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Why zealotry always leads to the slaughter of the innocents
Thursday, 19 November 2009
Rontzki isn't a fringe figure from a far-out group. He is the government-appointed head of the Military Rabbinate - authorised to lay down the religious law to recruits and explain to soldiers going into battle what their God expects of them. The post holds an IDF rank of brigadier.
At a passing-out ceremony, Rontzki heaped praise on the Israeli soldiers involved in the assault on Gaza last January.
He made no effort to downplay the devastating nature of the 22-day attack, Operation Cast Lead, which killed 100 Palestinians for every Israeli who perished. Nor was he fazed by the fact that the majority of the Palestinian dead were civilians while the majority of the Israeli dead were soldiers.
"In times of war, whoever doesn't fight with all his heart and soul is damned - if he keeps his sword from bloodshed, if he shows mercy toward his enemy when no mercy should be shown."
He quoted from the Book of Jeremiah: "Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord with a slack hand and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood."
The ceremony was held in the West Bank settlement of Karnei Shomron - an illegal development built on Palestinian land from which the inhabitants had been expelled.
It came a few days after the UN had debated the report of the Goldstone Commission, which found that both sides had committed war crimes in Gaza. Neither did Goldstone dodge the fact that the scale of Israel's crimes had been overwhelmingly greater than the scale of the crimes of Hamas.
Of course, Israel was overwhelmingly the stronger side. The IDF had overwhelmingly more opportunities. The point is, they took them.
Responding directly to criticism of Israel in the Western media in the wake of Goldstone's report, Rabbi Rontzki declared: "Apropos all that we've heard in the media of late, thank God that the people of Israel has united recently around the simple understanding of how it must fight. One of the major innovations of that offensive was the conduct of war - not as some kind of mission or detention.
"We all remember the beginning of the war, with a major attack of 80 planes bombing various places and then artillery, mortar and tank fire and so forth, as in war. Everyone fought with all their heart and soul, and that includes bravery of course, but also fighting with all the resources one has - to fight as if to truly determine the mission.
"In Israel's wars, warriors are God-fearing people, righteous people, people who don't have sins on their hands. One needs to fight with an understanding of what one is fighting for."
Any who die smiting Palestinians will be rewarded in heaven . .
Rontzki was wrong in claiming that "the people of Israel has united" in support of the military excesses in Gaza. (Two groups of people routinely associate all Jews with the crimes of Zionism - Zionists and anti-semites.)
The Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din, reports that Rontzki's Rabbinate, at the outset of the Gaza attack, distributed a pamphlet to soldiers labelling the Palestinians 'murderers' and warning against any temptation to show them mercy.
The publication, says Yesh Din, likened modern-day Palestinians to the Philistines of the Bible. (Gaza, with Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gath, is listed in the Bible as one of the five Philistine cities.)
As Yesh Din observes, the assumption of divine approval of indiscriminate unlimited violence is clear.
"Therefore David inquired of the Lord, saying shall I go and smite the Philistines? And the Lord said unto David, Go and smite the Philistines." (1 Samuel 23:2.)
What is all this, but a variation on the teaching of Islamic jihadist scholars that those who die in the act of killing God's enemy will be instantly transported to paradise.
And what is that, in turn, but a version of the ideology which fuelled the First Crusade - a Christian army of awesome size, having swathed its way across Europe and Asia Minor, finally, on July 15, 1099, heady with a fervid sense of religious certainty, put the entire population of the Muslim city of Jerusalem, children, women and men, to the sword, in a slaughter which still can churn the stomach.
But the Crusaders for Christ will have gone to their work in Jerusalem with a will and an easy conscience, Urban II having guaranteed any Christian killer killed in action a plenary indulgence at the point of death, a guaranteed ticket to eternal bliss.
All the Abrahamic religions preach this demented cruelty. Israel is built on it.
