55% of Jewish Israelis back ban on sale or rental to Arabs
The
chattering classes may not be very happy about the
rabbis' letter banning sales or rentals of homes to Arabs, but the
Jewish public is largely in favor.
A survey by the
Panels Institute (link in Hebrew) at the end of last week shows that 55% of Israel's adult Jewish population is in favor of the ban. That includes 41% of secular Israelis, 64% of traditional Israelis and 88% of the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox. 58% oppose firing the rabbis who are state employees and who signed the letter. That includes 46% of secular, 73% of traditional and 92.5% of the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox.
The survey then asked what you would do if an Arab family moved into your neighborhood. 69% of the secular, 52% of the traditional and 15% of the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox said they had no problem with that. 24% of the secular, 31% of the traditional and 78% of the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox said that they would try to stop it.
Margin of error is 4.4%.
I don't expect that the rabbis will be fired, and I suspect that the numbers that support the substance of the ruling are much higher. For years, it's been the seculars of Tel Aviv and its environs who insist that we must separate from the Arabs. But they can't admit rabbis are right about anything, and they can't admit that they agree with refusing to rent to Arabs because, after all, that would make them 'racists.'
The picture at the top is Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Tzfat (Safed) who started all this.
Labels: Deuteronomy 7:2, Lehava, Panels Institute, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, renting or selling land to non-Jews in Israel
More politicians want to fire the rabbis
Minister without portfolio and MK
Benny Begin (Likud) has come out strongly against the rabbis who signed a letter calling on the public not to sell or rent real estate to Arabs.
“One must differentiate between the legal and public situation,” Begin told The Jerusalem Post, stressing the public significance of such a discriminatory letter. “From a moral-public point of view, the city rabbis should not be able to continue to proceed carrying on their public responsibilities, if they do not retract their letter, as some have already done.”
While not elected by the public, they are publicly appointed figures who serve in official positions as municipal rabbis, Begin said.
“It would be morally-publicly impossible for them to continue in their official positions on behalf of the public,” he said, reiterating a similar statement he made on Thursday morning, before [Attorney General Yaakov] Weinstein made his announcement [that he was opening an investigation. CiJ] public.
When asked if the public might side with the rabbis on this issue, as suggested by a few recent polls, Begin explained that the rabbis were appointed by the state, the establishment, which is against such sentiment.
As for the polls, well, it might be that “once again I am in disagreement with the public,” he said.
In response to a question from the Post about what practical measures the government might take against these rabbis, Begin replied that “first of all, we must respond, publicly, to indicate to the public, to the Arab sector, that we do not agree with the letter.”
It also turns out that Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef has refused to sign the letter.
A group of right-wing activists recently approached head of Shas’s Council of Torah Sages Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in an attempt to convince him to add his signature to the letter against renting or selling land in Israel to non-Jews, Channel 2 reported Sunday night.
According to the report, the senior Sephardi adjudicator refused to sign, and told the activists that it was “an unnecessary and harmful petition, such statements shouldn’t be made, next thing we know Jews in London and Paris will be told the same thing.”
Meanwhile, National Union Chairman Yaakov Katz has written a letter to Attorney General Weinstein.
“My bewilderment comes as we have never heard you similarly instructing your attorneys to examine criminal elements in the declarations of radical-left public figures, who demonstrate and ceaselessly that homes in Jerusalem should not be sold or rented to Jews,” Katz wrote. “The perplexity is even greater, since your office is in the Shimon Hatzadik [Sheikh Jarrah] neighborhood, where weekly such demonstrations take place.”
Katz urged Weinstein’s swift response, “to refute the sentiments within the public I represent,” which might “feel that you are continuing the path your predecessors led and the dominant line among your attorneys, which displays hatred and persecution against anything that smacks of Judaism and Torah.”
Yes, the attorney general's office is known to lean strongly left and secular.
In the meantime, the controversy is escalating, with another organization opening up an office to '
out' Jews who sell or rent land to Arabs.
The Lehava anti-assimilation organization announced on Sunday that it is opening a telephone center against the phenomenon of Jews selling or renting homes to Arabs. The announcement follows the rabbinical statement of opposition to such sales or rentals that has been signed by hundreds of rabbis and educators.
People calling 052 225 8183 will hear a recorded message in Hebrew telling them to leave details about people selling or renting their homes to Arabs. Lehava will then verify the information and publish the names of the people on a monthly basis.
Hey if selling or renting your home to an Arab is nothing of which to be ashamed, no one should mind if the fact that they do so is made public, right?
Heh.
Labels: Benny Begin, Deuteronomy 7:2, Lehava, renting or selling land to non-Jews in Israel, Yaakov Weinstein
Three yeshiva heads in Samaria summoned for undefined 'investigation'
I received the following by email earlier today.
