The Murder Of Children

Many Rabbis Sanction
The Murder Of Children
From John Kaminski
skylax@comcast.net
4-10-5

Two quotes from Israel Shahak, extracted from the article below:

* "We have established that there exists a special term of 'war of revenge' and this is a war against those who hate the Jews and [there are] special laws applying to such war Accordingly, if the enemies of the Jews had attacked them once but retreated, and they intend to attack them again they are to be defined as the haters of the Jews and a war of revenge should be waged against them. In such a war there is absolutely no obligation to take precautions during warlike acts in order that non-combatants wouldnot be hurt, because during a war both the righteous and wicked are killed. But the war of revenge is based on the example of the war against the Midianites (see Numbers, chapter 31) in which small children were also executed (verse 17, ibid. "Now, therefore, kill every male among the little ones") and we might wonder about this, for how they had sinned? But we have already found in the sayings of our Sages, of blessed memory, that little children have to die because of the sin of their parents. And our final conclusion is that we should continue with acts of retaliation and revenge against the haters of the Jews and such acts are considered to be a war of religious obligation (in Hebrew "milhemet mitzvah").

Every calamity and hurt that happens to the enemies, their allies and their children from such actions is caused by them and is [merely] the reward of their sins. There is absolutely no obligation to refrain from acts of retaliation out of an apprehension that innocents would be hit by them, because it is not we who are causing all this but them, and we are innocent."

(This explains the fate of the Palestinians when the Jews robbed them of their land.)

** The interview says "In 1989, Rabbi Ginsburgh was personally involved in the events that led to such a killing when he led a large group of his yeshiva students on an armed West Bank 'walking tour' that slipped around Israeli Army restrictions and assertively through a Palestinian village.

The tour ended in a melee that saw the rabbi stoned by angry villagers, the yeshiva boys rampaging through the village setting fires and vandalizing, and a 13-year-old Palestinian girl who was sitting in her house shot by one of the yeshiva tourists". In other words, the event described by The Jewish Week as "tour" was just a pogrom, one of the many organized in the West Bank by Halacha-keeping Jews in the last decades.

The most interesting thing about those Jewish pogroms was that no rabbi of importance condemned any of them. In this case, no Orthodox rabbi found a word to say about that "13-year-old Palestinian girl", who was murdered by Halacha-keeping Jews. "At the trial of the yeshiva boy charged with the killing, Rabbi Ginsburgh said bluntly, "The people of Israel must rise and declare in public that a Jew and a goy are not, God forbid, the same. Any trial that assumes that Jews and goyim are equivalent is a travesty of justice."

Begin forwarded message:

Subject: The Challenge...A VINDICATION...from Israel Shahak

http://www.cactus48.com/jewishlaw.html

The Challenge
...from Stefan Bialoguski

Subject: Jewish Fundamentalism
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001
From: mfrankl@jewishnews.net.au

There is a link on your website to information provided by a Berkley, California-based group calling itself Jews for Justice in the Middle East.

Regardless of anyone's political views, I believe there is an obligation to be truthful and accurate in information provided. The quotations from "Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel" by Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky provided by Jews for Justice in the Middle East are dishonest and misleading. Indeed, the following excerpts from the book quoted by Jews for Justice in the Middle East contain references puporting to represent Jewish religious law that are usually found on avowedly antisemitic websites such as neo-Nazi sites and Holocaust denial sites:

"Gush Emunim rabbis have continually reiterated that Jews who killed Arabs should not be punished, [e.g.]...Relying on the Code of Maimonides and the Halacha, Rabbi Ariel stated, 'A Jew who killed a non-Jew is exempt from human judgement and has not violated the [religious] prohibition of murder.'"

Also: " ... Halacha permits Jews to rob non-Jews in those locales wherein Jews are stronger than non-Jews."

Even a cursory glance at the Halachic (Jewish religious law) authorities proves that the above references have been taken out of context.

The standard compendium of Jewish law, the Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah 158:1, rules that it is forbidden to kill non-Jews - even idol worshippers or members of the seven nations that the Jewish People have a Biblical obligation to destroy (not the Arabs who fulfill neither category). The Shulchan Aruch (the author of the book, who is also known by the title of the book itself) repeats himself, which is a rare occurence, in Choshen Mishpat 425:5. These Halachos (laws) are not contested by other authorities and they are sourced in much earlier works; see Babylonian Talmud Tractate Avodah Zarah 26a-b, Rambam (Maimonedes) Mishna Torah Madah Avodah Zarah 10:1.

