RABBINIC COUNCIL IN ISRAEL SAYS
BOMBED CHILDREN IN LEBANON NOT INNOCENT
By Rev. Ted Pike
Yesha Rabbinical Council is the recognized authority on Jewish
religious questions in Gaza and the West Bank. This week it decreed
that at least 56 Lebanese citizens of Kfar Qanna, including at least
34 children, targeted by an Israeli air strike, were not “innocent.”
“The Yesha Rabbinical Counsel announced in response to an
IDF attack in Kfar Qanna that ‘according to Jewish law, during
a time of battle and war, there is no such thing as ‘innocence’ among
the enemy.’” 1
The council’s edict reflects existing Israeli military/religious
law. The chaplain for the IDF forces says, “In war, when our
forces storm the enemies, they are allowed and even enjoined by the
Halakah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians that are
ostensibly good.” 2
Such official standards come from binding Jewish law, or Halakah,
contained in the Babylonian Talmud. The Talmud is the highest religious
and ethical authority for the state of Israel and religious Jews.
The Talmudic ‘proof text’ for Yesha’s decision
came from treatise Abodah-Zarah 26b, where Rabbi Simeon Ben Yohai
says: “The best among the gentiles deserves to be killed. The
best of snakes ought to have its head crushed.”
Is the author of such bloodthirsty racism denounced in our time?
Hardly. Rabbi Ben Yohai is one of the earliest and therefore most
respected of Talmudic rabbis. He is so beloved by Ultra-Orthodox
Jews in Israel that every year at his birth place, in Meron, tens
of thousands gather for days in the festival of Lag Ba Omar to sing
and dance in honor of his memory. The prestigious Encyclopedia Judaica,
in its article on him, describes Ben Yohai as one of the giants of
Judaism for all time.
Ben Yohai’s bloodlust against Gentiles is enshrined in the
State of Israel itself, a nation whose apartheid laws caused the
United Nations to term Zionism “a form of racism and racial
discrimination” in 1976. They were putting it mildly. But Zionism
isn’t the root cause; it’s one black fruit of the poisoned
root of the religion founded and guided by the ancient Pharisees,
those whom Christ so bitterly rebuked. "Rabbinic" Judaism
is not the Hebrew monotheism established by God through Moses. Rather,
it is what that pure religion became after its leaders rejected and
crucified Christ.
World Revulsion
Much of the world, not sharing Israel’s disregard for the
lives of innocent civilians caught in a war zone, were shaken by
IDF’s intentional strike on a huddled enclave of refugees at
Qanna this week. Christianity, the heritage of Western nations, teaches
compassion toward innocent non-combatants in war time, as well as
to a vanquished enemy. Despite some Allied atrocities during World
War II (including the bombing of Dresden), such core values epitomized
US altruism to Japan and Germany following the war.
But Orthodox Talmudic Judaism, the official religion of the state
of Israel, has no sympathy for such high-mindedness. Jewish leadership
is bold in asserting that Judaism is not a ‘turn the other
cheek’ religion, or one to forget past offences. Judaism is
a ‘hit back’ religion. The Talmud teaches that if you
know your enemy is out to kill you, don’t do good to him. Kill
him first.
Islam, birthed in conquest and plagued by blood feuds and vendettas
for more than a millennium, is also a ‘hit back’ religion.
But of the two, Rabbinic Judaism is by far the most evil. Having
rejected the Messiah who commanded, “Love your enemies,” Israel
has become one of the most ruthless oppressors on the planet.
Who’s Killing Infidels Now?
A high percent of Christians live in Lebanon. To Jews who believe
the Talmud literally, Christians are idolaters - worshipping the
false prophet Jesus. And what should be done with idolaters? The
Talmud commands “. . . those who deny the Torah and prophets
of Israel-the law is that all those should be killed: and those that
have the power of life and death should have them killed; and if
this cannot by done, they should be led to their death by deceptive
methods.” 3
The renowned medieval Jewish sage and Talmudist Maimonides, writes: “Do
not eat with idolaters, nor permit them to worship their idols; for
it is written: make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them.
(Deuteronomy 7:2) Either turn them away from their idols or kill
them.” 4
Incidentally, the Talmud says that the children of Gentiles, such
as those bombed into rubble at Kfar Qanna, are to be regarded as
animals. The Jewish Encyclopedia article on "Gentiles," p.
621, says that the Torah [Talmud] "outlawed the issue [child]
of a Gentile as that of a beast."
Zionist Massacres
Israel’s “hit back” policy has repeatedly endorsed
reprisals against the Arabs, not only in Israel and the occupied
territories, but Lebanon, especially in 1982.
What happened then is remarkably similar to what is happening now.
Listen to World Vision International’s Stan Mooneyham, who
was on the scene.
Some say there was two hours notice. Others insist there was
none. In a camp of 60,000, it’s not easy to get the word around,
even when warning leaflets are dropped . . . the first planes came
at five o’clock in the evening; from just after midnight until
eight the next evening the bombing was continuous. For three days
the pounding went on. Everybody here has friends who died in the
attack. A woman makes a chopping motion across the knee of a baby
another woman is holding, saying she saw a baby at Ein-el-Hilweh
who had both legs blown off.
There is no Ein-el-Hilweh anymore. Never before have I seen
such total destruction, not even in Managua, the earthquake-stricken
capital of Nicaragua. If the world’s war makers and peace
makers want to see what the saturation bombing looks like, they
should look here. Israel, the country skilled in making the desert
blossom like a rose, knows also how to turn rose into desert.
