First Word

In a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the former Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel, Mordechai Eliyahu, declares that all Palestinians in Gaza (men, women, children) are collectively guilty for the Kassam rocket attacks on Sderot and ruled that there was no Talmudic prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential Israeli offensive on Gaza. The rabbi reasoned that everyone in Gaza is responsible since they have done nothing to stop the rocket attacks. (See here for a news report.)

Speaking for his father, Shmuel Eliyahu, the head rabbi of Safed, said that he (his father) advocated carpet bombing the general area from which the Kassams were launched, regardless of the price in Palestinian life.

“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop.”

Rabbi Elayahu was not being innovative in pushing Olmert to carpet bomb Palestinian civilians. In his letter, he appealed to Maimonides, Judaism’s most revered Talmudic scholar. I offer a few selections from the writings of Maimonides near the end. But Elayahu is not the only Judaic who uses Maimonides as a cover for criminal activities.

Baruch Goldstein

Rabbi Eliyahu’s theory of collective guilt is closely related to the Judaic doctrine that gentiles are not human and that a Jew may take the life of non-Jews without legal or divine penalties. This doctrine was put into practice on February 25, 1994, the Feast of Purim, when Baruch Goldstein, a physician and follower of Rabbi Meir Kahane (the founder of the Jewish Defense League), massacred 40 Palestinians, including children, in the Hebron mosque.

Rather than condemning Goldstein as a murderer, many prominent rabbis extolled him as a hero. At his funeral, Rabbi Yaacov Perrin told the mourners, “One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” And Rabbi Israel Ariel stated that, “The holy martyr Baruch Goldstein is from now on our intercessor in heaven.” Ariel’s statement is less surprising if you place it within the context of his theology. He said on another occasion, “A Jew who killed a non-Jew is exempt from human judgment and has not violated the religious prohibition of murder.”

Reflecting on the massacre, Israeli municipal council member Moshe Belogorodsky is quoted in the New York Times (March 4, 1994) as stating, “It says in the Talmud that when a non-Jew strikes a Jew it’s as if he’s striking the Divine Presence itself.” In the Jewish Week (April 26, 1996) he went on to say, “What Baruch did, at least in my book, is the opposite. It’s the sanctification of God’s name.”

Near the site where the 40 Palestinians were murdered is Goldstein’s tombstone. It reads:

“Here lies the saint, Dr. Baruch Kappel Goldstein, blessed be the memory of the righteous and holy man, may the Lord avenge his blood, who devoted his soul to the Jews, Jewish religion and Jewish land. His hands are innocent and his heart is pure. He was killed as a martyr of God on the 14th of Adar, Purim, in the year 5754 (1994).”

Lest anybody think that these are extremist and do not represent the Judaic mainstream, a 1994 poll indicates otherwise. The result was that “at least half of all Israeli Jews” approved of the massacre, so long as it was not referred to as a massacre (Yuval Katz, Yerushalaim, March 4, 1994).

Previous to the murders, Goldstein said that he recognized only two non-Talmudic authorities, Rabbi Kahane and Maimonides. And it is in these authorities that he found his justification for the massacre. Kahane is not sheepish about his views. In an interview with CBS News, Kahane said Arabs are dogs and based this belief on the Talmud. It is no stretch to conclude that if Arabs are dogs and these “dogs” are occupying “their” land, a Jew has every right to exterminate them. Goldstein was just being logical.

Rabbi Eliyahu and his son promote mass murder under the fraudulent theory of “collective guilt.” Rabbis Perrin, Ariel, Baruch Goldstein and presumably a majority of Israeli Jews consider a mass murderer a saint. What is wrong with these people? The answer is found in the Judaism itself. Below are just a few selections from the authoritative rabbinic literature.

Moses Maimonides

“Those who are outside the city are all human individuals who have no doctrinal belief, neither one based on speculation nor one that accepts the authority of tradition: such individuals as the furthermost Turks found in the remote North, the Negroes found the the remote South, and those who resemble them that are with us in these climes. The status of those is like that of irrational animals. To my mind they do not have the rank of men, but have among the beings a rank lower than the rank of man but higher than the rank of apes. For they have the external shape and lineaments of a man and a faculty of discernment that is superior to that of the apes.” The Guide of the Perplexed

“Man alone, and not vessels, can contract uncleanness by carriage. . . . The corpse of a gentile . . . does not convey uncleanness by overshadowing. . . . a gentile does not contract corpse uncleanness; and if a gentile touches, carries, or overshadows a corpse he is as one who did not touch it. To what is this like? It is like a beast which touches a corpse or overshadows it. And this applies not to corpse uncleanness only but to any other king of uncleanness: neither gentiles nor cattle are susceptible to any uncleanness.” The Code of Maimonides

“Accordingly, if we see an idolater [gentile] being swept away or drowning in the river, we should not help him. If we see that his life is in danger, we should not save him” Mishnah Torah

Talmudic Teaching

Sanhedrin 57a. “For murder, whether of a goy [gentile] by a goy, or of an Israelite by a goy, punishment is incurred; but of a goy by an Israelite, there is no death penalty.”

Minor Tractates, Soferim 41a-b “Even the best of the gentiles should all be killed.”

Sanhedrin 58b “If a heathen smites a Jew, he is worthy of death . . He who smites an Israelite on the jaw, is as though he had thus assaulted the Divine Presence; for it is written, one who smiteth man [i.e. an Israelite] attacketh the Holy One.”

Yebamoth 98a “Thus it may be inferred that the All Merciful declared their [the pronoun’s antecedent is ‘Egyptians’; and so by implication, all gentiles] children to be legally fatherless, for so indeed it is also written, Whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses.

‛Abodah Zarah 36b “[T]heir daughters [daughters of goyim] should be considered as in the state of niddah [filth; lit. mestruation] from their cradle.”

Conclusion

Many who read this may be surprised at how the Judaic religion views non-Jews. After all, was not the tagline of Schindler’s List, “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire,” from the Talmud? And does this not imply that the lives of both Jews and gentiles is sacred? This would, indeed, provide at least some evidence that Judaism is not as racist and accepting of the murder of non-Jews as the above citations would indicate. But the quote is inaccurate. And intentionally so. The Talmud actually says, “Whosoever preserves a single soul of Israel, Scripture ascribes [merit] to him as though he had preserved a complete world.” (Sanhedrin 37a) The Judaic propagandist Spielberg is just trying to fool the goyim into thinking that the Judaic religion teaches that Jews and gentiles share a common humanity. But Maimonides and the Talmud are clear. Jewish blood is precious, gentile blood is not. Thus, carpet bombing and massacring innocent Palestinians is justifiable, just so long as it is Judaics who do the killing.

What is even more appalling is that many Christians view Judaics as brothers in a common faith. Indeed, the Judiacs are the older brothers who have much to teach the Christian church. Judeo-Christianity and Christian-Zionism extol Judaism. And in so doing, they reject Christianity.
++++++++++++

Many of the references in this post were gleaned from Michael Hoffman’s, Judaism’s Strange Gods. It can be ordered at his web site.