“It must be stated clearly that the guilty party for this situation is the establishment, which has been behaving with aggression and brute force toward Jews, yet with magnanimousness and lenience toward enemies of the Jewish people."
Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg
Originally posted at 10:34 pm CDT
Extremist Chabad Rabbi Orders Followers Not To Violently Attack IDF, But Blames Previous Attacks On The “Immoral” Government And On Weak Rabbis Who Won’t Stand Up To It
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Just days after he refused to publicly or privately condemn violent attacks by Jews – many of them allegedly his students – on the IDF, Border Police and Shin Bet, Chabad Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg wrote an article on his website opposing the attacks, the Jerusalem Post reported.
But as is typical for Ginsburg – a noted racist and extremist – Ginsburg blamed the IDF and the “immoral” government for the attacks, not the West Bank Jewish settlers who carried them out.
“It must be stated clearly that the guilty party for this situation is the establishment, which has been behaving with aggression and brute force toward Jews, yet with magnanimousness and lenience toward enemies of the Jewish people,” Ginsburg wrote.
Ginsburg the dean and founder of the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the settlement of Yitzhar – the most radical anti-government yeshiva in Israel.
Ginsburg previously praised the mass murder of praying Arabs committed by Baruch Goldstein at the Ibrahim Mosque in Hebron 20 years ago and wrote a racist book, Baruch HaGever, to praise Goldstein and defend his mass murder.
His two co-deans of Od Yosef Chai, Rabbis Yotzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur, wrote the notorious racist book Torat HaMelech which, among other things, advocates for the murder of Arab babies in a time of war because they will grow up to hate Jews. Ginsburg and his students consider Israel’s current situation to be a time of war.
In his article, Ginsburg reportedly ruled that soldiers, police, and government workers should refuse to carry out orders or rules from the government or the army that Ginsburg considers to be immoral. Among those “immoral” orders would be to evacuate illegal West Bank settlement outposts or to arrest Jews who carry out racist price tag attacks against Arabs.
“Firstly, I am distressed by any clash of Jews with Jews – between soldiers and settlers – ‘We are all sons of one man,” Ginsburg wrote, specifically excluding Arabs from that descent even though Arabs are, according to the Torah, descended from Abraham and through him from Adam just as Jews are.
Ginsburg also attacked Israel’s security forces.
“On the one hand, they do not deal harshly with the hundreds of terrorist activities that take place each week (stone-throwing, Molotov cocktails, and even shooting attacks), and even release convicted terrorists without getting anything in exchange, while on the other hand, they define as ‘terrorism’ and ‘hate crimes’ trivial acts of protest (even arresting minors for spraying graffiti on walls, etc.),” Ginsburg wrote.
“Under these circumstances, an accusing finger must first be pointed at those who are truly responsible for this deterioration and a demand made that they improve their behavior regarding these issues. We should not ignore the positive actions that the military forces take in defending the inhabitants of the Land of Israel, which are certainly praiseworthy, however neither can we gloss over our harsh criticism for the injustices they are responsible for. When the government behaves in a corrupt, distorted manner, the task of rabbis and community leaders is to state this clearly and unequivocally,” Ginsburg wrote.
He also said rabbis and leaders of the Jewish community in Israel (i.e., Zionist Orthodox West Bank settler leaders and their supporters) should act as the government’s “comptroller” and “demand that every soldier, policeman, or state worker take personal responsibility to refuse to carry out orders and instructions that contradict the Torah’s morality,” Ginsburg insisted.
He then insinuated that the blame for the violent attacks by Jewish settler youth against the IDF, Border Police and Shin Bet was also the fault of those rabbis and community leaders who fail to take Ginsburg’s extremist, racist rantings to heart and promote them. If those rabbis would only take a stronger stand against “immoral” IDF and government actions, Jewish settler youth will not feel that its their responsibility to stop those “immoral” actions through the violence and racist activity they now rely on.
Ginsburg then claimed to be an advocate of non-violence.
“[It is better to] rise above the forceful combat that the government is driving at and to focus our efforts and our revolutionary spirit in active efforts of spokesmanship, uniting to achieve a genuine change in public life in the Land of Israel,” Ginsburg said, specifically using the biblical term for Greater Israel rather than acknowledging the state or the government by using the term “Israel” or “State of Israel.”
Yitzhar is one of the most radical Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and many followers of the late extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane who now follow Ginsburg call it home.
But last week mor than 50% of Yitzhar voted against staging violent attacks against Israeli security forces and the IDF. The 1,172-member settlement’s secretariat organized the vote and reportedly threatened to quit if the community did not take a strong stand against anti-IDF, anti-security forces violence.
But that vote did not deal with the issue of the many racist “price tag” attacks against Arabs, mosques and churches – many of them allegedly carried out by Ginsburg's students.
Neither did Ginsburg’s article.
Ginsburg is American-born-and-raised.
He holds no official position in Chabad-Lubavitch, and most of his Chabad followers are anglo Chabad ba’al teshuvas and radical West Bank Jewish settlers.
The Border Police seized the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva building after its students rioted and attacked a Border Police and IDF outpost nearby early last month.
Last week, the Border Police allowed the yeshiva to tentatively reopen – but with only 50 students allowed inside.
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