33. The King’s Torah

Rebbe Schneerson

Netanyahu, who is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, and despite an ongoing battle in the Israeli courts over charges of corruption, formed his sixth government in November 2022, and by allying far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties to his right-wing Likud, which will be his and the country’s most hardline to date.[1] In 2019, Netanyahu, , was indicted on charges of breach of trust, bribery and fraud, following a three-year investigation, due to which he relinquished all his ministry posts other than the prime minister position. Netanyahu has pleaded not guilty and called that trial a “witch hunt” and an “attempted coup,” and has called for changes to Israel’s judiciary system.[2] On May 17, 2020, Netanyahu was sworn in for a fifth term as prime minister in a coalition with Benny Gantz. After tensions escalated in Jerusalem in May 2021, Hamas fired rockets on Israel from Gaza, which prompted Netanyahu to initiate Operation Guardian of the Walls, lasting eleven days. After the operation, Israeli politician and leader of the Yamina alliance Naftali Bennett announced that he had agreed to a deal with Leader of the Opposition Yair Lapid to form a rotation government that would oust Netanyahu from his position as prime minister. Netanyahu’s criminal trial was set to begin on May 24, 2020, having been initially scheduled for March of that year but delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As of April 2023, the criminal trial is still ongoing.

In June 2021, after Naftali Bennett formed a government with Yair Lapid, Netanyahu was removed from the premiership, becoming opposition leader for the third time, before returning as Prime Minister again after forming a coalition after the 2022 election, which is notable for its inclusion of far-right politicians.[3] However, as summarized by Max Blumenthal:

 

[S]ince the publication of Torat Ha’Melech, Netanyahu has strenuously avoided criticizing its contents or the author’s leading supporters.... His weakness stems from the fact that the religious nationalist right figures prominently in his governing coalition and comprises a substantial portion of his political base. For Netanyahu, a confrontation with the rabid rabbis could amount to political suicide, or could force him into an alliance with centrist forces who do not share his commitment to the settlement enterprise in the West Bank.[4]

 

During the last decade of Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn’s life, from 1940 to 1950, after he had been rescued from the Nazis with the help of Nazi general Canaris, he settled in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn in New York City. Working with the government and the contacts Schneersohn had with the US State Department, Chabad was able to save his son-in-law Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (1902 – 1994), Russian Empire-born, American Chabad-Lubavitcher Jewish rabbi known to many as “the Rebbe” from Vichy France in 1941 before the borders were closed down.[5] Between 1984 and 1988, Benjamin Netanyahu served as the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. At the time, Netanyahu formed a relationship during the 1980s with the Rebbe Schneerson, whom he referred to as “the most influential man of our time.”[6] In 1983, Menachem Begin had announced his intention to resign as Prime Minister, and was replaced by Yitzhak Shamir. After ruling the country for most of the 1980s, the party lost the Knesset election in 1992 to Yitzhak Rabin’s Labor Party. Netanyahu, Likud’s candidate, won the vote for Prime Minister in 1996 and was given the task of forming a government after the 1996 elections. Around the time he met Rebbe Schneerson, Netanyahu also became friends with Fred Trump, the father of Donald Trump.[7]

Lubavitch messianism involves the hope that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson could himself be the Messiah. Schneersohn is considered one of the most influential Jewish leaders of the twentieth century.[8] Schneerson transformed the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, which almost came to an end with the Holocaust, into one of the most influential movements in world Jewry, with an international network of thousands of educational and social centers, known as Chabad Houses. Chabad’s goal, explains Sue Fishkoff, author of The Rebbe’s Army, is to reach every Jew in the world. Chabad seeks out the support of the rich, famous and powerful, including celebrities like Bob Dylan, Jon Voight, Whoopi Goldberg and Al Gore.[9] Schneerson’s grave attracts thousands of Jews and non-Jews for prayer.

However, Rabbi David Berger, a highly popular figure in Modern Orthodox circles, wrote The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference, criticizing Lubavitcher messianism as “precisely what Jews through the generations have seen as classic, Christian-style false messianism.” His views are shared and supported by many prominent Orthodox authorities. In the 1980’s and early 1990’s, Rabbi Eliezer Menachem Schach, a leader of the strictly Orthodox Jews in Israel who wielded powerful influence over the country’s politics for more than two decades, waged a campaign against the Lubavitcher movement. The messianic claim, Rabbi Schach said, was “total heresy,” adding that those making it “will burn in hell.”[10]

Schneerson spoke of the position of the United States as a world superpower, and would praise its foundational values of “‘E pluribus unum’—from many one”, and “In God we trust.”[11] Schneerson was visited by presidents, prime ministers, governors, senators, congressmen and mayors. Notable among them are John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Jacob Javits, Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani, David Dinkins and Joe Lieberman.[12] In 1978, the US Congress asked President Carter to designate Schneerson’s birthday as the national Education Day USA. It has been since commemorated as Education and Sharing Day. In 1994, Schneerson was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his “outstanding and lasting contributions toward improvements in world education, morality, and acts of charity.”[13] President Bill Clinton spoke these words at the ceremony:

 

The late Rebbe’s eminence as a moral leader for our country was recognized by every president since Richard Nixon. For over two decades, the Rabbi’s movement now has some 2000 institutions; educational, social, medical, all across the globe. We (the United States Government) recognize the profound role that Rabbi Schneerson had in the expansion of those institutions.

 

Despite his broad reputation as a humanitarian, Michael Lesher writes in The Times of Israel that, “The Rebbe didn’t just tolerate Israeli oppression. He encouraged it.”[14] Schneerson based his teaching on the traditional Hasidic text known as the Tanya, the main work of the Chabad philosophy and approach to Kabbalah, according to which only Jews are endowed with fully human souls.

