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Book by rabbis cited by suspect in Duma arson attack

Aug 08,2015 - Last updated at Aug 08,2015

The King’s Torah” is a book cited by one of the suspects in last week’s burning of an Arab toddler in Duma, in the occupied West Bank. The book features religious edicts justifying the murder of infants since they will grow up later to fight as enemies. Burning homes, mosques and churches is an obligatory holy mission since such buildings will obstruct the arrival of the Messiah in Jerusalem, the book says. 

Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg, who wrote this book along with four other rabbis, has created a culture of racism and hatred towards all Palestinians. It was not surprising that some of his followers committed the horrible crime in Duma. One of his disciples is Rabbi Meir Ettinger, a grandson of assassinated racist Meir Kahane, who had always advocated killing Palestinians and expelling them as an act of cleansing Israel.

Burning one Arab family will not cause much concern to those zealots compared to their new upcoming plan, the mother of all operations as they call it, which is the burning of Al Aqsa Mosque and rebuilding the “Third Temple”. Dov Loir, Ginsburg, and Baruch Marzel had advocated the 1994 murder of 29 Palestinians in Hebron by Baruch Goldstein on the grounds that such acts will hasten the arrival of the redeemer. (Ezekiel 20:34) 

The Israeli government is encouraging these ultraorthodox rabbis by refraining from inflicting any harsh punishment on their followers who carried out, as a religious duty, nine acts of arson against churches, mosques and non-Jewish families in Palestine.

But such a deeply rooted belief is not new to Israeli society. Researcher Rosemarie M. Esber recently published a compendium of data on the 1948 massacres in Palestine. In the book, titled “Under the Cover of War: The Zionist Expulsion of the Palestinians”, she documents — from Israeli archives — the most heinous atrocities committed against Palestinians to force them to leave their homeland.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is condoning the atrocities committed by ultraorthodox communities. His lack of action against them gives an indication that Israeli society is drifting from its claimed liberal, tolerant, multicultural ideology into a narrow-minded chauvinistic one that regards Torah laws as superseding civilised laws that all nations are supposed to abide by.

Such doctrines and ideologies on the Israeli side will generate similar reactions by the Palestinians, whether in Jerusalem or anywhere in Europe, especially when they see Al Aqsa Mosque in flames.

 

When the code of ethics is nullified by religious edicts, barbarism is sanctioned.

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