Three prominent rabbis and heads of yeshivot in Samaria were summoned to police interrogation daily, without knowing the subject of the interrogation. The Samaria Settlers' Committee: "Scare tactic and threats - just like in Soviet Russia."
The rabbis have informed the authorities in a letter that they will not be arriving at what looks like a political intimidation interrogation: "Our door is open to any investigator who comes to our offices or homes and informs us of the matter he would like to investigate us about. We do expect that in the future, it will be clear to every investigator what the required procedure is for investigating rabbis."
Uproar in the religious public and the nationalist camp over what appears to be an attempt to start a scare campaign against Samaria rabbis.
Three prominent rabbis in Samaria received in the mail about two weeks ago, letters summoning them to interrogations during the coming week at the Russian Compound police station in Jerusalem. The rabbis are: Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, the rabbi of the settlement and head of the yeshiva of Elon Moreh, who was recently chosen as the rabbi for the whole region of Samaria; Rabbi David Dudkewitz, the rabbi of Yitzhar and the head of the central kollel of the area; and Rabbi Yehoshua Schmidt, the rabbi of the settlement and head of the yeshiva of Shavei Shomron, as well as a member of the secretariat of the Samaria Rabbinical Council.
The three are rabbis of well-known, established and prominent settlements, who also serve as yeshiva heads and are known as prominent rabbis in the religious Zionist movement in particular, and in the nationalist and settlement camp in general. In many incidences, senior IDF officers, Israeli police and various security agencies meet with them in their homes, as well as many government ministers and Knesset members. At their head is the regional rabbi of Samaria, Rabbi Elyakim Levanon.
The letters were signed by a junior-level officer and without any official subject of the investigation noted.
The fact that in each of the three letters, the rabbis were summoned consecutively to interrogations - day after day, without any official subject (of interrogation) listed, and to a police station which does not belong to the Judea/Samaria police district, has led many to believe that this is the beginning of a scare-and-threaten campaign aginst settlement rabbis.
Something else that has added to the uproar are the threats made by junior police investigators against the rabbis, seemingly to scare them into appearing at the interrogations.
It was revealed that in one case, an investigator phoned one of the rabbis, shouted at him and heaped abuse and threats on him, and in addition, "improper" phone threats were directed at another rabbi in a call made by a junior officer at a Jerusalem police station that was answered by a secretary in the rabbi's office.
In the wake of these calls, the three rabbis - Rabbi Levanon, Rabbi Dudkowitz and Rabbi Schmidt - sent a letter with their signatures to the commander of the investigations department of the Israeli police, in which they declared that they have no intention of presenting themselves at what looks like a political scare-tactic investigation.
Among other things, the rabbis wrote in the letter:
"We, the undersigned, three settlement rabbis and heads of yeshivot, have received a summons to an investigation at a Jerusalem police station. We were surprised to receive the summons, signed by a sergeant, stating that we are summoned to an "interrogation" without providing any details about the matter referred to.
"Our door is open to every investigator who comes to our offices or our homes and describes what he is interested in investigating us about. We do expect that in the future, it will be clear to every investigator what the required procedure is for investigating rabbis."
In addition to the rabbis' letter, Gershon Mesika, the head of the Samarian Regional Council, sent an urgent letter to the Minister of Homeland Security, Yitzchak Aharonovitz, saying: "I was surprised to hear of the inappropriate summons to an interrogation and of the implied threat to three prominent rabbis and heads of yeshivot. This is a step which looks improper both in its essence, which looks like an attempt to impose scare tactics and political threats, and in its disrespectful format. Would a junior police officer have allowed himself, in his spare time, to summon to an investigation a district judge, an archbishop or senior Khadi in this way? I expect the honorable Minister to order an investigation of this gravely (wrong) procedure."
Chairman of the Samaria Settlers' Committee, Benny Katzover, reacted sharply to the story: "Summoning rabbis to consecutive interrogations, one day after another, is a grave step in the style of oppressive regimes we thought we forgot about; this is a transparent attempt to scare and threaten the rabbis of the settlement movement and in its wake, the whole settlement movement. No enlightened society would have agreed to such actions by the ruling powers."
MK Arye Eldad (National Union), a member of the Knesset Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, announced that he will speak to the Minister of Homeland Security on the subject: "The Minister of Homeland Security must investigate whether it is standard procedure to summon public figures to an interrogation, without telling them what the interrogation is about, whether the State Prosecutor's Office ordered the summons, and if so, who else was summoned, or is this a local initiative of police investigators, and also whether this step is agreed to by the Minister of Homeland Security."
