Would You Say Kaddish for Terrorists — at Gunpoint?

[A response to Leah Jordan’s blog posting “I’m Proud to have led Kaddish”:]

After reading Leah Jordan’s blog posting (I’m Proud to Have Led Kaddish), I feel compelled to stop everything I am doing in order to respond – as respectfully and non-confrontationally as I can muster. After all, the author is a human being with inherent rights to hold and express her opinion.

My son is a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, stationed on the border with Gaza, whose mission is to protect the lives of the Israeli Jews living in the numerous agricultural communities abutting the protective fence on the border.

I am in shock. I simply cannot understand how any Jew could participate in – let alone lead and defend in writing – an event in where they uttered Kaddish, the special prayer for the dead, over Hamas terrorists. These people were killed while trying to attack and destroy the border fence with Israel. I believe that none of the Jewish people I know personally would be capable of such a thing, even if they were forced to do so at gunpoint!

We are living in a critical time in Jewish history. I believe we are heading for a kind of a shakedown. Sadly, young, misguided ‘idealists’ like Leah may find themselves, against their explicit will, standing outside of the circle of Jewish history.

In my eyes, people like Leah are no different than the so-called Neturei Karta ‘Jews’ who travel from Brooklyn to Tehran and Ramallah to meet and exchange hugs with the Persian and Arab dictators, Ahmadinejad and Abbas. These so-called ‘leaders’ – they are actually cruel and driven dictators – are openly sworn to make sure the Land of Israel will be either judenrein (free of Jews), or that the Jews will be annihilated altogether, HaShem forbid.

Leah: for the sake of the good and the truth, I enjoin you and your companions to look yourselves in the mirror and ask: ‘is honoring murderous terrorists who seek our destruction a true Jewish value, one that we received from our parents and wish to transmit to our children?’