Friday, March 21, 2008

Those Wacky Jews

To round out my trifecta of crazy adherents of Abrahamic religions I now present "Those Wacky Jews". A high ranking Rabbi has come out and said that Jewish law forbids employing or renting homes to Arabs (I'm not sure if this is meant to be Arabs or Muslims. The article say Arabs but I wonder what would happen in the case of an Arabic Jew.).

This sort of thing does not help Israel. It's bound to piss off all the Arab countries that surround Israel, and they're already angry as it is. It's going to incite more hatred among the Israelis who follow this wack-job, and make life harder for those trying to sort out some sort of peace deal.

This isn't the first time this Rabbi has spouted dangerous nonsense. He supported calls from some of his fellow rabbis back in 2005 for soldiers to ignore orders to withdraw from the Gaza strip. Inciting mutiny in the armed forces is bad. Inciting mutiny to keep the fighting going is very bad.

He has also said that Jewish law requires the shooting of civilians in areas from which attacks on Israel come from. This is not just bad or stupid, it is suicidal. The only way forward for Israel is to claim the moral high ground. That means they should be generous and conciliatory at the negotiation, ruthless on defense, but under no circumstances should they ever engage someone who is not immediately engaged in hostilities against them. They should under no circumstances attack civilians. In fact, no one in any military should attack civilians.

Just like the christians need to tell people like those at Jesus Camp and muslims need to tell Al Qaeda to "shut the fuck up and stop ruining things for the rest of us" the jews need to shut this guy up. He's just making things worse for everyone.

End Post
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1 comment:

Hewhoblogs said...

Did you know that there are sections of Israel where women have to sit at the back of the bus and men at the front? I only just found that out the other day. Talmudic law decrees it.

On a slightly related note, I got caught talking to a conspiracy theorist nut on the train the other day. I should have noticed the warning signs. Anyone who calls the citizens of Israel "Israelites" instead of "Israelis" is not someone to have a conversation with on the train.