'Don't rent to non-Jews,' Israeli rabbis warn

[freepalestine]

'Don't rent to non-Jews,' Israeli rabbis warn
Published today 13:39
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Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (C), the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish party
Shas attends a pre-election rally in Tel Aviv February 28, 2006.
[MaanImages/Moti Milrod]




JERUSALEM (AFP) -- Fifty Israeli rabbis have signed an open letter warning Jews not to rent or sell property to non-Jews, saying those who do should be "ostracized," a copy of the letter showed on Tuesday.

"In answer to the many questions, we say that it is forbidden in the Torah to sell a house or a field in the land of Israel to a foreigner," says the letter, referring to the Pentateuch, or the first five books of the Bible.

The text, which was signed mostly by state-employed rabbis, warns "he who sells or rents them a flat in an area where Jews live causes great harm to his neighbors."

"After someone sells or rents just one flat, the value of all the neighboring flats drops... He who sells or rents (to non-Jews) causes his neighbors a big loss and his sin is great," the letter said, in what was largely understood to refer to Israel's Arab minority.

"Anyone who sells (property to a non-Jew) must be cut off!!"

According to the Israeli news website Ynet, the letter was to be published in religious newspapers and distributed in synagogues across the country later this week.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel slammed the letter as "racist" and called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to condemn "the incitement expressed by the rabbis."

"Rabbis who are civil servants have an obligation to the entire public, including Israel's Arab citizens. It is unthinkable that they would use their public status to promote racism and incitement," the group said in a statement.

The organization called on Netanyahu to take disciplinary action against state-employed rabbis who signed the document.

The letter appeared as tensions grow between religious Jewish and Arab-Israeli residents of the northern town of Safed, where local rabbi Shmuel Eliahu has called on Jews to avoid renting or selling property to Arabs.

There is a college in Safed that attracts Arab-Israeli students from the surrounding area, many of whom seek accommodation in the town while studying.

In October, a group of Jewish youths attacked several Arab-Israeli students at the college, shouting "death to Arabs" in an incident police had to break up.

Some 1.3 million Arab Israelis live in Israel, which represents about 20 percent of the population. They are made up of Palestinians who remained on their land after Israel's establishment in 1948, and their descendants.

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=339810

[Ztrain]

The ADLs probably going to back up this rascist garbage too

[freepalestine]

Israel turns blind eye to racist state-employed rabbis
Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 9 December 2010

http://electronicintifada.net/artman2/uploads/3/101209-racist-rabbis.jpg An Israeli holds a sign reading "Jewish and Arab solidarity for justice and equality" at a protest outside Jerusalem's Great Synagogue against a religious decree by fifty of Israel's leading rabbis, 8 December 2010. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills (http://www.activestills.org))
Jews must not rent homes to "gentiles." That was the religious decree issued this week by at least fifty of Israel's leading rabbis, many of them employed by the state as municipal religious leaders. Jews should first warn, then "ostracize" fellow Jews who fail to heed the directive, the rabbis declared.

The decree is the latest in a wave of racist pronouncements from some of Israel's most influential rabbis.

In October, Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Safed, delivered a ruling, signed by 17 other rabbis in the city, telling Jewish residents not to sell or rent property to members of the country's Palestinian Arab minority, who make up a fifth of the population.

His followers turned words into deeds by attacking Arab students in the city and threatening to burn down the homes of Jewish landlords renting to the students.

Similar edicts have recently been backed by dozens of rabbis in Tel Aviv and nearby Bnei Brak, a suburb of 150,000 mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews. They have threatened to "expose" any Jews who rent to "foreigners" -- in this case, a reference to migrant workers and African refugees who are crowded into neglected neighborhoods in the center of the country.

After many weeks of silence on these declarations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was finally forced to issue a condemnation yesterday, describing the rabbis' call as undemocratic and contradicting the bible, which, he said, called for Jews to "love the stranger."

Nonetheless, racism in Israel is increasingly enjoying high-level sanction among the most influential sectors of the religious establishment.

The latest ruling was signed by Shlomo Aviner, a spiritual leader of Israel's national-religious camp; Yosef Elyashiv, a senior ultra-Orthodox rabbi; and Avigdor Neventzal, rabbi of Jerusalem's Old City.

