By Rabbi Dow Marmur
JERUSALEM — In their zeal and professed patriotism Israel’s Jewish terrorists – yes, Jewish terrorists in Israel who contravene the laws of the state! – and their fellow-travellers are threatening the security and the integrity of the country.
A recent symptom is the pathetic effort by supporters of the suspects now in custody (for the arson attack that killed three members of an Arab family in the West Bank) to accuse the security forces of torturing their friends who’re being interrogated.
By all accounts that’s not true. The authorities are interrogating the Jewish suspects in the same way as they interrogate Arab suspects. It may not be pretty but it doesn’t justify the defenders of the poor pious Jewish boys who may have committed murder in the name of God while quoting Holy Writ. Arsonists don’t deserve sympathy or warrant pressure on the authorities to release them.
To add fuel to the flame, Israel’s television Channel 10 ran last Wednesday a video showing a wedding in which the zealots dance in semi-ecstatic celebration with army machine guns and incendiary devices. To enhance the fun and to add to the joy of the occasion they also defaced a picture of the child murdered in that arson attack.
Mercifully to date no responsible politician has come out in their support. Not only has Prime Minister Netanyahu condemned them, but even Naftali Bennett, the leader of the Habayit Heyehudi party that attracts so-called religious nationalists and with which the terrorism suspects are likely to identify, hasn’t shown sympathy for the suspects and the protesters. On the contrary, like the prime minister he has distanced himself from Jewish terrorism. We can only hope that both Netanyahu and Bennett mean it
In fact Bennett’s party may break up as some of its members seem to prefer fanatics to their leader, even though few would describe him as a moderate.
Jewish terrorism is here to stay, alas. The longer the occupation continues the more the settlers in the territories are likely to be radicalized in their efforts to force the government to annex the West Bank into the Jewish state. They no longer seem to worry about demography which made right-wingers like the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to get out of Gaza – perhaps as a prelude to vacate the rest, had not Hamas taken over there – out of fear of having an Arab majority in a Jewish state. For Sharon the argument against the occupation wasn’t morality but demography.
He seemed to have believed that Israel must remain a democracy. The zealots today don’t seem to care about that. If they have to subdue an Arab majority by creating a Jewish dictatorship, so be it. Some of them even argue that democracy is inimical to the kind of Judaism they deem to be normative. They even try to introduce – with some success – this approach to the teaching of civics in state schools.
Ari Shavit, whose Thursday column in Ha’aretz always makes one think, wrote this week that Israel has at most another decade before our worst forebodings may come true: the Zionist dream will have come to an end and with it Israel as we know will be replaced by something that even armchair Diaspora right-wingers won’t support.
Shavit implies that it’s not too late to save Israel for Judaism by ceding the territories. But for that, the country needs a leader who is prepared to make sacrifices on our behalf. Nobody seems to date able to identify such a person.
*
Marmur is spiritual leader emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. Now a resident of Israel, he may be contacted via dow.marmur@sdjewishworld.com. Comments in the space below must be accompanied by the letter writer’s full name as well as his or her city and state of residence. (City and country for those writing from outside the U.S.)