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Divine Incitement 18 August 2001 Palestine Media Center http://www.palestine-pmc.com An Israeli Rabbi notorious for his racism and spite towards Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular is once again being probed for inciting to violence and racism. Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg, a prominent spiritual leader of the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva groups, has been known to publish and advocate calls for violence against Palestinians and Arabs in general. In his latest book, Tipul Shoresh (“Root Treatment”), Rabbi Ginzburg makes the claim that the “land of Israel” belongs solely to the Children of Israel. According to a 16 August Ha’aretz article, the Rabbi states in his book, “no goy (non-Jew) has the right to live in the area unless he is a convert or a righteous Gentile”. The spiritual leader also calls for the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel (which includes the Occupied Palestinian Territory in the Rabbi’s mind). He calls for the land to be “cleansed” of foreigners and urges his followers not to employ or trade with Palestinians. Of course, the Rabbi refers to Palestinians as “Arabs”, refusing to so much as recognize the existence of a Palestinian People. The Israeli head of the State Prosecutor’s Office’s special tasks division, Talia Sasson has ordered an investigation in the Rabbi’s latest book. Just two months earlier, a similar investigation was launched against Rabbi Ginzburg because of comments he made to the Jerusalem weekly newspaper Kol Hazman and the daily Ma’ariv. In both commentaries, the Rabbi expressed his support for Baruch Goldstein’s massacre of Palestinian worshipers as they prayed in Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque. In the 1994 massacre, Goldstein butchered over 60 Palestinians. The investigation was dropped and no charges were filed. Rabbi Ginzburg had published Baruch Hagever (“Baruch the Man”) in 1998. The Rabbi, apparently a fan of massacring Palestinians, published a book praising Goldstein and his final act of mass murder. Following the publication of this book, the Rabbi was investigated for inciting to violence and racism. However, the investigation was quickly botched and no charges were filed. Unfortunately, Rabbis of higher spiritual influence have made even far more racist remarks without so much as being questioned, let alone investigated. For example, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Shas, Israel’s third largest party has recently stated that Arabs “multiply like ants” and wished that they would “all go to hell”. Earlier in the year, he called for the extermination of Arabs altogether. On the other hand, Rabbi Lau, one of Israel’s Chief Rabbis has justified and blessed the extra-judicial executions carried out by the Israeli occupation forces against Palestinians. The investigation comes at a time when the United States is threatening to boycott a United Nations Conference on discrimination in which over 50 nations want to discuss the issue of Zionism as a form of racism. Knowing that its absence would undermine the international conference, the United States has threatened to boycott it altogether if the item is discussed, claiming that such a discussion would be anti-Semitic. This is despite the fact that all Arab Peoples in the Middle East are Semitic. www.palestine-pmc.com ============================================================ Stories of Unpunished Crimes 18 August 2001 Palestine Media Center – PMC http://www.palestine-pmc.com In the Occupied Palestinian Territory, stories of armed Israeli settlers attacking Palestinian villagers and terrorizing their children have tragically become a daily occurrence. Since the outbreak of Israeli hostility in 28 September 2000, Israeli settlers, armed to the teeth with government-funded semi-automatic rifles, have raided Palestinian villages scattered around the hilltops of the West Bank and blanketed in its fertile valleys. Thursday 16 August, armed Israeli settlers from the illegal Israeli settlement of “Itamar” attacked five Palestinian shepherds around the village of Yanoun, south of Nablus City, and chased them with raining bullets. Mr. Abdel Latif Yousef, the Municipal head of the village of Yanoun stated, “Around six O’clock this morning, an Israeli military jeep from the ‘Itamar’ settlement chased Bajes Aqel, Hassan Aqel, Mohamed Abu Hamad, Ra’ed Jamil, and Mahmoud An’im from neighboring Aqraba. These shepherds were tending to their herd in Yanoun’s shepherd fields”. He told reporters that the Israeli settlers chased the shepherds through rough mountain roads with ceaseless fire from their semi-automatic weapons. In panic, the shepherds fled for their lives and left their herds to run and wander away in fear. At least ten goats were killed and scores others were lost. In the valleys and mountains hugging the Nablus District, tens of small Palestinian villages are currently isolated and continuously subjected to terrorizing attacks from bands of armed Israeli settlers. These settlers aim to illegally annex the Palestinian land between the illegal Israeli settlements of “Itamar”, “Ma’ale Ephraim”, “Janit”, “Mikhorah”, “Shilo”, “Rahel”, and others. Annexing these lands would mean the expulsion of thousands of Palestinian villagers. In the context of this violent Israeli settlers’ campaign, a band of armed Israeli settlers from the illegal settlements of “Rahel” and “Shilo”, protected by a large force of Israeli occupation soldiers, raided the village of Jalood in the Nablus District on Thursday 16 August. Upon raiding the small village, the Israeli settlers confiscated large plots of land belonging to the Palestinian residents and prohibited them from reaching the rest of their farmland by force. On the same day, another band of armed Israeli settlers razed farmland belonging to the villages of Aqraba and Yanoun in order to use it in the expansion of the illegal Israeli settlement of “Itamar”. Israeli occupation soldiers in the area also sealed off the road connecting Al-Naqoora and Deir Sharaf and confiscated a number of residents’ cars, the only one available for the villages’ residents. The move effectively disconnected the Palestinian residents of Aqraba and Yanoun from the rest of the District. |
