Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon has disclosed that Israel’s security services have adopted stringent measures to ensure that a despicable incident like last summer’s firebombing of a Palestinian family’s home in the West Bank village of Duma will never happen again. “We have taken draconian steps to prevent another terror attack,” he said on December 26 without further elaboration.
Jewish terrorists affiliated with the settlement movement in the West Bank are strongly suspected of having perpetrated the crime that claimed the lives of Saad and Riham Dawabsha and their infant son, Ali, on July 31.
Yaalon said that indictments against the suspects are expected soon.
Yaalon’s disclosure comes not a moment too soon.
Jewish terrorists endanger Israel and should be treated like terrorists, as Ehud Barak, the former defence minister, suggested recently. They’re a disgrace to themselves and to Israel.
But they’re not the only deviants who should be held to account. As Yaalon said, rabbis on the lunatic fringe who incite hate crimes against Arabs should be investigated as well.
To his credit, Yair Lapid — the former minister of finance and head of the centrist Yesh Atid Party — has declared that Orthodox rabbis linked to Jewish radicals cannot absolve themselves of responsibility for the actions of their acolytes. For too long now, the Orthodox rabbinate has lauded or turned a blind eye to extremist rabbis like Dov Lior and Yitzhak Ginsburgh.
Born in the United States, Ginsburgh has been accused of encouraging violence against Arabs. He spoke highly of Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish settler who murdered 29 Palestinian Arabs and injured more than 100 in Hebron in 1994.
Lior is an equally shady character, having advised Jews not to rent homes to Arabs and having played a role in the publication of The King’s Torah, an inflammatory tract which sets out situations in which non-Jews can be killed by Jews.
Unfortunately, Ginsburgh and Lior represent the tip of an iceberg of racism and subversion haunting Israel.
Earlier this month, the Israeli media published accounts of an Orthodox wedding in which guests brandished knives, rifles and firebombs and stabbed and burned a photograph of Ali Dawabsha. Video footage of this event recorded their shameful behaviour.
To no one’s surprise, some of people at the wedding, including the groom, are friends with the Jewish extremists who already have been detained in connection with the deadly Duma firebombing.
Disturbingly enough, the rabbi who presided at the marriage ceremony, Daniel Stavsky, has blamed Palestinian Arabs and the Shin Bet domestic intelligence bureau for it. Stavsky’s astonishing accusation speaks volumes about his warped mentality and mindset.
The video shocked and dismayed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He condemned the unruly wedding guests as “a threat to Israeli society and Israel’s security.” Naftali Bennett, the leader of the right-wing Jewish Home Party and a minister in Netanyahu’s cabinet, issued a condemnation of Jewish extremists, too.
Netanyahu and Bennett are probably sincere in their condemnation of Jewish terrorists, but one suspects they’re equally motivated by the concern that their rampages against Arabs may jeopardize Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
According to Carmi Gillon, a former Shin Bet director, the threat posed to Israel by Jewish religious extremists has reached an unprecedented level. He believes their objective is to replace the Jewish democratic state of Israel with an Iranian-style Jewish theocratic state.
These are fighting words, but they have the ring of authenticity, authority and urgency.
In addition to the dire threats Israel faces from sworn enemies like Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic State, Israel is now threatened by a cabal of Jewish terrorists hell-bent on taking the law into their own hands and wreaking havoc.
Let’s be absolutely clear. These maladjusted Jews are ticking time bombs who must be defused. They should be treated with the utmost severity, and their twisted rabbinical mentors must be swiftly brought to justice.
Israel’s well-being and future depends on it.