- "Strongest among men in enmity
- To the Believers wilt thou
- Find the Jews and Pagans;…"-Holy
Koran V. 85
It is an irony that the Israeli
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef has chosen the time to make his racist
statements in a hateful sermon just before the Jewish Passover.
The Passover itself was God’s protection of the Hebrew people
from the ancient Egyptians. Prophet Moses safely led the flight of
the Hebrews from Egypt which took them across the Red Sea.
But the ancient Hebrews were
often rebellious and ungrateful for God’s favors. Rabbi Yosef is
a man who is not only rebellious and ungrateful but he seeks gain
in evil. Surely he cannot think that God will favor him or forgive
him for his sermon which calls for the annihilation of Arabs.
One thinks of religious leaders
as those who advocate peace and an end to war. Any religious
leader who has a conscience would at least ask the Israeli
military to restrain themselves and not shoot, shell, or attack
Palestinian civilian areas by ground to ground missiles.
The world has conveniently
forgotten how Prophet Jesus was betrayed by a Jew and how the Jews
led him to what they thought was his crucifixion. And Jesus is not
the only prophet that the Jews killed or tried to kill, but one of
an endless succession.
This is not about hatred for
the Jews, for if it were, it would be hypocritical to ask for
compassion on the one hand for Arabs and Palestinians and on the
other to state that all Jews are evil. But all Zionists are indeed
evil and Rabbi Yosef is as evil as they come.
But it is not just vile
religious leaders like Rabbi Yosef that cause a great deal of
concern. There are others whose radical voices speak out in daring
discourses that call for the expulsion or mass murder of
Palestinians too. Ultra-nationalist Israeli Tourism Minister
Rehavam Zeevi also proposed the expulsion of all Palestinians from
the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, likening Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat to Adolf Hitler. Perhaps the Israeli leaders are so
intoxicated with their own arrogance that they fail to see the
truth. How can Arafat be like Hitler? Where are the Jews that he
has killed? Where are his gas chambers and his concentration
camps? Where are his military tanks and his gunboat helicopters?
Where are his heavily armed troops supplied with the latest of
American made weapons?
The neo-Hitlers are the
Israelis who at every turn, at every opportunity, find new ways to
suppress, torture and slaughter Palestinians. It is not Arafat who
has dug trenches around Israeli cities, but the Israelis who have
surrounded and isolated Palestinian enclaves and made them no
better than Jewish ghettos and concentrations camps of old.
The victim of Hitler’s
atrocities have in turn victimized the Palestinians. Two wrongs
can never make a right and there is no reason on earth why the
Palestinians have to be punished simply because they were born on
their own land.
Perhaps the world is blinded by
the hate of such people as Rabbi Yosef and Zeevi. But this
blindness will not last forever and one day the truth will out.
And then there is the hardliner
Israeli Security Minister Uzi Landau who told reporters in
occupied Jerusalem that Arafat is like Saddam Hussein. He also
said that Arafat uses his media and school system to inculcate
Palestinians children with anti-Israeli sentiments.
"He teaches kids from a
very young age to jihad for Jerusalem, jihad in order to
annihilate Israel," Landau said. He went on to say that,
"The Palestinian entity (has) systematically raised up their
kids to portray the Jews as Satan on earth, as the plague of the
third millennium, as the enemy of mankind."
But Arafat does not have to
teach the Palestinian children anything. They learn this every day
when Israelis shoot at them, when Israelis kidnap them, when
Israelis send them to prison and torture them, when Israelis kill
them off. No school could be better or more effective than life
itself. And the only people whose existence is threatened is the
Palestinians, certainly not the Israelis who for the most part are
safe and secure in their distant homes from all the slaughter that
takes place on Palestinian streets and in Palestinian homes. If
anybody is raised to hate and to annihilate another, it is the
Israelis who teach their children this.
It is not Arafat we have to
fear, even though he may be inept. It is such religious leaders as
Rabbi Yosef and Prime Minister Sharon, the hyena Shimon Peres and
Landau.
To further contradict himself,
Landau defended international criticism of Israeli plans to build
700 new homes in illegal Jewish settlements built on Palestinian
land in the West Bank. He said that such developments were the
result of natural population growth. It is ok to import Jews and
export Palestinians in Landau’s view.
In his sermon that calls for
the annihilation of Arabs, Rabbi Yosef stated, "It is
forbidden to be merciful to them, you must give them missiles,
with relish-annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable ones."
It is here that one must wonder
who should be done away with, who is evil and who is damnable. I
personally would cast my vote for Rabbi Yosef. But I will leave
his retribution up to God.
