If You Kill Anyone, Don't Kill Charedim!

Imagine a bank full of hostages. The hostage taker is upset at the bank for not giving him a loan so he can save his house. He blames the bank and all of its employees. And has threatened to kill everyone in it. Including the customers that happened to be in the bank when the hostage taker broke in carrying a deadly weapon.

One of the hostages among the non bank employees is selected as a spokesman. He sees his life flashing before his eyes and tells the hostage taker the following. I beg you, don’t murder innocent bystanders who are not with the bank. We are not at fault. We had nothing to do with not giving you a loan. The implication of course is that if you’re going to murder anyone, murder the bank employees!

This is exactly what is being reported by Arutz Sheva about the Hebrew language edition of Mishpacha Magazine. They have published a plea in both Hebrew and Arabic which in essence begs the Arabs that if they are going to kill any more Jews, it ought not be the Charedim. Because the Arab complaint about Jews going up on the Temple Mount which some believe has precipitated the current murder spree - is not about them. They would never go up there –  as it is Halachicly forbidden to go up there today on pain of Kares!

I can’t believe the callousness and utter disregard for fellow religious Jews that this letter displays. If this is how a moderate Charedi magazine thinks, then we are all lost. It’s not that they don’t have a point about Jews going up to the Temple mount exacerbating tensions between Arabs and Jews. I too was critical of that. But to in essence say (by implication) - murder the Religious Zionists if you are going to murder anyone is beyond being self-centered. It is an exercise in pure evil. 

As I have said many times. The real reason they are trying to kill us is the decades long indoctrination of Jew hatred. It is a passionate obsession with so many of them. And all too easy for Palestinian leaders to incite their religious zealots to kill indiscriminately. Dying for the cause just makes them a martyr – with a guarantee of a very special and bright ‘Gan Eden’- which is reserved for all Muslim martyrs. 

And it gives fodder to the media to say that more Palestinians are being killed by Jews, than Jews by them – without any context. Making Israel out to be an occupying callous monster equal to the Palestinian terrorists that kill us. Or that Israel is even worse than them since Israel is stronger and in control as an occupier! It isn't fair that more Palestinians die because of this. 

Obviously the real villains here are the Palestinian terrorists and the leaders that have incited the violence. The media has some culpability here too since they tend to portray Israel's defense of its citizens as morally equivalent to the terrorists.

But when one religious Jew tries to re-direct the killing to other religious Jews – with the claim that they are innocent of what those other Jews are doing - that is perhaps the lowest any Charedi outlet has ever sunken too.

I fully expect some back pedaling here. But I think the cat is really out of the bag now. This is what at least some of them are thinking. Which is truly sickening.

Update
There is an article in the Jewish Press that explains Mishpacha as not intending it as a plea to Arabs not to kill Charedim. Here in part is what it says:

(Mishpacha Magazine's Aryeh) Ehrlich, in this poorly structured article, was trying to bring across a point or two, which he only managed to accomplish at the end of page two (which no one else actually read), and it wasn’t a message for the Arabs to not kill Hareidim because they don’t go up to the Temple Mount.

Ehrlich’s first point that he was finally trying to make is that Hareidim are on the front line because to the Arabs and to the world they look the most authentically Jewish...
He writes that now when there is no longer a real differentiation between right and left in Israel, and we are stuck with a confused government, now is the time to for unity, and more so, now is the time for all Jews to join them on the front line and be more Jewish...

Along the way he explained that this is Islam’s religious war against the Jews.The Temple Mount disclaimer in Arabic was merely the poorly chosen literary foil he used to reach this last sentence of “be more Jewish”, and nothing more than that.

I'm not sure that this 'explanation' makes it much better. He clearly said what he was quoted as saying in Arutz Sheva. That this was used in some other context is hardly a saving grace.