broke out, B’nai Israel raised over $2 million to
support Israel in her time of crisis.
This near 100% support for the Israeli military started to erode in the
1980s with the war in Lebanon, especially with the prolonged occupation in
southern Lebanon, which was very unpopular with the Israeli public and led
to the deaths of hundreds of Israeli soldiers until Ehud Barak withdrew in
2000.
Roughly 20% of Israelis identify themselves as “religious.” 80% consider
themselves secular, which can mean anything from being like most American
Jews—occasional visitors to the synagogue, who observe, at least sort of,
most major Jewish holidays—to Jews who are 100% not religious, who are on
the beach at Netanya eating hot dogs today instead of in shul fasting.
Many of the young Israelis from this 80% secular camp are totally turned
off by what’s going on in Gaza and the West Bank. They have no desire
whatsoever to risk their lives to defend some settlers on a hilltop in
Samaria. The number of Israelis seeking exemptions from the draft, or
seeking to defer reserve duty is reaching record high levels. Twenty-two
percent of Israeli males received draft exemptions in 2001, compared with
12% twenty years ago. Most get draft exemptions on medical, educational,
religious, or other grounds. According to War Resistors International,
more than 2,000 Israelis have argued for conscientious objector status
since September 2000. The number of individuals jailed in Israel for
refusing to serve in the military is also up sharply.
Those levels would be even higher if it weren’t for the fact that the IDF
generally relies on volunteers to serve in West Bank and Gaza. Some
soldiers volunteer because the money’s much better—they get hazardous duty
pay. Others volunteer for ideological reasons, which of course is also
politically dangerous: the soldiers who volunteer to defend the
settlements will be the ones called on to evacuate them should Sharon’s
disengagement plan proceed. Divided loyalties in a soldier is NOT a good
thing.
The sense of malaise in Israel is not limited to young people who avoid
military service. For many of the younger generation, they no longer have
the Zionist dream. They no longer believe in Israel as the fulfillment of
2,000 years of Jewish longing. At their seder tables they say “next year
in Los Angeles.”
In an interview with Ha’aretz in November, 2003, Avraham Burg, speaker of
the Knesset, had a harsh assessment of Israel’s future. Burg said: “When
you ask Israelis today whether their children will be living here 25 years
down the road you don’t get an unequivocally positive answer. You don’t
hear a booming yes. On the contrary: Young people are being encouraged to
study abroad. Their parents are getting them European passports. Whoever
can checks out possibilities of working in Silicon Valley in California;
whoever has the wherewithal buys a house in London. So that slowly but
surely, a society is developing in Israel which isn’t certain that the
next generation will live here. A whole society is living here that has
no faith in its future.”
Burg says ”What is actually happening is that the leading Israeli class is
shrinking, because it is no longer ready to pay for the caprices of the
government. It is no longer willing to bear the burden of the settlements
and the burden of the transfer payments. But what we’re getting in the
meantime is not a revolt in the streets, it’s a quiet revolt of people
leaving, getting out. It’s a revolt of taking the laptop and the diskette
and moving on. So if you look up and look around, you will see that the
only people who are staying here are those who have no other option. The
economically weak and the fundamentalists are staying. Before our eyes
Israel is becoming ultra-Orthodox, nationalist and Arab. It is becoming a
society that has no vision of a future, no narrative and no forces to
maintain itself.” End of quote.
That vision of Israel—an Israel that is ultra-Orthodox, nationalist and
Arab, with no sense of a future, no narrative and no forces to maintain
itself—scares me more than all the suicide bombers in the West Bank and
Gaza. For that vision would mean that 2,000 years of longing on the part
of our ancestors was all for nothing. It would mean that the dream of a
Jewish homeland, a place where all Jews could feel truly at home, a place
where we could all go and feel like part of one large extended family, was
a dead dream. Not going to happen.
The ones killing this dream are not the Arabs—it’s the Jewish
fundamentalists. When a secular Jew sees fundamentalist Judaism, he
assumes Judaism has nothing to teach him. He sees an intolerant,
superstitious, misogynistic and hate-filled religion with a God that kills
children for violating Shabbat. Not the loving, compassionate, rational
and at the same time spiritual religion we see.
Many secular Jews in Israel are embarrassingly ignorant about Judaism.
Last February when I was traveling to Israel I had to change planes in
Montreal. I had an interesting conversation with the Israeli El Al
security person, a nice young lady. When she found out I was a rabbi, she
said, so can you tell me what this “tu b’shevat” holiday is all about? She
said “people keep telling me chag sameach, and I have no idea what they’re
talking about.” I appreciated the opportunity to do some kiruv, to do
some outreach and education, but I was appalled that a Jew who grew up in
Israel knew less about Jewish holidays than my six year old daughter.
The deeper impact of the fundamentalist mindset, however, is on the peace
process. The vast majority—over 70%—of Israelis favor pulling out of Gaza
and much of the West Bank. Most of the 30% opposed to pulling out are not
extremist or fundamentalist. Most are simply citizens who have a
different perspective. Not all Jews living in Gaza or the West Bank are
extremists. Many, such as most of the residents of settlements like Alfe
Menashe, are secular Jews who moved to the territories not because of
ideology, but because the air is cleaner and the houses are cheaper.
Settlers like those would comply with government orders to move, and
probably wouldn’t even complain much if there was financial compensation.
