228 How to save the Obama presidency - bomb Iran, by Daniel Pipes (Jerusalem Post)

How to save the Obama presidency - bomb Iran, by Daniel Pipes (Jerusalem Post)

(1) Dutch filmmaker who subdued the "underpants bomber"
(2) How to save the Obama presidency - bomb Iran, by Daniel Pipes (Jerusalem Post)
(3) Israel publishes list of 13 Hamas leaders "Israel's next targets for liquidation"
(4) Israel feels under siege. Like a victim. An underdog - Robert Fisk
(5) US turning a blind eye as Israel bulldozes Palestinian homes & even sewage works
(6) The King's Torah (Halacha, Jewish religious law) - when to kill non-Jews (even babies)
(7) Rabbi's book says Jews can kill gentiles
(8) The Complete Guide to Killing Non-Jews: translation of an article in Maariv (Israel)

(1) Dutch filmmaker who subdued the "underpants bomber"

From: Charles Krafft <whodareswings@yahoo.com> Date: 07.02.2010 07:32 PM

The Shady Mainstream Media Payday of Flight 253 Hero Jasper Shuringa

http://gawker.com/5434950/the-shady-mainstream-media-payday-of-flight-253-hero-jasper-schuringa

I'm not really following this underpants bomber story very closely, but Jasper's Shuringa's Israeli friend in Miami handled all the negotiations with the press for him after his fifteen minutes of fame and he hasn't been heard from since. I'm wondering if Shuringa wasn't Mossad, or if not Mossad at least a sayanim. Is he a Jew, too? The article infers that being in the filmmaking business Shuringa knew knew how to play the press like a fiddle. He turned everything over to a mysterious Israeli "friend" to handle. This seems curious, especially in light of the fact the bomb was apparently a dud from the beginning.

(2) How to save the Obama presidency - bomb Iran, by Daniel Pipes (Jerusalem Post)

From: IHR News <news@ihr.org> Date: 08.02.2010 04:00 PM

How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran

Daniel Pipes -- The Jerusalem Post (Israel)

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=167618

Sunday, February 7, 2010       23 Shevat, 5770     

How to save the Obama presidency - bomb Iran

{caption} President needs dramatic gesture to change perception of him as lightweight ideologue. Talkbacks (80) {end}

I do not customarily offer advice to a president whose election I opposed, whose goals I fear and whose policies I work against. But here is a way for Barack Obama to salvage his tottering administration by taking a step that protects the US and its allies.

If Obama’s personality, identity and celebrity captivated a majority of the American electorate in 2008, those qualities proved ruefully deficient in 2009. He failed to deliver on employment and health care, he failed in foreign policy forays small (e.g., landing the 2016 Olympics) and large (relations with China and Japan). His counterterrorism record barely passes the laugh test.

This poor performance has caused an unprecedented collapse in the polls and the loss of three major by-elections, culminating two weeks ago in an astonishing senatorial defeat in Massachusetts. Obama’s attempts to “reset” his presidency will likely fail if he focuses on economics, where he is just one of many players.

He needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a lightweight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge and where he can trump expectations.

Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can order the US military to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity.

Circumstances are propitious. First, US intelligence agencies have reversed the preposterous 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that claimed with “high confidence” that Teheran had “halted its nuclear weapons program.” No one (other than the Iranian rulers and their agents) denies that the regime is rushing headlong to build a nuclear arsenal.

Second, if the apocalyptic-minded leaders in Teheran get the Bomb, they render the Middle East yet more volatile and dangerous. They might deploy these weapons in the region, leading to massive death and destruction. Or they could launch an electromagnetic pulse attack on the US, devastating the country. By eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat, Obama protects the homeland and sends a message to America’s friends and enemies.

THIRD, POLLING shows long-standing American backing for an attack on the Iranian nuclear infrastructure.

• A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll in January 2006 found that 57% of Americans favored military intervention if Teheran pursues a program that could enable it to build nuclear arms.