 

…the general difference between Jews and non-Jews: A Jew was not created as a means for some [other] purpose; he himself is the purpose, since the substance of all [divine] emanations was created only to serve the Jews. The important things are the Jews, because they do not exist for any [other] aim; they themselves are [the divine] aim. The entire creation [of a non-Jew] exists only for the sake of the Jews.[15]

 

According to Lesher, “The mainstream reader seldom hears about any of this: much of what passes for commentary on the Rebbe’s work is mere propaganda.” Schneerson’s warmongering also drew on his fanatical insistence that the End Times were rapidly approaching, “We are now very near the approaching footsteps of Messiah, indeed, we are at the conclusion of this period,” he claimed in 1951.[16] During Israel’s slaughter of over 17,000 people in Lebanon in 1982, Schneerson repeatedly criticized the Israelis for being too timid. During the First Intifada, Schneerson preached against the easing of Israeli oppression, asserting that “[C]oncessions convince the Arabs of Israeli weakness” and “encourages terrorist activity.”[17] According to Schneerson, “every inch of territory in Israel,” including “the lands taken in the Six-Day War,” must be held by the use of Jewish military force, regardless of international law or the consequences for the non-Jewish population. Why? Because “the ordinary Arab in the street” seeks nothing less than “Arab dominion over the entire land of Palestine” and regards all Israelis with “deep-seated hatred.”[18]

Schneerson took great interest in the affairs of the state of Israel, where he was a major political force, both in the Knesset and among the electorate.[19] Although he never visited Israel, many of Israel’s top leadership made it a point to visit him. Prime Minister Menachem Begin came to visit him before going to Washington to meet President Carter. Ariel Sharon had a close relationship with Schneerson, and Shahak and Mezvinsky report, in their book Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, “Ariel Sharon was the Rebbe’s favorite Israeli senior politician. Sharon in turn praised the Rebbe publicly and delivered a moving speech about him in the Knesset after the Rebbe’s death.”[20] Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu also visited and sought Schneerson’s advice. Netanyahu said that while serving as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations in 1984, Schneerson told him: “you will be serving in a house of darkness, but remember, that even in the darkest place; the light of a single candle can be seen far and wide…” Netanyahu later retold this episode in a speech at the General Assembly, on September 23, 2011.[21]

 

Jewish Defense League (ADL) 

Shamir stepped down as Likud leader after losing the election in March of 1993. To replace him, the party held its first primary election, in which former United Nations Ambassador Benjamin Netanyahu, becoming the Leader of the Opposition. Netanyahu’s current ruling coalition also includes exponents of Kahanism, a religious Zionist ideology based on the views of Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) and the Kach party in Israel. Kahane’s bid for a Knesset seat was endorsed by Zvi Yehuda Kook (1891 – 1982), a prominent ultranationalist Orthodox rabbi, and the son of Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine. Rebbe Schneerson supported Kahane on many issues concerning Israel, including the issue of Arabs, relinquishing land, building settlements and the incorporation of Jewish law into Israeli policy.

Kahane, an ordained Orthodox rabbi, and later a member of the Israeli Knesset, founded the JDL in 1968, to “protect Jews from antisemitism by whatever means necessary.” In The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane: From FBI Informant to Knesset Member, Robert Friedman exposed links between Kahane, ultra-rightist founder of the Jewish Defense League, to the CIA, the FBI, the Mossad and the Mafia. According to Friedman, “high-ranking members of Mossad” were directing Kahane, and that the “central player” was former Mossad operations chief, Yitzhak Shamir.[22] At some time in the late 1950s, Kahane took on the pseudonym Michael King to impersonate a Gentile. His strong anti-communist views landed him a position as a consultant with the FBI. Bob Dylan, who attended several JDL meetings, made positive comments about Kahane in a 1971 interview for Time magazine, where he said, “He’s a really sincere guy. He’s really put it all together.”[23]

Kahane founded the JDL with Joseph Churba, a United States Air Force Middle East intelligence expert, author, and political activist known for his support of Israel. In 1963, the FBI asked Kahane and Churba to infiltrate the John Birch Society.[24] He and Churba created the July Fourth Movement, which was formed to counteract widespread opposition towards U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Subsequently, they co-authored the text, The Jewish Stake in Vietnam, which was an attempt to convince American Jews of the “evil of Communism.” The book’s introduction states that, “all Americans have a stake in this grim war against Communism… it is vital that Jews realize the threat to their very survival [should Communism succeed].” By 1976, Churba was the Air Force’s top Middle East intelligence expert when he publicly criticized comments by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. George S. Brown, about Israel’s being a military burden for the United States.[25] Churba began using the phrase “Never again” and conceived the Jewish Star and fist insignia adopted by the JDL, a symbol resembling that of the Black Panther Party.[26]

Joseph Churba, who founded the JDL with Meir Kahane, also had ties to General John Singlaub of the CIA and John Rees of Western Goals. In 1980, Churba worked as a campaign advisor for presidential candidate Ronald Reagan. Kahane and Churba was also friends with neoconservative Douglas Feith.[27] Churba became head of the International Security Council (ISC), established in 1985 by CAUSA International of Sun Myung Moon. ISC was a think-tank of former statesmen and senior military officers who dealt with international security issues.[28] The predecessor organization to ISC, the Center for International Security (CIS), was organized by Churba in 1979. Its board included Major General George Keegan, Jr., William Kintner, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, the ASC’s General Daniel O. Graham, and Bernard Yoh, cofounder of Accuracy in Media and former counterinsurgency consultant to South Vietnam president Ngo Dinh Diem and other terrorist governments in the sphere of American influence. [29]

A major conference on state terrorism and the international system was held by the ISC and CAUSA International in January 1986 in Tel Aviv, with speeches by Dr. Bo Hi Pak, Arnaud de Borchgrave, Charles Lichtenstein, Gordon Sumner, Jr., and Yehuda Blum, former Israeli ambassador to the UN. In a brochure issued by ISC in October 1987, Churba acknowledges the “generous and unwavering support of CAUSA International and that of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, whose understanding of the threat to Judaeo-Christian civilization is unique, as is his selfless commitment to freedom, security and peace.”[30] These organizations and others coalesced under the Federation for World Peace (FWP), founded by Rev. Moon in 1991 after the passing of the cold war.[31] As reported by Edward S. Herman, in The “Terrorism” Industry, Churba was connected to other elements of the far-right through his service as advisor to GeoMilitech Consultants Corporation, along with John Singlaub and Edward Luttwak of CSIS. GeoMilitech was founded in 1984 by Barbara Studley, a friend of Singlaub’s, apparently as an arms conduit. The firm supplied arms to the Salvadoran government as well as the Nicaraguan Contras. Singlaub used GeoMilitech to procure $5.3 million in weapons, which were transferred to Adolfo Calero in June 1985.[32]

