American Jewish leaders have been quick and correct to call on moderate Muslim leaders to condemn Islamic terrorism, particularly against Jews, and to mobilize their followers to oppose all such violence.
But when it comes to Jewish violence and terrorism, they are strangely silent, even when the victims are Jews as well as Palestinians.
Jewish-Arab violence in the Israeli city of Acre was the lead story in the Israeli news media for several days before it broke in the U.S. news media.
It began on Yom Kippur when an Arab father drove with his son into a predominantly Jewish neighborhood to pick up his daughter at her fiancé’s apartment. Some young Jews felt his presence and action offended their religious sensitivities and began stoning the two men.
Word spread to the Arab neighborhoods, where masked youths rampaged into the Jewish parts of the city. Soon it got out of hand and observers were calling it dueling pogroms.
Israeli police had to evacuate some Arab families when Jewish rioters torched their homes. Houses, businesses and cars were vandalized, burned and looted on both sides.
This is not an isolated incident, say Israeli army and police officials, but part of a spreading problem of violence by haredi Orthodox Jews and radical settlers. It happens not just in the West Bank but also in cities like Acre and Jerusalem.
But you wouldn’t know about it unless you spent time on the Internet reading Israeli news media.
Last month a prominent Israeli peace activist and critic of the settler movement, Prof. Ze’ev Sternhell, was lightly wounded in a pipe bombing of his home.
Leaflets left at the scene offered a 1.1 million shekel bounty for anyone killing a leader of Peace Now, the leftist pro-peace movement that criticizes Israel’s settlement policy.
Only two major Jewish organizations condemned the bombing — the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League.
But they didn’t mention the larger problem nor the leaflets calling for the murder of peace activists and declaring “the State of Israel has become our enemy” and its leaders are “a mob of wicked people, haters of the Torah who want to erase the laws of God.”
Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism, wrote to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert urging the government to crack down on the violence and honor its commitments to freeze settlements and dismantle illegal West Bank outposts.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the community’s leadership umbrella, has failed to condemn the Jewish terrorism and settler violence.
It also failed to acknowledge the problem in the Daily Alert, a news summary prepared for it by the right-leaning Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
“American Jews simply don’t know about [the problem]; they don’t read about it in their Jewish media, not in the Daily Alert, not in the mainstream press which is preoccupied with the financial crisis and the election campaign, and they don’t hear about it from the leading Jewish organizations,” said Ori Nir of Americans for Peace Now.
Elsewhere, haredi Orthodox zealots have formed “modesty patrols” that resemble something straight out of Iran or Saudi Arabia. Their goal is to stamp out what one called “breaches of purity and modesty” by fellow Jews.
Shops have been looted, people harassed and stoned. In one instance, vigilantes reportedly broke into a woman’s apartment and beat her for what it considered unacceptable behavior.
Many haredi religious leaders reportedly approve of such behavior and even encourage it as defending the faith against secular encroachment.
The Jerusalem Post reports growing concern in the Israeli security establishment of “an acute rise in violence between settlers and Palestinians.”
IDF Major General Gadi Shamni told the BBC that there may be only a few hundred hardcore activists in the radical settler movement; but their numbers are growing, and the mainstream settler movement is doing little to stop them. He called it “a very grave phenomenon” and said the vigilantes have the backing of some rabbis and other leaders.
Their quest to thwart any peace settlement and keep the West Bank was behind the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and 13 years later the problem has only gotten worse. My own visits to Jewish communities around the country reveal a blithe ignorance of the situation.
Growing violence by ultra-Orthodox zealots and vigilante setters against Jews and Arabs threatens to explode in Israel, but gets scant attention here. Yet it could be a greater threat to Israeli democracy than the Islamist zealots.
Olmert has warned that this “evil wind of extremism, of hatred, of malice … threatens Israeli democracy.” Yet the American Jewish establishment is ignoring it.
Douglas M. Bloomfield is a Washington, D.C.-based syndicated columnist and a former chief lobbyist for AIPAC.
What should Israel do about this problem? How can Diaspora Jews help? What do you think? Send letters to chronicle@milwaukeejewish.org.
Breakout if needed:
Growing violence by haredi Orthodox zealots and vigilante setters could be a greater threat to Israeli democracy than Islamist zealots.
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