Who is a good Jew?
FP 27. Semptember, 2012

Haaretz Published Sep.25, 2012

Soul-searching on Yom Kippur: Who is a good Jew?
By Carlo Strenger

How can we Jewish liberals be cured and turned again into good Jews? All we need to do is shut down our brains. According to Netanyahu & Co., this is the road to redemption.

Yom Kippur is traditionally a day for soul-searching. So I’ve been wondering how I need to change; where my past mistakes were, and I think I’ve seen the light. This is my occasion to recant and repent. I want to express my profound gratitude to Mr. Netanyahu’s fabulous team. Without Eli Yishai, Avraham Katz, Zeev Elkin Ophir Akunis & Co., I would never have understood how wrong I have been all along.

Israel’s liberals, I now realize, have forgotten what it is like to be Jewish, as Netanyahu told Rabbi Kaduri years ago.

Let me start with special thanks to Mr. Gideon Saar, Israel’s minister of education. The Council of Higher Education he chairs has decided to shut down the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University. Never mind that this department was audited by an international committee and had implemented its recommendation. A good Jew should never listen to the gentiles.

Academic freedom is an invention of the goyim, isn’t it? Like all inventions of the goyim, it creates trouble. After all it’s inacceptable that academics should hold and publish views that are not in tune with Bibi’s government. Saar’s decision is a wonderful precedent: it should teach these liberal academics that if they don’t follow the government’s line, their departments will be shut down.

In the name of Israel’s liberals, I repent: we mistakenly thought that one of Judaism’s great legacies is to remember what it was like to be a stranger in another’s land, and that we should not do unto others as was done onto us. Eli Yishai has taught us that this is un-Jewish: we must think about Jews only, and we should judge refugees by the color of their skins and defend Israel’s Jewish character by kicking them out without ever checking whether they should be treated as refugees according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Israel’s liberals have been stuck in the terrible misconception that Tikkun Olam, making the world a better place, is a great ideal, deeply rooted in the Jewish ethos. Worse than that: we thought that Jewish history has taught us that there is nothing more terrible than ethnic chauvinism. That’s why, along with most Jews around the world, we believed that support of human rights irrespective of color, creed and nationality matters.

I would like to thank MK Avraham Katz for opening our eyes. He told us that we are a bunch of decadent Tel Avivians who bow to the laws of the gentiles. A proud Jew doesn’t care about others. Only Jews matter. I would also like to thank Rabbi Ovadia Yossef for reminding us that God has created gentiles only to serve Jews - and I strongly advise the ADL to withdraw its condemnation of Rabbi Ovadia Yossef’s statement: the ADL is just another branch of liberal Jews falsely believing in universal human rights! Instead the ADL should sit and study Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira’s teachings about how much more valuable Jewish lives are than any other!

We decadent liberals have also thought that Jews should use our brains in determining our future and that we should think diplomatically in shaping foreign relations. I would like to thank Foreign Minster Avigdor Lieberman and his deputy Danny Ayalon for teaching us that a good Jew shows the rest of the world that we don’t give a damn about their friendship, and that a good Jew knows how to offend and humiliate others.

We liberals also thought that it’s a good idea to protect the rights of gays and lesbians, and that Israel’s progressive legislation on gay rights is good. How mistaken were we! MK Uri Ariel has taught us that gays have no place in a Jewish army, and we should bow before his wisdom. Because actually, this whole democracy business is an invention of the goyim - even the word has ancient Greek roots. And Benny Katzover has already told us that Israel’s democracy should be replaced with a Jewish theocracy - it’s high time!
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