By Rabbi Dow Marmur
JERUSALEM — Starting in 1970, West Germany was terrorized by a group named after two of its founders, the Bader Meinhof Gang. It and its offshoots did untold harm with many killings of citizens. It was dissolved only in 1998.
Israel is getting its own Bader Meinhof Gang: young ostensibly pious men with side locks who claim to “outfrum” their parents and teachers though they dropped out of or perhaps were expelled from yeshivot and subsequently took to the outposts and hills.
By all accounts their parents, several of them prominent rabbis, and their teachers are devastated by these young men who claim to want to fulfill through terror what they’ve been taught in theory: the elimination of all foreign elements in the Land of Israel (primarily Arabs, of course), the destruction of “alien” institutions such as mosques, particularly the Al Aqsa on the Temple Mount, and preparing the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem for the arrival of the Messiah.
Some of them are now being held by the Israeli security forces where, like other terrorists under investigation, they’re said to have been tortured. Their parents, though opposed to their sons’ dangerous antics, are outraged that their children should be treated in the same way as Palestinian terrorists…..
Nadav Shragai, a respected journalist and writer published last Friday a lengthy essay about these boys in the daily Yisrael Hayom, the freebee sponsored by the ubiquitous billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson, a publication known for its strong right-wing leanings. It seems that the Israeli Right is trying to distance itself from these revolutionary terrorists who claim to fulfill what some may regards as the message of the so-called Religious Right. Whether that will lead to a revision of the message isn’t clear.
Two of the terrorists have just been indicted for the arson in the West Bank village of Duma that last July 15 destroyed the home of the Dawabsha family and killed the parents and one child leaving the other child maimed. Many more are said to have been detained or are under house arrest for as yet unspecified crimes of a similar kind.
Shragai’s description is worth repeating: “The Duma story is not completely separate from the recently circulated footage from a wedding in which young people were seen dancing, singing and holding guns with one of them holding up a picture of the Dawabsha baby with a knife stuck in him.”
Were the Jewish terrorists to adopt a name equivalent to Bader Meinhof it should be the Orbach Ettinger Gang. Moshe Orbach and Yair Ettinger have authored a kind of manual for Jewish terrorism. Ettinger is the grandson of the late Meir Kahana, the godfather and role model of Jewish terrorism.
Shragai describes their recommendations: “The government committing to promote naming a king, cutting out foreign labor immediately, no questions immediately when the [new] rule assumes power; a declaration by the new ruler of its intent to build a Temple, a work plan for building the Temple in accordance with a timetable; expelling non-Jews…. obligatory religious observance, in public spaces to begin with.”
No surprise that Prime Minister Netanyahu is outraged: the tract wishes to replace his government with extreme Messiansm. Its subversive and violent agenda constitutes a threat to the State of Israel, perhaps greater than those of all other enemies put together.
*
Rabbi Marmur is spiritual leader emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. Now residing in Israel, he may be contacted via dow.marmur@sdjewishworld.com. Comments intended for publication in the space below must include the letter writer’s first and last name and city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the U.S.)