The dangerous ones are the fundamentalist settlers who believe that’s
forbidden to give up one inch of the land of Israel because God gave it to
the Jewish people. Their radical rabbis ignore a clear preference in
halacha, in Jewish law, for peace over land. The highest value in Judaism
is to save lives. Even Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, the spiritual leader of the
very right wing Shas party, has said in a legal opinion that if giving up
land saves lives, it’s permissible to give up land.
These fundamentalists—probably less than 100,000 people, some 2% of the
Jewish population in Israel—are refusing to go along with the wishes of
the 70% that favors withdrawal. They’re threatening to bring down the
government, threatening to disobey government orders to evacuate
settlements, perhaps sparking a civil war, and they even hint openly about
targeting the Prime Minister for assassination.
Israel desperately needs peace. The ongoing occupation is the reason many
young Jews have lost the Zionist vision. It’s the reason many of them no
longer desire to serve in the military, and it’s the reason many of them
would rather live in Los Angeles than in Tel Aviv.
The battle against the Palestinians is also having a profound impact on
how our children here in America feel about Israel. They don’t have the
same unbridled, 100% love of Israel that my generation has. They see the
negative stories about Israel in the media, they read the anti-Israel
posters on their college bulletin boards, and they hear the bullhorns of
the anti-Israel rallies. Some of our young people buy the lies of moral
equivalency—some of our children think it’s just as wrong for Israel to
inadvertently kill civilians in the course of attacking terrorists as it
is for Palestinians to intentionally kill civilians by blowing themselves
up on buses, or by walking into houses and shooting unarmed people. What
effect will that attitude have on their love of Israel?
What makes the Jewish fundamentalists so dangerous is that Israeli society
doesn’t know how to fight them. The Israeli political system gives small
and fringe parties disproportionate political power, because the two major
parties, Labor and Likud need alliances with smaller parties to form a
government. Which means that all too often 2% of the population gets to
hold 70% of the population hostage. I’m convinced that if the leaders of
Israel and the leaders of the PA followed the wishes of the majority of
their citizens, we’d have peace tomorrow. Interestingly even though a
majority of Palestinians support continued suicide bombings, an even
larger majority, 72%, support making real peace with Israel.
So what can we do?
First, don’t worry about convincing your Christian neighbors about how
Israel’s right in the battle against terrorism. Don’t worry about what
the Presbyterian council decided about divestment from Israel. Worry
about what your kids and grand-kids think about Israel. They’re the ones
we need to convince if the next generation is going to keep the vision of
a peaceful and prosperous homeland for all Jews alive.
Second, give money to Masorti Judaism, which is Conservative Judaism in
Israel. They’re doing great work in showing secular Israelis there’s
another way to be Jewish than the ugly fundamentalist picture many of them
have. Israel desperately needs our approach to Judaism. Many Israelis are
hungry for the spirituality we could show them. A recent survey in Israel
found that 40 percent of those who are not attending services over the
High Holidays WOULD if there were a Reform or Conservative synagogue
nearby. Unfortunately, we don’t have many synagogues in Israel. Our
movement is starving for funds – Masorti rabbis are leaving Israel because
they can’t make a living there; of course, Orthodox rabbis have their
salaries paid by the state, but that’s another sermon. I believe so
strongly in this cause I recently sent a $1,000 contribution to the
Masorti movement.
Third, go to Israel. Instead of retiring to Florida, retire to Israel.
Among other things, they don’t get hurricanes there. And Israel
desperately needs more Jews like us—Jews who are tolerant, Jews who are
compassionate, Jews who know how democracy works.
If you can’t make aliyah quite yet, visit. If you have a child or
grand-child who’s eligible for a free BirthRight trip, or other group
trip, encourage them to go. If enough B’nai Israel people want to go, I’d
be delighted to lead a congregational trip.
And more than visit. If you’ve already been to Israel as a tourist, or on
a mission, go as a volunteer. Contribute not just your dollars, but your
time and energy to help build a better Israel.
I go to Israel every year. Usually I go do something selfish: I go to
what my wife Lauri calls “rabbi camp,” and I go and study Torah with a
bunch of my fellow rabbis, something I love to do. This year I decided to
contribute something. So in July I spent a week on an Army base not far
from Ben Gurion airport fixing communications equipment. It was a great
experience, and a great feeling to know that the work I was doing freed up
a soldier to do more important work. And by the way, it can be a very
cheap vacation—there are several volunteer opportunities where food and
housing are provided free, so all you have to do is buy a plane ticket to
get there.
Israel has a universal draft—all citizens are required to serve the
country. All Jews are in essence honorary citizens of Israel. You can
become a full citizen anytime you want to. As such, I would suggest we
should also volunteer to serve the country. There are many opportunities.
You can volunteer with the military, you can volunteer with the Magen
David
Adom, you can volunteer in hospitals or with disabled children. I will be
happy to help anyone looking for volunteer opportunities.
If you’re not so sure this is a good time to visit Israel, I’d like to
leave you with a quote from Rabbi Shlomo Riskin. Rabbi Riskin said “If
Israel is Disneyland, you go when the weather is good. If Israel is
mishpocha, family, you go when they need you.”
Israel needs us. Now, and always.
G’mar chatimah tovah, may God seal you in the book of life.