The article by Blumenthal is called, "How To Kill Goyim And Influence People: Leading Israeli Rabbis Defend Manual for For Killing Non-Jews."
Two weeks ago, Israel's extremist rabbis, who defend the contents of the book, held a conference in Jerusalem. Watch Blumenthal's video report of it here.
The hardcore rabbis do not reflect the opinion of the great majority of Israelis, but they are an influential minority in Israel's politics, especially in Netanyahu's government. Blumenthal writes:
In response to the rabbis' public rebuke of the state's legal system, the Israeli Attorney General and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kept silent. Indeed, since the publication of Torat Ha'Melech, Netanyahu has strenuously avoided criticizing its contents or the author's leading supporters. Like so many prime ministers before him, he has been cowed into submission by Israel's religious nationalist community. But Netanyahu appears to be particularly impotent. His weakness stems from the fact that the religious nationalist right figures prominently in his governing coalition and comprises a substantial portion of his political base. For Netanyahu, a confrontation with the rabid rabbis could amount to political suicide, or could force him into an alliance with centrist forces who do not share his commitment to the settlement enterprise in the West Bank.
There is more outspoken support for the rabbi among the most extremist segments of the Jewish settlement community. Blumenthal reports that a strong supporter of the author's book is Dov Lior:
His most well-known backer is Dov Lior the leader of the Shavei-Hevron yeshiva at Kiryat Arba, a radical Jewish settlement near the occupied Palestinian city of Hebron and a hotbed of Jewish terrorism. Lior has vigorously endorsed Torat Ha'Melech, calling it "very relevant, especially in this time."
Lior's enthusiasm for Shapira's tract stems from his own eliminationist attitude toward non-Jews. For example, while Lior served as the IDF's top rabbi, he instructed soldiers: "There is no such thing as civilians in wartime" A thousand non Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail!" Indeed, there are only a few non-Jews whose lives Lior would demand to be spared. They are captured Palestinian militants who, as he once suggested, could be used as subjects for live human medical experiments.
Another supporter of Shapira is the influential extremist rabbi Yaakov Yosef, the son of Ovadia Yosef, the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel. Blumenthal:
Besides Lior, Torat Ha'Melech has earned support from another nationally prominent fundamentalist rabbi: Yaakov Yosef. Yosef is the leader of the Hazon Yaakov Yeshiva in Jerusalem and a former member of Knesset. Perhaps more significantly, he is the son of Ovadiah Yosef, the former chief rabbi of Israel and spiritual leader of the Shas Party that forms a key segment of Netanyahu's governing coalition.
You should read the entire article. It is a damning revelation, and shows that every culture and society has its crazy extremists. Islam has its religious fundamentalists. Christianity has its religious fundamentalists. And Judaism has its religious fundamentalists. In their hands, the Koran, Bible, and Torah are all desecrated. And they all have great influence in the political communities of Israel, Iran, and the United States.
Obama, Netanyahu, and Ahmadinejad are not distancing themselves from the most extreme hardliners/war-crazed freaks in their societies. Instead of excommunicating them out of the political arena, as they should, their governments are giving them political cover, and direct/indirect military support.
Alan Hart, a veteran British journalist of Middle East affairs, wrote an article about Rabbi's Yosef support for the extermination of non-Jews, and compared his hardcore stance with Iran's President Ahmadinejad's comments that Israel needs to lose its extreme Zionist identity for it to survive, which were falsely translated into English that he wanted Israel to be "wiped off the map." The article is called "What's the Difference between President Ahmadinejad and Rabbi Yosef?" Here is the beginning of the article:
Short answer. Iran's President Ahmadinejad did NOT call for Israeli Jews to be annihilated. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Israel's Shas party, HAS called, more than once, for the Palestinians (and, in fact, all Arabs) to be exterminated.
As reported by the mainstream Western media, Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map". What that meant, it was asserted, was the destruction, the driving into the sea, of Israel's Jews.
What Ahmadinejad actually called for was the de-Zionization of Palestine. His actual words were to the effect that he wanted the Zionist state to disappear as the Soviet Union had done. In other words, there would be a place in a de-Zionized Palestine for all Jews who wanted to stay and live in peace with their fellow Arab citizens.
Hart's clarification is very timely, as the world is heading into another cycle of U.S./Israeli war propaganda, this time directed against Iran.
In an interview with Antiwar's Scott Horton today, Blumenthal said, "This is a huge scandal." And added, "It's a major national controversy. The Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef is calling for the death of all Palestinians on the eve of direct negotiations between Benjamin Netanyahu, and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas." Speaking of Yosef, Blumenthal said he, "is the most powerful rabbi in Israel."
Yosef recently said that he wished Abbas would "vanish from our world." The Obama administration condemned his remarks. From The Australian:
"We regret and condemn the inflammatory statements by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said in a statement.
"These remarks are not only deeply offensive, but incitement such as this hurts the cause of peace."
