November 4, 2022
A RACE, NOT A RELIGION?:
Israel just had a bad week (Jeffrey Salkin, 11/04/22, RNS)
I cannot overstate the danger that Israel, the American Jewish community, and Judaism itself faces.Itamar Ben-Gvir is a racist.He believes in the discredited radical anti-Arab and xenophobic rhetoric of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who founded the Jewish Defense League in New York in the 1960s and then made aliyah.He venerated Baruch Goldstein, who in 1994 opened fire in the tomb of the patriarchs in Hebron, killing 29 people and wounding 125 Palestinian Muslim worshipers.He had threatened to assassinate former prime minister Yitzchak Rabin, and on this day in 1995, Yigal Amir did precisely that.He supports passing a law that would make sex between a Jew and a gentile illegal.Ben-Gvir was considered so dangerous, that he was forbidden to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. That is the most stunning condemnation that you will ever find of him and his ideas.
Posted by Orrin Judd at November 4, 2022 11:59 AM