Mis-reading the Bible/Torah to Promote Terrorism and the Killing of Babies!

Meet the ideology that inspired the suspected extremist Jewish settlers who were involved in the torching of a mosque in the West Bank in Palestine last month and in other earlier cases of terrorism.

The Jewish Daily Forward wrote a revealing article that exposed the growing influence of extremist Jewish institutions and figures that are promoting teachings of violence, hatred, and genocide on the basis of radical biblical interpretations.

So far, such groups have had little success in recruiting supporters in the US, with the exception of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), which was characterized as "a right-wing terrorist group" by the FBI. Well, to be accurate, the JDL's founder, late extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane appears to have one last loud supporter and follower. This follower is none but Joe Kaufman, the virulent Islamophobe from Florida.

Of course, extremism is not exclusive to the Jewish religion. All religions have their share of extremists. It is a must that the peaceful moderates from all religions work together to expose and isolate such radicals who wish to drag the world into their narrow-minded vision of division, hatred, and violence. Collectively and genuinely working toward justice and a culture of mutual respect will surely bring peace and harmony.

Read an earlier article that I wrote: Bible, Quran easily quoted out of context

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Excerpts from the Forward article:

Rabbinic Text or Call to Terror?

The Jewish Daily Forward

By Daniel Estrin
Published January 20, 2010

Click to read the full article.

Jerusalem — The marble-patterned, hardcover book embossed with gold Hebrew letters looks like any other religious commentary you’d find in an Orthodox Judaica bookstore — but reads like a rabbinic instruction manual outlining acceptable scenarios for killing non-Jewish babies, children and adults.

“The prohibition ‘Thou Shalt Not Murder’” applies only “to a Jew who kills a Jew,” write Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur of the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar. Non-Jews are “uncompassionate by nature” and attacks on them “curb their evil inclination,” while babies and children of Israel’s enemies may be killed since “it is clear that they will grow to harm us.”...

The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, suspects five of those arrested were involved in the torching and vandalizing of a Palestinian mosque last month in the neighboring Palestinian village of Yasuf...

In 2008, author Shapira was suspected of involvement in a crude rocket attack directed at a Palestinian village. Israeli police investigated but made no arrests...

In 2003, the head of the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, was charged by then-Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein with incitement to racism for authoring a book calling Arabs a “cancer.”

In 2006-2007, the Israeli Ministry of Education gave about a quarter of a million dollars to the yeshiva, and in 2007-2008 the yeshiva received about $28,000 from the American nonprofit Central Fund of Israel.

“The King’s Torah” reflects a fringe viewpoint held by a minority of rabbis in the West Bank, said Avinoam Rosenak, a Hebrew University professor specializing in settler theology. Asher Cohen, a Bar Ilan University political science professor, thought its influence would be “zero” because it appeals only to extreme ideologues.

But the book’s wide dissemination and the enthusiastic endorsements of prominent rabbis have spotlighted what might have otherwise remained an isolated commentary...