In 2011, the FBI released files on the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, which state that the star had received death threats from the JDL. The report described how the JDL would make the death threats, and then call the rap star and offer protection for a fee. According to the documents, Shakur was a victim of this scheme, as was another late rapper, Eazy-E of N.W.A. and founder of Ruthless Records with Jerry Heller.[33] Heller claimed the death threats came from Neo-Nazi-Skinheads because of the “Fuck Tha Police” song. When Ruthless recording artist and former N.W.A. member Dr. Dre sought to work instead with Death Row Records, Ruthless executives Mike Klein and Jerry Heller were fearful of possible physical intimidation from Death Row Entertainment executives including chief executive officer Suge Knight and requested security assistance from the violent JDL. Eazy-E apparently admired the JDL for their slogan “Never Again,” and had plans to do a movie about the group.[34] JDL spokesperson Irv Rubin issued a press release stating, “There was nothing but a close, tight relationship” between Eazy-E and the League.[35]

In November 1990, after Kahane gave a speech to an audience of mostly Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn, where he warned American Jews to emigrate to Israel before it was “too late,” a crowd gathered around him in the second-floor lecture hall in Midtown Manhattan’s New York Marriott East Side, when he was assassinated by El Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian-born U.S. citizen. Nosair became involved with the al-Farouq Mosque in Brooklyn, which was supported by the Maktab al-Khadamat (Services Office), which was established in 1984 by Osama bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam in Peshawar, Pakistan. The purpose of the office was to raise funds for the Arab mujahadeen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Ali Mohamed, a sergeant at Fort Bragg, provided United States Army manuals and other assistance to individuals at the mosque.[36]

During the murder trial, Nosair largely ignored the court and focused on multiple sketches he made of Princess Diana.[37] In a verdict described by law professor Jeffrey B. Abramson as “bizarre,” a jury in December 1991 acquitted Nosair.[38] Nevertheless, Nosair was later convicted of the murder in U.S. District Court for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, orchestrated by the Muslim Brotherhood-connected Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, known as “Blind Sheikh,” who was also secretly in the employ of the CIA.[39] Nosair was sentenced to life imprisonment and later made a confession to federal agents.

After hearing of Kahane’s death, Schneerson remarked that “one of the greatest Jewish leaders in history has fallen.”[40]After Kahane’s assassination, the Kach political party he had founded in 1971, split, with Kahane Chai breaking away from the main Kach faction. After several electoral failures, Kach entered the Knesset following the 1984 elections. However, it was barred from participating in the next 1988 election for inciting racism. Kach and Kahane Chai were declared terrorist organizations in 1994 by the Israeli government. The banning of the two groups followed one of the most well-known incidents of Jewish extremism, the massacre of twenty-nine Muslims in Hebron by Dr. Baruch Goldstein, a Chabanik and prominent member of Kach on February 25, 1994. Both Kach and Kahane Chai organize protests against the Israeli government and harass and threaten Palestinians in Hebron and the West Bank. Groups affiliated with them have threatened to attack Arabs, Palestinians, and Israeli government officials. A number of JDL members have been linked to violent, and sometimes deadly, attacks including the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in Hebron, West Bank in 1994, which left 29 people dead, several as young as twelve, and 125 wounded. In April 2002, the current leader of Kach, Baruch Marzel, was arrested by Israeli police in connection with a plot to leave a trailer laden with two barrels of gasoline and two gas balloons outside a Palestinian girls’ school in East Jerusalem. The West settlements of Tapuah and Kiryat Arba are strongholds of the Kahanist movement. According to the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, both organizations receive support from American and European sympathizers.[41]

 

Settler Movement

Allan C. Brownfeld, who is editor of the American Council for Judaism’s periodical Issues and contributor to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, reported that after Schneerson’s death in 1994, “[T]housands of his Israeli followers played an important role in the election victory of Binyamin Netanyahu. Among the religious settlers in the occupied territories, the Chabad Hassids constitute one of the most extreme groups. Baruch Goldstein, the mass murderer of Palestinians, was one of them.”[42] The International Court of Justice found the settlements in the Occupied Territories to be illegal in its 2004 advisory opinion on the West Bank barrier. The transfer by an occupying power of its civilian population into the territory it occupies is a war crime, although Israel disputes that this applies to the West Bank.[43] Israel has justified its civilian settlements by stating the territories in question are not occupied, but disputed, and that a temporary use of land and buildings for various purposes appears permissible under a plea of military necessity and that the settlements fulfilled security needs.[44] The International Court of Justice concluded that Israel had breached its obligations under international law by establishing settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and that Israel cannot rely on a right of self-defense or on a state of necessity in order to preclude the wrongfulness of imposing a regime, which is contrary to international law.[45]

Settlements currently exist in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), claimed by the State of Palestine as its sovereign territory, and in the Golan Heights, which is internationally considered Syrian territory. As of January 2023, there are 144 Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including 12 in East Jerusalem. There are over 100 Israeli illegal outposts in the West Bank. In total, over 450,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem, with an additional 220,000 Jewish settlers residing in East Jerusalem. Additionally, over 25,000 Israeli settlers live in the Golan Heights. Israel has established Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and in the Israeli-occupied portion of the Golan Heights, both of which Israel has effectively annexed, and as such Israel does not consider the developments there to be settlements. In June 1997, the Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu presented its “Allon Plus Plan.” This plan holds the retention of some 60% of the West Bank, including the “Greater Jerusalem” area with the settlements Gush Etzion and Ma’aleh Adumim, other large concentrations of settlements in the West Bank, the entire Jordan Valley, a “security area,” and a network of Israeli-only bypass roads.[46]