• A Zogby International poll in October 2007 found that 52% of likely voters supported a US military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon; 29% opposed such a step.

• McLaughlin & Associates in May 2009 asked whether people would support “using the [US] military to attack and destroy the facilities in Iran which are necessary to produce a nuclear weapon”; 58% of 600 likely voters supported the use of force and 30% opposed it.

• Fox News in September 2009 asked: “Do you support or oppose the United States taking military action to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons?” Sixty-one percent of 900 registered voters supported military action and 28% opposed it.

• Pew Research Center in October 2009 asked which is more important, “to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if it means taking military action” or “to avoid a military conflict with Iran, even if it means they may develop nuclear weapons”;  of 1,500 respondents, 61% favored the first reply and 24% the second.

Not only does a strong majority – 57%, 52%, 58%, 61% and 61% – already favor using force, but after a strike Americans will presumably rally around the flag, pushing that number much higher.

Fourth, were the US strike limited to taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities, and not aspiring to regime change, it would require few “boots on the ground” and entail relatively few casualties, making an attack politically more palatable.

Just as 9/11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush’s meandering early months, a strike on the Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama’s feckless first year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene. It would sideline health care, prompt Republicans to work with Democrats, make netroots squeal, independents reconsider and conservatives swoon.

But the chance to do good and do well is fleeting. As the Iranians improve their defenses and approach weaponization, the window of opportunity is closing. The time to act is now or, on Obama’s watch, the world will soon become a much more dangerous place.

The writer (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

(3) Israel publishes list of 13 Hamas leaders "Israel's next targets for liquidation"

From: Kristoffer Larsson <kristoffer.larsson@sobernet.nu> Date: 07.02.2010 08:09 PM

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=259437

Israeli website publishes list of 13 top Hamas wanted activists

Published yesterday (updated) 07/02/2010 09:02

Bethlehem - Ma'an/Agencies - The Israel-based self-described intelligence and security news service debkafile published a list of 13 Hamas leaders allegedly "Israel's next targets for liquidation" on their website Friday.

The service said the list was distributed by de facto government security services to members following the alleged assassination of Hamas military wing founder Mohammad Al-Mabhouh in Dubai on 19 January, citing "counter-terror sources."

According to the service, the following 13 men and woman were notified of an imminent assassination threat:

Jamila Shanti, member of the Hamas political bureau and Palestinian lawmaker;

Muhammad Deif, former supreme commander of Hamas until he was badly injured in a previous Israeli attack;

Ahmad Jabry, Leader in the armed wing of Hamas, the Izz Ad-Din Al-Qassam Brigades;

Marwan Issa, Jabry's deputy;

Abu Khalid Hijazi, chief of the Haiman Judah squads in Gaza, former Fatah member;

Muhammad Harub, Jihad Islami, who was targeted twice for assassination by Israel;

Abu Al Montaseir Omar, head of Hamas military planning (strategy) department;

Abu Qusai, senior commander responsible for ex-Fatah combatants;

Nader Jaber, Izz Ad-Din Al-Qassam operations chief in the Gaza Strip;

Khalid Mansour, Islamic Jihad military commander in the Gaza Strip;

Muhammad Sanwar, chief of Hamas forces in the central Gaza sector;

Muhammad Abu Shemala, chief of Hamas forces in the South;

Ahmad Randour, chief of Hamas forces in the North.