Block after block of crumpled wreckage is all that’s left.
Plus the unknown number of bodies. There must be hundreds down there
underneath the rubble - the permeating odor of decaying flesh tells
you that much. Refugees who escaped say that as many as 8,000 died.
The Red Cross puts the number at 1,500. Either way, it’s one
of the major massacres of modern times. (Ed. note: The final Lebanese
death toll was 17,500).
Mooneyham then describes the Israeli attack on Sidon in the darkness
of the early morning:
. . . at 2:30 Monday morning, June 14, an aerial bomb slices
into Kineye School. It rips bodies apart, strews arms and legs
and pieces of what a second before had been living, breathing
human beings. The concussion takes the rest.
No more running. No more crying. Now they sleep.
Now here I am three weeks later, where no observer is supposed
to be, seeing what no observer is supposed to see. The bodies and
pieces of bodies . . . Kineye School is a charnel house: body fluids,
creeping across the basement floor from the stack of bodies, are
ankle deep in places. It is possible to count 50 or so bodies.
The rest are piled atop each other, hurled there by the blast that
took their lives. We are told there are 255 in the helter-skelter
pile.”
Lest We Forget
The Israelis, of course, played down the casualties and damage
in Sidon, as well as Beirut. Yet Mooneyham, who managed to penetrate
the area much sooner than other Western observers has this to report:
If the Israeli figure of 165 killed in Sidon is accurate, I saw
all but ten of those bodies in one school basement, still unburied
three weeks after the invasion. That says nothing about the township
of Ein-el-Hilweh just outside of Sidon which had a normal population
of 60,000 and was obliterated by saturation bombing.
As the head of an international relief organization bringing $400,000
worth of medical and relief supplies to the victims of the holocaust,
Mooneyham was astonished at the refusal of the Israeli conquerors
to allow distribution of such necessities, even after the fighting
had ended and the area was secure.
Early delivery attempts were thwarted on several occasions by
Israeli blockades . . . Causing costly delays . . . Israel refused
all relief agencies access to occupied areas for more than ten
days of the worst need when quick action could have saved many
lives. The Red Cross ship SS Anton (carrying World Vision relief
supplies) was refused permission on security grounds to land critically
needed supplies to Sidon two weeks after the invasion, although
our people in the city reported total security, with people fishing
on the docks.” (August,
1982)
Although Mooneyham did not view other areas of Lebanon as closely
as his inspection of Tyre and its environs, what he saw there prompts
him to make an ominous comparison: “The sheer magnitude of
this one visible piece of the Israeli war machine is incredible.
David seems determined to become Goliath.” 5
History Repeats Itself
Today, America and the West naively impute Christian instincts
and values to Israel, our supposed ally in the “war against
terror.” But Israel’s ethics are worlds apart from ours.
Their Talmudic values do not come from Christ, but from those who
killed Him, the Pharisees.
Further, Israel resents American attempts to impose Christian ethics.
This week the Yesha Rabbinical Council sent this terse statement
to the Christian West, “All of the discussions on Christian
morality are weakening the spirit of the army and the nation and
are costing us in the blood of our soldiers and civilians.” 6
In other words, Israel’s Judaic Taliban says, “Butt
out of any attempt to Christianize the Israeli war machine!”
Dissent Answered with Bullets
In the early 1980’s, my father and our family promoted the
newly revived National Day of Prayer at the National Religious Broadcasters
Convention in Washington D.C. In a booth near ours, a Christian friend,
Stan Rittenhouse, was selling his book critical of Zionism, For
Fear of the Jews. Rabbi Ben Ami, liaison between Israel and the religious
right, stopped to peruse Stan’s book. He flew into a fury shouting, “He
should be killed!”
Would a Christian minister or priest respond that way toward an
opposing view? Of course not.
But Rabbi Ben Ami comes from a very different mindset. His deep
hit-back-hit-first reflex lashed out from a racial/religious tradition
going back thousands of years.
Time to Pull Out
After Israel’s saturation bombing of Lebanon in 1982, Prime
Minister Menachem Begin arrogantly defended Israel’s actions
saying, “We do not have to answer to the world, only to ourselves.”
In other words, Israel may take America’s military and monetary
contributions to her war-making in the Mid-East, but she rejects
any attempts by the Christian world to impose its Christian morality
upon her- a morality which, if implemented, could end Mid-East strife.
America’s business is to mutely supply the money and military
hardware that enables Zionism’s bloody expansion.
Isn’t it time to ask a few commonsense questions?
George Washington warned America to “avoid foreign entanglements.” Just
what are we doing spending nearly a trillion dollars and sacrificing
thousands of American lives on the other side of the world to benefit
nations, whether in Tel Aviv or Baghdad, who reject our values?
America was intended by its founding fathers, not to be an international
meddler in the strife of foreign lands, but a beacon of truth and
liberty which benighted foreign nations could turn toward for inspiration.
It’s time to disentangle ourselves from the troubled Middle
East and make use of the same man-power and the next trillion dollars
to build a stronger America.
It’s time to come home.
(Adapted from Ted Pike's book Israel: Our
Duty, Our Dilemma)
Endnotes:
1 ynetnews.com
7/30/06
2 Booklet published
by the Chaplain of the Israeli army Central Region Command quoted
by Dr. Israel Shahak in his Jewish History,
Jewish Religion, page
76
3 Choschen Hammishpat
113, Hagah
4 Hilkoth Akum
X,1
5 World Vision
Magazine, September 1982
6 ynetnews.com,
7/30/06