Palestinians are the target of violence by Jewish Israeli settlers and their supporters, predominantly in the West Bank. In 2011 the BBC reported that “vast majority of settlers are non-violent but some within the Israeli government acknowledge a growing problem with extremists.”[47] UN figures from 2011 showed that 90% of complaints filed against settlers by Palestinians with the Israeli police never led to indictment.[48] Some prominent Jewish religious figures living in the occupied territories, as well as Israeli government officials, have condemned and expressed outrage over such behavior, while religious justifications for settler killings have also been given.[49] In many cases, settlers abuse Palestinians in front of Israeli soldiers or police with little interference from the authorities.[50] The United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict reported:

 

Little if any action is taken by the Israeli authorities to investigate, prosecute and punish violence against Palestinians, including killings, by settlers and members of the security forces, resulting in a situation of impunity. The Mission concludes that Israel has failed to fulfil its obligations to protect the Palestinians from violence by private individuals under both international human rights law and international humanitarian law.[51]

 

Among the religious settlers in the Occupied Territories, according to Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, the Chabad movement constitute one of the most extreme groups, inspired by the racist teachings of Rebbe Schneerson. In Jewish History, Jewish Religion, the authors argued that while Islamic fundamentalism is vilified in the West, comparable Jewish extremism is largely ignored. The authors further explain that it is essential to understand these beliefs in order to understand the current situation in the West Bank, where many of the most militant settlers are motivated by religious ideologies in which every non-Jew is seen as “the earthly embodiment” of Satan, and according to the Halakha, the term ‘human beings’ refers solely to Jews.”[52] Brownfeld explains that leaders of the settler movement in the occupied West Bank follow the teachings of Rabbi Kook, and quotes him stating: “The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews—all of them in all different levels—is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.”[53]

In 2009, Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi, Manis Friedman wrote in response to the question posed by Moment Magazine for its “Ask the Rabbis” feature, “The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle).”[54] Shmarya Rosenberg, a blogger and critic of Chabad says that the comment in Moment is not an aberration from his experiences with Friedman and many other Chabad rabbis. “I don’t believe in Western morality,” Friedman wrote. “Living by Torah values will make us a light unto the nations who suffer defeat because of a disastrous morality of human invention.”[55] “If we took this policy, no one would be killed—because there would be no war,” Friedman said. “The same is true of the United States.”[56] Friedman argued that he is different from Arab terrorists who have used similar language about killing Jewish civilians.[57] “When they say it, it’s genocide, not self-defense,” Friedman said. “With them, it’s a religious belief - they need to rid the area of us. We’re not saying that.”[58]

Stephen Lendman reports, “Views like these aren’t exceptions. Though a minority, they proliferate throughout Israeli society…”[59] Lendman writes, “Rabbi David Batsri called Arabs ‘a blight, a devil, a disaster…. donkeys, and we have to ask ourselves why God didn’t create them to walk on all fours. Well, the answer is that they are needed to build and clean.’”[60] According to the chairman of the Jewish Rabbinic Council: “There is no such thing as enemy civilians in war time. The law of our Torah is to have mercy on our soldiers and to save them…. A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.”[61] Israeli author and former chief of Israeli military intelligence Yehoshafat Harkabi touches on this in his 1988 book Israel’s Fateful Hour. Harkabi writes that while such extremist beliefs are not “widely dominant,” the reality is that “nationalistic religious extremists are by no means a lunatic fringe; many are respected men whose words are widely heeded.”[62]

 

Torat Hamelech

Israeli agencies monitoring Jewish terrorist groups assert that they represent an “anarchist, anti-Zionist” worldview, and plan to use violence in a systematic, continuous manner, as a means to bring down the government of Israel and create a new Israeli “kingdom” that would operate according to Jewish law (Halakha).[63] In their introduction, the authors of the controversial Torat Hamelech (“The King’s Torah”), published in 2009, which argues that it is permissible for Jews to kill non-Jews, including children, under certain circumstances, quote Rebbe Schneerson, and declare that their goal is to achieve “true and whole redemption” and bring “God’s kingdom on earth.” Yeshivat HaRaayon HaYehudi in Jerusalem, which adheres to Kahane’s ideas, distributed the book.[64] At Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva, the flagship educational institution of Orthodox Zionism, has advertised the sale of the book.[65] Mercaz HaRav (“The Center of Rabbi [Kook] - the Central Universal Yeshiva”) is a national-religious yeshiva in Jerusalem, founded in 1924 by Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. Located in the city’s Kiryat Moshe neighborhood, it has become the most prominent religious-Zionist yeshiva in the world and synonymous with Rabbi Kook’s teachings. Many Religious Zionist educators and leaders have studied at Mercaz HaRav. Zvi Yehuda Kook was dean of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva. Zvi Yehuda Kook’s fundamentalist teachings as the Rosh Yeshiva of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva were a major factor in the formation and activities of the settlement movement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza, mainly through his influence on the Gush Emunim movement, which was founded by his students.[66]

According to Matthew Wagner, reporting in the Jerusalem Post, content of The King’s Torah, which covers the subject of killing non-Jews, and more specifically Palestinians, as part of the ongoing battle against terrorism, is particularly relevant for students at Mercaz Harav who serve in the IDF, as a large portion of the book is dedicated to exploring Jewish “rules of engagement” according to the authors interpretation of Jewish law. “For many young men at Mercaz Harav or other Orthodox Zionist yeshivot where IDF service is combined with intense Torah learning,” notes Wagner, “the book could have practical implications for how religious soldiers do battle.”[67] As Amos Harel, also writing in Haaretz, pointed out, around one-third of IDF infantry officers are religious, with the proportion climbing from only 2.5 percent in 1990 to 31.4 percent in 2007, as new study had shown.”[68]

Distribution of The King’s Torah, explains Wagner, came just over a week after it became known that Ya’acov Teitel, an American-born settler from Shvut Rahel, had been arrested for allegedly murdering two Palestinians and severely wounding a Christian who belongs to a messianic Jewish community in Ariel. Teitel confessed to having carried out a pipe-bomb attack against Ze’ev Sternhell, a commentator on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and one of the world’s leading theorists of the phenomenon of fascism. Teitel also confessed to the murders of a Palestinian taxi driver and a West Bank shepherd in 1997, a 2006 attempted bombing near the settlement of Eli, three bombings against police targets and a Christian monastery in 2007, and sending a booby-trapped package that injured a teenage boy to the home of a Messianic Jewish family in Ariel.