(4) Israel feels under siege. Like a victim. An underdog - Robert Fisk

From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: 03.02.2010 06:44 PM

Robert Fisk: Israel feels under siege. Like a victim. An underdog

Anyone who is anyone in Israel will come to Herzliya this week for a conference about the state of the Jewish nation. Our correspondent joined them and found a climate of unprecedented insecurity - and paranoia

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-israel-feels-under-siege-like-a-victim-an-underdog-1886332.html

Tuesday, 2 February 2010, The Independent

So the propaganda war is on. Forget Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the 15,000 Lebanese and Palestinian dead. Forget the Sabra and Shatila massacre that same year by Israel's militia allies as their troops watched. Erase the Qana massacre of 1996 - 106 Lebanese killed by Israeli shellfire, more than half of them children - and delete the 1,500 in the 2006 Lebanon war. And forget, of course, the more than 1,300 Palestinians slaughtered by Israel in Gaza last year (and the 13 Israelis killed by Hamas at that time) after Hamas rockets fell on Sderot. Israel - if you believe the security elite of Israel's right wing here in Herzliya - is now under an even more dangerous, near-unprecedented attack.

Britain - this came yesterday from Israel's ambassador in London, no less - is "a battlefield" in which Israel's enemies wish to "de-legitimise" the 62-year-old Jewish state.

Even Israel's erstwhile friend, that fine Jewish judge Richard Goldstone, is now, in the words of one of Israel's staunchest American-Jewish supporters, Al Dershowitz, an "absolute traitor to the Jewish people" and "an evil, evil man". (Headlines for this, of course, in Israel yesterday.)

Israel the underdog. Israel the victim. Israel whose state-of-the-art, more-moral-than-any-other army was now in danger of seeing its generals arraigned on war crimes charges if they set foot in Europe.

Heaven forbid that Israeli officers should ever be accused of atrocities! The Jerusalem Post yesterday carried a photograph of Kadima leader Tzipi Livni looking at a Krakow poster abusing her as "wanted for war crimes in Gaza". Forget that she did nothing as Foreign Minister when the Israelis rained phosphorus on Gaza. This whole judicial attack on Israel was an abuse, a deliberate use of international law to de-legitimise the state of Israel - like all the other condemnation of Israel. Would that it was. This current identity crisis is indeed a tragedy for Israel - though not in the way that its right-wing government now suggests.

I remember all too well how, after the disastrous Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, a huge London conference sought to find out how Israeli "propaganda" failed. Never mind the slaughter of the Lebanese and the growing Israeli military casualties. How come Israel's message didn't get across? How come the anti-Semitic press was allowed to get away with such calumny? It was an identikit forum to this week's Herzliya confab.

Today we must forget Operation Cast Lead against Gaza and its savage casualties. We must condemn the Goldstone Report for its unspeakable lies - that the army of good may have committed war crimes against the terrorists of evil - and realise that Israel only wanted peace.

In reality, Israel has made a series of terrible diplomatic mistakes. I'm not talking about the humiliation heaped on the Turkish ambassador by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon - he, too, was at Herzliya. I'm not referring to the preposterous complaints by Ron Prossor, the Israeli ambassador to Britain, that in times of crisis there was "a cacophany of voices from Israel", rather than a single voice.

No, Israel's gravest mistake in recent years was to refuse to contribute to Goldstone's report on the 2008-09 slaughter in Gaza. A "foolish boycott", the daily Haaretz called it. A disaster, according to Israel's liberal left, who rightly spotted that it placed Israel on the level of Hamas.

I have sat through hours of the Herzliya conference - it ends with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cheerleading for the masses tomorrow night - and the Goldstone Report and the fear of "de-legitimisation" has run like a thread through almost every debate.

I sat next to an Israeli PhD student yesterday who shook his head in despair. "I and my friends are filled with terrible disappointment when we hear these statements from our government. What can we say? What can we do?" It was an enlightening comment. Is this not what millions of British people said when Tony Blair took them to war on a sheaf of lies in 2003?

One of the most distressing moments at Herzliya came when Lorna Fitzsimons, former Labour MP and now head of Bicom, a British-based pro-Israeli think-tank, pointed out that "public opinion does not influence foreign policy in Britain. Foreign policy is an elite issue." Deal with the elite, and the proles will follow - that was the implication. "Our enemies are going out to international courts where we are not supreme," she said.

