[R-G] Israeli Rabbi Outdoes Ahmadinejad

[Sid Shniad]

http://mwcnews.net/focus/editorial/4924-israeli-rabbi-outdoes-ahmadinejad.html

Wednesday, 01 September 2010
  Israeli Rabbi Outdoes
Ahmadinejad<http://mwcnews.net/focus/editorial/4924-israeli-rabbi-outdoes-ahmadinejad.html>
By Lawrence Davidson<http://mwcnews.net/component/comprofiler/userprofile/ldavidson1945.html>

[image: Rabbi Ovadia Yosef]Back in October of 2005 the Western media,
starting with the *New York
Times<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/26/world/africa/26iht-iran.html?_r=1>
*, mistranslated a speech by Ahmadinejad. The Iranian President had called
for regime change in Israel, a practice American Presidents indulge in
repeatedly in terms of countries like Cuba, Sudan, and Iran itself. In this
case, Ahmadinejad’s statement that “the occupying regime over Jerusalem”
will one day “vanish from the pages of time” somehow became a desire that
Israel should be “wiped off the the map.”

Almost immediately all hell broke loose in the United States as every devout
Zionist and their supporters in and out of the government decided that Iran
(allegedly seeking nuclear weapons) had now revealed itself as an
“existential threat” to Israel. It was quickly pointed
out<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13641.htm>that the
*NYT* had made a mistake, that in any case Iran did not have the power to
actually “wipe Israel off the map,” that the Iranian nuclear program was,
according to all objective intelligence reports, not aiming to produce such
weapons, etc. but it made no difference at all. To this day, not only the
Zionists and their supporters in Congress, but a good many American citizens
(to say nothing of the Israeli public) believe that Iran wants to commit
genocide against Israel.

Now let us fast forward to August 29, 2010. On that day the Israeli
newspaper *Haaretz<http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/shas-spiritual-leader-abbas-and-palestinians-should-perish-1.310800?localLinksEnabled=false>
* reported on a speech made by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader the
Israeli political party, Shas. Shas is a major political movement in Israel.
It represents the religiously observant Sephardi Jewish population of that
country. It has eleven seats in the Knesset, is a key part of Prime Minister
Netanyahu’s coalition government, and one of its members (Eli Yishai) is the
current Minister of Internal Affairs. He is the one leading the effort to
ethnically cleanse in East Jerusalem. Shas' power means Rabbi Yosef is an
influential political player in today’s Israel. That is why Haaretz paid
attention to his speech of the 29th. So, what did he say?

Rabbi Yosef said that the Palestinians and their leaders are “evil and
damnable.” That “God should strike them with a plague.” And just in case God
doesn’t get them all, Israel “must send missiles to them and annihilate
them.” He finished up with “Abu Mazen (aka Mahmoud Abbas) and all these evil
people should perish from this world.” One is tempted to ask if the
spiritual leader of Shas was trying to mimic the New York Times' distorted
image of Ahmadinejad?

The U.S. State Department<http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2010/08/146414.htm>was
quick to condemn Yosef’s “inflammatory” remarks and note that they
“hurt
the cause of peace.” Coming just days before Prime Minister Netanyahu and
Mahmoud Abbas are to begin face to face “peace talks” that is probably
Yosef’s intent. Rather than see Israel achieve a compromise peace, the Rabbi
would prefer to see the Palestinians “ wiped off the map,” so to speak. It
is no surprise then that Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator for the Palestine
Authority, concluded that Rabbi Yosef’s speech was “incitement to genocide.”

The Israeli Prime Minister’s office released a statement (see State
Department link above) emphasizing that Yosef’s remarks, as influential as
they must be on the Shas party and its minister in the cabinet, “do not
reflect Netanyahu’s views, nor the stance of the Israeli government.”
Nonetheless, it is interesting that Haaretz felt it necessary to add that
Netanyahu’s comments “stopped short of a condemnation.” Back here in the
U.S. *The Jewish Week* <http://www.thejewishweek.com/print/11153>noted that
the American Jewish community’s response had been rather anemic. J Street ‘s
Hadar Susskind said that Israeli leaders as well as Palestinian leaders
should refrain from incitement, and Abe Foxman (who on this side of the
water is an inciter par excellence) released a statement saying that the ADL
was “outraged” by Yosef’s remarks, coming as they do “on the eve of the
Jewish New Year.” From all those in Congress who regularly label Ahmadinejad
as a racist and a madman, there has been silence.

It appears that we live in a world permeated with double standards. Indeed,
it may very well be that we are born with a genetic predisposition for them.
Even while claiming adherence to “universal” sets of ethical teaching (such
as the Ten Commandments), we regularly accept and/or excuse behavior by
blood relatives that we would condemn when practiced by those to whom we are
unrelated. We extend this to our ‘cultural relatives’ by holding one set of
standards for our community and another set for those that are alien. What
is terrorism? It is something the ‘other’ does, not us. Where is mass murder
committed? It is in Rwanda, in Darfur, in Bosnia, but not in Iraq or Vietnam
or Nicaragua. Who are the torturers? Not us. President Bush told us that
water-boarding does not count, and those that wrote the memos saying
“intensive interrogation” was legal while international law was obsolete,
now teach at our most prestigious universities. We are good. They are bad.
We deserve to live. They deserve to die. This practice of double standards
is old and very persistent.

Now Rabbi Ovadia Yosef shows us that Israeli Jews, and Zionists in general,
are just ordinary hypocrites like the rest of us. Has the “light unto the
nations” gone out? Well not completely. There is still a tiny little flame
that is kept alight by the Jewish minority who understands that Zionism has
been very bad for the Jews and Jewish values. There have always been such
ethical Jews around, but they have been shouted down by the majority who
insist that immorality somehow turns moral when practiced by Israel. But
now, thanks to the spiritual icon of Shas, the minority has been proven
right. As a consequence, it is now clear–if the world is looking for a
madman and a racist with influence over people who possess nuclear weapons,
Iran’s Ahmadinejad (who has no such weapons) cannot logically be high on the
list. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, however, seems a most suitable candidate.