From: "wayne mcguire" <wayne.mcguire@channel1.com>
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: jewish fundamenta 2/3
Date: 25 Dec 92 11:06:49 EST
Reply-To: "wayne mcguire" <wayne.mcguire@channel1.com>
Distribution: talk
Organization: Channel 1 Communications

(Continued from previous message)

     recognized as a conscientious student of the Torah, whatever
     the disdain in which one may hold him. A hypocrite he may
     be, particularly given his scandalous sex life--but he also
     may sincerely believe, as he has said, that if Israel had
     expelled the Arabs, destroyed the Islamic shrines on the
     Temple Mount, and annexed the West Bank and Gaza in 1967,
     "the Messiah would have come right through the open door and
     brought us redemption." More recently he declared, in an
     attempt to whip up anger at the intifada, that "our God is a
     god of vengeance. It's nonsense to assume that vengeance is
     not a Jewish concept." Obviously, Kahane's Torah is a tract
     without mercy, but it is surely the source of his political
     inspiration.

     Were the problem for the Jews that of a single religious
     fanatic, it would hardly matter what Kahane believed; the
     problem, however, is that many Orthodox Jews share his
     beliefs. Consider the director of a yeshiva who, a year ago,
     demanded acquittal for the Jewish murderer of a
     thirteen-year-old Palestinian girl on the grounds that
     "Jewish blood and a goy's blood are not the same.... Any
     trial that assumes that Jews and goyim are equal is a
     travesty of justice." Or at Bar Ilan, an Orthodox
     university, the rabbinical scholar who recently published an
     article inviting the genocide of the Palestinians, citing
     the mandate of the Torah to exterminate the Amalekites.
     Recent research by a respected Israeli sociologist reveals
     that 32 percent of the boys and 28 percent of the girls
     enrolled in secular schools profess a hatred of Arabs, a
     shocking statistic--until it is compared with the percentage
     in religious schools, which rises to 51 percent of the boys
     and 63 percent of the girls. Orthodox rabbis in the United
     States as well as Israel, says Friedman, have consistently
     backed Kahane's bid for public office; some have even
     belonged to terrorist groups committed to killing Arabs with
     bombs and guns. However offensive many Orthodox Jews may
     find Kahane, the truth is that the Orthodox community in
     America and Europe (having forgiven him for the part he has
     diverted to his own pleasures) has supplied the millions of
     dollars that Kahane has spent to propagate his fanatical
     doctrines.

     Kahane still insists that his goal is to become prime
     minister; but even if he never again runs for public office,
     he will still have had a huge impact on Israeli public life.
     He has helped to brutalize political intercourse in Israel.
     I remember seeing him march up Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv
     during the election campaign of 1981, surrounded by a dozen
     young toughs, shouting slogans, pushing bystanders out of
     the way. This exemplified a campaign in which the Right
     proudly showed its muscles by attacking the offices and
     breaking up the rallies of the Left.

     At the same time, Kahane has articulated ideas, once
     unmentionable, that are now part of public discourse. He has
     helped popularize the routinely proclaimed right-wing tenet
     that the pro-peace forces are traitors to Israel. Most
     notably, Kahane has been successful in promoting the ideas
     of "transfer" of the Arab population out of Greater Israel.
     Not only is the idea widely discussed, but it could, in some
     form, be enacted into law by the current Knesset. True, some
     of his ideas have not quite caught on, like criminalizing
     sex between a Jewish woman and an Arab man, a proposal taken
     directly from the Nuremberg Laws. But Kahane struck a
     responsive nerve when he declared that Judaism and democracy
     are incompatible.

     Meanwhile, within Kahane's entourage in Israel are JDL
     hoodlums who are wanted by American law enforcement
     authorities. (Some, having begun their careers of violence
     in the 1960s, are not so young anymore.) They are suspected
     of having committed acts of terror, ranging from the bombing
     of Arab Americans to several murders, including the 1985
     assassination in California of Alex Odeh, Western Regional
     Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
     In his research, Friedman has followed leads tenaciously,
     interviewing police officials and extracting FBI documents.
     Many trails of criminality lead to Kahane's circle and in
     some instances to Kahane himself. But according to Friedman,
     investigations have been frustrated repeatedly by Israel's
     refusal to cooperate. One FBI document, written in August
     1987, charges that Israeli responses to requests for the
     records of phone calls, arrests, travel, and residencies of
     JDL murder suspects "have been untimely [and] incomplete and
     in certain cases no response was rendered." The explanation
     for this conduct lies in the admonition of Rabbi Eliezer
     Waldman, a Kahane ally and a right-wing Knesset member, who
     said, "Jews should never be handed over to gentiles under
     any circumstances."

     It is ironic that President Bush bowed recently to Israel's
     demand that the United States break off contact with the
     PLO, which had failed to condemn an act of Palestinian
     terrorism emanating from Libya. At the same time, henchmen

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