And that, in a sense, said it all. International legitimacy is what Israel demands. And as a state it is legitimate. It was voted into existence by the United Nations. And, as the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has said, its creation may not have been just - but it was legitimate. Yet when an international juridical team invited Israel to participate in its inquiries, Mr Netanyahu smugly refused.

In this sense, the Gaza war proved what is so deeply troubling about the current Israeli body politic. It wants the world to recognise its democracy - however flawed this may be - but it will not join the world when asked to account for its behaviour in Gaza.It claims to be a light among the nations but will not let anyone look too closely at that light, to examine its fuel and to look precisely at what it illuminates.

Goldstone, Goldstone, Goldstone. The eminent lawyer who so bravely sought justice for the murdered and raped victims of the Serbs in the Bosnian war - and whose bravery inspired the world, including Israel, at that time - has been on the lips of every Israeli government apologist at Herzliya.

Tzipi Livni spoke of him. So did Yossi Gal, the Israeli foreign affairs ministry director-general. He spoke of the "attempt to use the Goldstone Report to push Israel to the margins of legitimacy". So did Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations. He noted that the US administration had been "overwhelmingly responsive" - ie dismissive - of the Goldstone Report. Even the mouse-like US ambassador to Israel, James Cunningham, suggested that the Goldstone Report might be used as an attempt to de-legitimise Israel.

What is this nonsense? After the 1982 massacre of Sabra and Shatila Palestinians, Israel appointed a government commission of inquiry. The Kahan Commission's report was not perfect - but what other Middle Eastern nation would examine its sins so courageously? It stated that the then Defence Minister Ariel Sharon's responsibility - he had sent in the Lebanese militias - was "personal". This report did not expunge Israel's guilt but it proved that it was a worthy state, one that was prepared to confront this slaughter with honesty rather than abuse.

Alas, no Kahan Commissions for Israel today. No judgment for Gaza. Just a slap on the wrist for a couple of officers who used phosphorus and a criminal charge against a soldier for stealing credit cards.

As it happens, I met Goldstone after he was appointed head of the war crimes tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia in The Hague. A palpably decent, honest man, he said that the world had grown tired of allowing governments to commit war crimes with impunity. He was talking, of course, about Milosevic. He wrote a book on the same lines, warmly praised by Israel. But now he is the earthquake beneath Israel's legitimacy.

I dropped by the eminently sensible Israeli army reserve colonel Shaul Arieli at his NGO's office in Tel Aviv yesterday afternoon and discussed the attempts to arrest Israeli military officers for war crimes if they visited Britain and other European countries.

"All this is much more disturbing to us today than it was a few years ago," he said. "We are afraid of this trend after Operation Cast Lead. It affects the image of Israel all over the world, not just for military officers. If they were charged, it would show that the state of Israel couldn't protect its soldiers. I am sure that the Goldstone Report affects these things."

All of which suggests that the real earthquake beneath Israel, the real danger to its image and standing and legitimacy, is a nation called Israel.

(5) US turning a blind eye as Israel bulldozes Palestinian homes & even sewage works

From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: 03.02.2010 06:49 PM

Robert Fisk: Why does the US turn a blind eye to Israeli bulldozers?

Most of the West Bank is under rule which amounts to apartheid by paper

Saturday, 30 January 2010, The Independent,

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-why-does-the-us-turn-a-blind-eye-to-israeli-bulldozers-1883670.html

Both the United States and Europe now stand idly by while the Israeli government effectively destroys any hope of a Palestinian state; even as you read these words, Israel's bulldozers and demolition orders are destroying the last chance of peace; not only in the symbolic centre of Jerusalem itself but – strategically, far more important – in 60 per cent of the vast, biblical lands of the occupied West Bank, in that largest sector in which Jews now outnumber Muslims two to one.

This majority of the West Bank – known under the defunct Oslo Agreement's sinister sobriquet as "Area C" – has already fallen under an Israeli rule which amounts to apartheid by paper: a set of Israeli laws which prohibit almost all Palestinian building or village improvements, which shamelessly smash down Palestinian homes for which permits are impossible to obtain, ordering the destruction of even restored Palestinian sewage systems. Israeli colonists have no such problems; which is why 300,000 Israelis now live – in 220 settlements which are all internationally illegal – in the richest and most fertile of the Palestinian occupied lands.