MK Nissim Ze'ev (Shas) also reacted sharply: "By the looks of it, this smacks of political persecution. The State is forbidden to interfere in matters of Jewish law for the Jewish people; the moment this is done, we are liable to lose the Jewish state. Great rabbis of Israel carry out their tasks, to determine Jewish law and to lead the public. The rabbis must not be deterred by grave summons such as these, and we strengthen the hands that do their jobs with dedication for all of the Jewish People."
And you all wonder why we take so lightly the prospect of having to choose between being a Jewish state and a Democratic state.
The picture at the top is Rabbi Elyakim Levanon.
Labels: Deuteronomy 7:2, Israel is a Jewish state, police state, Samaria rabbis
Rabbis' letter has stopped home sales to Arabs
You will recall that I reported last week about a letter signed by numerous city rabbis not to
sell or rent homes to Arabs. On Thursday, two rabbis - Rabbis Simcha HaCohen Kook and Yaakov Edelstein -
removed their names from the letter after their teacher - Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv - denounced the letter.
"I've said for some time that there are rabbis who must have their pens taken away from them," Elyashiv remarked.
"It's interesting that these same Zionist rabbis support symbolically selling their land to gentiles during the shmita year," he added referring to the seven-year cycle when agricultural fields in Israel must lie fallow.
But the remaining rabbis have continued to support the letter, and the letter has
all but put a stop to home sales to Arabs by Jews.
"We know for sure that the rabbis' ruling has already been effective in stopping some sales," says an involved source.
The ruling banning the sale or renting of apartments to Arabs was originally issued two months ago in the Galilee city of Tzfat, of which several neighborhoods can be said to be mixed Arab-Jewish. Arabs comprise the majority of students in the local college, as well as of service providers in many fields.
In light of this demographic trend, the city's Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu issued the ban. It cites not only classic Jewish sources, but also the fact that bringing nationalist Arabs into Jewish neighborhoods leads to violence and danger to life, intermarriage, and a drop in property values as Jews leave the area and it becomes Arab.
Since the ruling was first issued, nearly 50 city rabbis around the country have signed it – and of late, another 250 have expressed support. This, apparently, in light of the demographic dangers presented by Arabs moving into neighborhoods of Jerusalem, as well as cities such as Nazareth Illit, Ramle, Lod, and more.
Some rabbis and many politicians have come out against the ruling, including Rabbi Yuval Cherlow and Prime Minister Netanyahu. The mayor of Herzliya, Yael German of the Meretz party, has said that she will seek to bring about the firing of the city's Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yaakobovitz because of his signature on the letter. Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein has said he will look into charges that the signatories are guilty of incitement.
Let's fire all the rabbis - that'll solve all the problems, won't it? /sarc
The picture is Rav Ovadiah Yosef, who was involved in the original letter.
Labels: Deuteronomy 7:2, Rabbis' letter, renting or selling land to non-Jews in Israel
Rabbis: Jews shouldn't rent land in Israel to gentiles
40-50 rabbis from the National Religious and Charedi (ultra-Orthodox) streams have signed a letter calling upon Jews
not to rent land in Israel to gentiles.
If a Jew sells or rents property to a gentile, his neighbors must warn him, and if he does not change his ways, the neighbors must avoid the person, and may not conduct business with him, according to the petition. A person who rents or sells to non-Jews also may not get aliyahs in synagogue.
Note: No death penalty.
In addition, one of the best-known National-Religious rabbis, Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, signed the letter, as did Yosef's son, Rabbi Yaakov Yosef. Haredi leader Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv and Rabbi Avigdor Neventzal of Jerusalem's Old City also signed the letter.
Another ten rabbis reportedly plan to sign the letter.
Across the spectrum. These rabbis certainly don't need my approval to express their opinion, but let me point out that there is a specific prohibition in the Torah against selling or renting land
in Israel to non-Jews (Deuteronomy 7:2 and see Rashi's commentary there). Of course, that's not going to bother Israel's Leftists:
MK Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz) called on Tuesday for these to be fired.
"This is the worst kind of racism, which comes from rabbis who are paid by the state" Horowitz said on Tuesday. "All they do is encourage hatred and destroy Israeli democracy."
Many of them are actually not paid by the State and cannot be fired. But that's beside the point. In most places in Israel, Jews and Arabs do not live together. This is not America or even Europe, and neither side wants to live together. That doesn't mean that they're fomenting violence or hatred against each other. No rabbi is calling for murdering Arabs who buy in Jewish neighborhoods, and certainly not for murdering Jews who sell to Arabs. Unlike the 'Palestinian Authority,' Hamas or Jordan, all of whom have a death penalty for anyone who sells land to Jews.
Labels: Deuteronomy 7:2, Rabbis' letter, renting or selling land to non-Jews in Israel
The chattering classes may not be very happy about the rabbis' letter banning sales or rentals of homes to Arabs, but the Jewish public is largely in favor.
