During the fighting in the Gaza Strip, the religious media – and on two occasions, the Israel Defense Forces weekly journal Bamahane – were full of praise for the army rabbinate. The substantial role of religious officers and soldiers in the front-line units of the IDF was, for the first time, supported also by the significant presence of rabbis there.
The chief army rabbi, Brigadier General Avichai Rontzki, joined the troops in the field on a number of occasions, as did rabbis under his command.
In addition to the official publications, extreme right-wing groups managed to bring pamphlets with racist messages into IDF bases. One such flyer is attributed to “the pupils of Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg” – the former rabbi at Joseph’s Tomb and author of the article “Baruch the Man,” which praises Baruch Goldstein, who massacred unarmed Palestinians in Hebron. It calls on “soldiers of Israel to spare your lives and the lives of your friends and not to show concern for a population that surrounds us and harms us. We call on you … to function according to the law ‘kill the one who comes to kill you.’ As for the population, it is not innocent … We call on you to ignore any strange doctrines and orders that confuse the logical way of fighting the enemy.”
If you ask me the whole world is nuts…
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Arraya: Hitchens wrote an article on the radicalization of the Israeli Army through the rabbinate: http://www.slate.com/id/2214440/
I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiments regarding the propaganda behind undermining Iran and our dealings with them. Of course, loons like I-Am-A-Dinner-Jacket lend credence to that approach and make it easy for the American people to believe that a nuclearized Iran would light up Tel Aviv first chance they got. It also doesn’t hurt that effort when you see groups like Hezbollah and Hamas sporting banners with mushroom clouds on them.
I’m a hawk by nature, but I believe, in Iran’s case, that we can engage their populace and effect regime change from within. Ballots versus bullets.