With regards to whether it is permissible to steal the Talmud, Tractate Bava Kammah 113b, states that it is forbidden to steal from non-Jews. That opinion is the only view mentioned in the Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpat 348:2. The Shulchan Aruch makes no diferentiation between Jews and non-Jews. The Siftei Kohen, ibid., states categorically that to steal from a non-Jew is a transgression of a negative Torah commandment. He writes that the Rambam (Maimonedes) and the Maharshal rule in accordance with this view. The Vilna Gaon rules, ibid. 8, that not only is it forbidden but that if someone did so the money cannot be used for any dvar Mitzvah (the fulfilment of a religious obligation) .

I hope your concern for truth and accuracy and a desire not to incite hatred of Jews or any other ethno-religious group will induce you to check the information I have passed on to you from Rabbi Lauffer of Jerusalem with a competent Halachic authority (eg an Orthodox rabbi) of your choice and, once confirmed, remove the defamatory material from your website.

Yours,
Stefan Bialoguski

Please respond to:
sbialoguski@hotmail.com

The Response...from Israel Shahak
Date 2001

A VINDICATION

Answer to the slanders of Stefan Bialoguski against "Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel" by Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky (Pluto Press, 1999 ISBN 0745312764)

Stefan Bialoguski thinks that intellectual and often public terror employed in the USA and other countries against Jews who speak the truth about Judaism, whether in form it took after the inception of Talmud or its continuation in Orthodox Judaism will succeed against an Israeli Jew like me.

It is known to the readers of the Hebrew press that majority of Orthodox rabbis have the greatest regard for Jewish thieves (and one can add drug smugglers and money-launderers) who donate a part of their ill gotten money to Jewish religious institutions, but eat kosher food. Prophet Micah says: "Hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity, who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with injustice. Its heads judge for a bribe, its priests teach for hire, its prophets divine for money; yet they lean upon the Lord and say: 'Behold, the Lord is among us! No evil shall come upon us'" (chapter 3, verses 9-11).

The beginning of any struggle for justice in the Middle East must be recognition of the fact that for the last 52 years Zion - that is the 'State of Israel' - had been built with blood, mainly of the Arabs, and founded on the most horrifying forms of injustice which when applied to the Jews are rightly condemned as anti-Semitism. Let me give here give only a single example, before entering Halachic argument. During 18 years of Israeli occupation of Lebanon about 25,000 Lebanese and Palestinians lost their lives as compared with about 800 Israeli soldiers. It is a significant fact of Israeli politics that numbers of non Jews killed in Lebanon had little or no influence on Israeli decision to leave it, even when they were members of South Lebanese Army, allied with Israel. On the other hand, the relatively small numbers of killed Jewish soldiers were the chief factor, even in the eyes of Israeli organizations calling for withdrawal, to mobilize the Jewish public opinion and force the government to withdraw.

The great majority of the Orthodox and traditional Jews (in the USA even more than in Israel) is quite indifferent to numbers of non Jews killed by the Jews, while it is very sensitive to a single Jew killed by non Jews. The same happens with discrimination: there is very little, if any protest from great majority of the Orthodox and traditional Jews when Jews discriminate against non Jews, in our case the Arabs, together with screams of fury against any hint of discrimination (or abuse) against the Jews themselves.

Surely, such an attitude by a public so devoted to the worship of the Jewish past must be influenced by that past. As I have shown (especially in my book "Jewish history, Jewish religion"; chapter 5 "The Laws Against Non Jews"), this attitude derives from the many Halachic laws against non Jews.

After this necessary preface, let me answer in some detail the accusations made by Stefan Bialoguski. I hope that when I have dealt with them, the malicious ignorance on which they are based will became apparent. As to his quoting rabbi Laufer of Jerusalem as his authority, this only reminds me of the faithful communists during Stalin who used to quote a "an authority" from Moscow to confirm the usual falsehoods of another totalitarian system. Such "authorities" may have known all works of "Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin" as the phrase was then, but they used them only in order to approve Stalin's crimes.

Similarly, Orthodox rabbis, whether in Israel or the USA were silent, for example, when quite recently one of their colleagues, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh proposed in a major Hebrew paper that the State of Israel should slaughter "women, children and old folks" in Palestinian towns and villages and, in generally do to them what was done in Sodom and Gomorrah (the case will be discussed in detail below).