Its sentiments have also been echoed by Ovadia Yosef, a former chief rabbi of Israel and the spiritual leader of Shas, an important political and religious party in Netanyahu's government. "Selling to [non-Jews], even for a lot of money, is not allowed. We won't let them take control of us here," Yosef said recently.

Two months ago, Yosef explained the logic behind his views and those of like-minded rabbis.

"Goyim [non-Jews] were born only to serve us." Explaining why God allowed non-Jews long lives, he added: "Imagine that your donkey would die, you'd lose your income. [The donkey] is your servant. ... That's why he [the gentile] gets a long life, to work well for the Jew."

Yosef's remarks against "gentiles" were greeted with respectful silence by Israeli officials and most of the media. It was left to the United States government and the New York-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to issue rebukes. Abraham Foxman, the ADL's head, accused the rabbi of advancing "hateful and divisive ideas."

The rabbis' use of theology to support racial discrimination is being applied to more than just housing.

This summer, Yosef Elitzur and Yitzhak Shapira, who head an influential seminary in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar, published The King's Torah, a 230-page guide to how Jews should treat non-Jews.

The two rabbis concluded that Jews were obligated to kill anyone who posed a danger, immediate or potential, to the Jewish people, and implied that all Palestinians were to be considered a threat. On these grounds, the pair justified killing Palestinian civilians and even their babies.

Last month Shapira also backed the use of Palestinians as human shields, a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and a practice that Israel's high court has outlawed.

The King's Torah, far from being condemned by moderate rabbis, has been greeted with a general silence and enthusiastic support from a number of notable religious leaders.

Arik Ascherman, head of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel, said the growing extremism of the the Orthodox religious establishment in Israel reflected the increasingly right-wing atmosphere in Israel that made the expression of ultra-nationalist views permissible.

In the current climate, he said, moderate rabbis were reluctant to speak out against their colleagues. Many of these rabbis belong to the Conservative or Reform streams of Judaism, which are not officially recognized in Israel.

"The religious sanction being given to the political right by these rabbis is dangerous. It makes their opinions seem more acceptable," he said.

That is being reflected in public surveys, in which many Israeli Jews express support for anti-Arab views. A poll by the Israeli Democracy Institute published last week showed that 46 percent of the country's Jews did not want to live near Arab citizens, and 39 percent felt the same about foreign workers.

Even more, 53 percent, wanted Arab citizens to be encouraged to leave Israel and half believed Arabs should not have equal rights with Jews. Among the religious public, racist sentiments were more popular.

Israeli prosecutors, meanwhile, have turned a blind eye to the refusal of several prominent endorsers of The King's Torah to obey a summons calling them for investigation. "Our holy Torah is not a subject for investigation or trial by flesh and blood," the rabbis said.

In all, the rabbinical establishment is growing increasingly bold in promoting its vision of a Jewish state run according to holy law, according to Zvi Barel, a commentator with the daily newspaper Haaretz.

"They and their supporters are transforming zealous fundamentalism and the shameful The King's Torah into the mainstream," Barel wrote recently.

The general trend towards extremism has not happened by chance, said Sefi Rachelevsky, a prominent Israeli writer critical of the Orthodox rabbinate. Israel's public coffers pay the salaries of some of the most extremist rabbis, and the education system regularly falls under the political control of religious parties like Shas.

Shapira, who advocates killing non-Jewish babies, receives large sums from the education ministry for his yeshiva -- a seminary where he spreads his message of hate. Religious students also receive extra subsidies unavailable to normal students to encourage their attendance at such yeshivas.

The rabbis exert their influence on the youngest and most impressionable too. When the new school year started in September, 52 percent of Jewish children in first grade attended a strictly religious school.

Pupils in some of the most religious schools, Rachlevsky pointed out, are taught that Jews sit above nature, which comprises four categories: "inanimate," "vegetable," "animal" and "speakers" -- or non-Jews, who are considered no more than talking animals.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745327540/theelectronic-20) (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1848130317/theelectronic-20) (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net (http://www.jkcook.net/).


A version of this article originally appeared in The National (http://www.thenational.ae/), published in Abu Dhabi.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11666.shtml