Perilous Times
Top Israel rabbis: Don't sell property to non-Jews
By AMY TEIBEL
The Associated Press
Tuesday, December 7, 2010; 1:14 PM
JERUSALEM -- Three dozen top Israeli rabbis threw their support Tuesday
behind a religious ruling barring Jews from selling or renting homes to
non-Jews - an indication of growing radicalism within the rabbinical
community at a time of mounting friction between Israeli Arabs and Jews.
The action by the clerics - chief rabbis in some of Israel's largest
cities and influential among the devout - fueled charges of racism.
The religious opinion first became a focus of controversy last year
when the chief rabbi of Safed - a town in northern Israel that has a
large concentration of devout Jews - urged that it be applied
specifically to Arabs.
Nitai Morgenstern, an aide to Safed's chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliahu, said
the town has "a problem of a lot of people renting and selling to
Arabs, and that destroys the city's social fabric."
Recently, a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews asked other chief rabbis to
express their support for the ruling to prove it has widespread
backing, Morgenstern said Tuesday. Thirty-seven rabbis signed it. The
Associated Press obtained a copy of the ruling with their signatures
attached on Tuesday.
Mordechai Nagari, chief rabbi of Maaleh Adumim, a large West Bank
settlement outside Jerusalem, defended the letter, which he signed.
"The rabbinical ruling is that you cannot sell houses to gentiles, and
its purpose is to protect the Jewish identity of the state of Israel,"
he told AP Television News.
Morgenstern said he understood how this attitude could cause friction
with the Arab minority, which accounts for one-fifth of Israel's
population of 7.6 million.
"But people have to see the other side," he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the initiative.
"Israel categorically rejects these words" against its Arab citizens,
Netanyahu said in a speech Tuesday evening in Jerusalem. "This must not
happen in any democratic nation, and certainly not in the Jewish and
democratic state" of Israel.
Amit Cohen said he and other Safed residents led the campaign to win
other rabbis' support because clerics are "simply fed up with the fact
that rabbis have to fear issuing or discussing religious rulings."
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel called on Netanyahu to take
disciplinary action against the rabbis, who are employed by the state.
Taxpayers pay the salaries of Israel's 126 municipal chief rabbis.
Arab Israeli lawmaker Ahmad Tibi said the rabbis should be fired and
brought up on criminal charges "because we are talking about incitement
or racism according even to Israeli law."
Israeli Jews have increasingly been questioning the loyalty of Arab
citizens, who legally enjoy the same rights but tend to be poorer and
discriminated against in state funding and job opportunities.
Israel's ultranationalist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, led his
Yisrael Beitenu party to large gains in last year's parliamentary
elections by playing on the perceived disloyalty of Israel's Arabs.
Meanwhile, some members of the Arab minority have become radicalized by
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and are openly speaking about turning
the Jewish state into part of a binational state that would be home to
Israelis and Palestinians both.
Salah Mohsen, spokesman of Adalah, an advocacy group for Arabs in
Israel, said the rabbis' action was "not surprising" and blamed
Lieberman's party, which wants to redraw Israel's borders to exclude
large Arab communities.
Rabbi David Rosen, the interfaith adviser to Israel's chief rabbinate,
described the rabbis' action as "disturbing" but said he did not think
that the majority of the country's rabbis would agree and called it a
product of the lingering conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
"The rabbinate as a whole isn't xenophobic or hostile to Arabs," Rosen
said. "As long as the conflict goes on here, it's logical to assume
that the attitudes of all sides will harden, which is deeply
regrettable."
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Associated Press writers Diaa Hadid and Daniel Estrin contributed to
this report from Jerusalem.