This is Israel Shahak's point about the ethnocentrism of any strict interpretation of Jewish law. And it's in Haaretz, thanks to Breaking the Silence:
An overview of some of the army rabbinate's
publications made available during the fighting reflects the tone of
nationalist propaganda that steps blatantly into politics, sounds
racist and can be interpreted as a call to challenge international law
when it comes to dealing with enemy civilians.
Haaretz has received some of the publications through Breaking the
Silence, a group of former soldiers who collect evidence of
unacceptable behavior in the army vis-a-vis Palestinians. Other
material was provided by officers and men who received it during
Operation Cast Lead. Following are quotations from this material:
"[There is] a biblical ban on surrendering a single millimeter of
it [the Land of Israel] to gentiles, though all sorts of impure
distortions and foolishness of autonomy, enclaves and other national
weaknesses. We will not abandon it to the hands of another nation, not
a finger, not a nail of it." This is an excerpt from a publication
entitled "Daily Torah studies for the soldier and the commander in
Operation Cast Lead," issued by the IDF rabbinate. The text is from
"Books of Rabbi Shlomo Aviner," who heads the Ateret Cohanim yeshiva in
the Muslim quarter of the Old City in Jerusalem.
publications made available during the fighting reflects the tone of
nationalist propaganda that steps blatantly into politics, sounds
racist and can be interpreted as a call to challenge international law
when it comes to dealing with enemy civilians.
Haaretz has received some of the publications through Breaking the
Silence, a group of former soldiers who collect evidence of
unacceptable behavior in the army vis-a-vis Palestinians. Other
material was provided by officers and men who received it during
Operation Cast Lead. Following are quotations from this material:
"[There is] a biblical ban on surrendering a single millimeter of
it [the Land of Israel] to gentiles, though all sorts of impure
distortions and foolishness of autonomy, enclaves and other national
weaknesses. We will not abandon it to the hands of another nation, not
a finger, not a nail of it." This is an excerpt from a publication
entitled "Daily Torah studies for the soldier and the commander in
Operation Cast Lead," issued by the IDF rabbinate. The text is from
"Books of Rabbi Shlomo Aviner," who heads the Ateret Cohanim yeshiva in
the Muslim quarter of the Old City in Jerusalem.
I can picture Hitler making a similar rant to his generals – "not one step back" – when they suggested a tactical retreat from Stalingrad, to avoid being cut off and lost entirely.
There has always been loads of this stuff, including Aviner, available in english to anyone who actually gave a damn. There is quite a bit of it in Ian Lustick's book, "For the Land and the Lord", which has been online at his website for ten years:
Talking of Lustick, I bought a copy of his rather obscure book, "Unsettled States, Disputed Lands" (Cornell, 1993), in which he compares Isra/Pal with Northern Ireland and Algeria, in terms of the gradual transformation of opinion in favour of decolonisation. This study is written, rather remarkably, from a Gramscian point of view (though I don't think he is quite fair to Gramsci's motives). The book was so informative that, according to Lustick himself, a number of settler intellectuals bought copies and studied it, so as to prepare an equally Gramscian counter-strategy.
This isn't the first time that military rabbis have exposed to be cheerleaders for blood and destruction:
Some jews really say, one may kill the goyim
http://www.clal.org/e14.html
…Since the words here cited were used, the 1973 War has occurred, and much further deterioration has set in. One of the consequences of that war was a booklet put out by the Central Command Headquarters/Israeli Army Chaplaincy and authored by Abraham Avidan (Zamel), military rabbi of the Command, under the title After the War: Chapters of Meditation, Rule, and Research. One of its highlights is the rabbi's thesis that ". . . insofar as the killing of civilians is performed against the background of war, one should not, according to religious law, trust a Gentile [and justifies this claim, citing the utterance from the Codes:]'The best of the Gentiles you should kill.' . . ." It took an outraged article in the Mapam newspaper to have the booklet withdrawn by the army, but no principled refutation of its barbarism has been put forward, and insofar as any notice was taken of this occurrence in Jewish publications in this country at all, tu quoque evasions were used to muddy the waters. (Cf. Nathan Suesskind, "Tov Sheba-Goyim . . .," C.C.A.R. Journal, Spring 1976, pp. 28f. and n. 2) [14a] Whatever its administrative fate, the booklet reveals the mind-set of some of the more sophisticated religious and military personages; one can imagine, if one doesn't know, its counterpart on cruder levels of culture. Thus the question is really not one of "purity of arms" (whatever that may mean) but of the socio-political conditions which make for or against purity of minds and morals.
The Torah tells us, in Exodus 9:6, that the fifth of the Ten Plagues, dever in Hebrew, was an epidemic that destroyed the livestock of the Egyptians. So how can it be, if all the horses are dead, that Pharaoh and his army of horse-drawn chariots pursue the fleeing Israelites down to the Red Sea, and are drowned when the parted waters close upon them? The rabbis of yore explained that there had been some God-fearing Egyptians whose livestock was spared by the dever, but soon enough, these supposed good guys turned into evil persecutors. And therefore, says Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai: "Tov shebagoyim harog," kill even the best of the goyim, just as you would smash the brains of the best of snakes. This midrash may be found in the Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael, a commentary on the Book of Exodus, composed in fourth-century Palestine.
Julius Streicher had the lowest IQ of the Nuremberg defendants: 109, if memory serves. His defense was entirely by pointing to jewish scriptures, law, and commentary. He was tortured and hung for his speech and literature only.
"One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." – Rabbi Yaacov Perrin in his eulogy of Dr. Baruch Goldstein, Feb. 27, 1994
Freund argues that "our enemies took advantage of the broad and merciful Israeli heart"
As in the '73 war, Israel would not be able to do what Eva's cartoon depicts without the wallet of the poor American masses, dupes all.
What's new?
A few years ago, Rabbi Dov Lior, then Israel's advisor to the IDF, was quoted in Haaretz as having said, "The lives of 1000 goyim (non-Jews) are not worth a Jewish fingernail." I actually quoted him in an earlier issue of our quarterly, "Kurdish Life," but now working on number 68, I can't remember when.
Perhaps one day the Pals will take a lesson from the US Army & IDF handbooks. You know, goose for the gander? Here's an example from real history, as carried out by the free will of one American of jewish background, Lt. Jack Bushyhead:
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauLiberation/BuechnerAccount.html
The one point I keep returning to is the sanctity of the 1967 borders. The are not the boundaries established by the UN partition of 1947, nor do they enclose all of Palestine, nor do they somehow correspond to any of the multitudinous versions of Biblical Israel. All they represent is the military balance point reached in 1948-49. If Israel itself can be justified, so can the annexation of the West Bank. If the annexation of the West Bank cannot be justified, there is no particularly convincing argument for the 1967 lines instead. The 1948-49 cease-fire line represented the recognition of an amoral fact: on one side of that line Israeli political and military power was greater than Arab political and military power, on the other, it wasn't. The reflexive return to this line implies that this balance still holds true — but it doesn't. Indeed, as the events of 1982-2008 suggest, in fact Israeli political and military power in recent years had swelled to allow the incorporation of not merely all of Palestine, but forays into Lebanon as well. Now the balance is shifting. Can anyone explain to me why it is that the 1967 line should serve as some sort of sacred perimeter? After all, if we just take the 'well, they're here now' argument and allot Palestine between the two communities on the basis of population, the Arab state should get roughly one half of Palestine, and the Jewish state the other. 78-22 isn't some kind of golden mean or intrinsically and self-evidently equitable division.