Rabbinic Council Says Dead Lebanon Kids 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 mornings, 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 7/30/2006
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, 7/30/2006
Rev. Ted Pike is director of the National Prayer Network, a
Christian/conservative watchdog group.