When Obama's elderly envoy George Mitchell headed home in humiliation this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated his departure by planting trees in two of the three largest Israeli colonies around Jerusalem. With these trees at Gush Etzion and Ma'aleh Adumim, he said, he was sending "a clear message that we are here. We will stay here. We are planning and we are building." These two huge settlements, along with that of Ariel to the north of Jerusalem, were an "indisputable part of Israel forever."

It was Netanyahu's victory celebration over the upstart American President who had dared to challenge Israel's power not only in the Middle East but in America itself. And while the world this week listened to Netanyahu in the Holocaust memorial commemoration for the genocide of six million Jews, abusing Iran as the new Nazi Germany – Iran's loony president supposedly as evil as Hitler – the hopes of a future "Palestine" continued to dribble away. President Ahmadinejad of Iran is no more Adolf Hitler than the Israelis are Nazis. But the "threat" of Iran is distracting the world. So is Tony Blair yesterday, trying to wriggle out of his bloody responsibility for the Iraq disaster. The real catastrophe, however, continues just outside Jerusalem, amid the fields, stony hills and ancient caves of most of the West Bank.

(6) The King's Torah (Halacha, Jewish religious law) - when to kill non-Jews (even babies)

http://forward.com/articles/123925/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Emailmarketingsoftware&utm_content=70955889&utm_campaign=January292010%20_%20uywky&utm_term=Readmore

Rabbinic Text or Call to Terror?

By Daniel Estrin

Published January 20, 2010, issue of January 29, 2010.

JERUSALEM — The marble-patterned, hardcover book embossed with gold Hebrew letters looks like any other religious commentary you'd find in an Orthodox Judaica bookstore — but reads like a rabbinic instruction manual outlining acceptable scenarios for killing non-Jewish babies, children and adults.

"The prohibition 'Thou Shalt Not Murder'" applies only "to a Jew who kills a Jew," write Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur of the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar. Non-Jews are "uncompassionate by nature" and attacks on them "curb their evil inclination," while babies and children of Israel's enemies may be killed since "it is clear that they will grow to harm us."

"The King's Torah (Torat Hamelech), Part One: Laws of Life and Death between Israel and the Nations," a 230-page compendium of Halacha, or Jewish religious law, published by the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva in Yitzhar, garnered a front-page exposé in the Israeli tabloid Ma'ariv, which called it the stuff of "Jewish terror."

Now, the yeshiva is in the news again, with a January 18 raid on Yitzhar by more than 100 Israeli security officials who forcibly entered Od Yosef Chai and arrested 10 Jewish settlers. The Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security agency, suspects five of those arrested were involved in the torching and vandalizing of a Palestinian mosque last month in the neighboring Palestinian village of Yasuf. The arson provoked an international outcry and condemnation by Israeli religious figures, including Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, who visited the village to personally voice his regret.

Yet, both Metzger and his Sephardic counterpart, Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, have declined to comment on the book, which debuted in November, while other prominent rabbis have endorsed it — among them, the son of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Sephardic Jewry's preeminent leader. Also, despite the precedent set by previous Israeli attorneys general in the last decade and a half to file criminal charges against settler rabbis who publish commentaries supporting violence against non-Jews, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has so far remained mum about "The King's Torah."

"Sometimes the public arena deals with the phenomenon and things become settled by themselves," Justice Ministry spokesman Moshe Cohen told the Forward.

A coalition of religious Zionist groups, the "Twelfth of Heshvan,"—– named after the Hebrew date of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, has asked Israel's Supreme Court to order Mazuz to confiscate the books and arrest its authors.

"You open the book, and you feel that you read a halachic book. And it's a trap," said Gadi Gvaryahu, a religious Jewish educator who heads the coalition. It was, in fact, "a guidebook [on] how to kill," he charged.