The King’s Torah published by Od Yosef Chai yeshiva, whose president is Yitzchak Feivish Ginsburgh, sometimes referred to as “the Malakh” (“the angel”), an American-born Israeli regarded as one of Chabad’s leading authorities on Jewish mysticism.[69] In the summer of 1967, Ginsburgh went to the Torat Emet Chabad yeshivah in Jerusalem, where he studied the Chabad school and visited Rabbi Schneerson, whose guidance became his leading influence, and remained in Crown Heights, Brooklyn for several months.[70] In 1973, at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War, under instruction from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Ginsburgh visited the warfront to transmit the Rebbe’s blessing to officer Ariel Sharon, who later became 11th Prime Minister of Israel.[71] Ginsburgh bases his teachings on Hassidism and specializes in analyzing modern cultural phenomena in the light of Kabbalah, including psychology, psychoanalysis, homeopathy and economics.[72] Ginsburgh also supports the rebuilding of the Third Temple, believing that this would facilitate spiritual elevation and hasten redemption. According to Motti Inbari:

 

In his writings, Ginzburg (sic) gives prominence to Halachic and kabbalistic approaches that emphasize the distinction between Jew and non-Jew (Gentile), imposing a clear separation and hierarchy in this respect. He claims that while the Jews are the Chosen People and were created in God’s image, the Gentiles do not have this status… Ginzburg stated that, on the theoretical level, if a Jew requires a liver transplant to survive, it would be permissible to seize a Gentile and take their liver forcefully. From this point only a small further step is required to actively encourage and support the killing of non-Jews, as Ginzburg did in the case of Goldstein.[73]

 

According to author Motti Inbari, Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, who is regarded as one of Chabad’s leading authorities on Jewish mysticism, “gives prominence to Halachic and Kabbalistic approaches that emphasize the distinction between Jew and non-Jew (Gentile), imposing a clear separation and hierarchy in this respect.”[74] In his book Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple? Inbari, an Israeli academic who now teaches in the US, states, “[Ginsburg] claims that while the Jews are the Chosen People and were created in God’s image, the Gentiles do not have this status and are effectively considered subhuman.”[75] The following appeared in an April 26,1996 Jewish Week article that contained an interview with Ginsburgh:

 

“If you saw two people drowning, a Jew and a non-Jew, the Torah says you save the Jewish life first,” Rabbi Ginsburgh told the Jewish Week “If every simple cell in a Jewish body entails divinity, is a part of God, then every strand of DNA is part of God. Therefore, something is special about Jewish DNA.” Later, Rabbi Ginsburgh asked rhetorically: “If a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him? The Torah would probably permit that. Jewish life has an infinite value,” he explained. “There is something infinitely more holy and unique about Jewish life than non-Jewish life.”[76]

 

In 1989, following the arrest of seven of his students after the shooting of an Arab girl during a settler rampage through the Palestinian West Bank village of Kifl Haris, Ginsburgh reportedly “offered biblical justification for the view that the spilling of non-Jewish blood was a lesser offense than the spilling of Jewish blood.” He stated that threatening to kill Jews comes under the ruling, “He who comes to kill you, you should kill him first.”[77] In 1994, Ginsburgh received widespread criticism for his article “Baruch Hagever” in which he defended Baruch Goldstein.[78] The Jerusalem Post asserted that Ginsburgh had called the massacre a mitzvah.[79] In 2003, Ginsburgh was charged by then-Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein with incitement to racism for authoring a book calling Arabs a “cancer.”[80]

In May 2014, Shin Bet said the so-called price-tag hate crimes were perpetrated by about 100 individuals mainly hailing from the Yitzhar settlement and hilltop outposts, and were inspired by Ginsburgh.[81] The price tag attacks, also sometimes referred to as “mutual responsibility,” is the name originally given to the attacks and acts of vandalism committed primarily in the occupied West Bank by Israeli Jewish fundamentalist settler youths against Palestinian Arabs, left-wing Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, Christians, and Israeli security forces. The youths officially claim that the acts are committed to “exact a price from local Palestinians or from the Israeli security forces for any action taken against their settlement enterprise.”[82] B’Tselem, a Jerusalem-based non-profit organization whose stated goals are to document human rights violations in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, has documented many acts of this kind, which have included violent attacks carried out against random Palestinian civilians, burning of mosques and fields, stone throwing, uprooting trees, and incursions into Palestinian villages and land.[83]

Ginsburgh was the president of the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva which published The King’s Torah, written by his student Yitzhak Shapira, an Israeli rabbi who lived in the West Bank Israeli settlement Yitzhar, and is head of the yeshiva. Shapira studied at Mercaz Harav’s high school and spent time at the yeshiva as an older student. In 2006-2007, the Israeli Ministry of Education gave about a quarter of a million dollars to the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva, and in 2007-2008 the yeshiva received about $28,000 from the American nonprofit Central Fund of Israel.[84] Philip Weiss reported on the Mondoweiss website that payments to the New York-based Central Fund of Israel, which won the Jerusalem Prize for Volunteerism, were directed to the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva.[85] The New York Times described the fund as a “prominent clearing house” used by dozens of West Bank organizations as “a vehicle for channeling donations back to themselves” in order for donors to receive US tax breaks.[86]

The Central Fund of Israel is run out of the Marcus Brothers Textiles store on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. Itamar Marcus is a former vice president of the fund. Originally from New York City, he now lives in the Israeli settlement of Efrat in the West Bank. Itamar Marcus is a researcher and the founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch, which monitors and analyzes the Palestinian Authority (PA) through its media and schoolbooks. Marcus testified before the Education Subcommittee of the US Senate Committee on Allocations, documenting the Palestinian Authority’s indoctrination of children to seek death as Shahids (“Martyrs”), for public relations purposes. He has also presented before members of Congress, and to members of Parliament in numerous countries including, the European Union, United Kingdom, France, Canada, and Australia, and has lectured in universities and conferences worldwide. His work on textbooks led Benyamin Netanyahu to appoint Marcus to represent Israel in the negotiations with the Palestinians on incitement in the Trilateral Anti-Incitement Committee (Israeli–Palestinian–American) in his capacity as Director of Research for the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMP), where he served from 1998 to 2000.[87]

Marcus is a featured source for the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West, a 2005 documentary film about the purported threat of Islamism to Western civilization. The film shows Islamic radicals preaching hate speech and seeking to incite global jihad. It also draws parallels between World War II's Nazi movement and Islamism and the West’s response to those threats. Also interviewed in the film were Alan Dershowitz and Daniel Pipes. Segments of the movie were broadcast on CNN Headline News and in several specials on Fox News.

Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, who co-authored the King’s Torah, is a writer for HaKol HaYehudi (“The Jewish Voice”), a right-wing Israeli digital newspaper in Hebrew. The paper is written and edited in Yitzhar, an Israeli settlement located in the West Bank, by Avraham Binyamin and Yehoshua Hess, who were both convicted of incitement.[88] The paper is affiliated with Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, and has multiple writers, including his student Meir Ettinger, an Israeli Kahanist activist and extremist. His mother Tova is the daughter of Rabbi Meir Kahane. Ettinger is known for leading the Hilltop Youth, a group that pursues the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, conducts punitive price tag attacks on Palestinian villages, and targets Muslim and Christian sites. Ettinger was described by Israeli news organizations as the most-wanted figure by the Jewish division of the Shin Bet.[89]

Rabbi Zalman Nechemia Goldberg, a highly respected halachic authority in both haredi and religious Zionist circles, wrote an endorsement that appeared in The King’s Torah. The book has received the approbation of Baruch Goldstein’s rabbi, the notoriously racist Dov Lior, the Brooklyn-born settler Arba-Hebron Chief Rabbi and a respected figure among many mainstream religious Zionists who referred to it as “very relevant especially in this time.”[90] Lior one of the best-known rabbis of the aforementioned Gush Emunim, and chief rabbi of illegal Jewish settlements in Hebron and Kiryat Arba in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, the head of the Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), and a leading figure in the religious Zionist movement. The international community considers Israeli settlements like Kiryat Arba illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this. As a municipal rabbi of settlements in the West Bank, Lior receives a salary from the Israeli government.

Dubbed an extremist by The Forward, Lior on multiple occasions has called for ethnic cleansing of Arab Muslims and has expressed support for mass murderers.[91] Leading rabbis have testified that Lior was the source of rulings labeling the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin a rodef and a moser, a traitor who endangers Jewish lives. Rabin’s assassin, Yigal Amir, is known to have visited Lior. Goldstein also met with Lior. Following the massacre, Lior praised Goldstein as “a holier martyr than all the holy martyrs of the Holocaust.”[92] In July 2014, Lior said it was acceptable to kill Palestinian civilians and destroy the entire Gaza Strip in order to protect Jewish people in the South.[93]

Lior serves along with Eliezer Waldman as head of the Hesder Yeshiva Nir Kiryat Arba. Eliezer Waldman was an Israeli Orthodox rabbi and politician, who served as a member of the Knesset for Tehiya between 1984 and 1990. After the one-year program, he was accepted into the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, where he studied with Haim Drukman under Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook. He was one of the leaders of Jewish settlement in Hebron, and one of the founders of the Kiryat Arba settlement. He founded Yeshivat Nir in Kiryat Arba in 1972 alongside Yehoshua Rosen and Moshe Levinger, later becoming its president, with his son Noam as Rosh Yeshiva. According to Menachem Livni, in 1980 Waldman volunteered to take part in a Jewish Underground plot to carry out car bomb attacks against Palestinian officials.[94]

 


[1] Carrie Keller-Lynn. “Netanyahu returns as PM, wins Knesset support for Israel’s most hardline government.” (29 December 2022). Retrieved from https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-resumes-role-as-pm-as-israels-most-hardline-government-ever-takes-office/

[2] Rob Picheta, Hadas Gold & Amir Tal. “Benjamin Netanyahu sworn in as leader of Israel’s likely most right-wing government ever.” CNN (December 29, 2022). Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/29/middleeast/israel-benjamin-netanyahu-swearing-in-intl/index.html

[3] Oliver Holmes. “Israel’s far right hits ground running, and ripple effects are already being felt.” The Guardian (January 7, 2023). Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/07/israel-far-right-ultranationalist-hits-ground-running-and-ripple-effects-are-being-felt

[4] Lawrence Bush. “The King’s Torah: Preemptive Murder of Non-Jews.” Jewish Currents (July 25, 2017). Retrieved from https://jewishcurrents.org/the-kings-torah-preemptive-murder-of-non-jews

[5] Menachem Friedman & Samuel Heilman. The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Princeton, 2010); Bryan Mark Rigg. The Rabbi Saved by Hitler’s Soldiers (Kansas, 2016).

[6] Netanyahu, Benjamin (2011). “The Light of Truth at the UN” (Speech). Chabad.org. Retrieved 17 March 2013. http://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/1632210/jewish/The-Light-of-Truth-at-the-UN.htm

[7] Gabriel Sherman. “Trump Is Considering a Pre-Convention Visit to Israel.” New York (June 1, 2016). Retrieved from http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/06/trump-is-considering-pre-convention-israel-visit.html

[8] Bari Weiss. “Crowdsourcing the High Holy Days.” Wall Street Journal (October 2, 2014).

[9] Fishkoff Sue. The Rebbe’s Army (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2003), p. 12.

[10] Joel Greenberg. “Rabbi Eliezer Schach, 103; Leader of Orthodox in Israel.” New York Times (November, 2001).

[11] Menachem M. Schneerson. “The Difference Between Faith and Trust.” Chabad.org (January 15, 1981).

[12] “No One There, But This Place Is Far From Empty.” New York Times (January 14, 2009).

[13] “Public Law 103-457.” Thomas.loc.gov.

[14] Michael Lesher. “The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s dark side.” The Times of Israel (April 14, 2017).