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Eamonn when are you going to do your article on the Hamas Charter? I would like to see you explain that away or justife it. Having just come back from Israel and meeting the General Secretary of the PGFTU who does NOT want a Boycott of Israel and told me a Boycott of goods from the Settlements would harm around 30.000 Palestinians so while he had a problem with the settlements in a political sense he would not ask people to Boycott goods from them.
Posted by Terry McCorran | 25.11.09, 16:35 GMT
Palestinian people have been brutalised and dehumanised by the repugnant Israeli regime for decades. Anyone who speaks this truth is labelled, inevitably, an 'anti-semite'. Well, that old chestnut just won't operate to deflect criticism any more.
Posted by matt | 22.11.09, 10:58 GMT
Malachy, where is your comparison coming from? The Jews gunned down by the Nazis were not lobbing thousands of missiles into Germany. They didn't proclaim that justice for the Jews would only come with the destruction of Germany and the death of the Germans. Thats what Hamas says of Israel and followed it up by killing over a 1000 Israelis. So, again, where is your comparison coming from?
Posted by Av | 20.11.09, 09:12 GMT
Mannie, perhaps there would be no missiles if Isreal witdrew from the occupied Palestinian territory. The Palestinians have a right to fight the occupiers, its what subjugated people have always done. But then I guess the Palestinians are not "people" thats why you support the murder of so many in the cause of Isreal. Bedebyes to quote your defense of Isreali murder and war crimes "Are not Palestinians allowed to defend themselves" against an occupier?
Posted by Brian | 20.11.09, 01:44 GMT
Considering that millions of Muslims have been taught that jews are pigs and scum in state schools throughout the Islamic world,and that Hezbollah, the "party of God" and Hamas are happy to make martyrs of their young in trying to kill jews, it seem incredible that this article sees Israel as the demented, fanatically religious nutters.
Posted by freddy | 19.11.09, 22:06 GMT
Eamonn, I see the difference this way. Jihadi's export their violence to civilians all over the Middle East. Israel's violence against civilians is contained to Gaza and is typically in response to rockets launched at Israeli civilians. Does that make the Israeli's justified? No. But it is a very big difference. On another note, violence is most certainly not the sole province of Abrahamic religions. All religous violence is based on the belief that a diety is on the side of the one's committing the violence and it is therefore right and justified.
Posted by bill w | 19.11.09, 20:03 GMT
Why do all of Eamonn's articles on this subject read like they were produced by some hack at the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Does he not have a mind of his own on this subject? If he did he would be able to approach this issue from more than the one side. Come on, Eamonn, you are capable of better than this.
Posted by Davie Morrison | 19.11.09, 14:16 GMT
So, equating world wide Islamic Jihadism with the comments of one Rabbi shows us that there is no difference? Are not Israelis allowed to defend themselves, is it not true that if someone attempts to destroy you, it is simple logic to kill them first?
Obviously for this writer it is not. No mention then of the tens of thousands of innocent civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hands of Nato bombs and bullets. No mention of the 8000 plus rockets launched by Hamas at Israeli towns that Cast Lead stopped.
Just typical of the arrogance and hypocracy latter day European Christian liberal bleeding heart nonsense.
Posted by bedebyes | 19.11.09, 12:32 GMT
Why don't you mention in your article the cause of Operation Cast Lead. The firing of 8,000 missiles from Gaza on CIVILIAN Southern Israeli towns. The suffering of the terrorized citizens in those towns. Perhaps you can also mention the enormous restraint of the Israeli Government in not retaliating earlier.
Posted by Mannie | 19.11.09, 11:06 GMT
....and with that faith and certainty in the just nature of his cause, a certain Mr Hoess ran a camp oin southern Poland..as his colleagues did right across occupied eastern Europe. It is kind of the same, is it not? The only difference is in the manner of the murder; but then the Israeli defence Forces are being urged to behave just like the Sonderkommando did initially, the 'death camps' came later!
Posted by Malachy Mulligan | 19.11.09, 09:42 GMT