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Opinions/Editorials Title: The Rise Of Fanatical 'Israeli Ayatollahs' Is A Godsend For Anti-Zionists Last week, Israel’s foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman compared Turkey with Iran before the 1979 Islamic revolution. But if Mr Lieberman were to be honest, he’d recognise that the greater threat to Israel from rising religious fundamentalism comes from within – on an almost daily basis. At the same time as he was doing his tough-guy act with the Turks, Israel’s High Court was buckling to the fait accompli of sexually segregated bus services (women at the back) on over 100 state bus routes, demanded by an emboldened ultra-orthodox community. On the same day, an Israeli activist who defied orthodox Jewish custom by leading a group of women in open prayer at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall has been told to expect years in prison for breaching the peace – raising the prospect of Progressive Judaism’s first prisoner of conscience. The rabbis are now infringing on every aspect of Israeli life – even death. When the former Liverpool footballer Avi Cohen was killed in a motorcycle accident at the New Year, he had an organ donor’s card in his wallet – a campaign he had publicly supported. His family agreed that his organs should be donated before he was taken off his life-support machine, but several so-called “miracle worker” rabbis objected. They told the family that taking his organs while his heart was still beating was murder according to Jewish law. The family succumbed to the pressure, even though potential recipients had been told organs had been located for them. If these were purely domestic concerns they would be worrying enough for supporters of democracy and individual rights – but there are wider, existential ramifications. Thus, as Israel and her friends around the world battle a raising tide of demonisation of the Jewish state, they are being undermined by rabbinic extremism. This was starkly highlighted at Christmas when hundreds of Israel’s rabbis gifted anti-Zionism a “godsend” in the form of the despicable religious ruling barring Jews from selling or renting homes to non-Jews (Arab Israelis), published just before Christmas. Hundreds of other rabbis, including some of the most revered ultra-orthodox figures, Israel’s president, her prime minister, the nation’s conscience in the form of Yad Vashem Holocaust shrine, survivor groups and the Anti-Defamation League denounced the blatant racism, but the damage was done. Just as the anti-Israel lobby was rubbing its hands with glee at the a new line in its “Israel – the apartheid state” rhetoric, a group of rabbis wives (no doubt following patriarchal orders) added their own tinsel, with an open letter calling on Jews not to date Arabs. In chapter reminiscent of racists’ lurid sexual myths, the wives warned of wily Arabs preying on innocent Jewish lovelies. “Israeli society is falling into a deep, dark pit of racism and xenophobia,” warned Rabbi Gilad Kariv, the head of Israel’s Reform branch of Judaism. Israel’s founding fathers were committed modernists and believed the archaic Jewish sects would wither and die out in Zion’s brave new world. But, nurtured by bucket loads of tax shekels, today ultra-orthodox Judaism – for the first time in 2,000 years a state-sponsored religion – is a political power in its own right. Most significant is the ultra-orthodox Shas party, a major component of Netanyahu’s coalition whose leader Eli Yishai controls the all-important Interior Ministry, responsible for many areas of Israeli life dealing with identity and Jewish recognition. In a recent interview Mr Yishai openly admitted to taking a daily phone call from Shas’s spiritual head, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Rabbi Yosef is a Jewish reflection of an Iranian ayatollah. Revered by his followers as a legendary theologian, his world view is medieval. His recent pronouncement that the recent devastating forest fires in Israel’s north was divine retribution for poor Sabbath observance was far from the most bonkers thing he’s ever said. Today, the militant Judaism of Shas is one half of a political pincer set on squeezing the democratic life out of Israel’s body politic. The other half is the brawny nationalism of Lieberman (aka “Israel’s Milosevic”) and his Israel Beiteinu party supported by Russian Jews, now gunning for left-wing Israeli NGOs and human rights groups with McCarthyite fervour. Privately, the ultra-orthodox may view “the Russians” as whores and half Jews, while the migrants from Eastern Europe suspect the black-clad Talmudists are work shy draft-dodgers, but their profound differences are masked by their shared extremism – for the present.
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