From: wmcguire@world.std.com (Wayne McGuire)
Subject: Antisemitism(?!)
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 01:37:10 GMT

To: Ron Evans

In answer to your question about whether theocratic forces are
gaining ground in Israel, I offer you the following:

<knotes>

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<des>

<author>Getzler, Dvorah
<title>License for Violence
<newspaper>The Jerusalem Post International Edition
<date>Week ending July 29, 1989
<pages>11-12

<note>

Moshe Lissak and Ehud Sprinzak were both Hebrew University
professors at the time of the article.

<excerpt>

 
     " ... Properly used the word ["primitive"] has to be applied
     to those who see the world in simple primitive terms of
     black and white, to those who hate what is foreign to them,
     who fear the unknown and the strange.  Regrettably, that
     definition can be applied to too many rabbis and their
     followers...."
 
     Taking the point further, Lissak charges that no rabbi has
     taken up Kahane's challenge to refute the halachic
     underpinning of his racist hate message.  To the contrary,
     some--in particular the head of the yeshiva at Joseph's tomb
     in Nablus and others in Hebron--preach revenge as a
     religious precept, insisting that Halacha does distinguish
     between Jewish and non-Jewish blood. True, he concedes, most
     rabbis have been careful to stop short of that; but none has
     risen publicly to offer an explicit refutation of that ugly,
     racist interpretation of Judaism.
 
     As to those who doubt the political role of the rabbis,
     Lissak recalls that Israeli politics in the 1980s has
     undergone a sea-change.
 
     "Political life has--to coin a phrase--become theologized.
     Where once we witnessed the politicization of religion,
     which incidentally drove many away from the religious
     parties, now we are witnessing a theologization of politics,
     in which political parties seek the approval and advice of
     the rabbis even on totally secular matters; that gives the
     dictates of the rabbis a quite new authority which, in turn,
     has led to a radicalization of certain Orthodox groups."
 
     That development, combined with the rise of fervent
     religious nationalism, he believes, is central to the growth
     of political violence.
 
     Sprinzak categorizes Kahane as "the ideologist of violence,
     a man who believes that violence against the enemies of the
     Jews, avenging Jewish blood, is _kiddush
     Hashem_--sanctification of the Name of God.  For Kach,
     violence as revenge is a goal, rather than an instrument....
 
     Important to an understanding of Kach is that it makes no
     pretence of affirming its loyalty to the institutions of the
     State of Israel.
 
     On the contrary, it specifically states that the government
     lacks all legitimacy, Sprinzak says, offering a glimpse into
     the powder-keg that such a movement may be....
 
     For Leibowitz matters are starkly simpler.
 
     "Since 1967, Israel has been sliding steadily downward; we
     are moving from humanism, through nationalism, to
     bestiality.
 
     "Our problem is not one of human relations.  It is that
     since 1967 the State has become the instrument of violent
     Jewish domination over another people.  Everything that has
     happened since derives from that."
 
     Those who vent their rage against Arab passersby are "wild
     beasts," Leibowitz says.  But their actions are to be
     understood as "an expression of the political lead given by
     the State."

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