From: bc744@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Mark Ira Kaufman)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Re: jewish fundamentalism
Date: 24 Dec 1992 14:15:18 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc12.ins.cwru.edu


Wayne McGuire writes...


#To: Alan Stein

#Packet: CHANNEL1
#Date: 12-24-92 (02:56)             Number: 21537
#
#>>
#>>    As stated in HAMAS pamphlet no. 65, distributed in October of
#>>    1990,
#>>
#>>           "Every Jewish settler is an occupier,
#>>            and it is our obligation to kill him."
#>>
#
# AS> Can anyone, in his or her wildest dreams, conceive of even
# AS> the most right-wing Israeli making a similar statement about
# AS> Arabs?  It's absurd to even consider the question.
#
#Compare the rhetoric of Hamas with that of Meir Kahane, as
#reported by Robert Friedman in The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir
#Kahane: From FBI Informant to Knesset Member (Brooklyn, New York:
#Lawrence Hill Books, 1990), page 217:
#
#     .... In a speech in Haifa on June 28, 1985, Kahane attacked
#     Jews and Arabs equally.  "No one can understand the soul of
#     those (Arab) beasts, those roaches," glowered Kahane.  "We
#     shall either cut their throats or throw them out.  I only
#     say what you think."  According to a report in Kolbo Haifa,
#     a Hebrew-language weekly newspaper in Haifa, Kahane then
#     directed a stream of obscenities against the mayor of Haifa,
#     Arieh Goral, and left-wing politicians Shulamit Aloni and
#     Yossi Sarid, whom he called "scoundrel," "dog,"
#     "disgusting," and "Jewish prostitutes who employ Arab
#     pimps."
#
#     Kahane concluded his harangue, which was megalomaniacal even
#     by his standards, by promising his audience: "In two years
#     time, they [the Arabs] will turn on the radio and hear that
#     Kahane has been named minister of defense.  Then they will
#     come to me, bow to me, lick my feet, and I will be merciful
#     and will allow them to leave.  Whoever does not leave will
#     be slaughtered."
#
#The rhetoric of Kahane was at least as murderous and inflammatory
#as that of Hamas. How much of the extremism and popularity of
#Hamas is a reaction to the extremism of Israeli political figures
#like Kahane?  Jewish fundamentalists have triggered an Islamic
#fundamentalist backlash.

    To say that the Islamic fundamentalist movement is a response
    to Kahane's racism just does not hold with the facts.  It was
    actaully the other way around.  Islamic fundamentalism was an
    ugly reality by the early 1970's.  The massacre at the Munich
    Olympic Games took place long before Kahane began spewing his
    hatred.  So you chronology is just a bit off.


#Nor is this genocidal rhetoric limited solely to Kahane and his
#followers. Ehud Sprinzak in The Ascendance of Israel's Radical
#Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) produces numerous
#quotes in this repulsive vein from Jewish fundamentalists in
#Israel outside the Kahane school of ultra-racist ultra-violence.
#I'll be happy to post them all here if anyone doubts my word.
#Some of them make the Hamas covenant read like a PTA
#announcement. (I particularly like the remarks of one rabbi who
#insists that all goyim are subhuman beasts.)
#
#By all means complain about Hamas. But Israel had better start
#dealing with the mote in its own eye if it is going to make a
#convincing case to the Western democratic world about the dangers
#of Islamic fundamentalism. Jewish fundamentalism is as fully ugly
#and dangerous as Islamic fundamentalism.

    This is again false.  There does not exist anything in Israel
    like the Islamic Resistance Movement.  There does not exist a
    "covenant" among even the most racist Israelis, in which they
    plegde to kill Arabs as an expression of religious duty.  The
    Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement should be read by
    anybody who wants to see what Israel is really up against.  A
    parallel to this covenant simply does not exist in Judaism or
    in Israeli politics.  There is no entity that is sworn to the
    murder of Arabs.  


#Btw, can you you clarify something for me? Why do emotional
#Israeli supporters around here repeatedly try to pass of as
#factual statements remarks that can easily be refuted from
#well-documented sources? How many times do they have to be burned
#before they realize that the best path is to stick to the truth?

    Citing extremeists, and suggesting that these racists possess
    any significant following in the Jewish world is a falsehood.
    Such views hold virtually no influence in Israel.  Even right
    wingers in Israeli politics cannot stomach such racism.  Such 
    extreme views are rarely even discussed, except when somebody
    attempting to discredit Israel uses them as representative of
    Israeli views in general.

    The question is not whether such Jewish racists exist, but do
    they carry any weight in the world of Israeli politics.  They
    do not.  And to suggest that they do is to paint an erroneous
    picture the situation.  One must compare the influence of the
    extremeists in Israel with the influence of HAMAS and Islamic
    Jihad and Hezbollah.  The existence of Islamic racism towards 
    Jews, as documented in the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance
    Movement, is not only widespread in the Arab world but surely
    triggered the racism of people like Kahane, and NOT the other
    way around, as falsely asserted.