Jewish Discriminatory Practices Are Rooted in Jewish Religious Law By Dr. Israel Shahak
Doc Tavish
http://www.infobahnos.com/~jtoth/web245.html
From the Hebrew Press
Israeli Discriminatory Practices
Are Rooted in Jewish Religious Law
By Dr. Israel Shahak
------------------------------------------------------------------------
(This is an abridged translation of an article by the author published
in the Israeli newspaper Davar on March 15, 1995.) The author of the
following article Dr. Israel Shahak is a retired professor at the
Hebrew University in Jerusalem, also chairman of the Israeli League
for Human Rights.]
The rabbis of Safad, joined by the Chief Rabbi Bakshi-Doron, recently
issued a judgment prohibiting Jews living in the Land of Israel to
lease or sell any real estate property to non-Jews. These rabbis are
on the State of Israel's payroll. Yet all too clearly, their judgment
contravenes Israeli state laws proscribing public expressions of
racism and utterances hurtful to human dignity. (1)
(1) Plenty of such laws exist, but since only the attorney general has
the right to charge people who seemingly contravene them, they are
almost always applied against the Arabs and hardly ever against the
Jews. For example, the late [Jewish] Nazi Meir Kahane was never
charged for calling Arabs "dogs" as was his custom.
Nonetheless, the rabbis of Safad did not invent this prohibition. The
racist rulings are part and parcel of the Jewish religious law
(halacha). Furthermore, all the rulings of Jewish religious law
concerning non-Jews, and incidentally, also Jewish women and some
other Jewish sectors, are racist and discriminatory. Yet for years
such rulings have been routinely invoked by rabbinical courts which
are a recognized part of the State of Israel's judiciary.
Two examples show what the application of such laws may involve.
According to Jewish religious law, both non-Jews and Jewish women
cannot validly testify in rabbinical coutrs. True, Jewish women are
permitted to testify in a few strictly limited matters considered
"female affairs." If a case involves "a major judicial effort,"
however, a Jewish woman's testimony is perforce invalid,(2) because
"all women are lazy by nature."
(2)The example given in halacha is that a Jewish woman can testify
that a single dish or several dishes are kosher. But if she testifies
that many dishes prepared for a big reception are kosher, her
testimony is invalid on the assumption, that her laziness and
resultant reluctance to make a major effort could make her lie if they
really were non-kosher.
But even in cases not involving a "major judicial effort" when Jewish
women can testify, a problem appears when the testimony of a Jewish
woman is contradicted by the testimony of a Jewish man. Jewish
religious law solves this problem by the formula that "a testimony of
100 Jewish women is equivalent to a testimony of a single Jewish
man."(3)
(3) Although this ruling is provided in the English translation of the
authoritative Talmudic Encyclopedia (under the entry "Yisha,"
"woman"), it cannot be found in any of the numerous books dealing with
Judaism in English or other foreign languages.
The second example concerns the definition of the term "harlot" in
Jewish religious law. "We have learned by tradition that the term
'harlot' as designated in the Torah means any woman who is not a
daughter of Israel (i.e., not born Jewish), or a daughter of Israel
who has had intercourse with a man she is forbidden to marry"
(Maimonides, The Book of Holiness, Forbidden Intercourse, Chapter
XVIII, Law 1, translated in Yale University Judaica series). According
to this racist definition, all women who happen to have been born
non-Jewish are automatically considered to be "harlots." On the basis
of this definition every female converted to Judaism is still
considered by Jewish religious law to be a "harlot" - and as such
forbidden to marry a Jewish "priest" (i.e., a supposed descendant from
the Biblical "Aaron the priest").(4)
(4) In the U.S. this ruling is accepted by the Orthodox and the
Conservatives, i.e., by the majority of American Jews. Needless to
say, neither they nor the Reform Jews (who do not accept it) ever
discuss the matter in their English-language publications.
It is easy to imagine what the Jews would have said if any religion or
movement branded all Jewish women as "harlots" and maintained that
they remain "harlots" for ever only because they were born Jewish.
Lands defined as owned by the State of Israel
can be leased only to Jews
All too clearly the enforcement of such laws in the State of Israel is
irremediable unless the religion is separated from the state. It is
impossible, and in my view even improper, to demand that Orthodox
rabbis not issue rulings conforming to Jewish religious law which has
for them an incontestable validity as the Word of God. But it is
reasonable to demand that those who do not believe in the sanctity of
Jewish religious law know what is its real content.The secular Jews
should not fall prey to an indoctrination presenting "the Jewish
morality" as supposedly enshrined in Jewish religious law, or
extolling compatibility between the norms of historical Judaism and
modern democracy. As Jews, we should be aware of the undeniable
historical fact that for long centuries the entire Jewish nation
really believed that all non-Jewish women were "harlots" and that the
religious Jews in Israel still so believe.
What is really surprising is that people so seldom realize that laws
of the State of Israel pertaining to the use of land are no different
in essence from the rulings of the Safad rabbis. The State of Israel
has turned most of the land, whether in Israel or in the West Bank,
into "state land." After these lands are defined as owned by the State
of Israel they can be leased only to Jews. The right to lease such
lands is denied to all non-Jews, without a single exception. This
denial is enforced by placing all state lands under the administration
of the Jewish National Fund, a branch of the World Zionist
Organization, whose racist statutes forbid their lease or any other
use to non-Jews. It is easy to see that such Israeli regulations are
nothing but an effect of corresponding rulings of Jewish religious
law, just as secular anti-Semitism is often an effect of
secularization of religious anti-Semitism.