[15] Alison Weir. “Why is the US Honoring a Racist Rabbi?” CounterPunch (April 7, 2014). Retrieved from https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/07/why-is-the-us-honoring-a-racist-rabbi/

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ari L. Goldman. “Rabbi Schneerson Led A Small Hasidic Sect To World Prominence.” New York Times (June 13, 1994).

[20] Alison Weir. “Why is the US Honoring a Racist Rabbi?”

[21] The Light of Truth at the UN, (video) Excerpt: Prime Minister Netanyahu at the General Assembly, Chabad.org (September 23, 2011). Retrieved from https://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/1632210/jewish/The-Light-of-Truth-at-the-UN.htm

[22] Robert I. Friedman. The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane: From FBI Informant to Knesset Member (Lawrence Hill & Co, 1992), p. 106.

[23]  “Bob Dylan interview.” Time (May 31, 1971).

[24] Robert I. Friedman. The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane: From FBI Informant to Knesset Member (Lawrence Hill & Co, 1992), p. 61.

[25] “Joseph Churba, Intelligence Aide Who Criticized General, Is Dead.” New York Times (April 28, 1996).

[26] “But Meir Kahane’s Message Refuses to Die; Source of 'Never Again’.”. The New York Times (November 19, 1990). Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/19/opinion/l-but-meir-kahane-s-message-refuses-to-die-source-of-never-again-080490.html

[27] James Bamford. A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies (Doubleday, 2004), pp. 278-82.

[28] Lawrence C. Soley. The News Shapers: The Sources who Explain the News (Praeger, 1992), p. 102.

[29] Inside The Shadow Government, Declaration of Plaintiff's Counsel Filed by the Christic Institute, U.S. District Court, Miami, March 31, 1988, pp. 123-24; cited in Edward S. Herman & Gerry O’Sullivan. The “Terrorism” Industry: The Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror (New York: Pantheon, 1989).

[30] Edward S. Herman & Gerry O’Sullivan. The “Terrorism” Industry: The Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror (New York: Pantheon, 1989).

[31] Michael Mickler. “Toward an ‘Abel’ UN? The Unification Movement and the United Nations.” Journal of Unification Studies Vol. 9, (2008).

[32] Inside The Shadow Government.

[33] “FBI Files on Tupac Shakur Murder Show He Received Death Threats From Jewish Gang.” Haaretz (April 4, 2011).

[34] “Breakdown FM: Still Ruthless-Interview w/ Jerry Heller.” Part 1. Odeo (Archived January 9, 2007, at the Wayback Machine).

[35] Ben Westhoff. Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap (Hachette Books, 2016).

[36] Daniel Benjamin & Steven Simon. The Age of Sacred Terror (Random House, (2003). pp. 4–6.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Jeffrey B. Abramson. We, the Jury: The Jury System and the Ideal of Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 144.

[39] Robert Freidman. “The CIA and the Sheikh,” The Village Voice (March 30, 1993)

[40] Rabbi Shlomo Moriah. “Thirty-Six Little-Known Admirers of Rabbi Meir Kahane.” Jewish Press (November 18, 2016). Retrieved from https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/interviews-and-profiles/thirty-six-little-known-admirers-of-rabbi-meir-kahane/2016/11/18/

[41] Jessica Stern. Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2003).

[42] Allan C. Brownfeld. “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel.” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (March 2000), pp. 105-106. Retrieved from https://www.wrmea.org/2000-march/book-review-jewish-fundamentalism-in-israel.html

[43] Robert Cryer, Hakan Friman, Darryl Robinson & Elizabeth Wilmshurst. An Introduction to International Criminal Law and Procedure (Cambridge University Press 2010), p. 308.

[44] David Kretzmer. The occupation of justice: the Supreme Court of Israel and the Occupied Territories (SUNY Press, 2002), p. 83

[45] See the Judgment in “Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” para 120, 134, and 142. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20100706021237/http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/131/1671.pdf

[46] “The origins and evolution of the Palestine problem,” Part V (1989–2000), chap. III, E. CEIRPP, 2014. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20140421064330/http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/3DF99D9DCCB3B21F85257C62004B782F

[47] “Concerns over rising settler violence in the West Bank.” BBC (November 17, 2011). Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15753945

[48] “Concerns over rising settler violence in the West Bank.” BBC (November 17, 2011). Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15753945

[49] Amitai Etzioni. Security First: For a Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy (Yale University Press, 2008), p. 119.

[50] “Israel: Palestinian Drivers Routinely Abused.” Human Rights Watch (February 26, 2001). Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/news/2001/02/26/israel-palestinian-drivers-routinely-abused

[51] Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, A/HRC/12/48, 25 September 2009, para 85.

[52] Israel Shahak & Norton Mezvinsky. Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (Pluto Press, 1999), p. 58.

[53] Allan C. Brownfeld. “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel.” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (March 2000), pp. 105-106. Retrieved from https://www.wrmea.org/2000-march/book-review-jewish-fundamentalism-in-israel.html

[54] Nathaniel Popper. “Chabad Rabbi: Jews Should Kill Arab Men, Women and Children During War.” Haaretz (June 9, 2009).

[55] Ibid.

[56] Ibid.

[57] Ibid.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Stephen Lendman. “Religious Fundamentalism in Israel.” SteveLendmanBlog (August 12, 2009).

[60] Stephen Lendman. “Religious Fundamentalism In Israel.” Counter Currents (August 12, 2009). Retrieved from https://countercurrents.org/lendman120809.htm

[61] Natasha Mozgovaya. “U.S. Lawmakers to Obama: Press Israel to Ease Gaza Siege.” Haaretz (January 26, 2010). Retrieved from https://www.haaretz.com/2010-01-26/ty-article/u-s-lawmakers-to-obama-press-israel-to-ease-gaza-siege/0000017f-e49b-d7b2-a77f-e79f59920000

[62] Alison Weir. “Why is the US Honoring a Racist Rabbi?” CounterPunch (April 7, 2014).

