Extremist Schmucks

In my post from Sunday discussing how religious terrorists seek to silence not only their enemies but also their co-religionists who don't tow the extremist line, I noted:

Jews aren't immune from it either--just because there hasn't been any more high-profile assassinations in the 14 years since the murder of Yitzhak Rabin doesn't mean that the extremists who encouraged Yigal Amir have gone away altogether.

Well, now we have some more recent concrete proof. From Rabbi Sid Schwarz, founder of PANIM: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values, in an article in The Jewish Week describing his experience at a concert after the Salute to Israel parade in New York last month:

Then a band launched into a rousing rendition of Am Yisrael Chai. I spent more than 25 years as an activist for Soviet Jewry. This was our theme song signaling solidarity both with the history of our people and with all those oppressed Jews in the world whose cause we championed. A group of young men in their 20's with kippot and tziztzit were right in front of me dancing in a frenzy. But they alternated the verse that meant "the people of Israel lives" with "all the Arabs must die." It rhymed with the Hebrew. Given the way all joined in, it was clear that this was not the first time it was sung.

I leaned over to a young man who was next to me, also wearing a kippah and tzitzit. I nodded at the dancers and asked: "Does this song bother you?" He looked at me with a suspicious look and replied: "This is Zionism."

So let me get this straight--if I'm offended by one group of extremists hijacking Mickey Mouse in order to encourage killing Jews, I'm not supposed to be equally offended when another group of extremists hijacks a powerful religious song to encourage killing Arabs?

It's encouraging, though, that this rabbi and other Jewish leaders are beginning to realize that "Islam is not the only religion that is in danger of being hijacked," and that what was being espoused in this concert is not Zionism, but racism.

But wait, there's more! In an article in Moment Magazine asking rabbis from various denominations how Jews should treat Arabs, here's what the Chabad rabbi had to say:

I don’t believe in western morality, i.e. don’t kill civilians or children, don’t destroy holy sites, don’t fight during holiday seasons, don’t bomb cemeteries, don’t shoot until they shoot first because it is immoral. The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle).

Rabbi Manis Friedman, Bais Chana Institute of Jewish Studies, St. Paul, MN

Note to Chabad: Please stick to trying to convert secular Jewish students on college campuses and supplying yummy Friday night dinners. Don't wade into foreign policy. Ever.

But the odd thing is, I don't know if there's too much of a risk of a bunch of crazed haredim rushing to sign up for the next war, even with the rabbis saying stuff like that. As we all know, the ultra-Orthodox don't join the IDF, because they get a sweet deal that allows them to stay in their fundamentalist schools rather than defending their country, as their secular co-citizens are required to do. Also, joining the IDF would require them to deal with (gasp!) WOMEN! Who have powerful military careers and don't wear wigs! Oh the humanity!

Same goes for the punk kids in the first article. Just like their young Republican Yellow Elephant counterparts from other religions, they could go overseas to kill Arabs, but it's far safer to just stay in the U.S. and be an armchair quarterback. Those kids would absolutely piss themselves if confronted with bullets and bombs.

There's an old joke about how if you have two Jews on a desert island, they'd build three synagogues--one for the first one to attend, one for the second one to attend, and one that neither of them will EVER set foot in and that both will complain about constantly. But it is true in the wake of the election of Barack Obama and the renewed focus on finding a concrete solution in the Middle East that we now see a fault line forming between most American and Israeli Jews, who want peace, and that small group of ultra-Orthodox and haredim, who want to live out their warped Old Testament fantasies at the expense of everyone else. And that fault line will only grow deeper and more volatile until we stand up to the extremists, until we get over the fear of looking like a self-hater or acting divisively in order to effectively say that what the extremists preach is not what Judaism or Zionism is all about. Rabbi Schwarz puts it best:

Jewish leaders are quick to demand that Muslim clergy condemn the extremism that has hijacked Islam into a religion of terrorism and death. We need to make the same demands of the rabbis of institutions whose students make a chillul hashem (a desecration of God's name) by singing "all the Arabs must die".

UPDATE:  In all fairness to Chabad, the organization is now distancing itself from the comments.  Although the rabbi in question uses the tried-and-true "taken out of context" excuse.