Beards Carry No Immunity
By Rabbi Meir Kahane z"tl h"yd
Published originally on November 10th 1989
“And Judah too, shall fight against Jerusalem...” (Zechariah 14)
The briefest of hints, but a chilling one: that in the end of days, Judah, Jews, will join the gentile enemy in war against Jerusalem. And behold, we see it in our days. The self hating Jewish anti-Semite. The Jew who fights his own people, who joins with the enemy of Jerusalem in battle against Jerusalem.
Disturbed Michael Lerner of Tikkun Magazine carried a “revised” list of sins for which we should beat our breasts on Yom Kippur as we recite Al Het (for the sin). For example:
“For the sins we have committed by not publicly criticizing the Jewish people and Israel when they are acting as oppressors.”
“For not recognizing the humanity and pain of the Palestinian people.”
The same disturbance places an expensive full page ad in The New York Times with the huge headline: “No, Mr. Shamir. Don’t assume that American Jews support your policies toward the Palestinians.”
Moshe Arens’ son, Professor Yigal Arens of the University of California, creates a group called Jewish Committee on the Middle East (JCOME) and places a large ad in several publications. It reads, in part:
“We are Americans and Jews and we come together at this time to publicly express our strong desire to see the US take meaningful steps to disassociate our country from the policies of Israel... We can no longer condone or be associated with such Israeli behavior, nor, do we believe should our country.”
And Arens and his fellow Jews then call upon the United States to cut economic and military aid to Israel. Thus:
"For these reasons, we believe the time has come to normalize the U.S. relationship with Israel. A complete re-evaluation of what has become, since 1967, the American sponsorship of Israel, is required. The unprecedented amounts of economic aid should be cut back over the next two to three years to much smaller levels. Furthermore, the considerable military and intelligence assistance should also be radically reduced."
A Jew named Lenny Brenner writes a viciously anti-Semitic book, Jews in America Today, which is grist for the mill of every Nazi and Jew-hater.
And then there is another Jewish group.
The article appeared in the Magazine, The Message International, a fundamentalist Moslem publication that is venomously opposed to the existence of Israel. It began this way:
"We participate together with the Palestinian people in their anguish and suffering. We feel their intense pain and frustration resulting from the cruel oppression they are enduring under the brutal Zionist occupation of their Palestinian homeland. This is especially so since we understand the overwhelming justice of their right to self-determination and statehood in their beloved Palestine. A yearning that burns fervently to be free and sovereign in their native land."
The article was written by a Jewish group and continued with:
"The genuine Jewish people recognize the Palestinian people as the legal sovereign over their entire land, not just the West Bank and Gaza. The Zionists have absolutely no right to rule the land."
The same Jewish group issued the following statement as part of a pamphlet issued September 15, 1982:
"We pledge allegiance to the kosher state of Palestine represented by the PLO, patriotic freedom fighters in the honorable cause of humanity."
The same group regularly inserts advertisements in The New York Times attacking the existence of Israel, and on March 3, 1989, the Israeli newspaper Davar carried a picture of one of the group's leaders visiting Arabs wounded in the uprising against Israel. He handed out $12, 000 to various wounded Arabs and presented the Moslem Red Crescent (the equivalent of the Red Cross) $3, 000 for the intifada "victims." Each Arab received a bag of sweets along with a personal letter wishing him a speedy recovery.
All of the above share a common denominator: Jews attacking the Jewish state , Judah fighting against Jerusalem. But one group differs radically from all the others. While all the others are secular, generally leftist Jews, the latter is an Orthodox one - Neturei Karta.
And while much fire and brimstone has been poured on the heads of Lerner and Arens and all the other secular and leftist Jews, there has been an unconscionable failure on the part of religious Jews to speak out against the traitors and enemies of both Israel and the Jewish people who call themselves Neturei Karta. That is inexcusable.
Let me make it quite clear that it is totally legitimate for one to be an anti-Zionist and to disagree with the fundamental concept of a Jewish state in our times, because of religious reasons. There is certainly source material for that position in Torah sources, even though those who use it to deny the legitimate halachic status of Israel are, I believe, very very wrong. I believe that the Jewish state is G-d's hand, that the well known "oaths" in Tractace Ketubot that are used to deny the right to a Jewish state until the coming of the Messiah are interpreted totally wrong and that Religious Zionism is not only proper, but mandatory and obligatory.
Nevertheless, I certainly recognize the right of Jews to religiously differ, though wrong. That is not why I feel that Jews should rise up in anger at Neturei Karta and use all means necessary to punish them. It is not their anti-Zionism which is criminal and which places them beyond the pale. It is rather the fact that they openly support the enemies of the Jewish people, the murderous and vicious Arab Nazis of the PLO, that places the Neturei Karta outside the Jewish camp.
There is a red line in Judaism that cannot be crossed without becoming a traitor to and enemy of the Jewish people. There is a limit that, once reached and violated, marks one as a moser, an informer, and a rodef, a pursuer of Jews, who is plotting to destroy them. That line and limit is the joining together, openly and eagerly and without shame with the enemy who wishes to harm and destroy Jews. Neturei Karta has become the enemy within the Jewish camp, the moser and rodef that should be dealt with in all the ways that are necessary.
It does not matter that they comprise a handful. Their insignificant numbers are unimportant. The substantive nature of their treachery and Hillul Hashem, desecration of the Name, are what matter.
In their obscene words and actions on behalf of the PLO Nazis, do they differ from those leftist Israelis who meet with and support the PLO? In their open support to the Hitlerite Arabs, are they different from Yigal Arens, or Noam Chomsky, or Lenny Brenner or the other disturbed leftist Jews who aid the destruction of Israel? Is venom against Jews and hatred of the Jewish State somehow mitigated because the individual has a beard? Do payot (earlocks) and a long black coat cover the treacherous nakedness of the moser and rodef? Does someone who joins hands, literally, with those who would massacre Jews become more legitimate because he covers his abomination with the mantle of the “Torah”?
I do not think so. I know that there is no difference except that the so-called religious Jew, in addition to his teacher, also desecrates the name of G-d and his Torah. Jewish silence, religious Jewish silence, is inexcusable. The time is long overdue for unified Torah condemnation of Neturei Karta and the same kind of action against them that we would deem proper for those traitors who walk around beardless. After all, many is the “religious” Jew whose beard merely covers an unshaven face, and whose piety is but a fig leaf for the same diseased soul as that which possesses all the traitors on the left.
Topic: Religious who refuse to serve in the army (Read 7425 times)