[63] Amos Harel & Chaim Levinson. “Settler Terror Underground Seeks to Overthrow Israeli Government, Say Investigators.” Haaretz (August 3, 2015). Retrieved from https://www.haaretz.com/2015-08-03/ty-article/.premium/murderers-of-infant-part-of-group-planning-to-ramp-up-jewish-terror/0000017f-f434-d497-a1ff-f6b43b960000

[64] Matthew Wagner. “Book advocating killing gentiles who endanger Jews is hard to come by.” The Jerusalem Post (November 11, 2009). Retrieved from http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/Article.aspx?id=160084

[65] Yair Sheleg and Haaretz Correspondent. “Mercaz Harav - the Flagship of National-religious Yeshivas.” Haaretz (May 7, 2008). Retrieved from https://archive.ph/HthGt#selection-775.0-783.21

[66] Lustick, Ian S. (1988). For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. Council of Foreign Relations. p. 29. Retrieved from https://www.sas.upenn.edu/penncip/lustick/index.html][Staff, C. I. E. (2021-02-07). "Gush Emunim Established". CIE. Retrieved from https://israeled.org/gush-emunim-established/

[67] Matthew Wagner. “Book advocating killing gentiles who endanger Jews is hard to come by.” Jerusalem Post (November 11, 2009). Retrieved from https://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Book-advocating-killing-gentiles-who-endanger-Jews-is-hard-to-come-by

[68] “The Religious Right in Israel and the Transformation of the IDF” Retrieved from https://mepc.org/commentary/religious-right-israel-and-transformation-idf

[69] “Hero or Racist?” The Jewish Week (April 26, 1996).

[70] “Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh.” Torah Cafe. Retrieved 24 June 2017.  Retrieved from http://www.torahcafe.com/scholar/rabbi-yitzchak-ginsburgh_0000000225.html

[71] רויטל שנור (22 May 2003). "הרבי אמר לכתוב היועץ המליץ לשתוק". Arutz 7 (in Hebrew). Retrieved from http://www.inn.co.il/Besheva/Article.aspx/1569

[72] Yair Sheleg, (2000). The New Religious Jews (in Hebrew). (Jerusalem: Keter Publ. House).

[73] Motti Inbari. Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple? (State University of New York Press, 2009), p. 134.

[74] Motti Inbari. Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple? (State University of New York Press, 2009), p. 134.

[75] Ibid.

[76] Cited in Israel Shahak & Norton Mezvinsky. Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (Pluto Press, 1999), p. 62.

[77] Alan Cowell. “An Israeli Mayor Under Scrutiny.” New York Times (July 6, 1989. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/06/world/an-israeli-mayor-is-under-scrutiny.html?scp=1&sq=Yitzhak&st=nyt

[78] Motti Inbari. Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple? (State University of New York Press, 2009), p. 132.

[79] “Probe of rabbi who called Hebron massacre a ‘mitzva’.” Jerusalem Post (September 5, 1994). Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1440792087

[80] Motti Inbari. Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple? (State University of New York Press, 2009), p, p. 132.

[81] Amos Harel, Revital Hovel &Jack Khoury. “Security sources: 100 followers of racist rabbi are behind hate crimes.” Haaretz (May 8, 2014). Retrieved from http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.589469

[82] Uri Friedman. The 'Price Tag' Menace: Vigilante Israeli Settler Attacks Spread.” The Atlantic Wire (October 2011). Retrieved from http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/10/price-tag-menace-vigilante-israeli-settler-attacks-spread/43226/

[83] "Background on violence by settlers.” B'Tselem (January 1, 2011). Retrieved from http://www.btselem.org/settler_violence

[84] The Forward and Daniel Estrin. “The King's Torah: A Rabbinic Text or a Call to Terror?” Haazetz (January 22, 2010). Retrieved from https://archive.ph/RC8ND#selection-1008.0-1008.1

[85] Akiva Eldar. “U.S. Tax Dollars Fund Rabbi Who Excused Killing Gentile Babies.” Haaretz (December 15, 2009). Retrieved from https://www.haaretz.com/2009-12-15/ty-article/akiva-eldar-u-s-tax-dollars-fund-rabbi-who-excused-killing-gentile-babies/0000017f-db84-df62-a9ff-dfd72d010000

[86] Jim Rutenberg, Mike McIntire  & Ethan Bronner. “Tax-Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in West Bank.” The New York Times (July 5, 2010). Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/world/middleeast/06settle.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

[87] Nathan J. Brown. Palestinian politics after the Oslo accords: resuming Arab Palestine (University of California Press, 2003), p. 296.

[88] Chaim Levinson. “Palestinian Attacks Fueled by Settler Violence, Senior Israeli Commander Says.” Haaretz (November 23, 2015). Retrieved from https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-idfofficer-settler-violence-causes-terrorism-1.5412527

[89] Jas Chana. “Israel Arrests Meir Ettinger, Suspected Leader of Jewish Extremists.” Tablet (August 4, 2015). Retrieved from https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/israel-arrests-meir-ettinger-suspected-leader-of-jewish-extremists

[90] The Forward and Daniel Estrin. “The King's Torah: A Rabbinic Text or a Call to Terror?” Haazetz (January 22, 2010). Retrieved from https://archive.ph/RC8ND#selection-1008.0-1008.1

[91] Sefi Rachlevsky. “A racist, messianic rabbi is the ruler of Israel.” Haaretz (July 1, 2011). Retrieved from http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/king-lior-and-his-subjects-1.370554

[92] “Rabbi Dov Lior: A Case Study in State-Sponsored Incitement.” Institute for Middle East Understanding (July 24, 2014). Retrieved from https://imeu.org/article/rabbi-dov-lior-a-case-study-in-state-sponsored-incitement

[93] Jeremy Sharon. “Rabbi Lior: Jewish law permits destruction of Gaza to bring safety to Israel.” The Jerusalem Post (July 23, 2014) Retrieved from http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/Rabbi-Lior-Jewish-law-permits-destruction-of-Gaza-to-bring-safety-to-Israel-368605

[94] Ehud Sprinzak. “From messianic pioneering to vigilante terrorism: The case of the gush emunim underground", Journal of Strategic Studies, 10:4 (1987), p. 213.

Divide & Conquer