Not rabbinical competence is needed here but a protest against Orthodox rabbis proposing, supporting and defending atrocities when committed by Jews in name of Halacha.

In any case, Bialoguski forgot, or perhaps never learned, the basic halachic rule in case of a dispute: "let us bring the book and see". My answer is full of references to books; let him check those references by himself and not be enslaved to any rabbis.

Let me begin with the lesser issue of stealing and robbing which will illustrate the systematic falsification of Halacha used by Bialoguski. What he quotes is the halachic prohibition of stealing from anyone. But on this issue there is a crucial difference in Halacha between Jews stealing from non Jews and Jews robbing non Jews. The difference between theft (in Hebrew "gne'iva") and robbery (in Hebrew "gezel") is the same as in most systems of laws. Theft is defined as taking one's property by stealth while robbery is defined as taking one's property openly, using violence.

It is clear that the stealing of Palestinian land in the Territories (and before this inside Israel in the early 1950s) was done by employing state power, indeed often by employing army units, and is to be defined - as what was done to the land of the Indians by the USA - as robbery.

As I will show below, the Halacha makes a distinction (known to anyone who has even a minimal knowledge of the subject) between theft committed by a Jew, which is totally forbidden no matter from whom, and robbery committed by a Jew. While it is forbidden to Jews to rob a fellow Jew under any circumstances, the situation is quite different in Halacha in the case of a Jew robbing a non Jew, where under well defined circumstances Jews are indeed permitted to rob non Jews.

Accordingly, there is in Halacha a special issue known by the name of "robbing the non Jew" (in Hebrew "gezel hagoy"), which appears under this name in the authoritative Talmudic Encyclopedia, and the circumstances in which such robbery is either permitted or forbidden are discussed in great detail, as I will show below. Here I will only remark that Bialoguski omits this.

But before discussing robbery, let me return to the issue of stealing and show that behind the prohibition of stealing from anyone, there is in Halacha the most glaring discrimination between Jews and non Jews, omitted by Bialoguski and most "authorities" who write about Judaism. This is the issue of punishment to be inflicted according to Halacha on a Jew who steals. If he steals from a Jew he has to pay twice the value of what he had stolen, or return what he had stolen, if possible, and pay its value in addition. The first part is regarded as the restitution and the other as the punishment. But in case of Jew stealing from a non Jew he is only to pay the value of what he had stolen, only because he had stolen from a non Jew.

The reason given by Maimonides, following the Talmud, is that in Biblical verse specifying the punishment for theft it is written "he will pay twice to his fellow" and according to Halacha the word "fellow" means only Jews, and excludes the non Jews (Maimonides, Laws of Theft, chapter 2, rule 1).

The important commentary on Maimonides' Code, "Magid Mishneh", written by rabbi Yoseph Karo, the author of Shulchan Aruch, and other commentators fully agree with this shameful discrimination.

Let me add two observations you will not hear from "experts" on Judaism in the USA. If, for example, somebody would have proposed that Jews in the USA would be discriminated in exactly the same way as the Halacha discriminates against non Jew; that is he would propose that any non Jew stealing from a Jew would be exempt from punishment and will have only to pay the value of what he had stolen, but not be punished in addition, he would be justly regarded as anti-Semite. It would not help him if he would sanctimoniously exclaim, as Bialoguski does, "but I am against stealing from anybody, including the Jews!"

Second, this example shows that most Americans, including the educated ones, know nothing about the real Judaism because they were brainwashed by apologists and propagandists and are in now in the same situation as were the faithful communists before the famous Krushchev's speech of 1956, who also were sure that they know about "the true situation inside the USSR", but in realty knew nothing about the reality of Stalin's regime, because they were brainwashed by authorities they had blindly followed.

Let me now deal with the views of the Halacha in the case when a Jew robs a non Jew. As is told in great detail in both Babylonian (the usually used one) Talmud and the Jerusalemite Talmud, the earlier talmudic Sages had disputed whether it is permitted or forbidden for a Jew to rob a non Jew and in what circumstances. Those disputes are studied by present day talmudic students as boys (I too studied this subject at the age of fourteen), since an important part of them is contained in a popular Talmudic Tractate, Baba Kama (p. 113b) in addition to other places. Although the more offensive passages have been censored out in most of printed texts, they are preserved in booklets, used on such occasions, called "The omissions from the Talmud", so that the entire dispute, of great length and many complications, is explained and its effect can be imagined.

Briefly, the Sage