Let’s Combat Religious Zionism’s Existential Threat
Today is the 17th Tammuz, traditionally a fast date commemorating a bevvy of tragedies which befell the Jewish people. However, the centre of this mourning, and the nature of these tragedies, has always focused the exile of the Jewish people from our homeland. It is advisable to understand for what reason Hashem elected to exile us.
The Petichta of the Eichah Rabbati relates:
“The people of Yehudah captured ten thousand alive, and brought them to the top of a cliff and threw them down. At that moment, the Holy Blessed One said: “I did not decree death for the children of Noach except by the sword, and they brought them to the top of the cliff and threw them down, and they were all torn apart. There is no rest from such cruelty.” At that moment, the Holy One, Blessed be He, said: “What are these doing here? Let them go into exile.” Once they sinned, they were exiled. And once they were exiled, Yirmiyahu began to lament over them with Eichah.”
The Midrash informs us that for our first exile, what tipped the scales, what ultimately doomed the Jewish people to exile was the excessive cruelty in which they murdered non-Jews.
Perhaps, then, it is appropriate, that on the eve of the 17th Tammuz, over Shabbat, Sayfollah Musallet, 20, and Mohammed al-Shalabi, 23, were murdered by terrorists who profess to be members of my community – the Religious Zionist community.
This is not an isolated incident.
Last week, a Hilltop Youth cell expelled the residents of Mu’arrajat after years of regular terror attacks, violent raids on schools during class hours, vandalism, theft, the poisoning of sheep seizure of grazing lands, and countless other crimes, again, committed by those who profess to be members of my community.
Two weeks ago, 3 Palestinians were murdered in Kafr Malik after a Hilltop Youth cell set fire to cars, homes and shot live rounds at men, women and children alike.
This wave of Jewish terror isn’t restricted to the West Bank. On May 22nd, Fouad Alian was murdered in the affluent Baka neighbourhood of Jerusalem by a Jewish terrorist.
This is not an exhaustive list; Jewish terror has only been growing and growing these past few years. And it is mostly being done by men in kippot and tzitzit, who profess to be religious.
Those that committed the attack this past Shabbat did so on Parashat Balak. Perhaps it would have done them well to have read the Midrash Rabbah relating to that parasha:
“All [true] prophets displayed compassion – both toward Israel and towards gentiles. As Yirmiyahu says (Yirmiyahu 48): “My heart moans for Moav like flutes,” and likewise Yechezkel (Yechezkel 27): “Son of man, raise a lament over Tzur.” But this one, Bilaam, was cruel, seeking to uproot an entire nation without cause, for no reason. Therefore, the episode of Bilaam was written down in the Torah: to teach why the Holy Blessed One removed the spirit of prophecy from the nations of the world, because one arose from among them, and see what he did.” (Bamidbar Rabbah 20)
The terrorists, who often LARP as, and certainly view themselves as, continuations of the prophets of biblical Israel could not be further from such figures; rather, they are as detestable as the wicked Bilaam, whose share in the World to Come involves being boiled in semen. They seek to uproot the nation of Palestine for no cause, no reason. The very warning against their degeneracy was staring them in the face in the Torah portion they were supposed to be reading! (as if they ever cared about Torah in the first place.) Those who turn a blind eye to these terrorists may not be as wicked as them, but they are certainly not inheritors of the Torah of the prophets who “displayed compassion both towards Israel and towards gentiles.”
We cannot claim that our hands are clean of their blood simply because we were not the ones to pull the trigger. Firstly, it is precisely the fetishism with which the Religious Zionist community have treated the Holy land of Israel that has transformed into an idolatrous monster of our own making. And secondly, the Jewish community have always held ourselves to a steadfast principle: “all of the nation of Israel are responsible for one another.” That this attack was committed by those I consider my brothers makes me feel equally guilty in their deaths, and if you care about the Jewish tradition – you should too.
Though written in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War, I find that the words written by Rabbi Lord Immanuel Jakobovits ztz”l, former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, continually relevant:
“Another dimension of the loss incurred by the abandonment of Jewish traditional values directly affects the very security of the State… …We should not have left it to gangs of murderous terrorists to draw the world’s attention to [the] stain on humanity [that is the plight of the Palestinians]. Had we cried out in protest against the intolerable degradation of hundreds of thousands of human beings inhumanly condemned to rot in wretched camps for a generation, had we aroused the world’s conscience over a tragedy of such magnitude, we might have prevented the growth of a monster organisation which has already destroyed so many innocent lives. Now, with the blessing of the world community, that problem threatens the very existence of Israel more acutely than the Arab armies ever did.” (To Be Equal or to Be Different: A Reassessment of Israel’s Role in the Contemporary Jewish Condition)
Actions have consequences. So does inaction.
I am commanding my co-religionists: do not be apathetic to this cancer within our community. I am warning you all: the longer you stay silent, the greater the punishment Hashem will wreak on us.
It is high time that the leaders of the Religious Zionist community actually do something to clamp down on those who call our shuls their own, who claim our Rabbonim as theirs, and who distort our tradition to justify their sacrilege. Murderous thugs have no place in our communities.
In the 19th chapter discussing the laws of forbidden marriages and relationships, Rambam (Maimonides) notes that any Jew that can be “characterised by insolence and cruelty, hating people and not showing kindness to them, we seriously suspect that he is a Gibeonite [and thus unable to marry a Jew, or be considered a Jew halachically.] For the distinguishing signs of the holy nation of Israel is that they are meek, merciful, and kind.”
The halacha is clear. And how we, as Religious Zionists need to be interacting with these people is laid out in front of us.
Are you a Religious Zionist? Do you know someone who participates or aids the outposts of the Hilltop Youth? According to Rambam, you have an obligation to inform your friends that they are forbidden to marry them. Make sure that no-one mistakenly counts them in a minyan. If they touch a drop of wine, you are forbidden from consuming it. At the very least, these acts may help save our brothers who are so steeped in idolatry they do not even realise how far they have fallen, and bring them towards repentance, but at most, they may help clarify Gibeonites in our community who deserve no share or part in it.
Regardless of whether Rambam would consider these people halachically Jewish or not, they continue to carry out their acts in our name. So long as we ignore their actions, we demonstrate to Hashem how little we care about our fellow man, and give Him no reason to preserve us in this land. In his political epic, ‘Writings of the Last Generation’, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Ashlag zy”a, the greatest Kabbalist of the 20th century, warns:
“Judaism must present… religion, justice, and peace to the nations. If not… Zionism will be cancelled altogether.”
Please understand how essential it is that we combat these terrorists, whose actions threaten Judaism, Zionism and our very stake in the land. If we fail to do so appropriately, Hashem will surely expel us from the land for a bitter, third, time.
