Current Translations and Commetary From Israel's Hebrew-Language Newspapers

by Dr. Israel Shahak

Dayan's Regrets About Allowing Settlers in Hebron

Yediot Ahronot, April 8, 1997

By Rami Tal

The Bible tells us¹ how 300 men were capable of changing history if they were determined and radical enough. The Israelite Judge Gideon understood this about 3,000 years ago, when he preferred the 300 warriors who drank water by licking their hands rather than an army of 22,000 soldiers who were not cautious enough. By employing only brave and determined warriors, he liberated Israel from the Midianites.

Rabbi Moshe Levinger, the founder of the Jewish community in Hebron, also understands this. The 500 Jewish settlers of Hebron, including the women and children, are an army unit whose aim is to undermine every arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians. This would undermine not only an arrangement supported now by Peace Now aiming at returning most of the areas occupied in 1967, but even the settlement in the spirit of the present government which intends to leave about half of the West Bank area in Israeli hands.

While these lines are being written, an incident which occurred in Hebron is not yet clear.² According to the Israeli investigators, the version of the shooting incident by the two Yeshiva students involved is rather suspicious. But even should it turn out that they were really attacked, one must understand that the presence of Jewish settlers in Hebron, by its very nature, is a constant provocation. Those who reject this argument should imagine how they would react to an attempt at settling a few hundred Hamas-supporting Arabs in Ramat Aviv ³ or the Geulah quarter⁴ in Jerusalem.

Those who have served, even once as a reservist, in Hebron can testify how Jewish settlers incessantly harass the local Arabs. It is no incident that radical figures like Baruch Marzel and Anat Cohen⁵ have chosen Hebron for their base of action. It is no accident that the personality most admired among the Hebron Jewish settlers is the assassin Baruch Goldstein. The settlers themselves have no power to implement their schemes. But they want to do everything possible to achieve their aims to push Israel into a large military confrontation with the Palestinians. ⁶

Over 20 years ago the late Moshe Dayan told me, I have made mistakes in my life but my greatest mistake that I repent more than any other was that I did not succeed in expelling Levinger and his comrades from Hebron.⁷ Levinger speaks about Arab-Jewish coexistence in Hebron, but he knows that such a coexistence with him is impossible. His real aim is to use Hebron as a powder keg to re-kindle the Israel-Arab conflict and lead to the eviction of most Palestinian Arabs from the Land of Israel."

Dayan was right. Jewish settlement in Hebron is a keg of explosives. To neutralize it, a courageous decision is needed to remove the settlers from there. Most politicians in Israel know this and confirm it off the record. But, unfortunately, no government, neither Right, Left nor unity government, has so far had the courage to do it. In the end, they will have to, but until then an intolerable price in blood will be paid.

NOTES (by Dr. Israel Shahak):

¹Book of Judges, chapter 7, verses 4-8. The story is well known to most Israeli Jews together with the military reasoning behind it.

²The two Yeshiva students shot and killed a Palestinian, claiming that they did it in self-defense. They were subsequently exonerated from blame, as happens in almost all cases involving Jewish Hebron settlers, much more so than in the cases of other settlers.

³A rich suburb in the northern part of Tel Aviv.

⁴A Haredi neighborhood in Jerusalem.

⁵ Notorious Jewish fanatics, much liked by the Israeli media.

⁶I disagree with this analysis, which does not take into account the beliefs of the Jewish settlers in Hebron. They fully believe that it is God who will push Israel into a realization of their aims. This belief makes them even more dangerous than the author supposes them to be.

⁷Dayan was defeated on this point by Yigal Alon, a darling of the Israeli "left" who smuggled weapons to Levinger in his ministerial car.

A Farm for Raising Pure Priests to be Established Soon

Kol Ha'ir, April 11, 1997

By Erez Fridman

The Movement for Establishment of the Temple is preparing a plan for the raising of trained Jewish priests to offer sacrifices in the Temple and is looking for two houses in a settlement, for raising of pure priests.

The intended priests will be raised in the farm from the time of their birth until the age of 13, while being totally isolated from any human touch.¹ The isolation will begin from the act of birth itself. The mother will be taken to give birth in one of the houses and the birth will be conducted by a midwife especially trained not to touch the child during the birth. It was decided, however, that if an emergency arises the mother would be taken to a hospital and the child, made impure by human touch, would be regarded as incapable of becoming a pure priest. Only Jewish families certified by the Movement as being of direct descent from Aaron the Priest would be allowed to donate their children for this plan. Until the age of 13, the children would study, without being touched, the art of priestly conduct. The best student will be declared a High Priest. The food of the intended priest will be taken exclusively from the one percent of the food manufactured in Israel which now is destroyed by various manufacturers as a condition of receiving a kashrut certificate. ²

Jews-only Har Homa settlement on former West Bank land annexed by the Israelis to Jerusalem.

Netanyahu sought to use the Palestinian ban on land sales as an excuse to "break off" peace negotiations once and for all with the PA. "We must consider carefully if we should continue talks with people who represent such fascist theories," said his adviser, David Bar-Ilan. Other right-wing ministers called the ban "anti-Semitic."

Bar-Ilan's claim that the PA's land policy is"fascist" is the most hypocritical comment from the Likud since Ariel Sharon called Arafat a "terrorist." In fact, since 1948 Israel has banned the sale of Jewish National Fund (JNF) land to Arabs, even if they are citizens.

"The Palestinians are mimicking us," says Israeli lawyer Danny Seideimann. "An Israeli [Arab] citizen born and bred in Haifa who wants to buy an apartment on JNF land is not entitled to, while a Jewish resident in the U.S. is."

