When Victims Rule (pdf)

THE CAUSES OF HOSTILITY TOWARDS JEWS: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
“The level of support for a murderous lunatic and the identification
with [Goldstein] among some sectors of the public have been greater
than I’d estimated at first. I see in this the danger of an Israeli racism, or
to be more precise, a Jewish racism.” [DERFNER, L, 4-1-94,. 2]
As the Jewish Bulletin noted in 1994, “since the Hebron murders, Israeli
teachers have devoted lessons to explaining why Goldstein’s deed was an abomination.
But at one highly rated Jerusalem school, the Hebrew Gymnasium,
about half the students of an 11th grade class gathered off campus after one of
the anti-Goldstein lessons, and chanted ‘Death to the Arabs,’ and ‘Goldstein
tzaddik,’ or righteous man … Probably the most disturbing finding came from
one of the largest high school in Beersheva. A teacher there polled the class and
found that 60 percent of the students supported the massacre.” [DERFNER, L.,
4-1-94, p. 2]
Based upon literal interpretations of some parts of the Talmud, even Jewish
religious opponents understood how religious texts could be interpreted to
sanction Rabin’s murder. As a troubled Israeli rabbi, David Hartmann,
observed:
“The rabbis under radically different conditions prevailing during the
third century AD … encouraged … hate and destruction. [Rabin’s assassin]
was no aberration. He was wholly within the normative tradition
that has survived frozen through the ages to our own time … There are
sufficient other resources in the tradition – humane and pacifist ones –
to counteract the dogmatism. The tragedy is that a group of fanatical
and political rabbis has become dominant over all other voices in Israel.”
[ELON, p. 42]
Gershom Scholem, a professor at Hebrew University and an author on
Jewish mysticism, was outraged when a dozen kabbalists (Jewish mystics)
camped outside Prime Minister Rabin’s house a few weeks before his murder
publicly calling upon “angels of destruction,” and prayed for Rabin to die. This
occurred, notes Scholem, “in the heart of Jerusalem, in fairly normal times. No
one in the religious world cried out to protest. Nobody said it’s all nonsense. In
other words, they believe (these invocations to black magic) actually work.”
[ELON, p. 46]
In 1988 another Israeli rabbi, David Ben-Haim, this one a member of the
“radical right” messianic religious movement in Israel, dipped into Talmudic
texts and other seminal Judaic literature to evidence profoundly disturbing
material. “In a thirty page study that examined all Halakhic authorities on the
subject,” says professor Ehud Sprinzak of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
“Ben-Haim proves that according to the vast majority, the Torah, when speaking
about Adam (a human being), never includes Gentiles in this category. He
points out that ten recognized Halakhic authorities repeatedly proposed that
Gentiles are more beast than human and that they should be treated accordingly;
only two authorities recognize non-Jews as full human beings created in
the image of God.” [SPRINZAK, p. 273]
“What comes of all this,” wrote Rabbi Ben-Haim, “is that according to the
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