On closer inspection it turns out that almost everything the State of
Israel does or says in its relations with non-Jews is an effect of
such a secularization of religious notions. As an example let me give
the recent spontaneous pronouncement by senior officials of the
Housing Ministry in justification of their policy of supporting the
Jewish settlers who squat in houses that the ministry builds. In such
cases the ministry's policy is to spend public money for connecting
such houses to the electricity, water and sewage networks. When asked
why they do it, the Housing Ministry officials answered that " it was
inconceivable to leave the Jews without electricity or sewerage, no
matter what they do."
Gentile Villages
It is not difficult to point to Arab villages in Israel (let alone in
the occupied territories) whose residents have been left for decades
"without electricity or sewerage," often until the present day. It is
not difficult to point to the striking contrast between spending tax
money for construction of magnificent public buildings in the center
of Jewish Gush Etzion (in the West Bank) or Jewish Gush Qatif (in the
Gaza Strip) and the dilapidation of Druze villages in Israel which are
not being granted budgets for the most essential amenities, even
though a large majority of their residents serve in the Israeli army.
We are often told of "an alliance of blood" between the Druze and the
Jews. For all such talk, however, the Druze are Gentiles, which
automatically turns them into frequent victims of discrimination, both
by Jewish religious law and Israeli policies.
There are well-intentioned people who believe that this situation
could be significantly remedied if the Knesset enacted more laws
against discrimination, or if the Supreme Court passed more verdicts
against it. In fact, there is no basis for such hopes because the
State of Israel has a multitude of ways of circumventing legal
obstacles. The Supreme Court verdict which ordered the government to
let the Arab villagers of Baram and lkrit return to their villages has
never been made effective(5) and the Meretz ministers in the present
government did not help these villagers either.
(5) The verdict was issued in 1951. Ben-Gurion's response was to order
the Israeli air force to bomb the two villages on Christmas Eve of
that year, with the adult male villagers rounded up and forced to
watch from the nearby hill as their houses were being demolished. Such
practices are possible, because Israel has two systems of laws, both
equally in force. One comprises various "emergency regulations" which
are hardly ever applied against the Jews, and the other relatively
liberal laws applied whenever the Jews are concerned.
Racist and inciteful pronouncements of Jews against non-Jews,
especially against Arabs, abound in the State of Israel. Yet I do not
recall a singIe instance of a Jew being convicted for such an offense,
although many Arabs have been convicted for incitement against the
Jews.
I do not deny the existence of major differences between Israeli laws
and Jewish religious law. But the most important of these differences
seems to be that the manner of drafting the Israeli laws permits
obfuscation of what Jewish religious law states with bluntness.
Official racism and discrimination pervade all walks of life in
Israel. Israel is not the only state which robbed the natives of their
land, whether in the West Bank after 1967, or by more legal means in
Israel in the 1950s and 1960s. In those decades most land owned by the
Arab citizens of Israel (let alone the refugees) was in effect filched
from them. There are many states which in the past were systematically
engaged in land robbery. The U.S., for example, robbed Indians of
their land, transforming most of it into state land. Nevertheless,
this land is now available for use by any U.S. citizen. One of the
differences between Israel and other states is that the latter might
have practiced racial or ethnic discrimination in a specific period of
time in the past, whereas in Israel such discrimination still is
practiced.
We need to recognize that in Israel the real issue is discrimination
not only against the Palestinians (including those who serve in the
Israeli army, police and Shabak), but against all non-Jews. This
discrimination has the same character as that which the anti-Semites
want to apply against the Jews. Unless we understand those realities,
we will not be able to change them. But these realities include the
fact, that Israel practices systematic discrimination against non-Jews
because it defines itself as a "Jewish state mandated to preserve its
Jewish character."
Until the beginning of the Jewish Enlightenment in the 1780s (6) all
Jews firmly believed that non-Jews should be discriminated against
whenever possible. It now turns out that the Jewish Enlightenment
failed to change the attitudes of all, or perhaps even of most Jews in
this respect. Many completely irreligious Jews still believe, that for
the sake of the Jewish tradition which commanded dis crimination
against non-Jews, the latter should be discriminated against in the
"Jewish state" forever.
(6) It spread rapidly in France, Britain and Holland, slowly in
Germany and the Austrian Empire, but it begun in the Russian Empire
only in the 1860s and in the Ottoman Empire even later.
Of course this argument cannot justify discrimination against
non-Jews. On the contrary, it closely resembles the arguments also
exist in all other Middle Eastern states, of anti-Semites in favor of
continued (or renewed) discrimination against the Jews to the point of
virtual identity.
Challengers of the view that adherence to tradition justifies
discrimination can be divided into two completely different
categories. Some argue that a racist and discriminatory tradition is
to be denounced in any event, even if in the past it helped provide a
state or society with some cohesion.
The advocates of this view assign to justice a priority higher than to
tradition and areaccordingly willing to oppose their own or their
ancestors' tradition if it conflicts with the principles of justice.
According to this view, social reforms should aim at a removal or
change of such traditions. I fully concur with this view. (...)
(This article also appeared in The Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs, July/August, 1995)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For more material from Israel Shahak try:
http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~sames/steve/shahak.htm
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Harry Katz
Dov Tavish writes:
Israeli Discriminatory Practices
Are Rooted in Jewish Religious Law
By Dr. Israel Shahak
Yet again, Israel Shahak. With all due respect, can't Mr. Tavish and
his cohorts find anyone else to corroborate Dr. Shahak's views? Not
one single, solitary expert? Reprinting his views every few weeks do
not make them any more persuasive.
--
Harry Katz