Losing international support over the Jabal Abu Ghneim debacle, Israeli officials have been waiting for an opportunity to put pressure back on the PA. It is no coincidence that Abu Medein's statements came after U.S. special envoy Dennis Ross spent two weeks trying to force Arafat to accept the fait accompli of Jabal Abu Ghneim and return to "negotiations."

"The U.S. condemns any law or decree that would threaten death against any Palestinian for selling land to Israelis or Jews," said State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns. "That's wrong. It is contrary to what must prevail in the Middle East, which is peace and the spirit of peace." As the main power and so-called peace broker in the Middle East, one would expect that the U.S. would at least try to present a balanced position on the issue of land rights in the West Bank.

Almost as hypocritical as Bar-Ilan's statement was a State Department position articulated by Burns that was so far from being balanced that it drew criticism from even the most docile Arab leaders, who face increasing opposition at home for supporting the so-called peace process.

"This is now the most crucial stage of Oslo," explained Palestinian Ahmed Abu Hassan in Gaza. "If the effort to attain our homeland through negotiation fails, then we have no other option than to return to the armed struggle. We at least know the rules of that game."

Any Palestinian teenager could have told Ross and his spokesman, Burns, that the ban on selling Palestinian land to Israelis, and the killing of land dealers who do, would not have happened had the U.S. stood up to Netanyahu's blatant violation of the Oslo accords and of international law at Jabal Abu Ghneim. Clinton's failure to put a stop to the further expropriation of Palestine forced the PA to deal with this matter in its own way.

At this writing, other suspected land dealers are in PA jails. Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper reports that a "hit list" of 16 fraudulent Arab land dealers is being circulated through the PA security establishment. Far from backing down, Abu Medein has since threatened Arab land dealers who hold Israeli citizenship.

"We advise those who carry the Israeli identity card that if they believe they have become Israeli citizens, and because of that they are protected, they are mistaken," he said. "They will be brought to justice one way or another."

A few days later Israeli forces were able to protect known land dealer Assad Rajabi from being taken from Jerusalem to Ramallah by the PA. Netanyahu blamed Palestinian Col. Tawfiq Tirawi as the PA official behind at least two of the killings and the effort to take Rajabi into custody.

Despite the feeble efforts of Dennis Ross, the crisis is deepening, and it seems that the only way to avoid an even bloodier confrontation is a U.S.-imposed Middle East land conference to determine who rightly owns what in the West Bank under the framework of the Fourth Geneva Convention. If Israel is so sure of the legality of the steps it is taking to retain 60 percent of the West Bank, let it open the Land Registration Office records to international scrutiny. Unlike other offices of the West Bank "Civil Administration," which are located at Beit El near the Jalazone refugee camp, the Land Registration Office is at a secret location inside Israel and its records are "top secret." The reason for this is obvious the fraudulent nature of most of the land transactions that have taken place in the West Bank.

Nearly four years ago, optimists at the White House envisioned that in 1997 the final-status peace talks would begin. Palestinians feel that under Netanyahu's stewardship 1997 is instead the beginning of his "final solution" for their dream of statehood in historic Palestine. Until it is clear what type of entity will emerge in the West Bank and who will control how much land, those who sell sacred and limited West Bank land to encroaching Israelis will be the first, unlamented victims in what is sure to be a bloody confrontation that very likely will spread far beyond the borders of Israel/ Palestine.

The house where priests will be raised would consist of two floors. The first will be empty except for its supporting pillars, and its purpose will be to isolate the priests from the impure earth. The farm would be closed to all visitors and its workers would enter it only after they had purified themselves by the ashes of the Red Heifer and put on special mantles not touched previously by anything else. Rabbi Yosef Albaum, one of the heads of the Movement for Establishment of the Temple, said that he has a list of women who are willing to donate their sons to this plan.

The Movement emphasizes the importance of the Red Heifer which was recently born in Kfar Hassidim for the success of this plan. Only if a Red Heifer is first sacrificed and its ashes used for purification can the plan be successful. In order that the Red Heifer not be blemished it was decided to keep it hidden.

NOTES (by Dr. Israel Shahak):

¹According to Judaism as it existed until a few centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, Jews and their priests were divided into two categories: the pure and impure. The latter could be purified, however, by various ceremonies. The most grievous and also common type of impurity was being touched, however indirectly, either by a living non-Jew (non-Jews were regarded as impure without a possibility of purification) or touching the corpse of a Jew. The impure Jews could not enter the temple or participate in various ceremonies outside it. There was only one way of purification from the graver states of impurity, by being twice sprinkled (by a hyssop) with water to which a few ashes of the Red Helfer were added. Since the ashes have been long lost, all Jews including their priests are regarded as impure, except the newly born babies who have not yet been touched by anybody.

²According to the Bible and Talmud the Jews should give to priests, on condition that the latter are pure, 1 percent of any food they produce, and they are forbidden to eat the food before this offering is separated. This obligation was discontinued when all Jews became impure, but was revived in Israel in the 1960s in a symbolic manner when the influence of religious parties grew. At present, 1 percent of most kosher food produced in Israel is separated at some stage of its manufacture and destroyed, either by burning or by being poured or thrown into the sea. This is one of the important facts about Israel and Judaism which, although known to everyone in Israel, is deemed not fit to print in The New York Times or to be mentioned by rabbis in Western countries when they discuss Judaism. Let me add that in this avoidance of discussion the Reform rabbis are, in my view, worse than all the others, being even more hypocritical.

³A purely red cow was recently born in Israel and, after being proclaimed to be a Red Heifer, caused more public interest than a White Elephant once caused in Thailand.