Family members who answered phone calls placed to the homes of both authors said they did not wish to comment.

In 2008, author Shapira was suspected of involvement in a crude rocket attack directed at a Palestinian village. Israeli police investigated but made no arrests.

Co-author Elitzur wrote an article in a religious bulletin a month after the book's release saying that "the Jews will win with violence against the Arabs."

In 2003, the head of the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, was charged by then-Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein with incitement to racism for authoring a book calling Arabs a "cancer."

In 2006-2007, the Israeli Ministry of Education gave about a quarter of a million dollars to the yeshiva, and in 2007-2008 the yeshiva received about $28,000 from the American nonprofit Central Fund of Israel.

"The King's Torah" reflects a fringe viewpoint held by a minority of rabbis in the West Bank, said Avinoam Rosenak, a Hebrew University professor specializing in settler theology. Asher Cohen, a Bar Ilan University political science professor, thought its influence would be "zero" because it appeals only to extreme ideologues.

But the book's wide dissemination and the enthusiastic endorsements of prominent rabbis have spotlighted what might have otherwise remained an isolated commentary.

At the entrance to Moriah, a large Jewish bookstore steps from the Western Wall, copies of "The King's Torah" were displayed with children's books and other halachic commentaries. The store manager, who identified himself only as Motti, said the tome has sold "excellently."

Other stores carrying the book include Robinson Books, a well-known, mostly secular bookshop in a hip Tel Aviv shopping district; Pomeranz Bookseller, a major Jewish book emporium near the Ben Yehuda mall in downtown Jerusalem; and Felhendler, a Judaica store on the main artery of secular Rehovot, home of the Weizmann Institute.

The yeshiva declined to comment on publication statistics. But Itzik, a Tel Aviv-area book distributor hired by the yeshiva who declined to give his last name because of the book's nature, said the yeshiva had sold 1,000 copies to individuals and bookstores countrywide. He said an additional 1,000 copies were now being printed.

Mendy Feldheim, owner of Feldheim Publishers, Israel's largest Judaica publishing house, said he considered this a "nice" sales figure for a tome of rabbinic Halacha in Israel. He said his own company, which distributes to 200 bookstores nationwide, is not distributing "The King's Torah" because the book's publishers did not approach the company.

Prominent religious figures wrote letters of endorsement that preface the book. Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, son of former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, blessed the authors and wrote that many "disciples of Torah are unfamiliar with these laws." The elder Yosef has not commented on his son's statement.

Dov Lior, chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba and a respected figure among many mainstream religious Zionists, noted that the book is "very relevant especially in this time."

Rabbi Zalman Nechemia Goldberg, one of the country's most respected rabbinic commentators, initially endorsed the book, but rescinded his approval a month after its release, saying that the book includes statements that "have no place in human intelligence."

A handful of settler rabbis echoed Goldberg's censure, including Shlomo Aviner, chief rabbi of Beit El and head of Yeshivat Ateret Yerushalayim, who said he had "no patience" to read the book, and spoke out against it to his students.

Previously, Israel has arrested settler rabbis who publish commentaries supporting the killing of non-Jews. In addition to Ginsburgh, the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva head, in 1994, the government jailed Rabbi Ido Elba of Hebron for writing a 26-page article proclaiming it a "mitzva to kill every non-Jew from the nation that is fighting the Jew, even women and children."

"The atmosphere has changed," said Yair Sheleg, senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, who specializes in issues of religion and state. Previous governments took a tougher stance against such publications, he said, but "paradoxically, because the tension between the general settler population and the Israeli judicial system…is high now, the attorney general is careful not to heighten the tension."

It is not uncommon for some settler rabbis, in the unique conditions of West Bank settlement life, to issue religious decrees, or psakim, that diverge from normative Jewish practice. In 2008, Avi Gisser, considered a moderate rabbi from the settlement of Ofra, ruled that Jews may violate Sabbath laws and hire non-Jews to build hilltop settlements. And In 2002, Yediot Aharanot reported that former Israeli Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu sanctioned Jewish harvesting of Palestinian-owned olive trees.

