Last week, Jewish-Israeli terrorists committed an atrocious crime against humanity. They entered a Palestinian village outside Nablus in the West Bank, and burned down two houses. In one of the houses, a family of four was sleeping: a mother, a father, a 4-year-old boy and his younger brother. The toddler burned to death. His parents and the 4-year-old were severely burned and are fighting for their lives in an Israeli hospital. This act of terrorism is but the culmination of several acts of Jewish terrorism perpetrated during the past year. They include the burning alive of a 10-year-old Palestinian boy last summer, the burnings of several mosques and churches, and the burning of a Jewish-Arab bilingual school in Jerusalem. In addition, a religious zealot stabbed six people last week at a gay pride parade in Jerusalem; a 16-year-old girl died.
The haftarah, which we read this Shabbat for parashat Ekev, is the second haftarah of consolation after Tisha b’Av. In this haftarah, the prophet Isaiah exclaims: “Those who destroy you and devastate you will leave your midst” (Isaiah 49:17). Historically, the prophet was alluding to ancient Israel’s enemies who occupied the Promised Land and exiled our ancestors some 27 centuries ago. In contemporary Israel, this verse became a political idiom condemning anti-Zionists on the radical political left who undermine the political and moral legitimacy of the Zionist enterprise. Today, we can add the fanatic terrorists of the extreme political right as the worthy subjects of this poignant and timeless verse. They, too, with their rhetoric of hate and murderous acts, do not merit being considered an intrinsic and integral part of the nation.
One of the leading rabbis of our time, Jonathan Sacks, recently published a book titled “Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence,” in which the Modern Orthodox rabbi warns us against monotheistic religious fundamentalism in all its forms and manifestations and rebukes those who “kill in the name of the God of life, hate in the name of the God of love, and practice cruelty in the name of the God of compassion.”
No doubt, religious violence is the greatest threat to world peace today. In addition, when such horrendous atrocities are perpetrated by Jewish Israelis, and in the name of Judaism, some provocateurs and anti-Semites pose the question: “Well, if a handful of Jewish extremists commits acts of terror, then what is the difference between Israel and its most vicious enemies?”
The answer, of course, is that there is a vast and incalculable difference. In Israel, such acts of terrorism are perpetrated and legitimized by a marginal, tiny and minuscule minority, whereas in the Arab world, such acts of barbarism are legitimized, encouraged and celebrated.
Let me give you a brief example of the difference between how Israel and its neighbors deal with religious terrorism perpetrated by their own citizens. In 2008, Israel released as part of a prisoners exchange deal with Hezbollah several terrorists, including a man named Samir Kuntar. Kuntar, a Lebanese Druze, crossed the Israeli-Lebanese border by way of the sea in 1979, in order to murder Israelis. Once on Israeli soil, Kuntar broke into an apartment in the city of Nahariya, and took an Israeli man and his 4-year-old daughter down to the beach under the threat of a gun. At the beach, Kuntar killed the girl by crushing her skull with his rifle and also killed her father.
Back home, the mother was hiding in the attic from the terrorist. She put her hand on the mouth of her baby, in order to prevent the infant from making noise and exposing their hiding place. Most tragically, the baby suffocated to death. The mother, Smadar Haran, was the sole survivor in the family. In Israel, she is revered, loved and admired to this day. Haran is a noble and precious soul, and despite what she went through, she still supports the idea of a two-state solution, and even supported the release of Kuntar, the murderer of her family, in order to ensure the return of two fallen Israeli soldiers back to their families, so that they could be brought to eternal rest in Israel.
Compare Haran’s nobility of spirit with the attitude toward terrorism across the border from Israel, in Lebanon. When Kuntar, the terrorist who murdered Haran’s family, was returned to Lebanon in 2008, he was greeted by hundreds of thousands of cheering fans and supporters.
By contrast, in Israel, once news broke about the vicious murder of a Palestinian toddler by Jewish terrorists, Israel’s prime minister immediately expressed outrage, calling for the killers to be captured and brought to justice. The president of Israel, the leader of the National Religious Party and virtually every member of Knesset condemned the pernicious atrocity. The chief rabbi of Israel called the mayor of Nablus and expressed his outrage as Israel’s most senior religious leader. Israel’s president and prime minister visited the injured Palestinian family in the hospital. After the prime minister visited the family, he spoke about his anguish and pain as a human being and as a Jew. In Israel, we lament and abhor the existence of a handful of radicals in our midst. We reject them, their loathsome acts and everything they represent. We lower our heads in shame, express our empathy and solidarity with the victims, and vow to lock up the perpetrators for life.
As the bulk of the Israeli mainstream attests, and the prime minister and president of Israel professed time and again last week, these people are indeed nothing but a moral stain and potential “destroyers and devastators” of the Zionist ethos. They are a disgrace to the people of Israel, the Torah of Israel and to the God of Israel.
Rabbi Tal Sessler is senior rabbi of Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel. He is the author of several books on philosophy and contemporary Jewish identity.
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