The Rabbis ‘Fatawas’, Costly Hallucinations

‘Fatawas’, or religious decrees, of Israel’s rabbis are drawing attention of the public to their frequent issuance and their impact on the Israeli society. These often include excerpts of verses from the Torah which sanction the killing of non-Jews, including old men, women and children. They have been pushing Israelis further toward extremism and completely eradicating the separation between religion and the state which diluted Israel’s lose secular status and image. The Zionist entity seem to be turning into a fundamentalist religious state whose ‘Fatawas’ are ironically compatible with those issued by Al-Qaeda, causing people around the world ‘to hate religions producing them’. Both, Judaism and Islam are suffering from such decrees with their followers paying a heavy price and blamed for their issuance.

Until recently, the Israeli Rabbinical Council has never interfered in politics since 1948. Only after the Camp David Treaty was signed in 1979 stipulating an Israeli withdrawal from Sinai that some Israeli Rabbis of no standing began to issue ‘Fatawas’ that banned any Israeli troop pullout from Egyptian territories. This religious interference greatly increased after the Oslo agreement signed in 1993, between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). As a matter of fact, Rabbis call the Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank “a withdrawal from the heart of Israel”! In the wake of the Palestinian uprising ‘Intifada’ of Al-Aqsa in late 2000, some Rabbis started to issue Jewish decrees that call for the annihilation of the Palestinian Arabs, whether babies being nursed, or young and old men and women from among unarmed civilians. In fact, adherents of the extreme religious right in Israel are mostly colonizers/ (settlers) occupying Palestinian lands and have a lot to lose by any Israeli withdrawal. They are now pressuring the Rabbis to issue ‘Fatawas’ to prevent any pull-back from the occupied Palestinian West Bank and the Gaza Strip (W.B. and G.S.). One of the most heinous ‘Fatawas’, quoted the Torah in relation to the battle of Jericho by Joshua where the Lord of Israel ordered him to kill all inhabitants, possess all their possessions, and have no mercy on any of their children or in leaving plants and trees in their fields or any of their livestock alive. This ugly ‘Fatwa’ was issued by Mordechai Elyahu, one of Israel’s chief Rabbis, on March 6, 2008. This ‘Fatwa’ has quoted one of ‘the profane verses’ in the Torah which all Jewish and Christian Biblical Scholars who teach Bible studies in major western universities have categorically rejected as being ‘profane additions by the scribes’ as the Torah was being put in a written form after being orally transmitted for seven hundred years during the Hebrew Exile in Babylon. Some Jewish scribes also added all the fables found in the library of Babylon to the current Torah, according to the same scholars. These  verses are the very reason that stand behind the division of the Jewish community into two sections; the ‘Reform Jews’ who do not take the Torah literally and the ‘Conservative Jews’ who hold on to the Book’s contents including ‘the profane verses’ which totally contradict the Ten Commandments. How can the deity issue the Ten Commandments to Moses explicitly defining behavior principles such as “Thou shall not kill” and “Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s property” and then orders Moses to “kill all the little boys (of the Midianites in Sinai) and all females except for the virgins…and children to be kept for good use”. It goes without saying that if such profane verses were found in the holy Quran, not only all its books in the West would be burned instantly, but all Muslims might be “lynched”, as well.

These Jewish ‘Fatawas’ have sanctioned Israeli army bombardment of  Palestinian civilians in their homes during the war against Gaza in 2008-2009. The same religious decrees were used earlier to kill former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. On January 5th, 2008, Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe issued a ‘Fatwa’ that also called for the killing of the then prime minister Ehud Olmert, , his deputy, Chaim Ramon, his foreign minister, Tsipi Livni and the defence minister Ehud Barak, if they approve a peace settlement with the Palestinians. More notorious is Rabbi Dov Lior, the most extremist among  his fellow rabbis who puts to shame the likes of bin Laden. Lior issued a ‘Fatwa’ to kill all Palestinian civilians, including women and children and is now advocating the destruction of the second sacred Moslem shrine (Al-Haram Al-Sharif) in Jerusalem in order to build the Jewish temple on its site. Indeed, these Jewish ‘Fatawas’ are having their effect on Israeli recruits serving in the occupied W.B. and G.S., according to a study conducted by the University of Bar Elan. This study showed that they would follow such decrees instead of orders issued by their commanders. Israeli writer Sefi Rachlevsky summed up the situation regarding Lior; “Israel has established under the authority of Lior a world which consists of Jewish citizens, but not the Arabs….., all our students learn early in Israeli schools that only the Jews are human beings…….,there is no other alternative; you are either with Lior or against him”.  Rachlevsky did not exclude ‘moderate rabbis, and a minister of education who visited the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron with Lior, from being on the same level of thinking. He goes on to brand any prime minister who puts Israel under the enslavement of Israeli colonizers/ “settlers”, as a racist like Lior.