Contact Daniel Estrin at feedback@forward.com

(7) Rabbi's book says Jews can kill gentiles
http://jta.org/news/article/2009/11/09/1009034/rabbis-book-says-jews-can-kill-gentiles

November 9, 2009

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- A West Bank rabbi has written a book that says Jews can kill non-Jews who threaten Israel.

Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira of the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar released the book Monday.

Shapira, head of the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva, also said in "The King's Torah" that it is permissible to kill children if they pose a threat, Ha'aretz reported.

The book is based on Bible quotations to which Shapira has added his own opinions.

"The King's Torah" was released shortly after the announcement of the arrest of an alleged Jewish terrorist who admitted to killing Palestinians and attacks on messianic Jews and left-wing Jews.

(8) The Complete Guide to Killing Non-Jews: translation of an article in Maariv (Israel)

From: Dr. Gunther Kümel <sapere-aude.H@gmx.de> Date: 07.01.2010 04:32 AM
Subject: When and how to kill a Gentile

http://globalfire.tv/nj/09en/jews/killingguide.htm

The Complete Guide to Killing Non-Jews

Here is a full translation of an article in the Maariv newspaper of Israel (Ma'ariv 09.11.09 (p. 2)

by Roi Sharon

{caption} Jewish settlers cut the Palestinian boy's arm off for throwing stone.
This is permitted according to Jewish Law {end}

When is it permissible to kill non-Jews? The book "Torat ha-Melekh" [The King's Teaching - INT], which was just published, was written by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, the dean of the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in the community of Yitzhar near Nablus, together with another rabbi from the yeshiva, Yossi Elitzur. The book contains no fewer than 230 pages on the laws concerning the killing of non-Jews, a kind of guide for anyone who ponders the question of if and when it is permissible to take the life of a non-Jew.

Although the book is not being distributed by the leading book companies, it has already received warm recommendations from right-wing elements, including recommendations from important rabbis such as Yitzhak Ginsburg, Dov Lior and Yaakov Yosef, that were printed at the beginning of the book. The book is being distributed via the Internet and through the yeshiva, and at this stage the introductory price is NIS 30 per copy. At the memorial ceremony that was held over the weekend in Jerusalem for Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was killed nineteen years ago, copies of the book were sold.

Throughout the book, the authors deal with in-depth theoretical questions in Jewish religious law regarding the killing of non-Jews. The words "Arabs" and "Palestinians" are not mentioned even indirectly, and the authors are careful to avoid making explicit statements in favor of an individual taking the law into his own hands. The book includes hundreds of sources from the Bible and religious law. The book includes quotes from Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, one of the fathers of religious Zionism, and from Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli, one of the deans of the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, the stronghold of national-religious Zionism that is located in Jerusalem.

The book opens with a prohibition against killing non-Jews and justifies it, among other things, on the grounds of preventing hostility and any desecration of God's name. But very quickly, the authors move from prohibition to permission, to the various dispensations for harming non-Jews, with the central reason being their obligation to uphold the seven Noahide laws, which every human being on earth must follow. Among these commandments are prohibitions on theft, bloodshed and idolatry. [The seven Noahide laws prohibit idolatry, murder, theft, illicit sexual relations, blasphemy and eating the flesh of a live animal, and require societies to institute just laws and law courts - INT]

"When we approach a non-Jew who has violated the seven Noahide laws and kill him out of concern for upholding these seven laws, no prohibition has been violated," states the book, which emphasizes that killing is forbidden unless it is done in obedience to a court ruling. But later on, the authors limit the prohibition, noting that it applies only to a "proper system that deals with non-Jews who violate the seven Noahide commandments."

