Soldier Says Rabbis Pushed "Religious War" In Gaza

[Purveyor]

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Rabbis in the Israeli army told battlefield troops in January's Gaza offensive they were fighting a "religious war" against gentiles, according to one army commander's account published Friday.

"Their message was very clear: we are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land," he said.

The account by Ram, a pseudonym to shield the soldier's identity, was published by the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper in the second day of revelations that have rocked the Israeli military. (www.haaretz.com "Shooting and Crying, 2009").

They were leaked from a Feb 13 meeting of armed forces members to share their Gaza experiences.

Some veterans, alumni of an Israel Defense Force (IDF) military academy, told of the killing of civilians and their impression that deep contempt for Palestinians pervaded the ranks of the Israeli forces.

Haaretz and the daily Maariv, which also published the accounts, quoted over half a dozen soldiers and airmen. The institution's director, Danny Zamir, confirmed that Thursday's published accounts were authentic.

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REUTERS: http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE52J36V20090320

[no_hypocrisy]

1. As soon as the concept of "us versus them" comes into play, you're talking fundamentalism.

Israel wasn't founded to protect a particular kind of Jew, using all means necessary, from the rest of the world.

[peacetalksforall]

2. What are the differences in religious leaders who push for death?

[peacetalksforall]

3. Since gentile means non-Jew then the Rabbis will also go after the the various Christians?

[peacetalksforall]

4. I am more stunned by reading this as the seconds go by. I knew in my gut that

the attack and massacre of Gaza was more than missiles. To tell us it was to stop the missiles was an insult. It looked like expansionism and a movement to get these Palestinians to exile themselves. Some said ethnic cleansing, I never let myself go that far.

This combination of military, political and religious leaders joining forces to obliterate gentiles makes it look like Israel is, at this point in time, the most radical country in the Middle East. Leaders of other countries who mouth the annihilation of Jews are all mouth in comparison to Israel through these last attacks in Lebanon and Gaza and ongoing everyday rule and rights and land deprivation - especially with what Israel owns in the way of warfare technology.

It now appears to me that Israel wants to cripple the people around them, use Turkey and Egypt to do their bidding where possible, and not allow any other country to obtain nuclear weapons so that they can proceed to obliterate freely, to cleanse what they say is their land. I think they have been playing us.

Israel may be doing as much for corporations who want the U.S. and Europe (particularly the UK)to facilitate ownership of the earth resources (especially this region) as we are doing on our own on behalf of corporations.

I believe that the Bush Dynasty made a bargain with these Israeli leaders and Rabbis, then didn't fully deliver on their promise.

I think people should rethink what was once a given - unconditional support of Israel.
Corporations, politicians, religious leaders, media, lobbyists, military - the core group. The real terrorists.

[grassfed]

5. imagine living next door

and if you united with your neighbors in the face of a grave and gathering threat, you are vilified in the US media as an irrational anti-Semitic fanatic and exploited to raise money to neuter US politicians, promote religious race war, build more settlements, ethnic cleansing ....

[IndianaGreen]

6. And our chaplains told our troops they were waging war for Christ in Iraq

It is religion itself that is the cause of all of this! Those religious leaders that fought for justice and freedom did so, not because of their religion, but because of who they were as men and women.

Religion was the first enslaver of humankind, and remains so to this very day.

Religion! How it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began.

Emma Goldman
Anarchism: What It Really Stands For

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1910s/anarchism.htm

[Scurrilous]

7. NYTimes: A Religious War in Israel’s Army

<snip>

"The publication late last week of eyewitness accounts by Israeli soldiers alleging acute mistreatment of Palestinian civilians in the recent Gaza fighting highlights a debate here about the rules of war. But it also exposes something else: the clash between secular liberals and religious nationalists for control over the army and society.

Several of the testimonies, published by an institute that runs a premilitary course and is affiliated with the left-leaning secular kibbutz movement, showed a distinct impatience with religious soldiers, portraying them as self-appointed holy warriors."

<snip>

"Dany Zamir, the director of the one-year premilitary course who solicited the testimonies and then leaked them, leading to a promise by the military to investigate, is quoted in the transcripts as expressing anguish over the growing religious nationalist elements of the military.

"If clerics are anointing us with oil and sticking holy books in our hands, and if the soldiers in these units aren’t representative of the whole spectrum of the Jewish people, but rather of certain segments of the population, what can we expect?” he said. “To whom do we complain?”

more

[Sezu]

8. Evidently "Ram," has now admitted he didn't witness

the woman and children turning left instead of right; only "heard about it." So far it's simply hearsay. There is a lot more to this story than the simple minded Israel bashers are spouting. With them it's all guilty until proven innocent and even then guilty if you are an Israeli.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgxshts6_50dn5vfxfh