PBS Frontline Profiles Jewish Extremists

Tonight, PBS Frontline aired an interesting documentary entitled Israel's Next War, which focused on Jewish extremist groups in Israel. I'm confident that many viewers were shocked and surprised at what they saw and heard during this informative program—and I hope that it might cause dilemmas to form in the minds of some of these thinking, but heretofore uninformed, people. For one, these extremists seem to be the Jewish embodiment of the militant, self-righteous and narrow-minded literalism that most decent people abhor in various militant Islamic fundamentalist groups and sects. Not only that, but the documentary brought out the internal struggle going on within Israel between secular Jews and religious Jews, which is what the phrase “Israel's Next War” was really getting at. I think they could have done a better job of explaining the actual degree of this divide amongst Jews in Israel, but it was a good documentary nonetheless.

Many people don't realize that Israel, in spite of its nominal Judaism, is a secular state that ignores the requirments of the Torah in almost every respect, which is why many Orthodox Jews condemn the democratic secular government or, in some cases, even the existence of the State of Israel altogether. Far from being a righteous and religious Jewish State as many Evangelical Protestants would have us believe, public morality in Israel is about on a par with Eastern Europe since it's full of nightclubs, strip bars, prostitution and rampant nudity on television. It's these types of things, as well as flaunting the Sabbath as a day of rest (which seemingly should be punished by stoning) and other such religious code violations, that have the Orthodox conservatives in Israel in a sometimes-violent outrage.

This PBS Frontline documentary didn't spend much time trying to explain what Jewish extremists feel should be done to solve the problem of the presence of secular non-observant Jews in Israel, since it largely focused on their views regarding what needs to be done as far as a “Final Solution” (which is what some secular critics have called it with very intentional irony) to the Palestinian problem. This solution, as the statements of the Jewish extremists made perfectly clear, amounts to driving the Arabs out of Israel or simply killing them. This, it was explained, is what the Torah requires and is what Zionist Jews will need in order to have enough land for their settlements. I found it ironic that the justification used for seizing more Palestinian land, especially when coupled with racist and dehumanizing statements about their Arab enemies, is very similar in ideological tone to Hitler's quest for lebensraum (i.e. "living space") for the German people. Needless to say, there's a lot of irony in all of this.

It was made clear that most, if not all, of the Jewish extremists that this PBS documentary chose to focus on were followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was an advocate of forcing all Arabs out of the land of Israel. In conjunction with this, he also waged a campaign to rid Israel of all Christian missionaries and pseudo-Christian cults. This brings out yet another irony, since the Dispensationalist Evangelical Christian who staunchly support Israel will end up having their so-called "Good News" banned from it. Not only that, but many of the Arabs that Rabbi Kahane and other Jewish extremists want to expel from Israel are Arab (Palestinian) Christians. The irony here being that Dispensationalist Christians will only be able to get the "righteous" Israel which they so fervently desire if grave injustices are committed against fellow (albeit Arab) Christians. As I've explained in my Forgotten (Palestinian) Christians posting, a Christian would have to ignore the seemingly obvious point that since Christians (even Arab ones) follow the New Covenant and not the Old, then they as the “New Israel” have at least as much right to live in the land of Israel as any Jew—at least according to the New Testament.

Speaking of the Bible, I was relieved that one of the young Jewish extremists who was interviewed for the documentary made it clear that he felt that the revenge attacks which he and his fellow extremists advocate against Palestinians were scripturally justified. He clearly said that the Psalms call for revenge much more often than they call for peace, and one of their prominent rabbis made it clear (although not mentioned on the program) that hatred and vengeance for God's sake can certainly be justified from the Torah. When Muslim extremists speak in such terms and offer Qur'anic references, regardless of how twisted or out of context, the so-called "experts" and talking-heads start wondering out loud whether Islam is inherently violent, often concluding that Islam itself is to blame for militant extremism and terrorism. However, when it comes to Jewish extremists, they are largely portrayed as a small minority of fanatics who have just managed to twist and misinterpret an otherwise peaceful and wholesome religion.

Even though I liked this PBS Frontline episode overall, since I think it provided a lot of information that most people need to be aware of, it certainly had some shortcomings. For one, it seemed to imply that Palestinians started all the violence and that they're the ones who started using terrorist tactics—which simply doesn't match the facts. Likewise, they showed quite a few grisly pictures of Israelis who had been killed and maimed by Palestinian suicide bombers. However, no such heart-wrenching images were shown of Palestinians, including women and children, who have been killed or wounded when Israel jets or tanks intentionally fire into occupied Palestinians homes while carrying out the same type of "collective punishment" operations that Hamas implements by suicide-bombing. Targeting civilians is wrong regardless of who is doing it and how they're delivering the bomb—so condemn it in both cases O Ye Hypocrites! The cold hard facts tell us that each year a lot more Palestinian children (usually about three times more) are violently killed than Israeli children. However, this simply went unsaid on the program and not knowing any better, one might well have concluded quite the opposite.

Now I'd have to watch the entire Israel's Next War program again in order to actually jot down accurate statistics on this, but it seemed that when they were talking about the various deaths, it was exclaimed that Israelis had been "murdered" although Palestinians were merely "killed". They definitely did this at least once, and it's a rather common trend of media coverage of Israeli-Palestinian violence, so keep any eye out for it. One obvious proof of this is that Israel's targeted assassinations of certain Palestinian leaders are called "targeting killings" rather than "targeted murders" even in the mainstream American media, although these assassinations violate both U.S. and international law.

Another thing that was conspicuous in its absence was any discussion about how these Jewish extremists were not tortured by the Israel Security Services (Shabak). While the documentary showed that the Jewish extremists were held in isolation for long periods and heavily interrogated, nothing suggested that they were tortured. However, one would be safe in assuming that if these were Palestinian Islamic extremists, they would have been brutally tortured wholesale (and there's so much information regarding this on the web that there's no need for me to even provide a set of links).

Another convenient oversight was the 1994 massacre of forty-nine Muslim worshippers in Hebron by an extremist Jew. Although the documentary did mention this Hebron massacre in passing, it didn't give any of the gory details. Maybe the number of Palestinians killed over the years compared to the number of Jewish settlers killed would make the numbers rather lopsided and show that Israel has a lot more blood on her hands. Also, the fact that the grave of Baruch Goldstein, the American Jew mass murderer who carried out the Hebron massacre, was turned into a shrine in Israel (which admittedly disgusted most secular Israelis) and was visited regularly by extremist Jews until it was destroyed by the Israeli government in 2000 might have been judged as just too much for American viewers, since it was not mentioned. However, even though they did show a group of Orthodox Jews holding a vigil at the grave of Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was killed by a Muslim extremist, the fact that up until the year 2000, similar vigils were held a the grave of "Jewish terrorist" Baruch Goldstein was conveniently left out.

Anyone wanting to know more about Jewish fundamentalism and extremism in Israel should read Jewish Fundamentalism In Israel, by Israel Shahak, but do so with a grain of salt. Even though most of the book is accurate, Mr. Shahak was a staunch secularist who seemed to have problems with not only Jewish fundamentalism, but religion in general. Due to that, I think it's fair to say that, at least in a few instances, he may have jumped to some hasty conclusions, misinterpreted facts or overstated things just a bit. Other useful studies of Jewish fundamentalism, militancy and political extremism in Israel are For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, by Ian Lustick (published in 1988 by the Council on Foreign Relations Press and thus a bit dated); Brother Against Brother: Violence and Extremism in Israeli Politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination, by Ehud Sprinzak; and Zealots for Zion: Inside Israel's West Bank Settlement Movement, by Robert I. Friedman.