Israel’s Jewish Fundamentalism

The Israeli state criminal law makes no distinction between a Jew and a gentile, but the distinction is made by the Orthodox Rabbis officers who follow the Halakhah teaching and give religious advice to the soldiers before, during and after military operations.

By Hasan Afif El-Hasan, PhD
Special to PalestineChronicle.com

"......Israel Shahak turned human rights activist when he witnessed an event where a religious Jew did not allow his phone to be used on the Sabbath to call an ambulance for an Arab who suffered a heart attack in his Jerusalem neighborhood. Feeling offended as a Jew and a citizen of Israel and a human being, Shahak asked members of the Rabbinical Court of Jerusalem, whose members are nominated by the State of Israel, about whether the behavior of the religious Jew was legitimate according to the Jewish religion laws. He was troubled by the Court’s answer especially because it was backed by a passage from the Talmudic laws.

The Court ruled that “the Jew in question had behaved correctly, indeed piously” when he did not try to save the life of a gentile. Shahak concluded that Israel as a Jewish state constitutes a danger to all Jews everywhere and to all other peoples in the Middle East, especially since the power of its Jewish character is on the rise and the fact that it is a nuclear state. A constitutional law was passed in 1985 by large majority of the Knesset that no party which opposes the principle of a Jewish state or proposes to change it by democratic means, is allowed to participate in Knesset elections. The “Jewish state” means Israel belongs only to people considered by the Israeli establishments as “Jewish” regardless of where they live, and the status of its non-Jews citizens must be inferior. Israeli policies toward the Palestinians and the Arab neighbors have been guided by Jewish ideological considerations. According to Shahak, Ariel Sharon proposed in the Likud 1993 Convention that “Israel should adopt the Biblical borders concept as its official policy”......

Israel’s Jewish Fundamentalism ideology that preaches the “Redemption of the Land of Israel” and the disregard to the human rights and even the lives of the non-Jews is behind the pursuit of territorial expansion, the settlements activities, the so many laws and regulations that discriminate against the Israeli Arabs, the massacres of Arab civilians and POW’s and the inhumane treatment of the helpless Palestinians in the occupied land. "