My post @ Richard Silverstein’s Tikun Olam …
IDF Col. Ofer Winter’s Holy War Against Latter-Day Philistines
As any Hebrew or Sunday school child knows, Samson, who’d also been blinded by his captors, waited for the moment when the Philistines held a banquet at which they featured him as the entertaining clown of the evening. It was at that moment, as they ridiculed him, when Samson regained his strength and toppled the pillars of the pagan temple, taking his enemies down with him.
This is the sort of latter-day Jewish heroism Winter was summoning in the Order of Battle he published just before the ground invasion began. In a holy war, there is no morality. Morality is a secular concept. In such a war, there is only the Lord and His commands, which follow their own sacred code.
This riveting Haaretz article by Yagil Levy (not yet translated into English), recounts some of his barbaric military acts following that. Keep in mind as you read it that “Palestinian” and “Philistine” are almost interchangeable in Hebrew, and settler religious ultra-nationalists deliberately invoke the Bibilical term to conjure Palestinians as latter-day enemies of the nation of Israel:
Givati Brigade Battles Philistines
The order of battle which the Givati Commander Ofer Winter published at the beginning of Operation Protective Edge aroused a public furor. There were those who claimed that it should be impossible for someone who represented the battle in Gaza as a religious war-which declared the enemy to be “defamers, abusers and defilers of the God of Israel’s battle campaigns”-to continue in his military position.
…It’s important to remember, in any event, that we’re not speaking of a document having only abstract religious significance. The perspective of religious war [in the Order of Battle by Winter] guided the Givati brigade on a tactical [practical] level as well.
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The Humility of IDF soldiers praying before they put their lives on the line (Gideon Ariel's Group)During battleground tours with journalists of Hirbet Ahza’a, hundreds of meters into the depths of Gaza, Winter pointed to a mosque destroyed by an air attack. The mosque had been destroyed by the directive of Winter in order to neutralize fire that came from it, after Winter rejected the possibility of attacking it with a [less damaging] ground missile rather than an air-to-ground missile.
“Did you see it [the mosque]?” asked Winter pointing to the mosque. “This was once a mosque.” He said this giddily, without any hint of guilt, sorrow or apology as he strode through the ruins of the village, whose 13,000 residents were expelled according to the army’s [Winter’s] orders. He continued, saying with pride…: “When I said to you Ahza’a once looked different, I was referring to this [the mosque].”
It will be ‘Jihad’ or Holy War
Continued below the fold …
It will be ‘Jihad’ or Holy War
Rabbis handed out hundreds of religious pamphlets during the Gaza war. Some leaflets called Israeli soldiers the “sons of light” and Palestinians the “sons of darkness”. Others compared the Palestinians to the Philistines, the bitter biblical enemy of the Jewish people.
“Our job was to boost the fighting spirit of the soldiers. The eternal Jewish spirit from Bible times to the coming of the Messiah.”
Lieutenant (Rabbi) Shmuel Kaufman
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The Shavei Hevron Yeshiva inside the settlement of Hebron‘Religious duty’
I visited an orthodox Jewish seminary near Hebron in the West Bank. It is one of an increasing number of religious schools that encourage taking the Jewish Bible to the battlefield. The students’ seminary is built in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.
“Morals of the battlefield cannot come from a religious authority … or it’s ‘Jihad.’ People will not like that word but that’s what it is, Holy War.”
Reserve General Nehemia DaganBBC article: The rise of Israel’s military rabbis. [September 2009]
Reminds me of the Bible texts Rumsfeld handed to George Bush to make the just decisions on Afghanistan and Iraq.
Israel’s peace movement being pushed to the margins like never before
(The Guardian) Feb. 3, 2009 – Yehuda, a burly former infantryman who served during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, opens up a scanned file on his computer – a pamphlet circulated by the army’s chief military rabbi to soldiers before entering Gaza. It is a document as unsettling in its own way as the religious justifications of Hamas for its own violence. It talks about the necessity of cruelty against the enemy, and dehumanises and de-legitimises the Palestinians and their claims.
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Leaving Gaza, maybe, and to an uncertain fate - 2004Manekin translates the words: “We are not allowed by religious command to return an inch of land to the Palestinians. It is our land – God’s land. There is a question [in the pamphlet]: ‘Can we compare the Palestinians now to the biblical era of the Philistines? And if so, does this guide us how we act militarily’? The answer says: ‘Yes we can. The Palestinians like the Philistines are not a natural part of this region’.”
