Thursday, December 9, 2010

Israel turns blind eye to racist state-employed rabbis


Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 9 December 2010

"Jews must not rent homes to "gentiles." That was the religious decree issued this week by at least fifty of Israel's leading rabbis, many of them employed by the state as municipal religious leaders. Jews should first warn, then "ostracize" fellow Jews who fail to heed the directive, the rabbis declared.

The decree is the latest in a wave of racist pronouncements from some of Israel's most influential rabbis.....

Shapira, who advocates killing non-Jewish babies, receives large sums from the education ministry for his yeshiva -- a seminary where he spreads his message of hate. Religious students also receive extra subsidies unavailable to normal students to encourage their attendance at such yeshivas.

The rabbis exert their influence on the youngest and most impressionable too. When the new school year started in September, 52 percent of Jewish children in first grade attended a strictly religious school.

Pupils in some of the most religious schools, Rachlevsky pointed out, are taught that Jews sit above nature, which comprises four categories: "inanimate," "vegetable," "animal" and "speakers" -- or non-Jews, who are considered no more than talking animals."

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