Why Judaism is not about bulldozing the houses of Palestinians
Just because some Zionist extremists pretend to speak in the name of the Jewish people and in the name of the Torah, doesn’t mean they actually have the right to do so. Jewish, Bible-based territorialists are ignoring Oral Torah on which the Jewish religion is also based, instead claiming that the land is theirs because it says so somewhere in Deuteronomy. That is not Judaism, that is Zionism. It reduces the incredible Jewish tradition to a silly dispute over land, which is far below the dignity of that very tradition. And it leads uninformed non-Jews to believe that religious Jews are crazy fundamentalist extremists, who are prepared to propose, something that people calling themselves rabbis have actually been doing, a genocide or massive ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
However, the website Jews Against Zionism and the organization that is behind it, relentlessly advances knowledge of the fact that Judaism is not about stealing land from Arabs or waging wars. This is not only a defense of humanity and dignity for Palestinian, Lebanese and Israeli victims of Zionist violence, it is also an effort against anti-Semitism and for preserving the great Jewish tradition of justice, peace, and kindness - and the knowledge of that tradition among the non-Jewish public. In May this year, they published the following text.
Zionist "Rabbis" Falsify Torah
The Jewish religion teaches that Jews are in exile by Divine Decree and may emerge from exile solely via Divine redemption. All human efforts to alter a metaphysical reality are doomed to end in failure and bloodshed. History has clearly borne out this teaching.
Zionism, by advocating a political and military end to the Jewish exile, denies the very essence of our Diaspora existence. The religious Zionists have taken the Torah, a book of Divine law which teaches justice, peace and piety, and transformed it into a vehicle for their political goals, a source for their claims to a piece of land. These claims took their latest form this week, when, to our sorrow, the Zionist falsification was brought to the world’s eyes by the media.
In conjunction with President Bush’s visit to the State of Israel, several rabbis of the extremist Zionist settler community penned a letter to the President, asking him to stop "putting pressure on the Israeli leadership" to make land concessions to the Palestinian Authority.
The letter read in part:
"In the name of the people of Israel, the Land of Israel, the Torah of Israel and the G-d of Israel, we demand that his honor the president cease the pressure on the State to hand lands to the Arabs… Honorable President, you must not be remembered in history as Nebuchadnezzar and Titus who destroyed Jerusalem. You must surely remember that American does not benefit from causing damage, Heaven forbid, to the Jewish people and its land. If you help the wholeness of our holy land, we promise you and your country endless blessings."
Signed: Rabbis Dov Lior, David Druckman, Yaakov Yosef, Shmuel Eliyahu and Shalom Dov Wolpe.
Jews Against Zionism condemns this latest act of chutzpah and ingratitude. The writers of this letter call themselves rabbis and speak in the name of the Jewish religion, but the world must not allow itself to be fooled. They are radical politicians and militants advancing their own agenda, for which they are distorting the Holy Torah and jeopardizing Jews everywhere.
"It is a pity that these men wear yarmulkes and black hats, for it not Judaism that drives them but a foreign ideology," said Rabbi Hersh Lowenthal. "They claim to represent the Torah of Israel and the G-d of Israel, but actually their ideology is to flaunt G-d’s decree of exile and take over the Holy Land at a time when the Torah forbids us to have it."
For these extremists, the age-old Jewish tradition of speaking respectfully to gentile leaders is gone, to be replaced by a new standard of belligerent claims and dark threats. According to them, America has been punished in the past and may be punished again for not complying with the wishes of a small group of ultra-Zionist fanatics.
We look forward to the Messianic Era, when Jerusalem will be “a house of prayer for all nations” (Isaiah 56:7)
