This is one among many realities that we wish would be too bad to be true. Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, the prominent right-wing spiritual leader in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has openly condoned Jews killing any non-Jews, including children and babies, who pose a threat to Israel. In his new book, the warmongering Rabbi asserts: "If a gentile endangers the existence of Israel, it is allowed to kill him. Also if he is completely not to blame for the situation that has been created." He might have well said that a genocide of non-Jews (no doubt referring primarily to Arabs) along Holocaust lines is kosher too.
But Rabbi Yitzhak Maniac does not stop there. Just breaking any of the Commandments put forth by Moses is grounds for holy murder. (I guess he just missed the whole "Thou Shalt Not Kill" part.) He goes on to write that "Children should not be exempt from this fate. There is a reasonable explanation for killing infants if it is clear that they will grow up to hurt us, and in this situation, the strike should be directed at them.” Seriously? This kind of moral delusions justifying infanticide aren't even worth a retort. What they are worth is a direct, unequivocal condemnation by the Israeli state and all international bodies, from the United Nations to Amnesty International to the Red Cross and beyond. And Rabbi Maniac should be put behind bars and never allowed to speak or write, ever, unless he recants. Doing so would be less an act of censorship than a service to humanity.
The scariest part of all is that Rabbi Maniac isn't the driver of this overtly racist, malevolent and violent religious beliefs, according to the Israel Herald. He is just the leading mouthpiece of the radical Jews who are settling in the West Bank, where he runs a school in Yitzhar, one of the territory’s most hardline settlements, near Nablus. The popular regional newspaper Maariv has reviewed the Rabbi's book, but it will not be sold in major bookstores yet, "only" online and in person. By replicating the purported (and falsified) logic of Islamic terrorism Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira is knowingly creating a retaliatory cycle of violence beyond the "eye for an eye" doctrine of the Torah. If this current event is allowed to develop, there will be no future for non-Jews and Jews alike.