The book includes another conclusion that explains when a non-Jew may be killed even if he is not an enemy of the Jews. "In any situation in which a non-Jew's presence endangers Jewish lives, the non-Jew may be killed even if he is a righteous Gentile and not at all guilty for the situation that has been created," the authors state. "When a non-Jew assists a murderer of Jews and causes the death of one, he may be killed, and in any case where a non-Jew's presence causes danger to Jews, the non-Jew may be killed."

One of the dispensations for killing non-Jews, according to religious law, applies in a case of din rodef [the law of the "pursuer," according to which one who is pursuing another with murderous intent may be killed extrajudicially] even when the pursuer is a civilian. "The dispensation applies even when the pursuer is not threatening to kill directly, but only indirectly," the book states. "Even a civilian who assists combat fighters is considered a pursuer and may be killed. Anyone who assists the army of the wicked in any way is strengthening murderers and is considered a pursuer. A civilian who encourages the war gives the king and his soldiers the strength to continue. Therefore, any citizen of the state that opposes us who encourages the combat soldiers or expresses satisfaction over their actions is considered a pursuer and may be killed. Also, anyone who weakens our own state by word or similar action is considered a pursuer."

Rabbis Shapira and Elitzur determine that children may also be harmed because they are "hindrances." The rabbis write as follows: "Hindrances - babies are found many times in this situation. They block the way to rescue by their presence and do so completely by force. Nevertheless, they may be killed because their presence aids murder. There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults."

In addition, the children of the leader may be harmed in order to apply pressure to him.. If attacking the children of a wicked ruler will influence him not to behave wickedly, they may be harmed. "It is better to kill the pursuers than to kill others," the authors state.

In a chapter entitled "Deliberate harm to innocents," the book explains that war is directly mainly against the pursuers, but those who belong to the enemy nation are also considered the enemy because they are assisting murderers.

Retaliation also has a place and purpose in this book by Rabbis Shapira and Elitzur. "In order to defeat the enemy, we must behave toward them in a spirit of retaliation and measure for measure," they state. "Retaliation is absolutely necessary in order to render such wickedness not worthwhile. Therefore, sometimes we do cruel deeds in order to create the proper balance of terror."

In one of the footnotes, the two rabbis write in such a way that appears to permit individuals to act on their own, outside of any decision by the government or the army.

"A decision by the nation is not necessary to permit shedding the blood of the evil kingdom," the rabbis write. "Even individuals from the nation being attacked may harm them."

Unlike books of religious law that are published by yeshivas, this time the rabbis added a chapter containing the book's conclusions. Each of the six chapters is summarized into main points of several lines, which state, among other things: "In religious law, we have found that non-Jews are generally suspected of shedding Jewish blood, and in war, this suspicion becomes a great deal stronger. One must consider killing even babies, who have not violated the seven Noahide laws, because of the future danger that will be caused if they are allowed to grow up to be as wicked as their parents."

Even though the authors are careful, as stated, to use the term "non-Jews," there are certainly those who could interpret the nationality of the "non-Jews" who are liable to endanger the Jewish people. This is strengthened by the leaflet "The Jewish Voice," which is published on the Internet from Yitzhar, which comments on the book: "It is superfluous to note that nowhere in the book is it written that the statements are directly only to the ancient non-Jews." The leaflet's editors did not omit a stinging remark directed at the GSS, who will certainly take the trouble to get themselves a copy. "The editors suggest to the GSS that they award the prize for Israel's security to the authors," the leaflet states, "who gave the detectives the option of reading the summarized conclusions without any need for in-depth study of the entire book."

One student of the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in Yitzhar explained, from his point of view, where Rabbis Shapira and Elitzur got the courage to speak so freely on a subject such as the killing of non-Jews. "The rabbis aren't afraid of prosecution because in that case, Maimonides [Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, 1135–1204] and Nahmanides [Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, 1194–1270] would have to stand trial too, and anyway, this is research on religious law," the yeshiva student said. "In a Jewish state, nobody sits in jail for studying Torah."